Shavuot count-down: Day 24 of counting the Omer. Using
Kabbalistic symbology for
counting the Omer - the days between the 2nd night of Pesach and the start of Shavuot - tonight begins the
Tiferet of Netzach: Compassion in Endurance. Rabbi Simon Jacobson's
meditation for this day of the Omer:Healthy endurance, directed to develop good qualities and modifying bad ones, will always be compassionate. The compassion of endurance reflects a most beautiful quality of endurance: an enduring commitment to help another grow. Endurance without compassion is misguided and selfish. Endurance needs to be not just loving to those who deserve love, but also compassionate to the less fortunate. Does my determination compromise my compassion for others? Am I able to rise above my ego and empathize with my competitors? Am I gracious in victory?
(More on counting the Omer
here)
UPDATE:
Another interpretation from Synagogue 2000.
Aziz quotes Haggai, who earlier quoted this:
In 1953, when a rumor that Hitler might still be alive circulated around the world, an Arab newspaper asked some public figures what they would say to Hitler if they could contact him. As quoted in Bernard Lewis' book "Semites and Anti-Semites," this Arab officer responded: "I congratulate you with all my heart, because, though you appear to have been defeated, you were the real victor." [...] 24 years later, in 1977, the Nazi collaborator and author of that passage--Anwar Sadat--became the first Arab leader to visit Yad Vashem in Jerusalem.
Now, this logic supposedly should be applied to abu-Mazen. I am not going to dwell on the several reasons why the two cases are different. I am just going to poiint out two important facts. One is that Sadat is
dead (not a natural death, mind you). The other is that the real reason Egypt has not been at war with Israel since 1973 has little to do with the fact that Sadat visited Jerusalem (although this is the reason why he is dead). The real reason for this non-war status is the fact that Egypt was badly beaten in 1973. Another is that there is no longer a Soviet Union to support Egypt financially and militarily. On the other hand, there is the American financial support, that is clearly conditioned on Egypt's nonbelligerency. Just folow the money, and things clear up.
People who love soft methods and hate iniquity forgot this, - that reform consists in taking a bone away from a dog. Philosophy will not do it.
- John Jay Chapman
(via
Mudville Gazette)
Shavuot count-down: Day 23 of counting the Omer. Using
Kabbalistic symbology for
counting the Omer - the days between the 2nd night of Pesach and the start of Shavuot - tonight begins the
Gevurah of Netzach: Discipline in Endurance. Rabbi Simon Jacobson's
meditation for this day of the Omer:Examine the discipline of your endurance. Endurance must be directed toward productive goals and expressed in a constructive manner. Is my endurance and determination focused to help cultivate good habits and break bad ones? Or is it the other way around? Does my endurance come from strength or weakness? Does it come out of deep conviction or out of defensiveness? Do I use my endurance against itself by being tenacious in my lack of determination?
(More on counting the Omer
here)
(PR Newswire) Al-Qaeda, the premier global provider of integrated infidel solutions systems, today announced the Beta release of Jihad(TM) 2.0.
"Jihad 2.0 is a represents a flexible, open source solution platform for mission-critical 24-7 architectures," said spokesman Thabet bin Qais. "Whatever the fuck that means."
Jihad 2.0 will support popular ShariaWorks, KaffirZapper and is backward compatible with Century 7.0.
Al-Qaeda CEO Osama bin Laden said that "Jihad 2.0 demonstrates our commitment to innovation in a challenging environment."
Shares of Al-Qaeda closed at 0.000000001 dinars on the Jenin Exchange.
Jews in odd places: Peru: This South American country of 27 million has fewer than 2,800 Jews — though some who claim to be Jewish are not counted in the official number. At its 1970 peak, the once-thriving Peruvian community was 5,500 strong.
Tour guide Jaime Fischman tells
JTA, “Today we’re working on survival.”
Fischman’s grandparents were part of an early wave of German and Russian immigrants. Native Peruvians affectionately dubbed the exotic newcomers “Turcos,” or Turks.
“Our countrymen are devout Catholics who’ve never had much curiosity about who Jews really are,” he says.
The Jews of Peru are a lively mix of cultures. Some are descendants of Polish and Russian immigrants fleeing pogroms, and of Germans who fled the rise of Nazism. A few claim descent from Portuguese “secret Jews” who outlasted the Inquisition. Some came from North Africa. Holocaust survivors and their descendants also are part of the mix.
In addition, two unique groups challenge Peruvian notions of what it means to be a Jew.
The B’nai Moshe, sometimes referred to as “Inca Jews,”are former Christians. Rural farmers with no knowledge of Jewish custom and ritual, they began to practice an iconoclastic form of Judaism in the 1950s — inspired, they said, by the Psalms. They ate only fruits, vegetables and fish with scales. Unable to attract the attention of the mainstream Jewish community, they read from a homemade Torah scroll. They prayed wearing homemade prayer shawls. They used the sea as a ritual bath, and the men traveled to Lima to be circumcised. For some 30 years, the Jewish mainstream ignored the B’nai Moshe. Eventually they were “discovered” and examined by an Israeli-led religious court. In 1989 they were converted — on condition they move immediately to Israel. With the help of the Jewish Agency for Israel, 140 of the B’nai Moshe settled in Elon Moreh, a religious community in the West Bank. Second and third waves also were converted and made aliyah. Those who did not pass the rabbis’ examination remain in Peru, awaiting another chance.
The claims of a second group — descendants of 19th-century Moroccan Jewish adventurers who came to the Amazon jungle during the rubber boom — are more problematic. The community has passed through generations of intermarriage. They light candles on Friday night and bury their dead in what they call an “Israelite” cemetery, but their religious practices are also influenced by Catholicism and supernaturalism. This group lives in Iquitos, a town more than a thousand miles from Peru’s coastal cities, accessible only by plane or river boat. They have little contact with the outside Jewish world. But the 170-member community clings fiercely to a Jewish identity. They make donations to Israeli institutions, and several of their number have moved to Israel.
The B’nai Moshe and the “Amazon Jews” remain separated from the established community, which is concentrated in Peru’s capital, Lima.
B’nai Moshe converts were relocated immediately to Israel--Israeli rabbis wanted not only to guard against intermarriage, he says, but to assure their contact with Orthodox Jews. Among Lima’s Jews, in contrast, Orthodox practice has declined: Only about a dozen families keep the Sabbath strictly.
Embracing the families in the Amazon is more complex than recognizing the B’nai Moshe, whose Orthodox conversion has removed questions about their Jewish credentials. The Jewish faith brought to the jungle by the ancestors of the “Amazon Jews” has all but disappeared. Some in Lima grumble that the Iquitos only profess Judaism when it helps obtain things such as free burial, immigration rights to Israel or a chance to beguile tourists. Jewish authorities agree that in order to be fully acknowledged, group members would have to convert.
In any case, both groups could become mere historical footnotes: The remaining B’nai Moshe could convert and move to Israel, while the Iquitos community could disappear through intermarriage.
Shavuot count-down: Day 22 of counting the Omer. Using
Kabbalistic symbology for
counting the Omer - the days between the 2nd night of Pesach and the start of Shavuot - we have travelled through all of the combinations of the 7 lower sephirot with the
sephira of Tiferet. Tonight we begin 7 days of combining these sephirot with
the sephira of Netzach, beginning with
Chesed of Netzach: Lovingkindness in Endurance. Rabbi Simon Jacobson's
meditation for this day of the Omer:For anything to endure it needs to be loved. A neutral or indifferent attitude will reflect in a marginal commitment. If you have difficulty making commitments, examine how much you love and enjoy the object that requires your commitment. Do I love my work? My family? My choices?
For endurance to be effective it needs to be caring and loving. Does my endurance cause me to be, or seem to be, inflexible? Does my drive and determination cause me to be controlling? Am I too demanding? Do others (my employees, friends, children) cooperate with me out of the sheer force of my will and drive, or out of love?
(More on counting the Omer
here)
Moran spins to high-school students. One of Kesher Talk's readers, Russell, informs me that
Congressman Jim Moron - sorry, Mor
an - spoke to
a group of high school students on C-SPAN last week. The relevant part of Russell's email:
. . . where he places the blame for the current Israeli-Palestinian conflict on Israel, occurs about :43 minutes into the interview. A young woman asks him about issues that are important to him that may not be of the same importance to his constituents (at least that's the way I interpreted the question) and he responds (and I'm paraphrasing) that he feels he's blessed with having a district that generally thinks along the lines that he does, though there are some issues where he thinks he's "gotten a little bit ahead" of his constituents, such as foreign affairs, and it becomes very difficult to explain his positions.
He suggests the Middle East is one of those, and that his expertise on this issue comes from the fact that he's traveled over there many times and talked with many people. Accordingly, he suggests that it's the Likud government, which is "destroying homes and destroying infrastructure of the Palestinian authority," that is standing in the way of peace. He goes on to say the only solution is a two state system where the Palestinians have their own state that they can run themselves, along with protected borders for Israelis, but that "the settlements are a real problem."
He goes on to say that on this issue, he's voted in ways that have gotten him in trouble politically, but he thinks in the long run his views are the only ones that will secure real peace for the Israeli people, and that that conflict has to be resolved if U.S. objectives in the Middle East are going to be achieved, enabling democracy and the rise of economic middle class in the Middle East that will suppress young people from turning to terrorism. . . . nothing about what the Palestinians or the Arab states should do toward achieving peace was mentioned in reference to this point.
on his remarks earlier in the year:
Earlier in the program (about :14 into the presentation) he's asked about his leadership style, and he says he uses town hall meetings, such as the one earlier this year in Reston, VA, where he made remarks that "were taken out of context," misinterpreted, and used in a way he didn't mean. He says those remarks were directed toward (what he says was) an anti-war audience present at the meeting, and what he meant in those remarks was that any individual should work through whatever larger group they belong to in order to maximize their voice, as the group would have greater influence. Examples of such groups, according to Moran, would be the three major religions in the U.S., and he recalled trying to make the same point previously when he suggested, also controversially, that if Catholic priests spent "as much effort talking about unnecessary war as they do about abortion" it might change the course of public opinion. He admitted he didn't know if this was true, and that it was an exaggerated position, but, since the "lady" asking the question was Jewish, he used the same expression about "the Jewish American community, at least its leadership," and that was the point that was misinterpreted, and turned into a controversy.
I thought at one point he was going to say his remarks were hurtful, but what he said was that they were hurtful "in the way they were reported." Then (as if that wasn't bad enough) he tries yet another explanation, suggesting that he was trying to say that protest marches weren't as good a way to change public opinion as working through one's own organization or whatever group one belongs to, using the example that it was middle class America that turned around public opinion on the Vietnam war; then he quoted U.S. and Vietnamese casualty statistics for the Vietnam war.
on his re-election:
In the middle of the interview (around :30 or :35 into the interview) he was asked about a possible Democratic challenger to his seat in the next election, and he suggested that the more people in the race the better, as long as issues were discussed instead of personal attacks on a candidate's character.
Aren't you glad that's all cleared up now? [Bold emphasis mine - JW]
Rock the Casbah. Remember that Baghdad used to be
a cosmopolitan secular city with a thriving arts scene - before the Ba'athists took over.
An Iraqi theater group staged the country's first independent postwar production Sunday in Baghdad's looted, soot-stained Al Rashid theater — formerly a state-run institution in which only works sanctioned by the government of Saddam Hussein could be performed.
. . . . The theater company calls itself "Najeen," which means "Survivors." It has performed underground for years, staging plays in private homes or in public locales advertised only by discreet word of mouth. The 10-member cast in this production included some professional actors, but also poets, musicians and dancers affiliated with the group.
Jews in odd places: Uganda: In February, the
Ugandan Jewish community was given the stamp of approval under religious law after 83 years of practicing Judaism in isolation. 4 conservative rabbis from America and one from Israel joined the community’s spiritual leader Gershom Sizomu in supervising the conversion of most of Uganda’s 600 Jews.
Tracing their roots to rebel army officer Semei Kakungulu, a British missionary who preached the Hebrew bible to the people of Mbale at the beginning of the 20th century, Uganda's
Abayudaya community kept their faith despite persecution under Idi Amin’s dictatorial regime in the 1970s. And around 10 years ago, Kumalu, an American organisation which aids lost Jewish communities around the world, learned of the Abayudaya and helped the community rebuild itself and coordinated the mass conversion.
Jean Rosensaft, of the Hebrew Union College, in New York, expressed surprise that the Abayudaya wanted to join the tribe so badly: “Many Jews are losing the connection with their faith and it is inspiring to see people who actually choose to be Jewish. ... Judaism throughout history has welcomed the stranger and this is part of a tradition that has taken place for many years.”
Blog bull session redefining "conservative" and "liberal" started by Gary Farber (who is very good at putting out provocative ideas),
consolidated by Michael Totten, and joined by some very literate and knowledgeable political thinkers from across the political spectrum, like Joe Katzman, Armed Liberal, Michael Yglesias, Roger Simon, Patrick Ruffini, Keiran Healy, Perry de Havilland, and many other people commenting on
their blogs.
Main link index at Michael's. Read the whole thing - few cliches, no trolls, lots to think about.
Lessons from Durban. The
UN World Conference Against Racism, held in Durban SA right before before the attack on the World Trade Towers, turned into a festival of Israel-bashing and outright anti-semitism of the type which many of us became better acquainted with as we learned more about the politics and news media of the Arab world, and indeed of many of the Western organizations that went on to oppose US intervention in Iraq.
US Rep. Tom Lantos, who helped plan the conference and was part of the US delegation,
believes there are lessons to be learned from the conference about fighting terrorism. He places much of the responsibility for letting the conference get off-track on UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson. He holds the Bush administration responsible for the previous six months of unilateralist US foreign policy that made it difficult to rally support from our allies at the conference. Most of all, he blames several of the Arab nations for deliberately hijacking the conference in the first place.
Lantos' main thesis is that if the US wants liberal democratic societies to replace terrorist-supporting despots, we can't afford to be isolationist or unilateral in our foreign policy. If we do not stay engaged in world leadership, other nations will step into the vacuum. He describes in detail how this happened at Durban.
Among the interesting bits of information in this essay: There were five preperatory regional conferences prior to the global one. All of them went well until the Asian conference, held in Tehran, Iran, when Israeli, Jewish, Kurdish, and Bahai groups were barred from attending. (Remember this is a UN-sponsored conference.) Robinson did not insist the conference be moved to a different host nation that would not act in such a discriminatory manner. Although at the previous three conferences she exhorted the delegates about human rights abuses in their regions, at the Tehran conference she did not criticize Arab violations of human rights. Her avoidance of confronting the Islamic states set the tone for the conference itself, where she repeatedly refused to speak out against the debasement of rhetorical language, the demonization of one country, and the elevation of a regional territorial dispute to a major theme of a conference on racism.
Lantos also describes Jesse Jackson's unsuccessful grandstanding, Yasir Arafat's demagoguery, the parallel NGO conference infested with proto-Nazi imagery to depict Israel, and the "feverish" negotiations that went on in an effort to save the original purpose of the conference.
Although it was quickly overshadowed by the 9-11 attacks, the Durban conference is a useful case study in how international forums can be manipulated to
foment the kind of hatred and bigotry that results in terrorism.(Cross-posted on
Command Post)
David Plotz is writing
a series of articles in Slate on rebuilding civil society in Iraq.
The problem is
not merely how to introduce "democracy" to Iraq—democracy, after all, is as easy as holding an election—but how to bring about a liberal, constitutional democracy—a popular government that also protects the rule of law and basic rights. It's a noble ambition and a preposterously difficult one: If there is anything that democracy experts agree on, it's that you can't easily manufacture the conditions for liberal democracy. No quick fix replaces the hard work of building trust in laws, establishing checks and balances, encouraging civil debate, and so on. Recent attempts to impose democracy in countries such as Cambodia, Bosnia, and Angola have failed dismally.
Still, the experimentation in Eastern Europe, the former Soviet Union, Latin America, and Africa has produced a bunch of new ideas about how to build a genuine democracy faster and smarter.
Plotz then lists 7 ideas, including:
Establish rule of law and an independent judiciary before elections. There's a tendency in democracy-building to mistake elections for a stable democratic government. Every state requires order first. . . . The judiciary—which guarantees that order—must precede the elected government.
I previously
linked to several articles about the necessity for rule of law in Iraq as a pre-condition for establishing trackable property rights which in turn support stable democracy and a market economy.
Plotz' next article has some suggestions for establishing law and order.
The next article has suggestions for encouraging the voluntary civil associations celebrated by de Tocqueville, which actually get most of the work done, increase citizen confidence, and act as a check on government power.
UPDATE: The next article
offers seven suggestions for moving the Iraqi economy the the direction of widespread prosperity, from microlending to oil trusts. He also mentions Hernando de Soto's idea of firmly established property rights as an essential prerequisite.
(Cross-posted on
Command Post)
Shavuot count-down: Day 21 of counting the Omer. Using
Kabbalistic symbology for
counting the Omer - the days between the 2nd night of Pesach and the start of Shavuot - tonight begins the
Malchut of Tiferet: Nobility in Compassion. Rabbi Simon Jacobson's
meditation for this day of the Omer:Examine the dignity of your compassion. For compassion to be complete (and enhance the other six aspects of compassion) it must recognize and appreciate individual sovereignty. It should boost self-esteem and cultivate human dignity. Both your own dignity and the dignity of the one benefiting from your compassion. Is my compassion expressed in a dignified manner? Does it elicit dignity in others? Do I recognize the fact that when I experience compassion as dignified it will reflect reciprocally in the one who receives compassion?
We have now moved through all of the combinations of the 7 lower sephirot with the
sephira of Tiferet. Tomorrow begins the week of
the sephira of Netzach.(More on counting the Omer
here)
A different angle on Yom HaShaoh. Turns out young Israelis feel
the same way I do about Yom HaShoah commemorations.
. . . the club memorial is styled as an alternative ceremony, tailored to a generation that has grown restless listening to Hannah Senesh poetry and anthems from the Warsaw Ghetto partisans year after year. . . . "People are fed up with the usual movies and ceremonies,” said Ravid Brenner, 23, part of the standing-room crowd at the ceremony. “Still, all of our grandparents survived the Holocaust, so it’s very close.”
. . . “Why do people ask where was God in the Holocaust and no one asks where was God at a terrorist attack,” asked Koby Arielli, a 31-year-old fervently Orthodox journalist who confessed that he couldn’t connect to the Holocaust because his grandparents weren’t in Europe.
The Protocols of the Elders of Goyim. Why do I have an irresistable urge to paste this wonderful observation into all the comment threads on
No War Blog?
Why is a plausible link between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda invisible to the same people who can quickly connect the dots between the president and a worldwide conspiracy of oil and defense interests?
Speaking of this insidious presidential conspiracy, doesn't it sometimes remind you of another insidious conspiracy? It sure does to Lance Morrow.
Faced with a situation they, on some fundamental level, cannot understand (American soldiers being cheered?), ever more bizarre theories percolate amongst Bush’s opponents to explain his behavior. Amongst the academic left, for example, current wisdom holds that the president is a religious nut who invaded Iraq because of his reading of the Book of Revelations - not because of sound, this-world considerations about the dangers of weapons of mass destruction in the hands of a cunning tyrant given to playing with matches in the powder magazine of the Middle East, but rather because Bush is privately a Christian fundamentalist suicide bomber with an appetite for the Rapture or the Last Days or some other ecstacy of annihilation.
Bush is not One of Us, they say, not People Like Us. There’s that "scary business" of his believing in God. Bush and his gang are part of a Christian conspiracy to destroy the world. You might call this explanation the Protocols of the Elders of Goyim. It is the backup brought in when the left wants to give the Oil Hypothesis a rest. It is the other side of the same coin.
It is an ingenious line of insinuation. The Protocols of the Elders of Goyim states that the venality of the oilmen works hand in glove with their psychotic spiritual purpose. The Protocols of the Elders of Zion – that notorious, bogus document beloved of anti-Semites from Henry Ford to Hitler to the House of Saud - performed a similarly comprehensive smear job on the Jews, who were, you see, Mammon-crazed and God-crazed simultaneously. They came from a different universe. They were hostile aliens.
The Protocols of the Elders of Goyim depends upon reassigning Bush - an old-money Wasp from Connecticut and Maine - to an unsavory Christian milieu with roots in the trailer camp and more recently, in the polyester, shopping mall Christianity so culturally distasteful to the snobs of the left.
This reminds me of those people who are dumbfounded at the support for the war because "they don't know anyone who was for it." Some people need to get out more.
Yom HaZikaron. Yom HaZikaron. Israel's Memorial Day.
Meryl has the links. They will all make you cry.
UPDATE:
Toronto Star reporter
Rosie DiManno is now reporting from Israel after filing some amazing stories from Baghdad -
her account of the ceremonies.
Shavuot count-down: Day 20 of counting the Omer. Using
Kabbalistic symbology for
counting the Omer - the days between the 2nd night of Pesach and the start of Shavuot - tonight begins the
Yesod of Tiferet: Bonding in Compassion. Rabbi Simon Jacobson's
meditation for this day of the Omer:For compassion to be fully realized, it needs bonding. It requires creating a channel between giver and receiver; a mutuality that extends beyond the moment of need. A bond that continues to live on. That is the most gratifying result of true compassion.
Do you bond with the one you have compassion for, or do you remain apart? Does your interaction achieve anything beyond a single act of sympathy?
(More on counting the Omer
here)
Reconstructing Iraq. The economic and legal challenges facing postwar Iraq aren't new, and there is a body of knowledge developing on how to surmount them.
Hernando de Soto is a Peruvian economist who makes the argument that
successful market economies and liberal democracies depend on recordable and trackable property rights. Ramesh Ponnuru interviews De Soto on
Who Should Own Iraq? De Soto estimates that people in the third world and in ex-communist countries hold more than $9 trillion in what he calls "dead capital" — property that is owned informally, but not legally, and is thus incapable of forming the basis of robust economic development. . . . "It's not clear [in most poor countries] who owns what in terms of national records. . . . in Egypt it is not clear who owns 90 percent of all assets. In Mexico, 78 percent is not clear. Having a modern market economy is not possible. . . . There's no market without property rights. Second, no credit. Third, no investment. Fourth, no rule of law, no enforcement. And there's no supplying of electricity: Who's at the end of the wire, who do you bill? If it takes too long to figure out, it's very costly.
(It is instructive to read this together with
the series of links I posted about Palestinian banker Omar Karsou, whose group "Democracy in Palestine" - composed of fellow businesspeople - is lobbying the US to depose Arafat, because people who just want to run a business in the black see clearly the link between peace, rule of law, and prosperity, and are refreshingly unideological where the bottom line is concerned.)
Roger L. Simon links to an article about Aleksandr Yakovlev, who has exhaustively documented the viscious human rights abuses of the Soviet system, and has
some thoughts on how to go about cleaning house.. . . In the case of the Soviet Union, he contends that the unwillingness to face history in its dreadful entirety has left his country as an invalid — the people still hobbled by prehensile fear, the system still paternalistic, if not exactly repressive. . . . The falsified glory of Soviet history makes heroes of the army and the intelligence services and helps them retain disproportionate influence.
Yakovlev contrasts this situation with tribunals created under international auspices in South Africa, Yugoslavia, Rwanda, Cambodia, Sierra Leone and East Timor, which exorcise the totalitarian ghosts that would otherwise haunt societies trying to remake themselves. (Simon's blog has
a long discussion thread on whether getting the UN involved would help or hinder this process.)
(Cross-posted at
Command Post)
Jews in odd places: Mongolia: Sumati Luvsandendev, whose father was a Mongol and mother a Jew, told
JTA there are too few Jews in his country to call the Jewish presence in Mongolia a Jewish community.
According to historical records, a small community of mainly Ashkenazi Jews who lived in Urga, as Mongolia’s main city was then known, fell victim to Russian anti-Bolshevik forces that retreated into Mongolia in the early 1920s following a defeat in Central Asia.
Throughout Mongolia’s Communist history, Jews were a rarity — as was anti-Semitism.
After the collapse of Communism in Mongolia, a number of Mongolians sought better economic opportunities abroad and some made it to Israel, taking advantage of a visa-free agreement between the two countries. Recently, Israel introduced visas for Mongolian citizens after a significant number of Mongols were discovered to be working illegally in the Jewish state.
But there are also examples of people moving in the opposite direction. Hundreds of Israeli tourists come to Mongolia each summer — mostly seeking adventure in the Gobi Desert. And most of the Jews who live permanently in Mongolia these days are Israeli citizens. One Israeli family runs a laundry chain in Ulan Bator.
Shavuot count-down: Day 19 of counting the Omer. Using
Kabbalistic symbology for
counting the Omer - the days between the 2nd night of Pesach and the start of Shavuot - tonight begins the
Hod of Tiferet: Humility in Compassion Rabbi Simon Jacobson's
meditation for this day of the Omer:If compassion is not to be condescending, it must include humility. Hod is recognizing that my ability to be compassionate and giving does not make me better than the recipient; it is the acknowledgment and appreciation that by creating one who needs compassion G-d gave me the gift of being able to bestow compassion. Thus there is no place for haughtiness in compassion.
Do I feel superior because I am compassionate? Do I look down at those that need my compassion? Am I humble and thankful to G-d for giving me the ability to have compassion for others?
(More on counting the Omer
here)
Buy my wife -- please! A wealthy British businessman has offered a husband US$1-million for his wife, sparking outrage in the tight-knit Jewish community of north London and inviting comparisons in the British press to the hit Hollywood film Indecent Proposal.
Brian Maccaba, the director of a computer firm, reportedly made the offer after becoming infatuated with the wife, a teacher at a Jewish pre-school, whom he described as his "true soulmate." Mr. Maccaba sent a letter to the couple, Alan and Nathalie Attar, saying the tax-free bribe was a "golden key" to "set her free" and a chance for Mr. Attar to regain "his bachelor's freedom."
The letter said Mrs. Attar would have to spend the rest of her life with him. His offer was rejected, and the letter has become an exhibit in a defamation trial. Mrs. Attar turned to a rabbi for advice, who reportedly accused Mr. Maccaba of being a known adulterer who chased young Jewish newlyweds. Mr. Maccaba, a 45-year-old married Irish Catholic who converted to Judaism, has countered by suing the rabbi for slander. (
The National Post, May 5, 2003)
The secret Jewish -- ahem, secret neo-con -- conspiracy in Britain: Iain Murray catalogues the latest
scandal in the UK, in which Tam Dalyell complained of a "cabal of Jewish advisers" unduly influencing Prime Minister Tony Blair.
Keep your eye on Omar Karsou. This NYC-based Palestinian businessman has some harsh words for Chairman Arafat. Karsou is the
founder of a group called "Democracy in Palestine" and has the ear of Bush, Cheney, and Sharansky.
. . . Over the weekend of June 22-23, [Bush's speech saying Arafat must go] was entirely rewritten. Vice President Dick Cheney played an important role in that rewrite, as did two improbable people, Natan Sharansky, former Soviet dissident now right-wing Israeli politician, and Omar Karsou, former Palestinian refugee in Ramallah, now banker and "civil society" democracy activist, living in exile under death threat in New York. For some obscure reason, the effect of the last big blast in Jerusalem was to finally open ears at the top of the Bush administration to what these two "enemies of the Oslo accords" -- one Israeli, one Palestinian -- had been arguing for many years.
Mr Karsou, 42, a banker from Nablus who was living in Ramallah until a year ago, told Mr Cheney that many Palestinians wanted Mr Arafat to go. . . . "If we can get rid of the so-called leadership then we can definitely progress with a new generation. The people are ready, willing and able to make peace with our neighbours, whether it be Israel or Jordan."
Mr Karsou was delighted by Mr Bush's speech [naming the "axis of evil" and saying Arafat has to go]. "It reflects our views exactly," he said.
Although Karsou
also has harsh words for Israel (and his fellow Palestinians wouldn't take him seriously if he didn't), he is a businessman - heck, he's a
banker. Business people (especially in such a conservative industry) have a stake in stable law-abiding societies so they can make a living.
. . . . One thing [Israel] had and has, however, is a rule of law. Any property that could be amassed despite the burden of government could be considered relatively safe from arbitrary expropriation, while business disputes could be settled swiftly in uncorrupt courts. It is surely the rule of law that explains Israel's astonishing relative prosperity in a benighted region. . . . Israel's seizure of Gaza and the West Bank from Egypt and Jordan in 1967 did not bring dignity or political freedom, but it at least brought some respite from arbitrary government, and with it rising Palestinian standards of living. But since Arafat & Company returned in 1994 to monopolize the economy, fortunes have reversed dramatically. Based on World Bank and International Monetary Fund data, Professor Ephraim Kleiman of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem estimates that Palestinian GNP was about one-third lower in 2001 than in 1993.
Business people are realists rather than ideologues. They are self-disciplined and self-reliant. They often deal with people from many cultures, so they can't afford to be xenophobic zealots. They know wealth doesn't just appear out of thin air (or EU or UN handouts). They think about the future.
According to Sharansky, "Karsou represents an authentic position of the Palestinian middle class, who are familiar with the democratic experience from our side. The Palestinians have found themselves trapped in a corrupt dictatorship that strangles not only business initiative, but freedom of expression as well. . . . They said that there was no hope for democracy in Japan and Germany, because of their culture and their worldview. And lo and behold, today they are stable democracies . . . . The Americans also understand now that there is an intimate connection between international security and the democratization of regimes . . . "
[all boldface emphasis mine - JW]
Anti-Semitism Conference - reminder. Old Demons, New Debates: Anti-semitism in the West is a 3-day conference taking place at the
YIVO Institute for Jewish Research in New York next month. It is inexpensive to attend, and speakers include Ian Buruma, Abraham Foxman, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Todd Gitlin, Daniel Jonah Goldhagen, Hillel Halkin, Deborah Lipstadt, David Pryce-Jones, Leon Weiseltier, and Simon Schama. If you are able to get to Manhattan, put it on your calendar.
Remembrance Day for the Fallen of Israel's Wars and Israel Independence Day
6-7 May 2003 - 4-5 Iyar 5763(Thanks to Imshin for the link.)
How I knew the Iraq war was just: Gene Simmons, lead singer of KISS,
said it was so!
Shavuot count-down: Day 18 of counting the Omer. Using
Kabbalistic symbology for
counting the Omer - the days between the 2nd night of Pesach and the start of Shavuot - tonight begins the
Netzach of Tiferet: Endurance in Compassion. Rabbi Simon Jacobson's
meditation for this day of the Omer:Is my compassion enduring and consistent? Is it reliable or whimsical? Does it prevail among other forces in my life? Do I have the capacity to be compassionate even when I'm busy with other activities or only when it's comfortable for me? Am I ready to stand up and fight for another?
(More on counting the Omer
here)
Am Yisrael Chai. Mike's Place - scene of the latest suicide bombing - will, after a short memorial service,
re-open in time for Israel Independence Day. And security guard Avi Tabib, who like so many other Israeli security guards over the past two years
truly acted as a human shield (unlike the
sick fucks of the International Suicide Bomber Admiration Society), is recovering very quickly from his injuries.
The tragedy of the commons and the challenge of preserving local culture. Back in February (I told you I was going through old bookmarks), ParaPundit wrote
an excellent essay, with many embedded links, on "Terrorism and the Assumptions of Classical Liberalism," to which equally excellent comments have accrued. His thesis: "The problem for classical liberalism today is that technological advances are making it easier to create conditions in Western societies that are outside the range of allowable conditions needed for a liberal society to survive." I think this can happen in the absence of technological advance, and has done so in the past, but his point is well-taken that increasing ease of communication brings what increased contact between what he calls "liberal" and "illiberal" civilizations, and increasing ease of movement across borders can create a political version of the "tragedy of the commons."
In order to have a functional and effective nation-state (and yes anarcho-libertarians, we really do need one) we need a population that feels strongly loyal to the nation-state, to the kind of society that a given nation-state protects, and to their fellow citizens. Absent that loyalty we can not have an effective military or a government that is sufficiently uncorrupt to function well. A political Tragedy of the Commons will occur when people feel no sense of proprietorship toward their nation. This is the risk we are already running with our current immigration policy. That risk will become an inevitability if we adopt a policy of totally open borders.
Ironically, ParaPundit makes an argument similar to that of the anti-globalists, with whom I am fairly sure he does not identify. They want to protect indigenous societies by discouraging intermixing with global pop (i.e. American) culture and technology. ParaPundit wants to protect the "anglo-sphere" culture from being undermined by anti-Western memes, by limiting immigration.
i disagree with much of the anti-globalist position, but I do believe centuries-old traditions often have wisdom and provide valuable stability and identity, and that should not be arbitrarily heaved overboard by infatuation with the latest superficial meme. I support efforts of local cultures to preserve their own essence - I don't want to see a world where all is MacDonald's and Disney, although these have their place. I even believe that closed societies which reject much or all of modernity (monastaries, Amish, Buddhist, and ultra-Orthodox Jewish communities come to mind) create something unique and valuable, as long as they are voluntarily entered and left, and do not attempt to impose their way of life on the larger culture.
So the question for ALL who treasure a particular culture is: how do we preserve our way of life without draconian measures? Especially in response to such as the Islamists, who are not troubled by draconian measures, and who have no conpunction about imposing their way of life on everyone else and preventing their subjects from leaving?
