Rachel’s Tomb Matters

Alex Joffe’s important essay “Why Rachel’s Tomb Matters” published on JewishIdeasDaily.com places the UNESCO decision to discount the Jewish connection to Rachel’s Tomb in the context of a broader theological struggle. The entire article is an important read.

Through the centuries, Jewish and Christian travelers and pilgrims often visited the site near Bethlehem and remarked on its pillar, made of eleven stones symbolizing the tribes of Israel, named after the sons of Jacob (excluding the twelfth and youngest, Benjamin, the ordeal of whose birth occasioned his mother Rachel’s death).  Of course, we cannot know whether the site is “really” the burial place of Rachel, the “eternal mother,” but it was firmly engraved as such in Jewish and Christian consciousness….

It is true that Muslims are not alone in the impulse to deny Jews their past: consider the regularity with which Jewish cemeteries continue to be vandalized in Christian Europe. But Islam seems especially intent on erasing Jews from history on theological grounds. Flashpoints like Rachel’s tomb (or “Ezekeiel’s tomb” near the site of ancient Babylon) are especially vulnerable because they represent personages specifically claimed by Islam, but they are joined by houses of worship like the Great Synagogue in Oran, Algeria, seized and converted into a mosque in 1960, and communal buildings like the Haim Benchimol hospital in Tangiers, suddenly seized and torn down this year. Admittedly, there are showcase exceptions: the Maimonides synagogue in Cairo, the tiny Jewish communities in Morocco and Tunisia, preserved as if in amber for their considerable value as tourist destinations. But the vast number of sites that formed the living fabric of Jewish life—the cemeteries, synagogues, and schools, not to mention homes and places of work—are forever lost.

 

 

Ending Oil Addiction

TEST YOUR KNOWLEDGE: TRUE or FALSE?
• Adding nuclear power plants, wind and solar power will make us oil independent.
• Burning coal is the #1 contributor to greenhouse gas emissions in the US.
• Drilling more will make us oil independent.
• Biofuels such as ethanol cause hunger in Africa.
• Our trade deficit with China overshadows the cost of oil imports.
• Foreclosure is the largest drain on the economy.

If you answered “yes” to any of these questions, than you need to learn the truth about oil.

Eyal Aronoff, an Israeli American, is the co-founder of Quest Software. In the last few years, Eyal has been a behind the scene operator in the effort to wean the world economy off its addiction to oil. Oil addiction is really, really, bad for all of us, and it empowers regimes that support Israel’s enemies while weakening America’s economy and its stature in the world. You can read more on SetAmericaFree.com

When we fill up our cars, most of us have a cognitive dissonance, ignoring the fact that petro-dollars are financing Radical Islam, anti-Zionism and anti-Americanism.

Eyal is one of the brightest people I have met. After sitting with Eyal, David Abitbol, and Josh Kaplan a few months back, we knew that his presentation needed to be in front of the Jewish world. We had a perfect venue to start with — in New Orleans at the Jewish Federations of North America’s Annual General Assembly. As Jewlicious had been asked to produce some programs, we realized right away that Eyal is Jewlicious, and his important message would make a great discussion amond Jewish leaders.

Eyal tells the story of how bad our addiction is with a dry wit, and methodical and original thinking. He explains that the world’s richest man, and Forbes #3 most powerful person, is the King of Saudi Arabia. Much of his wealth comes from the countries which are governed by the world’s #1 and #2 most powerful – the President of China and the USA — the largest consumers of oil in the world.

How much wealth is there in Saudi Arabia? Sauid oil reserves alone are estimated to be worth 22 trillion dollars. What can you buy for 22 trillion?
— Market cap of all us companies traded publicly is only 12 trillion
— Every home in USA and have 5 trillion left to spend
— JFNA is the second largest charity, raising 800 million a year. They used to raise a billion.
— 22 Trillion is enough to fund the JFNA budget for 27,000 years.

The value of the oil of all the Arab countries is approximately 60 trillion. For 60 trillion you could buy every public company in the world at current prices. Since they have so much money, we cannot outspend them. We cannot outspend them in the fight against terrorism, delegitimizing Israel, protecting democracy, or anything else. Our only hope to curb the power and influence of the oil wealthy regimes is to reduce and then curb the world’s dependence on OPEC oil.

Why not just run on leftover grease or ethanol? It turns out the the American car industry has helped craft laws and regulations that retain the status quo, favor cars that use gasoline to drive, and disallow many cars that are run on alt fuels such as ethanol and methanol exclusively.

At almost every turn of his presentation we discover that long held truths are really propaganda propped up by the Gas and Car companies. According to Aranoff, gasoline consumption is the single worst thing that we do to harm the economy and environment. Oil – not coal – is the largest producer of greenhouse gasses and urban pollution. If we are going to cut greenhouse gasses and pollution, should we not start with largest pollutant first?

His has a 10 point plan to take the US beyond oil within a decade. This transition away from oil will free $4 trillion dollar that our economy could use to rebuild growth and reduce the deficit while at the same time delivering a deadly knockout to the corrupt oil cartel and its para-militant cronies. Read below.

Major Israeli Scholar Calls For End To Using Chickens For Kapparot

Citing a long list of rabbinic rulings and precedent, Rabbi Shlomo Aviner rules against using chickens for kapparot.

Rabbi Shlomo Aviner, head of the capital’s Yeshivat Ateret Cohanim and rabbi of Beit El, not only provided SPCA Israel with a letter last week showing the faultiness of the rite, basing his arguments on some of the greatest arbitrators, but went on video to expound on the halachic traditions proving why it’s wrong to inflict such cruelty on God’s creations, especially when the underlying motivation is absolution of one’s sins before the same God, as Aviner quotes former Tel Aviv Rabbi Chaim David Halevi.

Read the rest of the article on jpost.com

An Inspiring Shofar Story

Something to think about…

Next time you’re at the Kotel or when you hear the shofar blowing think about these guys:

Under a British law in Palestine passed in 1930, Jews were forbidden to blow the shofar at the Kotel, pray loudly there, or bring Torah scrolls, so as not to offend the Arab population… Despite this restriction, for the next seventeen years, the shofar was sounded at the Kotel every Yom Kippur. Shofars were smuggled in to the Kotel where brave teenagers defiantly blew them at the conclusion of the fast. Some managed to get away – others were captured and sent to jail for up to six months… Six of these men are still alive… Two weeks ago, these six men returned to the scene of their “crime”. Armed with shofars, they recounted their individual stories and blew shofar again at the Kotel.

Saving Park Adullam

What happened to Israel Leading the world in alternative energy?

Park Adullam

Bicyclists and hikers love to travel through Adullam National Park near Beit Shemesh, where David hid in the Cave of Adullam. But that scenery may be forever changed by oil-shale extraction.

In December 2009, Israel Energy Initiatives Ltd (IEI ) – a subsidiary of the American-based IDT Corporation – began an exploratory dig in the park, in preparation for implementing a new system for heating the underground shale to 650 degrees Fahrenheit, forcing the oil out of the shale rock and into pipes for further processing. It takes about 4 years.

This recent energy exploration in the Park Abdullam region has created a grassroots movement to save the antiquities park called The Committee to Save Adullam – a group of some 15 families many of whom hail from English-speaking countries.

According to the Committee, the Park Adullam region was the heart of Jewish civilization in Judea in the first centuries CE. Beautiful and valuable two-millennia-old antiquities fill the park, most buried safely underground.

Oil Shale exploration near Aderet.

They argue that: “If the extraction proceeds as plans, the underground heat and oil extraction risk destruction of the landscape, the antiquities, the wildlife, the air, and the ground-water.” The extraction process has never been profitable. “Even if new technique crosses the profitability threshold, local farmers who work the land will be entitled to no compensation and local tourism operators will suffer.”

The recent award-winning documentary movie GASLAND tells the story of the environmental destruction across the USA caused by natural gas extraction. Contrary to the image set by the energy industry, getting hydrocarbons out of shale is anything but clean.

According to an article in Haaretz, the Committee has taken their complaints to the Knesset and to Michael Steinhardt, who became Chairman of The Board of IEI this year:

Last month, the Save Adullam group sent Steinhardt a letter expressing their concerns about the oil development project, which uses a little-tested shale oil extraction technique. The process uses sustained heating of the ground at a depth of 1,500 meters to convert Kerogen – an organic chemical compound mix found in some rocks – into crude oil….

Steinhardt wrote back to the Adullam committee, requesting that its members no longer contact him directly but rather address all future concerns to IEI, a committee member told Anglo File [Ha'aretz]. In the letter, he also wrote: “If successful this industry will provide prosperity to Israel and your region,” and that “as long as Israel is dependent on foreign sources of energy we will never be truly secure.

The Committee has started an online petition, and the Jerusalem Report recently published a major article about the issue which gives voice to those for and against the project.

The irony of this controversy about oil-shale exploration is that Israel wants to build support in America by portraying Israel in a “green” light. However larger economic forces are pushing Israel into “ungreen” territory, such as risky alternative methods of hydrocarbon extraction. The argument that Israel needs this oil to be independent of oil imports is shortsighted. Even if these methods work— and there is every reason to not believe the hype— unless Israel makes a concerted effort to tap into alternative energy sources, Israel’s nascent oil industry will bever be able to keep up with Israeli’s increased appetite for oil.

Hate Crime At The Ghetto Wall

Photo by: Channel 10

Poland continues to be a place where Jews works out deep psychological problems in deplorable ways.

Last week an Israeli vandalized the last major section of the Warsaw Ghetto wall. JPost reports:

Former Israeli Air Force captain and Israel boycott activist Yonatan Shapira spray-painted pro-Palestinian graffiti on the walls of the Warsaw Ghetto last week, Channel 10 reported on Sunday.

Shapira was shown on camera the previous Sunday spraying the slogans “Free all ghettos” and “Free Palestine and Gaza” on the walls of the Jewish ghetto in the Polish city – famed site of Jewish resistance to the Nazis – and then hoisting upon the wall a Palestinian flag on a rope with a bottle attached at the end that he threw over the other side.

Shapira’s vandalism occurred on the eve of some of the highlights for Polish Jews this summer. This past week the Jewish community in Poland, together with tens of thousands of non-Jews celebrated Jewish culture at the Krakow Jewish Cultural Festival. MATISYAHU performed at Poland’s premier OPEN’ER Festival in Gdansk. Poles and Jews are finding more ways towards rapprochement, a move forward with good relations.

Shapira’s vandalism shows his disregard for the inherent dignity of his fellow Jews. By desecrating and violating the Jewish community of Poland’s holy site, a place where tears soak the earth, he has committed a hate crime.

The wall is one of the few places that the Jewish community in Warsaw can mourn the loss of millions of Jews. The ghetto walls were destroyed along with most of Warsaw in WWII. The communists that rebuilt the city attempted to erase any other remnant of the infamous wall.

The ghetto wall section that he desecrated is not just visited by local Jews, but by tens of thousands of visitors to Warsaw every year. The Ghetto is where tens of thousands of Jews died before being shipped to the death camps.

Shapira is not a righteous zealot, but a criminal who deserves to serve time for his hateful acts.

VIDEO: Israel Misconceptions on Campus

A healthy reminder that ignorance is one of our greatest enemies.