Our topic is the Day of Atonement. Does God need to die on a cross to save us from our sins?
According to Wikipedia: Yom Kippur (Hebrew: יוֹם כִּפּוּר, IPA: [ˈjom kiˈpur]), also known as the Day of Atonement, is one of the holiest days of the year for Jews. Its central themes are atonement and repentance. Jews traditionally observe this holy day with a 25-hour period of fasting and intensive prayer, often spending most of the day in synagogue services. Yom Kippur completes the annual period known in Judaism as the High Holy Days.
Yom Kippur is the tenth day of the month of Tishrei. According to Jewish tradition, God inscribes each person’s fate for the coming year into a book, the Book of Life, on Rosh Hashanah, and waits until Yom Kippur to “seal” the verdict. During the Days of Awe, a Jew tries to amend his or her behavior and seek forgiveness for wrongs done against God (bein adam leMakom) and against other human beings (bein adam lechavero). The evening and day of Yom Kippur are set aside for public and private petitions and confessions of guilt (Vidui). At the end of Yom Kippur, one considers one’s self absolved by God.
God did not create the universe, world-famous physicist Stephen Hawking argues in a new book that aims to banish a divine creator from physics.
Hawking says in his book “The Grand Design” that, given the existence of gravity, “the universe can and will create itself from nothing,” according to an excerpt published Thursday in The Times of London.
“Spontaneous creation is the reason why there is something rather than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist,” he writes in the excerpt.
“It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper [fuse] and set the universe going,” he writes.
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His book — as the title suggests — is an attempt to answer “the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything,” he writes, quoting Douglas Adams’ cult science fiction romp, “The Hitch-hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.”
His answer is “M-theory,” which, he says, posits 11 space-time dimensions, “vibrating strings, … point particles, two-dimensional membranes, three-dimensional blobs and other objects that are more difficult to picture and occupy even more dimensions of space.” He doesn’t explain much of that in the excerpt, which is the introduction to the book.
But he says he understands the feeling of the great English scientist Isaac Newton that God did “create” and “conserve” order in the universe.
The real news about “The Grand Design,” however, isn’t Mr. Hawking’s supposed jettisoning of God, information that will surprise no one who has followed his work closely. The real news about “The Grand Design” is how disappointingly tinny and inelegant it is. The spare and earnest voice that Mr. Hawking employed with such appeal in “A Brief History of Time” has been replaced here by one that is alternately condescending, as if he were Mr. Rogers explaining rain clouds to toddlers, and impenetrable.
“The Grand Design” is packed with grating yuks. “If you think it is hard to get humans to follow traffic laws,” we read, “imagine convincing an asteroid to move along an ellipse.” (Oh, my.) This is the sort of book that introduces the legendary physicist Richard Feynman as “a colorful character who worked at the California Institute of Technology and played the bongo drums at a strip joint down the road.” Mr. Hawking has written “The Grand Design” with Leonard Mlodinow, a fellow physicist who has also worked on “Star Trek: The Next Generation.” They’re an awkward pair, part “A Beautiful Mind,” part borscht belt. This book is provocative pop science, an exploration of the latest thinking about the origins of our universe. But the air inside this literary biosphere is not especially pleasant to breathe.
On his radio show today, Dennis Prager said: This man is a brilliant mind, but we often confuse brilliance with common sense. They’re not related.
They say he’s the greatest physicist says Albert Einstein.
Stephen Hawking says everything comes from nothing. No reason. He just doesn’t want to believe in God.
So many believers are so happy when they find a scientist who’s a believer. It has no impact on me.
My belief in God is not based on what people who study physics think. If you explain to me how something came from nothing, I’ll be an atheist. It’s not explainable.
Scientists are sophisticated plumbers. God bless science. It’s kept me alive. I had surgery this summer. I didn’t go to a witch doctor or to a rabbi. I went to a scientist.
Stephen Hawking is not an atheist because of his physics and mathematics. He’s an atheist for the same reason your friend Joe is who runs a bottling company for Pabst Brewery.
If you are still interested in publishing about the rampant cancer in the Jewish leadership of the world you can post my following reaction to Mariln Henry and the Cliams Conferene to whitewash the annual stealing of about 4 billion dollars by the Jewish leadership primarily in New York City. Not only do 30-40 Holocaust survviors continue dying a day of neglect and rejection by the Claims Conf. The Israeli govt. is giving an extra 100 plus Nis a month – ca. $35 to 25,000, but they keep on being denied by the Claims conference. Israel rejected increase for all those who made aliya after 1953. How many Jewish day school scholarships could be given out at the expense of what Jewish leadership around the world steals? Does Yom Kippur have meaning for the Jewish people if its leaders still steal billions on the backs of Holocaust survivors?
Dear Editor of the Jerusalem Post.
I was appalled that you published Marilyn Henry’s apologetic defense of the Claims Conference (“Metro views: If it ain/t broke, fix it”, August 31?, 2010). It’s hardly objective for someone paid by the Claims Conference to whitewash its skewed agenda and performance in the last fifty years to write the book Confronting the Perpetrators: A History of the Claims Conference about it in glowing colors. Her article in the Jerusalem Post was of the same genre.
Henry boasted that the Claims Conference initiated an investigation about 7 million dollars in more than 200 German pensions of bogus Holocaust survivors. The scam came out when NY Jews via the internet and a few Jewish newspapers exposed the scandal. Like in many of the scandals and mammoth fiscal corruption of the Claims Conference detected in the last 20 years, the Claims Conference only reacts after publicity. There is no internal scrutiny and no external surveillance. The US government and the State Government in Albany has been totally inept and apathetic in confronting Claims Conference massive corruption. In the meantime three senior Claims Conference executives defected back to Russia and enjoy anonymity since the Claims Conference lacks transparency and refused to publish their names (but they are known to the researchers and the activists). Not only would Chairman Julius Berman (never elected to represent any Jewish organization) not resign, but he attacked critics like Isi Liebler, Martin Stern, and others who have in-depth knowledge of the corruption of the Claims Conference and Jewish organizations (primarily in New York City) who have milked it for tens of billions of dollars since 1953 at the expense of the Holocaust survivors. Claims Treasurer and Chairman of the American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors and their Descendants Roman Kent refused to comment on the role & responsibility of the Claims Conference leaders in this criminal activity, and together with his executive members Ilan Steinberg and Menachem Rosensaft, fired its veteran director for wanting to put his organization’s annual report and budget on the organization homepage.
Henry’s article presumes that the reader is ignorant of Jewish communal life and Claims Conference corruption. Henry conveniently blurs past corruption; i.e detection of Israel Singers illegal Swiss bank pension fund and his resignation followed by that of Chairman Edgar Bronfman, corruption of insurance reparations where lawyers received much more than survivors, corruption in distribution of Swiss gold money where Claims Conference and World Jewish Congress received most the money and not the survivors, and the aggressive attempts of the Claims Conference to confiscate looted art throughout Europe and former Jewish property in the former Eastern Germany.and deny these assets or their value to the heirs. In the latter case auctioneers, middle men, and an ex-Stazi lawyer are funneling somewhere beyond 6-8 billion dollars in recent years to their own pockets. Claims auditor Joseph Feuchtwanger, after learning about Claims Conference corruption at a colloquium at Bar Ilan University several years ago, did such a good job investigating Claims Conference corruption in Frankfurt, that his audit was shelved internally, never even presented to the 23 Jewish member organizations, and forced to resign.
The Claims Conferenece works on a basis of deflection and disinformation. Several budgets exist and the actual budget is not presented on the organization homepage. A difference of hundreds of millions of dollars can be found in a given year between budgets. The fact that Ernst and Young are their accountants adds no accountibility or credibility. The same known accounting firm fudged the books for Enron and the American people lost billions of dollars in the hoax. The corruption got so bad last year, that the executive board voted to oust Chairman Reuvain Merhav.
Claims Conference executives earn hundreds of thousands of dollars a year; while Israeli Holocaust survivors have been dying 30-40 a day of neglect since 2006.
Much of the funding for commemoration is bogus and is based on organizations close to the executive. Agudat Israel rep Abraham Biderman sits on some 12-13 committees to fund his organizations and this past year 4 million dollars was alloted for a bogus Haredu ulta-religious Holocaust museum in Brooklyn. Julius Berman is there to make sure Modern Orthodox institutions get their take; most have no relation to the Holocaust. Saul Kagan, an amorphous old-timer, directing the organization for decades from the inside has never been called to explain his responsibility in the corruption from the inside. Some organizations like the Jewish Agency get as many as 3 allocations for the same project by giving in proposals from three different countries.
On numerous occasions, directives have been uncovered instructing workers not to recognize/recommend survivors for German pensions or benefits; or to secretly fund projects and organizations and not include these allocations in the books. Instead of prosecuting, the FBI, US Ministry of Justice, and other relevant branches of the United States government ignore the criminal activities and thus give legitimacy to the corruption and corrupt Jewish leaders.
Former Claims Conference vice-president Gidon Taylor has upgraded to the Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) with a 600,000+ dollar a year salary (not public knowledge since the JDC opposes transparency) and assists his new organization with knowledge how to benefit from reparations in the former Soviet Union and the JDC rakes in millions if not billions at the expense of the survivors. For every survivor recognized in the former USSR, there are another 2-3 tricked or ignored by the JDC, and denied reparations and assistance. Zane Buzby started the Survivor Mitzvah Project in Los Angeles since Holocaust survivors are neglected and ignored by the Claims Confernce and JDC in seven countries in the territory of the former USSR.
Prof. Yitzchak Kerem
Member of Knesset Public Committee for Holocaust Survivor Rights
Jerusalem/Israel
Prof. Kerem adds: An additional update for those on my mailing lists.
Henry’s article presumes that the reader is ignorant of Jewish communal life and Claims Conference corruption. Henry conveniently blurs past corruption; i.e detection of Israel Singers illegal Swiss bank pension fund and his resignation followed by that of Chairman Edgar Bronfman, corruption of insurance reparations where lawyers received much more than survivors, corruption in distribution of Swiss gold money where Claims Conference and World Jewish Congress received most the money and not the survivors, and the aggressive attempts of the Claims Conference to confiscate looted art throughout Europe and former Jewish property in the former Eastern Germany.and deny these assets or their value to the heirs. In the latter case auctioneers, middle men, and an ex-Stazi lawyer are funneling somewhere beyond 6-8 billion dollars in recent years to their own pockets. Claims auditor Joseph Feuchtwanger, after learning about Claims Conference corruption at a colloquium at Bar Ilan University several years ago, did such a good job investigating Claims Conference corruption in Frankfurt, that his audit was shelved internally, never even presented to the 23 Jewish member organizations, and forced to resign.
The Claims Conferenece works on a basis of deflection and disinformation. Several budgets exist and the actual budget is not presented on the organization homepage. A difference of hundreds of millions of dollars can be found in a given year between budgets. The fact that Ernst and Young are their accountants adds no accountibility or credibility. The same known accounting firm fudged the books for Enron and the American people lost billions of dollars in the hoax. The corruption got so bad last year, that the executive board voted to oust Chairman Reuvain Merhav.
Claims Conference executives earn hundreds of thousnds of dollars a year; while Israeli Holocaust survivors have been dieing 30-40 a day of neglect since 2006.
Much of the funding for commemoration is bogus and is based on organizations close to the executive. Agudat Israel rep Abraham Biderman sits on some 12-13 commitees to fund his organizations and this past year 4 million dollars was alloted for a bogus Haredu ulta-religious Holocaust museum in Brooklyn. Julius Berman is there to make sure Modern Orthodox instititions get their take; most have no relation to the Holocaust. Saul Kagan, an amorphous old-timer, directing the organization for decades from the inside has never been called to explain his resposnibility in the corruption from the inside. Some organizations like the Jewish Agency get as many as 3 allocations for the same project by giving in proposals from three different countries.
On numerous occasions, directives have been uncovered instructing workers not to recognize/recommend survivors for German pensions or benefits; or to secretly fund projects and organizations and not include these allocations in the books. Instead of prosecuting, the FBI, US Ministry of Justice, and other relevant branches of the United States government ignore the criminal activites and thus give legitimacy to the corruption and corrupt Jewish leaders.
Former Claims Conference vice-president Gidon Taylor has upgraded to the Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) with a 600,000+ dollar a year salary (not public knowledge since the JDC opposes transparency) and assists his new organization with knowledge how to benefit from reparations in the former Soviet Union and the JDC rakes in millions if not billions at the expense of the survivors. For every survivor recognized in the former USSR, there are another 2-3 tricked or ignored by the JDC, and denied reparations and assistance. Zane Buzby started the Survivor Mitzvah Project in Los Angeles since Holocaust survivors are neglected and ignored by the Claims Confernce and JDC in seven countries in the territory of the former USSR.
Dennis: “If 2900 Americans had been incinerated by strippers, nobody would want a $100 million stripper building in that place. Strippers have nothing to do with 9/11 but Muslims do. Not all Muslims, but Muslims.”
“If strippers around the world were murdering tens of thousands of people in the name of stripping, then building a stripper building at Ground Zero would be a problem. Strippers are to 9/11 as fish are to bicycles.”
Christiane Amanpour of ABC News, the most politically correct of the major news networks, interviewed Sunday Professor John Esposito of Georgetown University. He said: “We have two dangers right now. One is that the civil liberties of Muslim Americans will be even more eroded. Two, and more broadly, we will wake up one day and realize that the America we like to celebrate, you know the America we point to people around the world when we look down on them and say, we’re a democracy, we believe in pluralism, we believe in human rights. That, in fact, all of that, with the exception of this group. And that’s a very dangerous and slippery slope to go down.”
Dennis: This guy has been an apologist for Saudi Arabia and anything going on in Islam for 20 years.
How have civil liberties for American Muslims eroded at all?
Americans look down on the world by talking about democracy? Does Esposito look down on the U.S.?
Imam Faisal Abdul Rauf tells ABC that “mosques around this country are being attacked.”
Where’s the evidence for this?
In 2008, the last year we have hate crime stats, ten times as many Jews were attacked than Muslims.
How come Jews around the world aren’t threatening to blow up anything? How come Christians around the world aren’t threatening to blow up anything after all the mockery of Christianity in the Western world?
This imam is the man of peace? He’s the best?
If there is growing Islamophobia in the United States, this imam can take 100% responsibility.
From Wikipedia: “Esposito founded the Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at Georgetown University and is its current director. The center has received a $20 million endowment from Saudi Arabian Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal “to advance education in the fields of Islamic civilization and Muslim-Christian understanding and strengthen its presence as a world leader in facilitating cross-cultural and inter-religious dialogue.”[4]”
Why do universities host “understanding centers”? I thought universities were supposed to study things, not to promote causes?
H1: Peace Train
Prager H1: Christiane Amanpour interviewed Imam Faisal Rauf about the Mosque at GZ. He accuses his opponents of being “disingenuous.” But the Imam, of course, is as pure as the driven snow. Never mind that he suggests that if the mosque is not built, there may be violence… Dennis talks to Winfield Myers of Campus Watch about Professor John Esposito of Georgetown University, a Saudi flak used by ABC as a disinterested expert in their mosque at GZ story on “This Week” … Dennis talks to John Eastman about who will file an appeal against Judge Walker Prop 8 decision. The governor won’t. The DA won’t. So who will do the people’s will?.. It’s a crime to buy light bulbs in Europe.
Monday, September 13, 2010 Radio Show
H2: Where Are the Demonstrations?
Prager H2: Is there general Islamophobia in the US? No. Is their growing ambivalence toward Islam? Yes. Why? Because nine years after 9/11, we’re still waiting for a big demonstration denouncing Islamist terror. Right now, the most common complaint we are hear is that Muslims in the US are victims… Dennis talks to Michelle Malkin, columnist, best selling author and Fox News analyst. Her new book is Culture of Corruption: Obama and His Team of Tax Cheats, Crooks, and Cronies.
Monday, September 13, 2010 Radio Show
H3: Democrats Running from Democrats
Prager H3: Not only are Democrats running from the President, they are running from their own party… The first Medal of Honor has been awarded to a living recipient, a true hero… The trial for two murderers begins in Connecticut, their crime so horrific it’s hard to describe. Do you think this human scum deserves to live out their lives in prison? If you are against capital punishment, you do… Hillary Clinton says that this is the last chance for Mideast peace. It’s been the last chance since 1967.
Monday, September 13, 2010 | Posted by: Allen Estrin at 2:58 PM
HIllary Clinton proclaims that this is the last chance for Mideast peace. No, Madam Secretary, there’s no chance… until the Palestinians want to make peace.
Monday, September 13, 2010 | Posted by: Allen Estrin at 2:36 PM
The trial for two murderers begins in Connecticut, their crime so horrific it’s hard to describe. Do you think this human scum deserves to live out their lives in prison? If you are against capital punishment, you do.
Monday, September 13, 2010 | Posted by: Allen Estrin at 12:45 PM
Who will file an appeal on behalf of Prop 8, the California ballot measure defending the traditional definition of marriage? The governor won’t, the DA won’t. A bizarre circumstance. Dennis talks to John Eastman, law professor at Chapman University School of Law about this issue and what can be done about it. The deadline for the appeal is today. Go here for info on what you can do today or call Lt. Governor Abel Maldonado and tell him that you want him to file this appeal. Here’s his number: 916-445-8994. You can reach him at his Facebook page here Or his Twitter page here. Or you can email him here [email protected],
Monday, September 13, 2010 | Posted by: Allen Estrin at 12:26 PM
Some message of peace from the sweet Imam. If you don’t do what I want, there may be violence. He could easily diffuse the situation, but won’t. He’s the best and most moderate?
Monday, September 13, 2010 | Posted by: Allen Estrin at 11:23 AM
Dennis talks to Michelle Malkin, columnist, best selling author and Fox News analyst. Her new book, now in paperback, is Culture of Corruption: Obama and His Team of Tax Cheats, Crooks, and Cronies
Wednesday, September 08, 2010 | Posted by: Allen Estrin at 12:57 PM
The GZ mosque iman says sweetly that he’s going ahead. Never mind that most Americans and most New Yorkers don’t want him to. At least he calls it the Cordoba project and not Park51.
Wednesday, September 08, 2010 | Posted by: Allen Estrin at 12:15 PM
Man defends his family with his AK-47. Gets arrested for his trouble. What do you think would have happened to him and his family had he not been armed? Think the gang would have reacted to harsh words?
Tuesday, September 07, 2010 | Posted by: Allen Estrin at 1:22 PM
Dennis talks to Mitchell Bard, prolific author, and highly regarded expert on Mideast politics and Israel US relations. His new book isThe Arab Lobby: The Invisible Alliance That Undermines America’s Interests in the Middle East
Tuesday, September 07, 2010 | Posted by: Allen Estrin at 1:08 PM
Time Magazine reached a new low last week with this cover, an ugly insult to Israel. Time Magazine is contributing to the delegitimizing of this Democratic nation, a very dangerous trend. Bret Stephens of the Wall Street Journal writes eloquently about it here.
ABC’s Christiane Amanpour used Sunday’s This Week to again shame Americans for their presumed irrational intolerance and Islamophobia as she railed against the ignorance of too many Americans, provided a friendly forum to Iman Faisal Abdul Rauf, whom she prompted to ridicule Sarah Palin, and then brought aboard a group of three “leading thinkers on faith” to “discuss religious tolerance and Islamophobia in America.” That brings Amanpour’s show tally to six guests in favor of the Ground Zero mosque versus zero opposed (four today, two on the August 22 program).
Unmentioned by Amanpour or her guests: A report presented Friday by former 9/11 Commission Co-Chairs Tom Kean and Lee Hamilton about, according to Reuters, a needed “wake-up call about the radicalization of Muslims in the United States.” The report warned: “The U.S. is arguably now little different from Europe in terms of having a domestic terrorist problem involving immigrant and indigenous Muslims as well as converts to Islam.”
At the top of Sunday’s show, Amanpour noted the 9/11 anniversary and used it to frame her agenda: “Nine years later, the growing hostility towards American Muslims.” In a lengthy set-up piece leading into Rauf, Amanpour fretted that “the plans to build an Islamic center close to Ground Zero have whipped up anti-Muslim sentiment” and insisted: “Not since 9/11 has the country seen such anti-Muslim fervor.” She asserted “Muslim-Americans are feeling vulnerable, with attacks on mosques in California, Wisconsin, and Tennessee. And the latest fuel poured on the fire, a threat to burn Korans…” And “these tumultuous events have created a global backlash. From Washington, to the Vatican, to Afghanistan.”
Asked if it’s really a good idea to go ahead with his plans to build a mosque and Islamic center at an address so close to Ground Zero that it has become a flash point, Rauf gave a reply that boils down to a threat. Rauf said that if his Cordoba House does not get built on his chosen site near Ground Zero, “The headlines in the Muslim world will be that Islam is under attack.”
Citing Muslim attacks on Danish embassies during the riots in 2006 over Mohamed cartoons Rauf went on to say that the result of this current “crisis” could be that “anger will explode in the Muslim world.” That, he said, could lead to “something which could really become very, very, very dangerous indeed.”
Please bear in mind that CNN beams this stuff out not only across America, but around the globe. While Rauf might proffer that he was merely giving helpful advice, there’s an Islamist audience out there who could hear his well-amplified words – “Islam is under attack” — as a summons to inflict yet more of those explosive onslaughts in which thousands of Americans have already been killed.
…Rauf’s own plans created this “crisis.” Rauf himself said last December (before his partners began trying to unsay it) that he’d latched on to the Burlington Coat Factory site precisely because of its proximity to Ground Zero — so close to the heart of the Sept. 11 Islamist attacks that it was hit by “wreckage” from one of the hijacked planes. If Rauf was genuinely clueless at the time that harmony would not be served by trying to create an in-your-face $100 million Islamic hub on the edge of Ground Zero, by now he should be clued in.
…On Thursday, real estate magnate Donald Trump offered to buy out the Burlington site, in cash, for 25% above what Rauf’s developers paid, provided they build their mosque at least five blocks from Ground Zero. Apparently that would be too great a compromise for Rauf and his partners. They just keep saying no.
…Rauf’s wife and business partner, Daisy Khan, who covered for him in New York during his summer excursions abroad, seized the opportunity last month to make a televised denunciation of America as a place “beyond Islamophobia.”
Leviticus 19: 9 ” ‘When you reap the harvest of your land, do not reap to the very edges of your field or gather the gleanings of your harvest. 10 Do not go over your vineyard a second time or pick up the grapes that have fallen. Leave them for the poor and the alien. I am the LORD your God.
In a 2008 lecture on Leviticus 19, Dennis Prager says: We have ethical responsibilities to the downtrodden. God is the source of ethics.
The Torah does not speak here of handouts. The poor have to come to the field. They have to work for it. They’re collecting it for themselves. They’re not getting it for breathing.
It is corrupting to give people things for free.
My father was the president of the synagogue we attended. I remember only a few things from that period, but one of them was how constantly he would say, “It’s the ones we give free memberships to who complain the most.”
The ones who donate the most complain the least. Taking is corrupting.
Because the poor are not getting handouts, their dignity is preserved. They could come at night and collect from the field.
In a 2008 lecture on Leviticus 19, Dennis Prager is asked: “Do you think any aspect of anti-Semitism is spiritual as opposed to practical?”
Dennis: It’s all spiritual and theological. It’s not practical at all. Anti-Semitism is among the most impractical things a Jew hater came up with. When Spain kicked out its Jews in 1492, it devastated itself.
The same holds true for Europe after the Holocaust. Europe was the center of world culture. Then they killed the Jews off. Can you name a living Austrian? A living German (outside of politics and sports)?
In 1900, Vienna was the cultural center of the world. Look who came from Europe — Freud and Einstein to give two examples. Two Jews.
The devastation of Jewry has never helped a non-Jew.
The biggest example is Hitler. If the Nazis really hated Jews, they should’ve used them as slaves. Killing them took away from their war effort.
Hating Jews is entirely unproductive. That’s why it is so deep. If it was practical, you could buy your way out.
The Jews of Europe couldn’t believe that they were going to be wiped out. It didn’t make any sense. It was impractical.
In his 2008 lecture on Leviticus 19, Dennis Prager said: I am writing my autobiography. Tentatively, it’s about my three journeys — as a man, as an American and as a Jew. I’m writing the Jew part right now.
Part of the reason I have such a powerful association with the Sabbath was that it was the only family time we had. That was the time we ate together — Friday night and Sabbath afternoon.
From my sophomore year of high school, I did not eat at home [at night during the week]. I went my own way in life.
When I would make a family, I had only one image — the family at the Shabbat table because that was our only family time.
To this day, when I visit my family in New Jersey, we’re together on Shabbat. We’re not together on a Monday. We’re busy.
The importance of a tzibbur: Joshua Schwager, member of the 1986 national champion Penn State Nittany Lions and now a shomer Torah umitzvos Jew, told my students at Rutgers that the 2007 New York Giants became a great team and won the Super Bowl only after they got rid of Tiki Barber and Jeremy Shockey.
Shockey and Barber had both been offensive superstars for the Giants for years before the ’07 season. They both put up flashy individual statistics, but that didn’t translate into playoff victories for the Giants. Shockey and Barber negatively affected team chemistry by being “me first” players who loudly criticized teammates and coaches. But after Barber retired prior to the 2007 season and Shockey’s injury forced him to miss the playoffs, the Giants came together as a team.
Devarim 33:5 tells us, “And He was King in Jeshurun, whenever the sum total of the people were gathered, and the tribes of Israel were together.” Rashi, quoting the Sifri, comments, “When Israel is gathered together in a unified group, and there is peace among them, God is their King – but not when there is strife among them.”
Klal Yisrael can only be Hashem’s people when we are all working as a unified whole.
RABBI RABBS EMAILS: The better example would be the 2001 Seattle Mariners who won an insane 116 games. What was their secret? Prior to the start of that season, Alex Rodriguez had left.
ARod set a record for signing for the biggest contract ever as he made a fortune in Texas, and Seattle immediately set an American League record for the most wins in a season.
Economists peddling dire warnings that the world’s number one economy is on the brink of collapse, amid high rates of unemployment and a spiraling public deficit, are flourishing here.
The guru of this doomsday line of thinking may be economist Nouriel Roubini, thrust into the forefront after predicting the chaos wrought by the subprime mortgage crisis and the collapse of the housing bubble.
“The US has run out of bullets,” Roubini told an economic forum in Italy earlier this month. “Any shock at this point can tip you back into recession.”
But other economists, who have so far stayed out of the media limelight, are also proselytizing nightmarish visions of the future.
D. emails: For pity’s sake, lad! Is it too great a task for you to learn how to correctly spell “eerie?” It’s not a fair-dinkum big word, and it’s certainly not obscure. Your pathetic — and ill-conceived— little arguments that the current U.S. President is leading to us to Armageddon’s door would carry more weight if you didn’t present them with misspellings … you bloody, c*cksucking, still-lusting-after-Wayne-Cherry little ponce! Use spell-check, or, better, buy a dictionary. And, while you’re at it, replace my fair-dinkum Bubble Puppy record that you ruined by using it as a tea tray during one of your numerous youthful moments of gender confusion. You have no idea of the loathing you inspire in me.
>Thank you!
Your thanks mean nothing to me, Sunny Jim. You can’t spell, your views are merely the parroted musings of idiot radio ponce Dennis Prager and YOU GAVE YOUR MUM CANCER! Know this and know it well, my little Joey, one day — when you least expect it — fate will put our two paths at a junction. And at that moment, I’ll dispense some fair-dinkum justice. I’ll walk away. Rest assured that you won’t. Know it and believe it, you reptilian little bitch.
In a 2007 lecture on Leviticus 14-15, Dennis Prager says: Skin disease here is not leprosy. It is not so much a pathologic condition as a condition representing death. Tame aka impure aka unclean means death-oriented.
The Torah’s great division is between life and death. Egypt was death-oriented. The world was death-oriented. The Torah is life-oriented.
What is death oriented today? The Torah wants us to remove ourselves from the death-oriented.
* Jihadist theology. Their motto is that we love death as much as Jews love life. This is their own self-description. Your child blows himself up and the parents give out candy.
* Nazism was death oriented. The SS uniforms were black.
* We have death metal music. Death plays a huge role in kids’ music. Many of the band names and songs are about death.
* We have Halloween, a bigger holiday in the United States than any but Christmas.
* Much of our art is death-oriented. The popular German art exhibit of dead bodies. You have urine and fecal matter in a number of exhibits and paintings. We had a huge exhibit in Britain about the Moors murders of children in central England.
* We have TV and movies that celebrate death for its own sake.
* Abortion is death.
* Drugs are walking death. Users may be biologically alive but they’re not growing. You die the day you become addicted.
* Zero population growth is the opposite of celebrating life. Among intellectuals, there’s a contempt for large families. You have to explain yourself, not the ones who don’t have children. The ones who have twelve kids are nuts.
Leviticus 14: 43 “If the mildew reappears in the house after the stones have been torn out and the house scraped and plastered, 44 the priest is to go and examine it and, if the mildew has spread in the house, it is a destructive mildew; the house is unclean. 45 It must be torn down—its stones, timbers and all the plaster—and taken out of the town to an unclean place.
Dennis Prager: There is a concept here that your home is alive. That your house is a part of you. The house can suffer from death, from something eating it up, just as your scale disease can eat you up.
The idea that your house should be clean and not eroding is so civilizing. Judaism is a civilizing religion.
The literacy rate of Jewish women was virtually the same as Jewish men all through Jewish history. That is unparalled.
I am no ethnic chauvinist. Sometimes I joke that God made me a Jew so I wouldn’t be an anti-Semite.
"This guy knows all the gossip, the ins and outs, the lashon hara of the Orthodox world. He’s an [expert] in... all the inner workings of the Orthodox world." (Rabbi Aaron Rakeffet-Rothkoff)
Michelle Malkin, columnist, best selling author and Fox News analyst. Her new book, now in paperback, is 