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6 1 King Darius then issued an order, and they searched in the archives stored in the treasury at Babylon. 2 A scroll was found in the citadel of Ecbatana in the province of Media, and this was written on it: Memorandum: 3 In the first year of King Cyrus, the king issued a decree concerning the temple of God in Jerusalem: Let the temple be rebuilt as a place to present sacrifices, and let its foundations be laid. It is to be sixty cubits high and sixty cubits wide, 4 with three courses of large stones and one of timbers. The costs are to be paid by the royal treasury. 5 Also, the gold and silver articles of the house of God, which Nebuchadnezzar took from the temple in Jerusalem and brought to Babylon, are to be returned to their places in the temple in Jerusalem; they are to be deposited in the house of God. 6 Now then, Tattenai, governor of Trans-Euphrates, and Shethar-Bozenai and you other officials of that province, stay away from there. 7 Do not interfere with the work on this temple of God. Let the governor of the Jews and the Jewish elders rebuild this house of God on its site. 8 Moreover, I hereby decree what you are to do for these elders of the Jews in the construction of this house of God: Their expenses are to be fully paid out of the royal treasury, from the revenues of Trans-Euphrates, so that the work will not stop. 9 Whatever is needed-young bulls, rams, male lambs for burnt offerings to the God of heaven, and wheat, salt, wine and olive oil, as requested by the priests in Jerusalem-must be given them daily without fail, 10 so that they may offer sacrifices pleasing to the God of heaven and pray for the well-being of the king and his sons. 11 Furthermore, I decree that if anyone defies this edict, a beam is to be pulled from their house and they are to be impaled on it. And for this crime their house is to be made a pile of rubble. 12 May God, who has caused his Name to dwell there, overthrow any king or people who lifts a hand to change this decree or to destroy this temple in Jerusalem. I Darius have decreed it. Let it be carried out with diligence. 13 Then, because of the decree King Darius had sent, Tattenai, governor of Trans-Euphrates, and Shethar-Bozenai and their associates carried it out with diligence. 14 So the elders of the Jews continued to build and prosper under the preaching of Haggai the prophet and Zechariah, a descendant of Iddo. They finished building the temple according to the command of the God of Israel and the decrees of Cyrus, Darius and Artaxerxes, kings of Persia. 15 The temple was completed on the third day of the month Adar, in the sixth year of the reign of King Darius. 16 Then the people of Israel-the priests, the Levites and the rest of the exiles-celebrated the dedication of the house of God with joy. 17 For the dedication of this house of God they offered a hundred bulls, two hundred rams, four hundred male lambs and, as a sin offering for all Israel, twelve male goats, one for each of the tribes of Israel. 18 And they installed the priests in their divisions and the Levites in their groups for the service of God at Jerusalem, according to what is written in the Book of Moses. 19 On the fourteenth day of the first month, the exiles celebrated the Passover. 20 The priests and Levites had purified themselves and were all ceremonially clean. The Levites slaughtered the Passover lamb for all the exiles, for their relatives the priests and for themselves. 21 So the Israelites who had returned from the exile ate it, together with all who had separated themselves from the unclean practices of their Gentile neighbors in order to seek the Lord, the God of Israel. 22 For seven days they celebrated with joy the Festival of Unleavened Bread, because the Lord had filled them with joy by changing the attitude of the king of Assyria so that he assisted them in the work on the house of God, the God of Israel. 6:3 That is, about 90 feet or about 27 meters 6:17 Or "purification offering"

The first-ever archaeological excavations at the Nazi death camp Treblinka in Poland have revealed new mass graves, as well as the first physical evidence that this camp held gas chambers. The camp had been bulldozed in 1943. To cover their tracks, the Nazis went so far as to plant crops and build a farmhouse on the leveled ground. Presented in a new documentary, “Treblinka: Hitler’s Killing Machine,” which aired Saturday on the Smithsonian Channel, the excavations revealed brick walls and foundations from the gas chambers, as well as mass graves and massive amounts of human bone, some of which was close to the ground’s surface or exposed to the elements. Historians estimate that about 900,000 Jews were murdered at the camp over just 16 months. The Nazis began deporting Jews to Treblinka in July 1942, mostly from the ghettos of Warsaw and Radom. There were two camps: Treblinka I was a forced-labor camp where prisoners were made to manufacture gravel for the Nazi war effort. A little more than a mile (2 kilometers) away was Treblinka II, the death camp, where Jews were sent on trains. The victims were told that they were going to a transit camp before being sent on to a new life in eastern Europe. The deception was elaborate: Nazis erected a fake train station in the remote spot, complete with false ticket-counter and clock. “There was an orchestra set up near the reception area of the camp to play,” archaeologist Caroline Sturdy Colls told Live Science. “It was run by a famous composer at the time, Artur Gold.” The gas chamber was the subject of the teams’ second dig. The excavations revealed a brick wall and foundation. There were two sets of gas chambers built at Treblinka, the first with a capacity of about 600 people, the second able to hold about 5,000. The gas chambers were the only brick buildings in the camp, Colls said. The digs also revealed orange tiles that matched eyewitness descriptions of the floor of the gas chambers. Each tile was stamped with a Star of David, apparently in order to fool the victims into believing that the building was “a Jewish-style bathhouse.” The Jewish deportees were split into two groups, one of men and the other of women and children, and ordered to undress for “delousing.” After handing over their valuables and documents, the victims were sent to the gas chambers, which were pumped full of exhaust fumes from tank engines. “Within about 20 minutes, some 5,000 people inside would be killed by carbon monoxide poisoning. Corpses were initially buried in mass graves, but later in 1942 and 1943, Jewish slave laborers were forced to reopen the graves and cremate the bodies on enormous pyres,” adds Live Science. After the war, Treblinka was turned into a memorial. Out of respect for the victims, no excavation was allowed there, until Colls and her colleagues won approval from Polish authorities as well as Jewish religious leaders to conduct a limited dig. Israel National News: here

It Is Time For The House Of The Lord To Be Rebuilt Today’s Word Of Encouragement From Wayne: “Thus says the Lord of hosts, ‘This people says, “The time has not come, even the time for the house of the Lord to be rebuilt.”’ Then the word of the Lord came by Haggai the prophet, saying, ‘Is it time for you yourselves to dwell in your paneled houses while this house lies desolate?’ Now therefore, thus says the Lord of hosts, ‘Consider your ways.’” It was approximately 520 BC. Eighteen years earlier, in 538 BC, King Cyrus had allowed the Jewish people to return home to Jerusalem from their captivity in Babylon, in order to rebuild the temple of the Lord. The people had returned. However, the temple of the Lord remained desolate, unattended, while everyone was, as God’s word declared, dwelling “in your paneled houses while this house lies desolate.” This is the condition in much of the body of Christ in this day, regarding God’s call to the temple of the Lord and our priesthood to Him. The blessed truth of Jesus Christ, our resurrected Savior, Who is currently our indwelling “Lord” and “priest forever” (Psalm 110:1&4), has been trampled over, in favor of many being preoccupied with their own houses, paneled with their own distinctions, differences, desires, and proclamations, all while “this house lies desolate.” This great declared truth, to the body of Christ, that we are all, everyone one of us, born again into one holy priesthood to our God (1 Peter 2:5-9, Revelation 1:5-6, 5: 9-10) is being entirely neglected and therefore rejected. Just look and listen to what many Christians are emphasizing instead of this blessed truth these days. False teachings abound, false prophecies abound, never ending cultural wars with the very people Christ has died for and called us to minister the Gospel to, fights within the body of Christ on a host of religious issues, and, all the while - “this house lies desolate.” Brothers and sisters in Jesus Christ, kingdom of priests to our God, it is time for “the house of the Lord to be rebuilt.” It is time to swap out and repent of falsehood. It is time to mourn over the fallow, shallow, separated condition of and the weak, pitiful, fractured testimony coming forth from the collective body of Christ in this present day. It is time to be strong in the Lord and in the power of His might. It is time for us to live in the absolute crystal clear pure truth of Christ our Lord and High Priest forever over His New Covenant. Let us bring our priesthood to life so we may TRULY exalt Christ our Lord and priest forever. Resist the call to panel the houses of separation. Instead panel the temple of God within you. Every single time that you minister as a priest before your King and High Priest, you are paneling or adorning the temple of God within you. Yes let us consider our ways. And then let us forsake our ways for His way! Beloved of God, minister as a humble and joyful priest in God’s presence today and everyday! It is well past the time for us to emphasize the complete biblically revealed present fullness of Jesus Christ to His Own church, and to this entire world. It is our Lord’s clear-as-a-bell will that we live in this day as His Own holy and dedicated “royal priesthood” (1st Peter 2:9). May your own priesthood to God expand continually in a never ending further unfolding of the blessed privilege and call we have been graced with, through Jesus Christ, “to be a kingdom, priests to His God and Father - to Him be the glory and the dominion forever and ever. Amen” (Revelation 1:6).

The real estate sector is huge and complex, and it can be tough to maneuver through it successfully. There is a place reserved for each and every individual who wishes to make an impact on the world. Getting forward in the game might be challenging if you are new to it and do not have the same degree of experience as many other players who have been playing for a long period of time. And even if you have been in the game for an extended length of time, it does not ensure that you will make a lasting effect on others or that you will be remembered. That is not something that should be mentioned in the context of Norman Ebenstein’s biography. If you are not familiar with the business sector, especially real estate, it is probable that the name Norman Ebenstein will mean nothing to you when it is spoken in casual conversation. Follow the link https://www.capitalcommercialproperties.com/norm-ebenstein/ if your wish is to find out more. But if you are already acquainted with the man in issue, you will be in for no surprises when it comes to his life and commitment to his profession. For the time being, let us go a little more into the subject. Additional information about Norman Ebenstein Samuel and Jeannette’s son Norman was born in New York City and brought great delight to them as well as to the rest of their family. The fact that he was born in New York doesn’t change the reality that his formative years were spent growing up in Worcester, Massachusetts. His parents thought that having a family and receiving a college education were both incredibly essential goals in life. The fact that he and his family were descended from an aristocratic family was something that he and his family were quite proud of. He grew up with a strong feeling of Jewish identity and a strong sense of belonging to a community. His ability to do so was something he subsequently passed on to his own children and proceeded to do for the rest of his life, which is astounding. One of the most remarkable things about Norman is that, despite the fact that he still has a lot to prove, he has established himself as a brilliant guy. He commenced his academic life at Phillip Exeter College before transferring to Brown University, where he got his undergraduate degree in political science. He enrolled at this institution to pursue a degree in economics. This isn’t the first or last thing he’s accomplished in terms of expanding his horizons and expertise. Upon graduation from high school, this guy went on to law school at Boston University with the intention of acquiring a law degree. After a few years, he received his bachelor’s degree in history from the university. It should be noted that this happened at the University of Michigan. When it comes to learning new material and putting it into practice, Norman always stood out among his peers. He would not have been able to get all of those academic credentials if it had not been for his determination. Shirley was introduced to him while he was an undergraduate at Brown University, and the two were inseparable after that. The decision had been made, and there was no turning back the clock after that. He and his wife had been married for 65 years, and it had been a glorious period of their lives. Non-stop commercial success is a guarantee for him, but he has also accomplished remarkable success in his personal life as well as in his professional life. He had been the sort of person who believed that leaving a legacy meant more than simply having a successful business; it also meant having a loving family that would be there for you no matter what happened to you. On the 25th of January, 2019, he died away. Check this page out for more info. The business part of his life In the past, Norman has stated that having a solid foundation, such as a family, may aid in the establishment of a stable and lucrative firm. He was absolutely correct. He was an internationally recognized philanthropist who made a substantial contribution to the real estate sector. He was the sort of person who took pleasure in a genuine challenge and was not afraid to attempt something completely different. He demonstrates this through the creation of his first company, which he did without any prior commercial or entrepreneurial experience. When this firm was established, it was the world’s very first commercial venture, and it far surpassed everyone’s expectations in terms of both success and expansion. He exuded self-assurance and understood precisely what he wanted and how to go about getting it. He has remained with the same company for more than 48 years as a result of this decision. One of the most outrageous things he has ever undertaken is to make a financial investment in a commercial enterprise. Boca Raton Real Estate Holdings, the corporation that owns these real estate properties, is based in Boca Raton. As time went on, his capacity to grow this company and its assets grew in proportion to it. Throughout the years, it has grown to be one of the most well-known companies in the real estate market. A great entrepreneur and generous philanthropist, as previously said, he passed away on December 31, 2018. He delighted in producing income for himself and his family, but he also delighted in making a contribution to the common good. By helping people in need, he felt that the entire quality of life in the community would be better as a result. His decision to volunteer in India was motivated by his desire to help people who were in desperate need. For this reason, he formed the Norman Ebenstein Foundation, which is devoted to furthering this goal. Performing humanitarian activity in this manner has been his preferred means of accomplishing his goals. He had done a great lot in his life and had left a great deal of stuff behind him as a result of his efforts. In addition to putting in long hours, he generously gave to those in need.

Books & Music Food & Wine Health & Fitness Hobbies & Crafts Home & Garden News & Politics Religion & Spirituality Travel & Culture TV & Movies My Father's Keeper - Book Review German children of today are taught the open and detailed truth about Nazis, and what took place in Germany, as well as the countries surrounding it, during the time of the Third Reich. The lessons begin from an early age, and visits to former camps are a permanent feature on every school curriculum. Meanwhile a former Chancellor from the recent past, Gerard Schoeder, stated, ‘One thing is clear: The Nazi ideology was willed by people and carried out by people’, it did not come out of nowhere, and could not all be explained by blaming ‘demon Hitler’. A heavy burden still felt by many of Germany’s people, including those born long after the ending of World War II. But those who were openly in power during the Third Reich, the Himmler’s, the Goering’s, Speer’s and the Hesse’s for example, there were many others whose names were not public knowledge, had children. Children brought up in proximity not only to the architects and perpetrators of unthinkable crimes, but who often knew Hitler as a type of ‘kindly’ children and dog loving uncle. He attended their Christenings, often as the child’s Godfather and where it was not unusual for the baby’s christening gown to be embroidered with Swastikas, later their birthday parties accompanied by large and extravagant presents, while some children remember being patted on the head by Hitler in Berchtesgaden, his mountaintop home in Bavaria. What happened to them, and to their lives, when faced with the truth of what had taken place to others, while they had enjoyed an often idyllic childhood with a ‘perfect and caring’, and often cultured, father who for them had been like any other. My Father's Keeper: Children of Nazi Leaders - An Intimate History of Damage and Denial, answers a few of those questions as it covers the lives and feelings of some of individual children, the unenviable legacy that they had been left and its consequences. A German journalist Norbert Lebert began a series of interviews in the 1950’s with a number of those Nazi Kinder ‘Nazi children’ which, after the notes were discovered following his death in 1993, were continued by his son Stephan interviewing now aging ‘children’ forty years later. These combined with other indisputable facts and biographical details, give a compelling, complex and personalised view of both modern Germany and of the Nazi era. A few of the Nazi Kinder interviewed are like Gudrun Himmler, born in 1929, who did not allow herself to be interviewed for a second time. She has never had any problem with being her father Heinrich’s daughter, visited concentration camps with him and, as we are told, when aged fourteen cut out every picture of him from the newspapers and glued them into a large scrapbook. Named after his godfather a Bavarian prince, Heinrich Himmler was one of the most powerful men in Nazi Germany and an enthusiastic supporter of the concentration camp system, using it to eliminate those who did not fit his idea of a master race of Nordic Aryans. Himmler’s Pueppi, 'doll', as he called her, is still alive, is a dedicated Neo-Nazi supporter and a leading member of Stille Hilfe, the organization that was set up in 1951 to support arrested, condemned or fugitive former SS members. Despite the passage of time there are still many who qualify for clandestine assistance, and Stille Hilfe makes sure they are helped in every way possible. Even to luxury nursing homes for war criminals. Others are burdened by their heritage. Most of Martin Bormann's children, who with his opinion that Nazism was ‘completely incompatible with Christianity’ was probably the most anti-religious Nazi Minister, converted to Catholicism. His eldest son Martin born in 1930 and nicknamed ‘Kroenzi’ an abbreviation for Crown Prince, was one of Hitler’s godsons and christened Martin Adolf but, despite being a supporter of the Nazi party as a child and early teenager, became a Catholic priest and missionary worker in Africa for many years after being given refuge at WWII's end first by a Catholic farmer, and then a priest. After leaving the priesthood Martin Borman jnr became a theology teacher, travelled to Israel where he met survivors of the Holocaust, and gave lectures covering in detail the disgrace and terror of the Third Reich at schools throughout Germany and Austria. In 1971 he married the nun who renounced her vows after nursing him following a serious accident. While Niklas Frank born in 1939, whose father Hans Frank was not one of the most well known of the Nazi leaders but nevertheless efficient in what he set out to do, has called him ‘a slime hole of a Hitler fanatic’, and has only ever spoken of him with absolute contempt. Hans Frank was sent to Poland where his aim was to destroy Polish Culture, form ghettos for those of the Jewish faith, and use the Polish people as ‘forced and compulsory labour’……slaves. Millions of lives were lost, through extermination and brutality, and starvation because many of the population were forced to live on 600 calories a day. Hans Frank and Albert Speer were the only two German war criminals at the Nuremburg trials who repented and said they regretted what they had done and for what they had been responsible. Niklas Frank was seven when World War II led to the defeat of Germany, and with little understanding of what had happened during those years, however, like the lives of the other Nazi Kinder some of whom were imprisoned with their mothers, those of the Frank children were very difficult after their father had been captured. They had limited money, were not accepted at schools, and in those schools that did admit them they were treated harshly and discriminated against, as the children of a Nazi tyrant and monster. Later, also as with many of the Nazi Kinder, it was hard to find employment. He now gives lectures about his infamous father and the Nazi era, to young people in what was East Germany, a part of Germany which has a growing Neo-Nazi problem brought about in the main by a combination of present and past circumstances. There Niklas Frank, with his viewpoint on the past and its effects, is attempting to keep the disillusioned and the firebrands from straying into a scene which Germany has lived through before. My Father's Keeper: Children of Nazi Leaders - An Intimate History of Damage and Denial is a book that despite the subject matter, and the fact that the interviews tend to jump from one to another at times, is an interesting, informative and emotional but easy read for anyone interested in the time period, the topic or human nature. A difficult subject written with a light hand it is thought provoking, not only in the area it covers but in a wider sense. Legally the children featured in this book were innocent but they had to decide between attachment to their parents or loathing for their behaviour, and many of them, now elderly and decades later, are still trying to find a way to live with the consequences of crimes they did not commit. Hitler together with Joseph Goebbels and one of his daughters, who along with her five brothers and sisters was later killed by her parents. From the Deutsches Bundesarchiv (German Federal Archive)courtesy de.Wikipedia My Father's Keeper: Children of Nazi Leaders-An Intimate History of Damage and Denial Powerful and admired men, to their children often remembered as caring fathers. To the Allied forces and the world in general, War Criminals and punished as such. The children often imprisoned with their mothers, and their memories of the past, as well as their lives, forever changed. This book was bought many years ago using my own funds through Amazon.de For topics in the news And you can follow German Culture on Facebook Content copyright © 2013 by Francine McKenna. All rights reserved. This content was written by Francine McKenna. If you wish to use this content in any manner, you need written permission. Contact Francine McKenna for details. Website copyright © 2013 Minerva WebWorks LLC. All rights reserved.

Rich Maisel was your typical Jewish teenager growing up on New York's Long Island in the early 1980s. He had a strong Jewish identity, was a supporter of Israel, and was active in many Jewish social causes. Torah observance, though, wasn't really part of the equation. Like many other Long Island high school graduates, Rich registered at the State University of New York at Albany (SUNYA). Freshman year for Rich at SUNYA passed fairly uneventfully. He was doing well enough in his studies, had part-time jobs at the kosher cafeteria and teaching Hebrew school in the local Reform temple, and he was making new friends. During his sophomore year, Rich was elected president of the university's Reform Jewish student group. At the same time, a messianic Jewish congregation called "the Seed of Abraham" opened in Albany. DECEPTION AND SLICK MARKETING The Seed used deception and slick marketing to appeal to uninformed Jews. The Seed, like all messianic Jewish congregations, used deception and slick marketing to appeal to uninformed Jews, attempting to convince them that it is Jewish to believe in Jesus. The Seed's public functions and services were drawing increasing numbers, and somehow it had even succeeded in having one of its fellow believers hired as a Hebrew school teacher at the local Conservative synagogue. All of this raised the ire of Chaim Feinberg, z"l, a young, fiery Orthodox Jew living in Albany's small Orthodox community. He brought his concerns to Scott Moskowitz, an active member of the Orthodox Jewish student's group at SUNYA. Scott, in turn, raised the issue with Rich and suggested that they endeavor to find a non-Jewish student to join the Seed to investigate its inner workings and tactics. But finding a non-Jew willing to take the risks involved in such an endeavor was no easy feat. And so Rich boldly volunteered to accept the job himself. "While I don't know much about Jewish law," he said, "I've heard of the concept of saving lives, pikuach nefesh. Doesn't this job fall into that category?" Unsure of what to do, Moskowitz asked Rich to speak with Chaim Feinberg about his proposal. Rich called Feinberg, who immediately expressed his misgivings. After a lengthy discussion, however, Feinberg softened to the idea, but was not willing to make a decision on his own. There were many thorny halachic issues involved in the proposal, such as exposing Rich to apostasy and the attendance of The Seed functions on Shabbos. Feinberg spoke with a renowned rabbi. After clarifying the issues and gaining his support, he called Rich. "Okay, Rich, we can move forward with the plan. But," Feinberg cautioned, "there will be strict ground rules that you'll have to follow throughout the process." These rules included the instruction that Rich was not to take a single move without Feinberg's approval, and that after each meeting with The Seed, Rich would need to sit and learn with Feinberg as a sort of deprogramming. Rich readily agreed to the rules, hung up, and promptly broke the first rule: he called Pastor Birnbaum, the leader of The Seed, directly. INFILTRATING THE SEED During that first phone call, Rich and Pastor Birnbaum spent two hours talking. Rich laid the bait: he was lonely, Albany was so gloomy, everybody was so materialistic, he was a twice-a-year Jew who yearned for more spirituality. Birnbaum did not just take the bait, he gobbled it up voraciously. He told Rich that he knew exactly how he felt since he, too, had attended college in Albany. Birnbaum asked, "Do you have a Bible?" Rich responded affirmatively and Birnbaum instructed him to open it to the Book of Isaiah. Birnbaum then attempted to "show" Rich how the Tanach speaks of Jesus as the messiah and explained to him that believing in him did not make someone "un-Jewish." In fact, Birnbaum explained, believing in Jesus made a Jew "complete." After hanging up, Rich excitedly called Feinberg to advise him of the call. Feinberg was irate. After all, Rich had broken his agreement not to take any steps without Feinberg's consent. At the same time, Feinberg saw in Rich a bit of his own passion and, deep down, he knew that they had the right guy for the job. And so, now fully cognizant of the importance of following Feinberg's rules, Rich began to attend The Seed meetings. He was embraced with warmth by his "fellow members." They were enthused to share their love of Jesus and their common Jewish roots, and they were thrilled by Rich's musical ability. Before long, he was baptized, anointed with olive oil, and became a "baby believer." Rich quickly became a stalwart of The Seed community. Before long, he was baptized, anointed with olive oil, and became a "baby believer." Eventually he received "spiritual gifts," and the other members of the group believed that he could heal with his hands and receive prophetic visions. With each "spiritual gift," Rich rose higher in the ranks of The Seed until he became a messianic deacon. Throughout this time, Rich maintained a full credit load at the university and continued to lead Hillel's Reform group, teaching Hebrew school and working in the campus kosher kitchen. Nearly everyone, including his parents, family, and friends, remained unaware of Rich's double life. Rich was in constant contact with Feinberg, nearly matching hour for hour the time he spent with The Seed -- deprogramming, learning together, and reporting on the tactics, inner workings, and funding structure of the Seed. At one point Larry Levy, then executive director of Jews for Judaism in Baltimore, was flown in to add his expertise to the deprogramming team working with Rich. On the inside, other than Rich's insistence that Seed members seek medical assistance for serious conditions that they had been told would be healed by religion and belief, Rich pretty much became their poster child. Months went by. Rich found himself in dozens of situations for which he never could have planned. He and Feinberg found that prior consultation was often not possible. Rich learned to think fast and fly by the seat of his pants -- and debriefing and damage control afterward became critical. Nearly six months in, Feinberg decided to test the waters: how would The Seed treat a fellow believer who began expressing doubts? And so Rich began leaving meetings early, quietly expressing skepticism, and skipping meetings altogether. Before long, Rich was picked up by Pastor Birnbaum and a few friends, who invited him for coffee. As it turned out, coffee was not what Birnbaum had in mind. Rich was taken to an abandoned farmhouse with a wooden table and chairs and a single swinging light bulb. The ride was nearly two hours long through unknown, labyrinthine roads in upstate New York. It ended at an abandoned farmhouse with a wooden table and chairs and a single swinging light bulb. After sitting down, Rich was warned, "You can never leave from beneath the umbrella of Jesus." If he did, Birnbaum threatened, the devil would rip out his heart. While Rich didn't believe such nonsense, as the hours rolled on through the night -- there in the middle of nowhere -- and the gruesome stories built to a fever pitch, the fact that he was hours away from civilization with potentially violent strangers frightened him more and more. Rich was not returned to his dorm for over ten hours. Shaking and terrified, he didn't even bother to go to his room. He phoned Feinberg and demanded, "Come get me... now!" Rich spent the next three days recovering at the Feinberg home. Before he left, Feinberg told Rich, "That's it. It's time to plot our exit strategy." Suddenly, Rich was a "believer" again and a faithful Seed meeting attendee. The Seed had been planning a grand, community-wide Purim play, followed by a speech by a Holocaust revisionist. Rich had already been cast in the role of Achashveirosh. It was decided that Rich would take advantage of the public forum to expose and denounce Pastor Birnbaum and The Seed of Abraham. On the night of the play, dozens of Rich's fellow students were in attendance, secretly aware of Rich's intent. For some strange reason, Pastor Birnbaum and his wife remained close to the stage during the presentation of the play. Just as Haman's plot was revealed to Achashveriosh, who was about to order that Haman be hanged on the gallows that he had built for Mordechai, Rich broke character and began his denunciation: Turning to Birnbaum he said, "This is the modern-day Haman in new colors!" "Guard, guards, seize him! He shall be hanged on the same gallows that he has built for the Jews." Turning to Birnbaum he said, "This is the modern-day Haman in new colors! "This man, this missionary, systematically deceives Jews into believing they can remain Jewish when The Seed of Abraham is so obviously and painfully a Christian conversion group. This is the new Haman, my friends. I have been here, personally evaluating The Seed of Abraham for six months, and I can honestly say to every person in this room that there is not a single drop of Judaism here, only a sad, sad pretense. What happens after a Jew is lured here by phony Jewish stars and sweet-sounding Hebrew words? Like me, he will be called a baby believer, not a Jew but a baby believer in Jesus. "Yet Mr. Birnbaum has the nerve, the audacity, to call this group ‘Hebrew Christians.' This is a ridiculous contradiction, because a Jew is a Jew and never a Christian. "I feel very sad tonight. This is Purim, a holy night, when the Jews were saved from soul-destroyers like The Seed of Abraham. I pray that each and every Jew in this room will turn immediately to a true Judaism, a Judaism that has no room for Christian messiahs and that celebrates Purim as it was meant to be celebrated -- as a true Jewish holy day when the Jews were saved from these Hamans, who would destroy them either in body or in spirit, by converting their souls to Christianity." Pastor Birnbaum, who was standing nearby, rushed toward Rich and tried to push him off the stage. But Rich stood his ground. Rich's fellow SUNYA students shouted in support, and the crowd split into two factions. Pushing and shoving broke out. In the videotape of the play, a representative of the Assemblies of God (the world's largest Christian denomination, which funds projects to ensnare Jews) looks on dourly, and a pistol can clearly be seen being drawn from someone's waistband. Thankfully, no one was injured, and the police eventually broke up the fracas and forced Rich and his supporters to leave the building. THE SEED EXPOSED The denunciation was successful. It publicly exposed The Seed for what it was, and reports run by local newspapers helped spread the story. Birnbaum pressed criminal charges against Rich, and many of Rich's former friends from The Seed began to make large contributions to evangelical, Pentecostal Christian radio stations and other organizations in his name in order to save his soul. But these were the least of Rich's problems. Many Seed members believed that Rich was the devil incarnate, and so Rich began receiving repeated telephone death threats. It was evident that he needed to be out of the public eye. Rich had always toyed with the idea of spending junior year abroad and now the idea seemed perfect. He enrolled in Hebrew University. After a few weeks at Hebrew U, the seed of Torah that had been planted in Albany and watered by Chaim Feinberg began sprouting. Why did I travel halfway around the world to study the same things I had been studying in Albany? Rich wondered. What am I doing in the spiritual capital of the world without tapping into anything spiritual? By the end of September, Rich had enrolled in Aish HaTorah. King Solomon teaches us "There is a time to plant and a time to uproot that which has been planted." Sometimes, it seems, by uprooting what has been planted, a person also plants anew. While The Seed of Abraham has been relegated to the dustbin of history, Rich Maisel and his family are living a blossoming Torah life. This article is dedicated in memory of Chaim Feinberg, z"l. It originally appeared in Horizons magazine.

1. The U.S. covenant with the Jewish State dates back to Columbus Day, which is celebrated around Sukkot (October 8). According to “Columbus Then and Now” (Miles Davidson, 1997, p. 268), Columbus arrived in America on Friday afternoon, October 12, 1492, the 21st day of the Jewish month of Tishrey, the Jewish year 5235, the 7th day of Sukkot, Hoshaa’na’ Rabbah, which is a day of universal deliverance and miracles. Hosha (הושע) is the Hebrew word for “deliverance” and Na’ (נא) is the Hebrew word for “please.” The numerical value of Na’ is 51, which corresponds to the celebration of Hoshaa’na’ Rabbah on the 51st day following Moses’ ascension to Mt. Sinai. 2. Sukkot is the 3rd Jewish holiday – following Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur – in the month of Tishrey, the most significant Jewish month. According to Judaism, the number 3 represents divine wisdom, stability, permanence, integration and peace. 3 is the total sum of the basic odd (1) and even (2) numbers. The 3rd day of the Creation was blessed twice; God appeared on Mt. Sinai on the 3rd day; there are 3 parts to the Bible, 3 Patriarchs, 3 pilgrimages to Jerusalem, etc. 3. The Book of Ecclesiastes, written by King Solomon – one of the greatest philosophical documents – is read during Sukkot. It amplifies Solomon’s philosophy on the centrality of God and the importance of morality, humility, family, friendship, historical memory and perspective, patience, long-term thinking, proper-timing, realism and knowledge. Ecclesiastes 4:12: “A three-ply cord is not easily severed.” The Hebrew name of Ecclesiastes is Kohelet (קהלת), which is similar to the commandment to celebrate Sukkot – Hakhel (הקהל), to assemble. 4. Sukkot starts on the 15th day of the Jewish month of Tishrey, commemorating the Exodus and the beginning of the construction of the Holy Tabernacle in Sinai. Sukkah (סכה) and Sukkot (סכות) are named after the first stop of the Exodus – Sukkota (סכותה). The Hebrew root of Sukkah (סכה) is “wholesomeness” and “totality” (סך), “shelter” (סכך), “to anoint” (סוך), “divine curtain/shelter” (מסך) and “attentiveness” (סכת). 5. The Sukkah symbolizes the Chuppah – the Jewish wedding canopy – of the renewed vows between God and the Jewish People. While Yom Kippur represents God’s forgiveness of the Golden Calf Sin, Sukkot represents the reinstatement of Divine Providence over the Jewish People. Sukkot is called Zman Simchatenou – time of our joy – and mandates Jews to rejoice (“והיית אך שמח”). It is the first of the three Pilgrimages to Jerusalem: Passover – the holiday of Liberty, Shavuot (Pentecost) – the holiday of the Torah and Sukkot – the holiday of Joy. 6. “The House of David” is defined as a Sukkah (Amos 9:11), representing the permanent vision of the ingathering of Jews to the Land of Israel, Zion. Sukkot is the holiday of harvesting – Assif (אסיף) – which also means “ingathering” (אסוף) in Hebrew. The four sides of the Sukkah represent the global Jewish community, which ingathers under the same roof. The construction of the Sukkah and Zion are two of the 248 Jewish Do’s (next to the 365 Don’ts). Sukkot – just like Passover – commemorates Jewish sovereignty and liberty. Sukkot highlights the collective responsibility of the Jewish people, complementing Yom Kippur’s and Rosh Hashanah’s individual responsibility. Humility – as a national and personal prerequisite – is accentuated by the humble Sukkah. Sukkot provides the last opportunity for repentance. 7. Sukkot honors the Torah, as the foundation of Judaism and the Jewish people. Sukkot reflects the three inter-related and mutually-inclusive pillars of Judaism: The Torah of Israel, the People of Israel and the Land of Israel. The day following Sukkot (Simchat Torah – Torah-joy in Hebrew) is dedicated to the conclusion of the annual Torah reading and to the beginning of next year’s Torah reading. On Simchat Torah, the People of the Book are dancing with the Book. 8. The seven days of Sukkot are dedicated to the seven Ushpizin, distinguished guests (origin of the words Hospes and hospitality): Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, Aaron and David. They defied immense odds in their determined pursuit of ground- breaking initiatives. The Ushpizin constitute role models to contemporary leadership. 9. The seven day duration of Sukkot – celebrated during the 7th Jewish month, Tishrey –highlights the appreciation to God for blessing the Promised Land with the 7 species (Deuteronomy 8:8): wheat, barley, grapes, figs, pomegranates, olive oil, and dates’ honey – 3 fruit of the tree, 2 kinds of bread, 1 product of olives, 1 product of dates = 4 categories. The duration of Sukkot corresponds, also, to the 7 day week (the Creation), the 7 divine clouds which sheltered the Jewish People in the desert, the 7 blessings which are read during a Jewish wedding, the 7 rounds of dancing with the Torah during Simchat Torah, the 7 readings of the Torah on Sabbath, etc.Yoram Ettinger About the Author: Ambassador (ret.) Yoram Ettinger is consultant to Israel’s Cabinet members and Israeli legislators, and lecturer in the U.S., Canada and Israel on Israel’s unique contributions to American interests, the foundations of U.S.-Israel relations, the Iranian threat, and Jewish-Arab issues. If you don't see your comment after publishing it, refresh the page. Our comments section is intended for meaningful responses and debates in a civilized manner. We ask that you respect the fact that we are a religious Jewish website and avoid inappropriate language at all cost. If you promote any foreign religions, gods or messiahs, lies about Israel, anti-Semitism, or advocate violence (except against terrorists), your permission to comment may be revoked.

I’ve made mention before that I understand the importance of branding and marketing in this game, and I’ve also made mention that I work in a bookstore, providing me with a sizeable window into how such efforts are put into play. They say you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, but I’d wager that adage’s popularity is rooted in a time when graphic design techniques were less sophisticated. I’ll admit, I judge books by their covers all the time, and there’s a reason why people know who Chip Kidd is. If your cover is striking, uses bold colours, dynamic fonts or intriguing artwork, and is preferably a trade paperback at 350 pages or less, I am far more likely to pick it up and give it a perusal. I suspect this is why I never browse science fiction save the work of the Robert Silverberg. But I lack the technical expertise to offer helpful tips on cover design. Instead I’d like to discuss the second thing I look at once I pick up your well designed book. Real talk, people: writers, of all proficiency levels, are typically not the most attractive people in the world, present company included. But I don’t understand the the need for authors to exacerbate this issue with some of the most unflattering examples of portraiture ever captured on film. Petty? Irrelevant? Hardly. Lots of authors, at all success levels, opt not to have a photo on the dust jacket. No one forces anyone to include it, but if you do, you could at least make a minimum of effort to ensure it makes people want to pick up your book. After the cut, a quick survey of some of the worst I’ve seen on the shelves during my time as a bookseller. I think of lot of what causes author photos to go so horribly wrong is the tendency of someone [photog, publicist, agent, author] to try and add to the mythology and mystique of being A WRITER through the photo, which I find puzzling, since I’m certain all of the people photographed here would probably tell you that while writing is fun, being A WRITER isn’t very glamorous, or romantic, or mystical. It’s their job. A job they love, but still a job. I think one of my new favourite authors fell into this trap early. I’d heard the praise heaped on Junot Diaz for months before I picked up the hardback of ‘The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao‘ to have a look at [which has a great cover, btw], and immediately put it down when I saw that author photo. Dude, why are you so miserable? You teach Creative Writing at MIT, for God’s sake. That’s f*cking awesome! I mean, is that your WRITER face? Is that what someone who is A WRITER is supposed to look like, because WRITING is such a serious business? Thankfully, someone in Diaz’s camp realized that stern disaffection doesn’t help sell books, and threw on a new photo for the paperback edition of ‘…Oscar Wao’. Because winning a Pulitzer should put a smile on your face. Why be so hard on author photos? Because in some cases, it’s the first time you ‘meet’ the person behind the book. Maybe you never heard of them before, and that photo is your introduction. If the author opts not include a photo, then you’re introduced through the work [as it should be, some would say]. But if she does, it can make or break whether you read the book at all. It does with me anyway, and it did with Laurie Sheck. Sheck is an award-winning poet who recently released the novel, ‘A Monster’s Notes’. A reimagining of the Frankenstein legend, told from the monster’s perspective, the book enticed me to pick it up despite its hefty weight on the strength of its subdued yellow cover with its delicate calligrophy contrasted against the gruesome musculature of the monster’s eye. She almost won me over. Until. Is this what poets are supposed to look like? I fear she may collapse of consumption at any minute. To be fair, the expression on her face suggests this photo wasn’t her idea either. But these examples pale in comparison to the previous and current title holder of worst author photo I’ve ever seen. The previous title holder was filmmaker and short story author Miranda July, who’s collection ‘No One Belongs Here More Than You‘ immediately caught my eye as I’m a sucker for covers with nothing but sans serif fonts on them. The excessive platitutdes printed on the dust jacket should have been a flashing light [I get antsy whenever the McSweeney’s crowd comes out en masse], but her photo was the dealbreaker. “Ohh, please read my stories! They’re fragile and delicate and I’ve worked ever so hard on them. It would please me so if you read them!” I couldn’t do it. I’ve since read some of her work in other anthologies and thought it was *makes so-so gesture*, and I liked how she used her stove as a whiteboard for her website, but that photo. I refuse to have her book in my house because of that photo. But someone came along who surpassed even Ms. July [awful, awful pen name]. Behold, Shalom Auslander. The photo in question comes from the back of Auslander’s memoir ‘Foreskin’s Lament‘, which chronicles his Orthodox Jewish upbringing and his attempts to reconcile it to his adult life. As someone who has friends who came up in similar backgrounds, I am aware of the lasting impact such an upbringing can have. But dude. Honestly. Lighten the fuck up. Why do you look like you want to get in a fistfight with anyone who picks up your book? Are you going for the Chuck Palahniuk crowd? Have you seen Chuck’s photos? Happy as a clam. Auslander already had a strike for writing a memoir at a young age [see previous post] but that photo is the absolute shits. I’m sorry you suffered a traumatic childhood, but seriously Scowly McSourpants, let’s try to crack a smile. You write books for a living. You publish articles in GQ. Your past was lacklustre, but there’s a line of people around the block who would trade you for your present. You won, you’re a survivor. Try to be happy about it, for Christ’s sake. So please, aspiring and established authors, please make a little more of an effort to but the best face on your work. If you can’t put a best face, stifle your vanity and keep it blank. If you can’t, at least look like you take a little satisfaction in your successes.

6:45 PM PDT 10/14/2013 by Mike Barnes The attorney and former film exec put his stamp on such projects as the cult horror film "The Howling" and TV’s “Raid on Entebbe” and “V: The Final Battle” during his prolific four-decade career. Daniel Blatt, who produced the 1981 cult horror film The Howling, the 1976 telefilm Raid on Entebbe and the epic 1984 sci-fi miniseries V: The Final Battle, died Oct. 9 of pancreatic cancer at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. He was 76. Blatt, who started his career as an attorney, served as a vice president for Palomar Pictures from 1970 to 1975, overseeing such films as Sleuth (1972), The Heartbreak Kid (1972), The Taking of Pelham 123 (1974) and The Stepford Wives (1975) before transitioning into producing. Blatt was nominated for an Emmy Award for outstanding special drama or comedy with Edgar J. Scherick for producing NBC’s Raid on Entebbe (1976), an account of the daring Israeli raid to rescue Jewish hostages held at the Entebbe airport after a hijacking. The film, which aired just six months after the real-life drama, was directed by Irwin Kershner, starred Peter Finch, Charles Bronson and Martin Balsam and won a Golden Globe for best telefilm. In fact, many of the TV movies that Blatt produced were fact-based. Those included Common Ground (1990), about desegregation in Boston in the ‘70s; Kissinger and Nixon (1995), starring Ron Silver and Beau Bridges, respectively; A Brother’s Promise: The Dan Jansen Story (1996), about the star-crossed Olympic speedskater; and Never Give Up: The Jimmy V Story (1996), starring Anthony LaPaglia as the legendary college basketball coach. Earlier, Blatt produced the werewolf-themed The Howling, which was directed by Joe Dante from a rewritten script by John Sayles and noteworthy for its stunning transformation sequences and other state-of-the-art special effects. His other feature-film credits included I Never Promised You a Rose Garden (1977), The American Success Company (1980), Independence Day (1983), Cujo (1983), Let’s Get Harry (1986) and The Boost (1988). In addition to his work on the three-part V: The Final Battle -- a ratings smash that averaged a 19.6 rating/31 share -- Blatt also produced a 1984 to 1985 NBC series based on the alien-invasion miniseries as well as a handful of episodes of the CBS crime drama The New Mike Hammer, starring Stacy Keach. His last credit was the Lifetime telefilm Twist of Faith (2013), starring Toni Braxton. Blatt was born in Rockland County in New York and attended Duke and Northwestern's School of Law. He represented freedom riders and civil rights protesters in Jackson, Miss., in 1964 before eventually making his way into entertainment law. Survivors include his wife, literary agent Marti Blumenthal, daughters Jessica and Chelsea, grandson Benjamin, sister Ruth and brother Philip. BLATT, Daniel H. Born: 1937 Rockland County, New York, U.S.A. Died: 10/9/2013, Los Angeles, California, U.S.A. Daniel Blatt’s western – executive producer: The Virginian (TV) - 2000

The Zionist Federation of Australia extends condolences on behalf of the Australian Jewish community to Israel’s President, Reuven Rivlin and his family on the passing of his wife and Israel’s First Lady, Nechama Rivlin z”l yesterday. Nechama Rivlin was, by all accounts, an individual who assumed her national responsibilities with grace, bringing her innate characteristics of humanity, respect and commitment to those in need to her role. She was renowned as a staunch advocate for women, taking up the cause of victims of sexual assault and domestic violence. She devoted much energy and dedication to improving the lives of people with disabilities and volunteered in the Israeli Prison Service with modesty and compassion. Her own health issues did not deter her from demonstrating her passion and care for those in need. As tributes for Mrs Rivlin pour in from world leaders, Jewish community leaders from across the world and of course from Israelis from so many parts of society, we learn more of the quiet yet profound contribution she made in Israel and beyond. She will be remembered for her values, her warmth and her compassion to all. Her altruism and her achievements in raising awareness and sensitivity for those in need will be a legacy for Israeli society into the future. Her loss will, of course, be felt most keenly by her family- by President Rivlin, their children Rivka, Anat and Ran and their grandchildren. We send them our sympathies and wishes for long life. May her memory be a blessing, for her family and friends, the State of Israel and the Jewish world. For media enquiries please contact: Jeremy Leibler, President – +61 417 382 387, email@example.com Ginette Searle, CEO –+613 9272 5517, firstname.lastname@example.org

As America Has Done to Israel "The book that links awesome disasters hitting America and dividing the land of Israel." John uses his skills as a criminal investigator to uncover God working in American history. This is the most unusual study of history you will ever read, as events come alive when seeing God in American history. Starting from President George Washington, John shows as America blessed the Jewish people and later Israel, how America was greatly blessed. America's Fatal Mistake DVD Series "This DVD series will give you incredible knowledge of history and current events." In this powerful 3 DVD series, John reveals how the blessings and curses America has endured are in direct correlation with how we treat Israel. The book and DVD series will give you incredible knowledge of history and current events. You will clearly understand Bible prophecy and where the explosive events in the Middle East are heading. I Could Take His Punch "A book that you cannot put down, and a story you will never forget." This book captures the legend of Joe McTernan. He was a legendary figure to his family and all that knew him. When reading this book, you will be amazed, astonished and laughing about his adventures and exploits. He almost seems like a character out of a novel, but all his exploits are true. He possessed incredible strength, an unbelievable appetite, along with an indomitable will. When JESUS Sets You Free "Although this book is aimed at prisoners, it has a far broader reach..." Although this book is aimed at prisoners, it has a far broader reach; anyone who understands the legal system can understand this message. The concepts found in this book have resulted from a merger of John's 26 years of career experience as a federal agent, his intensive study of the Bible, and his ministry to prisoners. Together they have given him a unique understanding of how God deals with man through a precise legal system. If you can understand man's legal system, then it is very easy to understand God's. Rabbi vs Chaplain Debate Is Jesus Israel's Promised Messiah? Chaplain McTernan has spent thousands of hours with Judaism’s counter-missionaries in defending the gospel of Jesus Christ. This resulted in him obtaining unique knowledge in how to defend and proclaim the gospel from the Old Testament. Chaplain McTernan used this fine honed knowledge during this debate.

NEW YORK, Dec. 19, 2013 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- AJC applauded Senators Robert Menendez (D-NJ), Mark Kirk (R-IL), Charles Schumer (D-NY), and Lindsey Graham (R-SC) for spearheading a new bipartisan Senate bill on Iran. AJC is urging Senators to move expeditiously to adopt the measure, the Nuclear Free Iran Act of 2013, introduced today with 26 Senators co-sponsoring. "Until there are tangible, verifiable deeds by Iran to permanently end its quest for nuclear-weapons capability, Congress is doing the right thing, sending a strong message to Iran that it will pay a heavy price if a permanent agreement on its nuclear program is not achieved," said AJC Executive Director David Harris. AJC earlier this month sent a letter to all Senators urging them to support the preparation of new sanctions. AJC has conveyed appreciation for the efforts of the Administration and the other P5+1 governments negotiating with Iran. At the same time, Harris emphasized that the new sanctions should be held in reserve to "underscore the seriousness of America's determination -- and the consequences of an Iranian failure to act in good faith." "AJC has long believed in a diplomatic, not a military, solution to the Iranian nuclear crisis, and has advocated for the toughest possible economic measures to persuade Iran to desist from its nuclear-weapons quest," said Harris. "Sanctions work," said Harris. "What prompted Iran to come to the negotiations in Geneva with the P5+1 nations – the increasing toll of sanctions -- remains essential for ensuring that Tehran is committed to negotiating a final agreement to end its nuclear-weapons program." Numerous questions have arisen since the Geneva deal announced on November 23, and at least one P5+1 country, France, has expressed serious doubts about the Iranian commitment to reach a final deal. "Iran's charge that Congress will cause the collapse of the interim deal is a diversionary tactic," said Harris. "If Iran is serious about a deal, then Iran has nothing whatsoever to fear from the bipartisan Senate initiative." The Senate measure includes a provision for President Obama to waive sanctions if the Administration can certify that Iran is complying with the Geneva deal and negotiating in good faith on a final agreement. SOURCE American Jewish Committee

Identity and Structure: The Delicate Balance in the Jewish Agenda by Robert Hyfler, PhD. The identity advocate says: “Our goal is to promote 21st century options for Jewish living”. The structuralist replies: “Our challenge is to create a Jewish community worth living in”. Of course the two statements are not mutually exclusive and are indeed mutually reinforcing. A compelling vision of the joys of Jewish life must go hand in glove with a commitment to building those agencies and institutions that embody Jewish values and ensure an organizational framework for the future. Yet our communal and philanthropic world is seldom good at nuance. From generation to generation, decade to decade, one strategy over the other has often held sway. For the past two decades the identity advocates have been ascendant. The questions they ask and the solutions they propose speak to the dynamism of the moment and have served as the engine of most of today’s Jewish start-ups. What is there in the wellsprings of our traditions that can give meaning to the day to day lives of individual Jews and their families? How can we promote and encourage, through creative programming and direct entitlements, Jewish activities, behaviors and connections? Identity advocates and their philanthropic sponsors endorse and embrace Jewish emersion programming and creating and delivering to the grass roots tools and resources to assist them in their Jewish journeys. Limmud, Taglit-birthright, Jewlicious, PJ Library are but a few exemplary examples of the strategy’s efficacy and impact. Tapping in to the Jewish rootedness and universalism that exists side by side in so many of us, identity advocates approach chesed and tikkun olam by encouraging the interpersonal and direct service. They promote service learning and non-duplicable life changing experiences through programs like that provided by American Jewish World Service. The identity agenda has delivered a two decades long blessing of creativity and renewal. However, the vision of the structuralists, those who built mighty synagogue movements and the UJA and Federation system with their networks of agencies providing core services, laid the groundwork and the start-up resources for a Jewish state, cannot be relegated to history. It is the structuralists, in Federations, foundations and national umbrella and support organizations, who are now actively asking the timeliest of questions, “what next”? How do we create and sustain an architecture of nimble and flexible modern day agencies and institutions where the fullest range of those with Jewish connections find welcome and relevance? How do we develop renewed, significant and seamless collaborations of responsibility, caring and support, collaborations that bridge the secular and the sacred, to which any of us can turn with certainty when setback, crisis and loneliness occur? At a time when many “connect” but do not “join”, how is institutional and synagogue financial viability protected – not to mention finding the right homes and future for the best of the start-up endeavors? Who might combine and partner with whom and how will resources flow? Who will inherit the yoke of communal responsibility and the mantle of communal stewardship to ensure that those who now know “why” they must live as Jews and perhaps even “how” they can be Jews also have institutional space “where” they can be Jewish? Lastly, how will the “public” organizational stakeholders of Jewish life, membership organizations and Federations, partner with “private” philanthropic entities so that mutual accountability to our Jewish citizenry is assured? It is to these questions we must turn and the time for the synthesis of the two strategies is now. Bob Hyfler is a Jewish organizational consultant. He can be reached at firstname.lastname@example.org.

My sermon delivered on Erev Rosh Hashana at Temple Beth Hatfiloh in Olympia, WA on September 6, 2021 Here we are, once again. We are welcoming the new year, again impacted by the COVID pandemic. I stand here in an empty sanctuary, you sit there in front of your screens. While knowing this is the right thing to do in order to safeguard the health of our community, once again we are forced to figure out new ways of connecting, of maintaining community, even though we are physically apart. Thank you for all you have done to maintain our community connections over this past time, I know it hasn’t been easy. We have done it for a year and a half, and we can continue to do it. While the first time last year was a novelty perhaps, this second time gives us the somber opportunity to deeply reflect on what this time means, and what it reveals to us. We have learned so much. This pandemic and the changes it forced upon us were not only inconveniences, but they revealed important truths about ourselves and our communities. There is another aspect to the uniqueness of the new year, which would have occurred this year regardless of how we gathered. That is, this year on the Jewish calendar Rosh Hashana ushers in the shmita year. The Torah teaches that just as we take every seventh day—Shabbat—as a day of rest, so too we should take every seventh year as a year of rest. It is a year of pausing, a year of reset that in its ideal form impacts all levels of our society. In reality, unlike Shabbat, the shmita is not observed in contemporary practice as it is envisioned in the Torah. Aspects of the shmita are time and place specific to biblical times, and based on an agrarian community rooted around a centralized religious system located in the ancient Temple in Jerusalem. However, like many aspect of Biblical practice, they can be observed in its spirit if not its letter, and the shmita year deserves our attention, especially at a time such as this. So while I generally come to you on Erev Rosh Hashana with a list of things I have learned over the past year based on something that is going on in my life, this year will be slightly different. Yes, I am bringing you a list of seven things. But this year, we are looking forward, not back. This year, we take this unique opportunity to look at our calendar and think about how this moment in time is proving so crucial. Tonight, I invite you to join me in thinking about the seven practices of the shmita year, and why they are so desperately needed today. For the first one we turn to Exodus in the Torah, the first mention of Shmita: “Six years you shall sow your land and gather in its yield; but in the seventh you shall let it rest and lie fallow. Let the needy among your people eat of it, and what they leave let the wild beasts eat. You shall do the same with your vineyards and your olive groves.” (Exodus 23:10-11) There are actually three practices embedded in these two verses, and we will take them in turn. The first is letting the field lie fallow. Just as we are meant to take a rest from our labor every seven days, the earth is meant to rest from labor every seven years. Now I know that this might raise up questions about how an agrarian society that does not grow crops for a year survive—trust me, the Torah has an answer for that—but that should not distract us from the idea in this verse, that the earth needs to rest and part of our stewardship of the earth is to not overwork it. This summer particularly it has become abundantly clear the realities of climate change and what our human impact has wrought. We prepare now not just for summer but for smoke season. We experienced extreme heat like we had not before resulting in loss of crops, loss of animal life, and loss of human life. The hurricanes that affect the south and east are stronger than ever, and accompanied by flooding that killed people in their cars, in their homes, in their apartments. We are in a climate crisis. I like to think at times with humility that this extreme weather is extreme only to us, and our ability to live with it and through it. The earth will adapt and survive, it is we as humans that might not. We don’t need to save the earth, but save ourselves. What that requires is a shift in attitude, in approach to how we are in the world. For so much of human history we have seen an exploitation of the earth for human gain, and the impact we have made in our relatively short time on this planet has been disproportional. Genesis 2:15 teaches that we are to “till and tend” the earth, but we have neglected that second part. By centering the earth during the shmita year, by declaring it “off limits” to human consumption during this period, the Torah is guiding us to a new understanding of our relationship with our world. That we are not above the earth, that we are of it. The second teaching from this verse about shmita is that during the year that the fields grow on their own, then the resulting growth from those fields goes to the poor. In other words, shmita teaches that we are to have responsibility for those in need in our midst. It is not just about letting the earth rest from potential overconsumption, but as a check on the inequality of wealth. The poor are given priority during shmita. One thing that the pandemic showed us is that we are lacking a true social safety net in our country, and yet through policies, albeit temporary, that provided direct payments to people, we have shown that it is possible to redistribute wealth. Can we continue to live into this when it is not a crisis? This is an issue writ large. And yet is also one we can look at on the local level. Homelessness and housing are issues here in Olympia, ones that we have engaged with in the past but not as much recently. Having made the tremendous step to more than double our footprint in downtown Olympia with the purchase of the adjacent lot—and I am so proud of our congregation for this achievement—we can also reexamine our role as downtown citizens and neighbors and recommit to work with our partners at Interfaith Works to help create and maintain space for all of Olympia’s residents? This is not the only time in the Torah we are told to protect the vulnerable. Providing for the poor is not something we are meant to do just every seven years. But by connecting providing for the poor with the idea of letting our fields lie fallow, shmita teaches that we must have in mind the fundamental equality among individuals, regardless of status. That property ownership and material goods are fleeting, that ultimately everything is ownerless, and therefore we must provide for everyone’s needs. The third teaching of shmita also comes from this verse, namely that as the fields are fallow, and after the poor get their fair share, then the “wild beasts” are able to benefit from the land. There is a consciousness that we have a responsibility not only to the earth, but to all life that lives within it. Again, this is a problem of perspective—of seeing ourselves above the world and not of it. It is what is what Aldo Leopold called the “land ethic,” when he writes, “in short the land ethic changes the role of homo sapiens from conqueror of the land-community to plain member and citizen of it. It implies respect for his [sic] fellow-members, and also respect for the community as such.” We are one, not the one. Ever since moving to the Northwest I have been taken with the salmon. Every year the High Holiday season is marked by the return of the salmon, who make their way from the oceans to the streams of their birth, to create new life and to die. Their process of renewal and rebirth is timed to our process of renewal and rebirth, and should serve as a reminder that our Jewish tradition is deeply connected to the earth and its cycles. The cycle of the salmon also feeds other animals, the waters in which they live, and the forests that surround those waters. And they feed us as well. And yet it is human activity which threatens them and their existence. I have been humbled to learn about the deep spiritual, cultural, and economic significance of salmon to Northwest Native tribes on whose land we gather, it is a reminder of a proper and holistic relationship with the world in which we live. The shmita teaching that recognizes “wild beasts” as part of the system reminds us that we need to not only work to make the earth habitable for us, but for other species as well. Salmon are but one of the wild beasts that we need to be mindful of and care for, it is perhaps one that we as a Northwest Jewish congregation can take a particular interest in. For the fourth teaching of shmita we turn back to the Torah to a different section, to Deuteronomy 15:1-2: “Every seventh year you shall practice remission of debts. This shall be the nature of the remission: every creditor shall remit the due that they claim from their fellow; they shall not dun their fellow or kin, for the remission proclaimed is of God.” What a radical notion this brings: the idea that every seven years, debts are to be forgiven. And we know that we are a society built on debt. The loads of student debt carried by many people in this country, including rabbis. The threat and reality of medical debt as well when, even with insurance, an unfortunate illness or accident can spell financial disaster. But it is more than just debt itself. I had this epiphany recently reading about the Supreme Court decision to end President Biden’s eviction moratorium. In the article, it said, understandably, that tenant’s organizations were against it, and landlord organization’s lauded it. And I thought, this is the society we live in, we pit people against each other. Whether its landlord and tenant, or have and have-not, or lender and debtor, we favor transactional relationship, and when we do so, usually one person benefits at the expense of another. This is not a cooperative society. We know that unchecked capitalism leaves people behind. It is not interested in making sure everyone has their needs met. What would it mean, then, to forgive debts in our society? But moreso, what does it mean to create an economy that does not require debt to access basic things like education or health care, that sets up cooperation, not competition. That is the lesson of this fourth teaching of shmita. Numbers five and six are also contained within a single verse: “If a fellow Hebrew, man or woman, is sold to you, they shall serve you six years, and in the seventh year you shall set them free. When you set them free, do not let them go empty-handed: Furnish them out of the flock, threshing floor, and vat, with which God has blessed you. Bear in mind that you were slaves in the land of Egypt and God redeemed you; therefore I enjoin this commandment upon you today.” (Deuteronomy 15:12-15) Every seventh year, we are meant to free the slaves. Without getting into what the Torah means when it is permitting slavery, we can safely say that there is currently slavery today. And I don’t just mean the fact that it is still enshrined in the Constitution as legal punishment for crime, or the persistence of human trafficking worldwide and in our local community, or even how mass incarceration is an extension of slavery in the United States, curtailing the rights and privileges of those who have been in prison, which is disproportionately people of color. That is all there, and needs to be examined. But the pandemic revealed too how our society is dependent on a class of “essential workers” who do not have access to certain privileges and are in a sense, slaves to their jobs. Ones who can not take off work to get the vaccine, or are scared of losing work to the side effects. Who don’t have access to child care, or parental leave. Those who work in adverse working conditions, who are prevented from unionizing. And in the cruel irony of the pandemic, whose health insurance, if they even have it, is tied to their employment, so if they lose work they lose access to affordable health care during a time when it is most necessary. Modern day slavery is also in the form of the recent law in Texas, that controls the reproductive choices and health of those who are or may become pregnant. And modern day slavery is draconian voting laws, that seek to prevent classes of people to have a voice in creating the laws by which they will in turn be governed. As Martin Luther King said, “it is a cruel jest to say to a bootless man that he ought to lift himself by his own bootstraps.” By including the freeing of slaves as part of the seven-year cycle, the shmita year challenges us to examine who is it in our society that either explicitly or implicitly kept down, whose choices are limited, who can not by design live up to their full potential, and then address and repair those inequalities in our system. And when we free the slaves, according to the Torah, you do not just let them go but you provide for them a form of restitution or compensation for the time they worked, in order to set them on an even playing field as a free person. This is the fifth practice of shmita. And what this raises for us, that as we look back at the history of our country, and the institution of slavery that persisted for centuries, is that it is time we engaged with the idea of reparations. Jewish communities are beginning to talk more and more about our responsibilities to engage with the idea of reparations. Our Reconstructionist movement has taken it on, my rabbinic association has passed a resolution supporting it, we have begun to read and discuss here at TBH. This was done in the understanding that, as Rabbi Sharon Brous writes, “We did not create this problem, but that does not free us from being part of the solution. We are beneficiaries of a national economic system that was built on stolen land and stolen labor, a foundational wrong that has never been rectified.” In our own story of slavery in the Torah we read how the Israelites took the gold and silver from the Egyptians on their way to freedom, a form of reparations, payment for the 400 years of servitude. In contemporary history we have the model of reparations after the Holocaust, which would not undo the tragic and horrific past, but allow for a better and hopeful future. And more broadly, we have the idea of teshuvah, which we are focused on during these Days of Awe, which requires us not just to atone or apologize for past wrongs, but to actively try to find a way to repair, to rectify, to make right. Again, even if it can not undo the past, it can remake the future. As Rabbi Brous writes, “reparations would not suddenly ensure economic equality, nor would they erase generations of trauma. But they would offer some financial redress. And most significantly, they would signal a reckoning that our nation desperately needs.” Shmita this year reminds us of that need for reckoning. Taken all together, the fundamental lesson of these first six ideas of shmita is that there is a connection among environmental justice, racial justice, and economic justice, and it is our responsibility to recognize this intersectionality and act on it. When I think about it why shmita is necessary, why it is in our most sacred text, I come to think that it is meant as a check on human nature. Without it, without a limit on our actions, human nature is one of continual exploitation: of land, animal and fellow human. We have seen it throughout the entire course of human history. The pandemic made it that much more immediate and visible in our time, and in that way, shmita comes just when it is most needed. By suspending the notion of private ownership and letting the land do its own thing, by favoring the needy and the animals, by forgiving debts, by freeing slaves and paying them reparations—shmita is there to lead us away from our worst impulses toward a new idea of human behavior. And these six practices are all connected in the seventh: “And Moses instructed them as follows: “Every seventh year, the year set for remission, at the Feast of Booths, when all Israel comes to appear before God in the chosen place, you shall read this Teaching/Torah aloud in the presence of all Israel. Gather the people—men, women, children, and the strangers in your communities—that they may hear and so learn to revere God and to observe faithfully every word of this Teaching.” (Deuteronomy 31:10-12) The seventh practice of shmita is an affirmative, ritual component: that it is envisioned that the entire community come together every seven years, on the holiday of Sukkot, to hear the Torah. One could imagine what this must have been like in ancient times, and grandeur and pageantry and celebration of the entire community coming together every seven years, making the pilgrimage to the Temple to hear the reading of our sacred text. And while we do enact elements of this ritual—In our contemporary practice we read the entirety of the Torah over the course of a whole year while we are gathered together in community—the vision of this ritual has yet to be fully achieved. For what is described here is the creation and coalescing of radically inclusive community. A covenantal community of all ages, classes, genders, backgrounds, abilities that is joined together by a sacred text, tradition, and practice. A covenantal community that honors its ancestors and teaches its children, that protects the vulnerable and takes care of each other needs, that finds opportunities to join together in fun and celebration and support and comfort. A covenantal community that prizes equality, justice, and peace. We are being tested in a way now that we have not been in recent history. Fissures are deepening, the foundations are crumbling. Internal and external threats challenge us. And tonight, we turn the page to a new year, and a new hope for what is possible. Because we now are entering into this sacred time of shmita, arriving on our calendar at just the right time to remind us—to command us—to live into and fulfill the essence of what it and its seven constituent parts require: to build a society that works for everyone.

Tablet Magazine - a new read on Jewish life Listen to Tablet Looking for a good book to sink into at the beach in these waning dog days? Friends share what they’ve loved lately. August 14, 2015 Featured Contributor: Blake Smith The poet, who died last month, understood that American tradition is broken—but knew it was possible to begin again Without an elite capable of making good decisions, rights and laws aren’t worth the paper they are printed on The little-known Romanian writer Abraham Zissu espoused a conception of Judaism rooted in a deep love for one’s community, and a simultaneous willingness to challenge its fundamentals Henri Bergson’s original heuristic of open and closed societies emphasizes that liberalism is a religion born out of moments of mystical perception and faith May 1–September 11, 2022 Museum of Fine Arts, Boston April 14 - September 11, 2022 Jüdisches Museum Berlin April 14 - August 28, 2022 Museum of the Art and History of Judaism, Paris Radioactive tells the story of a crafty bigot who used a new mass medium to spread hate and get much too close to political power. This eight-part podcast, hosted by Detroit journalist Andrew Lapin, weaves together archival materials and present-day interviews to tell the story of Father Charles Coughlin’s dangerous rise and dramatic fall. Radioactive is produced by Tablet Studios, with support from Maimonides Fund, and in association with The WNET Group’s reporting initiative, Exploring Hate: Antisemitism, Racism and Extremism. Film, music, visual arts, and more. My Favorite Anti-Semite An occasional series of tributes to writers, artists, philosophers, and others who hate us and to why we still find value in their work.

Writing a Will The Rabbis interpret a will as an elaborate gift, making it permissible within Jewish law. Reprinted from The Jewish Religion: A Companion, published by Oxford University Press. The chief religious problem with regard to a will, in which a person declares how his estate is to be distributed after his death, is that, on the face of it, any disposition that is not in accord with the laws of succession, as stated in the Torah (Numbers 27:8-11; Deuteronomy 21:16-17), is contrary to the laws of the Torah. According to the Talmudic sources, however, the laws of succession only apply where the testator states that the deposition of his property in is the form of an inheritance. The laws of succession do not apply if the deposition is given as a gift, that is, if the estate is distributed while the man is still alive, with the stipulation taking place immediately but the distribution only when he dies, since a man is allowed to give away that which he owns to whomsoever he pleases. The key passage in this connection is the Mishnah (Bava Batra 8:5) which states: 'If a person gives his estate, in writing, to strangers, and leaves out his children, his arrangements are legally valid (literally, what he has done is done), but the spirit of the Sages finds no delight in him. Rabban Simeon ben Gamaliel said: If his children did not conduct themselves in a proper manner he will be remembered for good.' Most authorities, consequently, see no harm in a man making a will in favor of whomsoever he wishes, provided it is in the form of a gift not an inheritance, since the will is precisely that--a gift given in his lifetime to come into operation 'from now until after his death,' as this is formulated in the Mishnah in the same tractate. Nevertheless, he should leave a substantial amount to his children in order to satisfy the 'spirit of the Sages.'

UN Envoy to Discuss Troop Withdrawal with Israeli Officials Special UN Middle East envoy Terje Larsen is due to meet with senior officials in Jerusalem Tuesday to discuss Israel's plans to pull the Israeli army out of the occupied zone in south Lebanon by July, reported the Jerusalem Post. The Israeli daily cited government sources as confirming that Larsen will meet with National Security Adviser Danny Yatom and probably Foreign Minister David Levy. But no meeting with Prime Minister Ehud Barak is planned, said the daily, although Larsen held impromptu talks with him on a previous visit to Israel a few weeks ago. However, AFP said the envoy will hold talks this week with Barak. "The main issue will be Israel's withdrawal from Lebanon and the UN role in it," a source in Barak's office told AFP. UN Secretary General Kofi Annan announced last week that Roed-Larsen would visit Israel as well as Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Egypt, to discuss implementation of the 1978 UN resolution calling for the Jewish state's withdrawal from Lebanon. "Cooperation by all parties concerned will be required in order to avoid a deterioration of the situation" after an Israeli withdrawal, the UN Security Council said in a statement last week giving its backing to Roed-Larsen's mission -- (Several Sources) © 2000 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)

In the grand scope of things, the Reuben sandwich isn’t exactly rocket science. Take corned beef, sauerkraut, Swiss cheese and dressing, throw it on some rye bread, slap it on the grill and call it a day. Amazingly, the origin of such a straightforward, if unusual, sandwich is disputed (I probably shouldn’t be surprised). Some believe that it was the creation of a Lithuanian grocer, Reuben Kulakofsky, in Omaha, Neb., in the 1920’s at one of his poker games. Others claim that Arnold Reuben created the sandwich at Reuben’s Delicatessen in New York in 1914, despite his Reuben special not containing half of the main ingredients and skipping the grilling step. I don’t know which one of those stories is true, or who made the original. But I do know who makes it the way it’s supposed to be made, and that’s Izzy’s, a deli that has been located throughout the Cincinnati metro area since 1901. If you’ve done the math, you know that it’s been in business for 112 years, which says that it’s got to be something really special. If you’ve really done the math, you also know that Izzy’s predates the earliest Reuben date by 13 years and makes no claim that it’s the original home of the Reuben. That means we can only conclude that Izzy’s didn’t figure to add the Reuben to their menu until it gained widespread acceptance, and since Izzy’s built its reputation on corned beef and still uses founder Izzy Kadetz’s recipes, they somehow never discovered this combination until it had already caught on across the country. If they had, who knows, delis might be serving Izzies today. Maybe it’s a good thing they didn’t figure it out first. Despite not being the ones who invented the sandwich, Izzy’s knew a good idea when it saw it and built itself around the Reuben. What resulted was some of the best Reubens around, going far beyond the standard corned beef. For those who want something else, Izzy’s is well-known for much more than just corned beef, offering seven other kinds of Reubens. Turkey, cod, vegetarian, pastrami, beef franks and the Cincy staple goetta are all available, plus a double-decker of the standard Reuben. From my point of view, this is a very good thing, because that means that whenever Amy and I venture to Cincinnati, she’ll be able to have a Reuben of some kind if she so chooses. Actually, I’m not the least bit surprised by that, because Izzy’s appears to have been designed with Amy in mind, and I mean that literally. There’s a sandwich on the menu called Izzy’s Mex, which normally takes the corned beef and Swiss combo and adds jalapenos and chipotle sauce on rye. However, if you want, you can “try it Amy’s way”, which substitutes turkey for the corned beef and puts it on whole wheat toast. Fits her perfectly. For me, not having an aversion to beef, I had to go with the original. The special touch comes in the quality of the ingredients and in the dressing. Normally, the Reuben is made with either Russian or Thousand Island dressing, but Izzy’s actually makes their own dressing and keeps it a secret. They give you the dressing along with your sandwich, allowing you to slather on as much as you want to go with the kraut, Swiss and corned beef. One bite tells you why they’ve been in business since the end of the McKinley administration. The dressing is creamy and flavorful, the Swiss cheese melted perfectly, the kraut provides a nice bite and oh, that corned beef. It’s simply delicious, cut and cured exactly the way it should be done. Izzy’s uses the best brisket around for their corned beef, and it shows. There’s plenty of it on there, and there’s plenty of kraut as well. My aunt Margaret, a lover of Reuben sandwiches, would definitely approve. But Izzy’s doesn’t stop there. Potato pancakes are a large part of Jewish cuisine, and when Izzy opened up shop, he brought his family’s recipe for the delicacy with him. What happened became a thing of beauty, as every sandwich on Izzy’s menu is served with a large potato pancake (and some pickles, which aren’t bad either). These are hot and crispy, full of flavor and full of potato. For a really different taste, try dipping the pancake in the dressing on the side. It’s pretty good, and it’s just magnificent plain. With the quality of their Reubens, one could easily forget that Izzy’s is a full deli, not just a Reuben shop. Roast beef, turkey and pastrami all star in their own sandwiches, and all three of them combine to form the “Barry Larkin”, after the beloved Hall of Fame Reds shortstop. There’s even a meatloaf sandwich with mayonnaise and American, which Amy would find absolutely disgusting but I think is quite intriguing. However, I highly doubt I’ll ever find out if it’s any good or not, even if I were to one day move to Cincinnati. That’s because Izzy’s is so darn good at the Reuben that you can go every day and not get sick of it, especially with enough Reubens for every day of the week. Izzy’s might not have invented the Reuben sandwich, but the Kadetz family has certainly perfected it. They call it the World’s Greatest Reuben, and I think this might fall under the category of it’s not bragging if it’s the truth. As current CEO and non-Kadetz family member John Geisen likes to say, what you get when you cross a Jew with a Catholic (Geisen) is success, and it’s definitely the case for Izzy’s. Time to go: Lunch or dinner. Izzy’s does have one location that serves breakfast, but you’re not going to Izzy’s for breakfast. Wait during my visit: None. Being eight hours from Cincinnati, I hit it at around 3:30 p.m. for perfect timing. Location: The Izzy’s I visited can be found at 1198 Smiley Avenue in Cincinnati, in the Forest Park portion of the city. Cost: Most sandwiches will cost you between eight and 10 dollars. Not bad at all. Parking: Depends on the one you go to, as Izzy’s has seven Ohio locations and one in Kentucky, but mine had plenty of parking. Seating arrangement: Tables and chairs. Specialty items: Reuben sandwich, potato pancake

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- FEBRUARY MOTAS MEETING – SUN FEB 12 - MOTAS 2017 ANNUAL APPEAL - FEBRUARY DINING OUT – SUPPORTING SISTERHOOD - PRESENTING OUR 2017 MAN OF THE YEAR – DANIEL FAIGIN - MRJ MAN OF THE YEAR DINNER AT TAS – SAT MAR 4 - UPCOMING MENS HANGOUT: WHAT IS SOCIAL JUSTICE? - IN CLOSING The next monthly membership meeting of MoTAS will be on Sunday, February 12. The meeting will include great friends, Klezmer music, a three star buffet, and big ideas. The meeting will begin with breakfast at 8:45 am, with the meeting proper starting at 9:00 am. The Parashat for the meeting is Beshallach: The Israelites cross the Red Sea and celebrate with song and dance. They are sent on their journey and given manna for sustenance which appears daily. If one takes more than he can consume that day, it rots and turns wormy. The Israelites receive Shabbat. They start complaining. We will have a modern, positive and inspiring commentary. Our opening music for the meeting is Halleluyah by Rick Recht. Listen for free at http://www.rickrecht.com/album/halleluyah/. During the meeting, we’ll be discussing the upcoming Purim Carnival and our partnering with Temple Ramat Zion. The tentative date for the carnival is Sunday March 12. The carnival will be held at Ramat Zion. White Oak Ave. will be closed in in front of Ramat Zion for it. There will be Kosher food trucks. Ramat Zion will also provide Kosher Pizzas. We were asked to serve food and provide general assistance. What are your ideas for a game booth? Something Golf themed? Emoji Putting Green maybe? You are encouraged to browse the PragerU courses from prageru.com. What topic would you like to learn about or discuss? Our closing music is: The Hope (Studio Version) by Rick Recht. Listen for free at http://www.rickrecht.com/album/the-hope/. Email Frank for lyric sheets that match The Hope (Studio Version). We end, as always, with closing comments, good and welfare. In 2012, ignoring the objections of our accountant, the Men of TAS eliminated the dues requirement for membership. We moved to an inclusive model where every man in TAS is part of the Men of Temple Ahavat Shalom. Since we don’t have dues, we don’t have steady revenue. So, every year Men of TAS asks you to support our work financially. By now, you should have received the email with our Annual Appeal message. You can also find the message on our support page at http://support.tasnorthridge-motas.org/. On that page, you can find a printable donation form that you can mail in, as well as a link to contribute online. See your friends and fellow congregants that have really stepped up to support us on our website’s Wall of Honor at http://wallofhonor.tasnorthridge-motas.org/. Join the Wall of Honor yourself by donating 100 or more shekels (dollars). Your generous gift will provide fun events for all Temple members, kids to adults, teachers and staff. Continue to repair and improve our facilities. Most importantly, it will help us continue teaching and living the Jewish values that guide and enrich all our lives. Our February Dining Does Good” will be February 20 (Presidents Day) at Marie Callender’s in Northridge in support of MoTAS and Sisterhood. You can find a flyer for the event at https://wp.tasnorthridge-motas.org/activities/dining/. Mark your calendar for our March Dining Does Good, which will be at Souplantation on Monday, March 20. The flyer will be available shortly. At the 2017 MoTAS Shabbat on Friday, January 27, 2017, the MoTAS Man of the Year for 2017 was announced by Barry Mann, our 2016 Man of the Year. You can read Barry’s speech at https://wp.tasnorthridge-motas.org/2017/02/01/2017-motas-man-of-the-year/. Our honoree is none other than your humble MoTAS Weekly editor and cybermaven (and also your immediate past president), Daniel Faigin. Daniel will be honored, together with all the other Men of the Year from the other MRJ congregations in the region, at the MRJ Regional Man of the Year dinner on March 4th at TAS. More information is in the next item. MRJ Man of the Year Dinner – Saturday Evening, March 4, 2017. At the MoTAS Shabbat, our honoree for the MoTAS Man of the Year, Daniel Faigin, was announced. Daniel will be feted, together with the honorees from other MRJ congregations from the MRJ Pacific Southwest region, at the MRJ Man of the Year Dinner on Saturday, March 4, 2017. This year, the dinner will be held at Temple Ahavat Shalom, allowing us to show off our beautiful remodeled social hall. The cost of the dinner is $36, and you can RSVP now by clicking here. We will also need volunteers to help check in people and help with the event; if you are able to volunteer, click here. At our last MoTAS meeting, we had an energetic discussion about the meaning of the term “Social Justice”, and how different groups view the term very differently. Should “Social Justice” be redistribution by the government to those it deems to be in need, or should it be people helping people that they feel are in need — in other words, what is the role of government, and what is the role of community? Independent of what the government does, what is an individual’s responsibility to others? What does our tradition teach about the different views of social justice from a Jewish perspective. The discussion got so lively that we have decided to devote an upcoming Mens Hangout to the subject. We’re looking for a Sunday evening in late February, so watch your MoTAS Weekly for the announcement. As always, remember that the Men of Temple Ahavat Shalom is *your* organization. Keep up to date on our activities at http://www.tasnorthridge-motas.org/ and participate. Sign up for our action alert list at http://tinyurl.com/motas-action-alert. We want to serve all the men of Temple Ahavat Shalom and welcome new participants from the TAS membership. Join our Facebook group and “follow” our website. Come be part of the Men of Temple Ahavat Shalom!

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Exposition of the Old and New Testament, by John Gill, [1746-63], at sacred-texts.com hos 10:0INTRODUCTION TO HOSEA 10 This chapter is of the same argument with the former, and others before that; setting forth the sins of the ten tribes, and threatening them with the judgments of God for them; and exhorting them to repentance, and works of righteousness. They are charged with unfruitfulness and ingratitude; increasing in idolatry, as they increased in temporal good things, Hos 10:1; with a divided heart, and with irreverence of God, and their king; and with false swearing, covenant breaking, and injustice, Hos 10:2; and are threatened with a removal of their king, and with the destruction of their idols, and places of idolatry, which should cause fear in the common people, and mourning among the priests, Hos 10:1. It is observed, that their sin had been of long continuance, though the Lord had been kind and good unto them, in chastising them in love, giving them good laws, sending his prophets to exhort them to repentance and reformation, but all in vain, Hos 10:9; wherefore they are threatened with the spoiling of their fortresses, the destruction of the people, and the cutting off of their king, Hos 10:14. hos 10:1Israel is an empty vine,.... The people of Israel are often compared to a vine, and such an one from whence fruit might be expected, being planted in a good soil, and well taken care of; see Psa 80:8; but proved an "empty vine", empty of fruit; not of temporal good things, for a multitude of such fruit it is afterwards said to have; but of spiritual fruit, of the fruit of grace, and of good works, being destitute of the Spirit of God, and his grace; and, having no spiritual moisture, was incapable of bringing forth good fruit: or, "an emptying vine" (o); that casts its fruit before it is ripe; these people, what fruit they had, they made an ill use of it; even of their temporal good things; they emptied themselves of their wealth and riches, by sending presents, or paying tribute, to foreign princes for their alliance, friendship, and help; or by consuming it on their idols, and in their idolatrous worship. The Targum renders it, "a spoiled vine (p);'' spoiled by their enemies, who robbed them of their wealth and riches, and trampled them under foot. The Septuagint version, and those that follow that, understand it in a sense quite the reverse, rendering it, "a flourishing vine"; putting forth branches, leaves, and fruit; and which the learned Pocock confirms from the use of the word in the Arabic language: but then it follows, he bringeth forth fruit unto himself; all the good works done by them were not to the praise and glory of God, as fruits of righteousness are, which come by Jesus Christ; but were done to be seen of men, and to gain their applause and esteem, and so were for themselves; and all their temporal good things they abounded with were not made use of in the service of God, and for the promoting of his glory, and of true religion among them; but either consumed on their own lusts, or in the service of idols: or, "the fruit is like unto himself" (q); as was the vine, so was its fruit: the vine was empty, and devoid of goodness, and so the fruit it produced. The Targum is, "the fruit of their works was the cause of their being carried captive:'' according to the multitude of his fruit he hath increased the altars: as the Israelites increased in riches and wealth, their land bringing forth in great abundance, they erected the greater number of altars to their idols, and multiplied their sacrifices to them; this was the ill use they made of what fruit they did produce: according to the goodness of his land they have made goodly images; of richer metal, and more ornamented, and more of them, according to the plenty of good things, corn, and wine, and oil, their land produced; thus abusing the providential goodness of God to such vile purposes! (o) "vitis evacuans", Drusius, Rivetus, Schmidt; so Stockius, p. 149. (p) So Calvin. (q) "fructum aequat sibi", Mercerus; "fracture facit similem sibi", Schmidt. hos 10:2Their heart is divided,.... Some say from Hoshea their king, who would have reformed them from their idolatry, and returned them to the true worship of God; but of that there is no proof; better from one another, their affections being alienated from each other, by their discords and animosities, their conspiracies against their kings, and the murders of them, and the civil wars among themselves; they also not being of one mind, but disagreeing in their sentiments about their idols; some being for one, and some for another: or rather from God himself, from the fear of him, from his worship and service; or from the law, as the Targum; or their hearts were divided between God and their idols, as in Ahab's time between God and Baal; they pretended to worship God when they worshipped the calves, and so shared the service between them; or it may be rendered, "their heart flatters" (r) them; as if they had done that which was right and good, and were guilty of no evil, nor would any punishment be inflicted on them: now shall they be found faulty; be convicted of their sin and folly, and appear guilty; when they shall be punished for their idolatry, and their idols not able to save them, as the destruction of them next mentioned will fully evince: or, "now shall they become desolate" (s) their land shall be desolate, and they carried captive: he shall break down their altars, he shall spoil their images: that is, the king of Assyria shall do all this, or God by him: or, "behead their altars" (t); take off the top of them, as the Targum; the horns of them, which might be made of gold, or other ornaments which were of value; and therefore became the plunder of the enemy; and who also would break in pieces their images, for the sake of the metal, gold or silver, of which they were made; as was usually done by conquerors, and to show their entire power over the conquered, that even their gods could not deliver them out of their hands. (r) "adblanditur cor eorum", Schmidt. (s) "nunc desolabuntur", Pagninus, Montanus, Munster, Drusius; so Kimchi and Ben Melech. (t) "decollabit", Drusius, Piscator, Tarnovius, De Dieu; "decervicabit", Cocceius. hos 10:3For now they shall say, we have no king,.... This they would say, either when they had one; but by their conduct and behaviour said they had none; because they had no regard unto him, no affection for him, and reverence of him; but everyone did what was right in his own eyes: or during the interregnum, between the murder of Pekah, which was in the twentieth year of Jotham, and the settlement of Hoshea, which was in the twelfth of Ahaz; see Kg2 15:30; or when the land of Israel was invaded, and their king was shut up in prison, and Samaria besieged, so that it was as if they had no king; they had none to protect and defend them, to sally out at the head of them against the enemy, and fight their battles for them; or rather when the city was taken, the altars broke down, their images spoiled, and they and their king carried captive: because we feared not the Lord: did not serve and worship him, but idols; and this sin, casting off the fear of the Lord, was the source and cause of all their troubles and sorrows; of the invasion of their land; of the besieging and taking their city, and having no king to rule over them, and protect them: what then should a king do to us? if they had one, he could be of no service to them; for since they had offended God, the King of kings, and made him their enemy, what could an earthly king, a weak mortal man, do for them, or against him? it was now all over with them, and they could have no expectation of help and deliverance. hos 10:4They have spoken words, swearing falsely in making a covenant,.... Those are other crimes they were guilty of, for which the wrath of God could not be awarded from them by a king, if they had one, or by any other. They had used vain and idle words in their common talk and conversation; and lying and deceitful ones to one another in trade and commerce, in contracts and promises; and so had deceived and overreached one another: they had belched out many "oaths of vanity" (u): or vain oaths and curses; their mouths had been full of cursing and bitterness; and they made covenants with God, and their king, and with other kings and princes, and with one another, and had not kept them; and now for these things God had a controversy with them: thus judgment springeth up as hemlock in the furrows of the field; either the judgment of God, his wrath and vengeance for the above sins, rose up and spread itself in all their cities, towns, and villages; or rather the judgment and justice they pretended to execute, instead of being what it should have been, useful and beneficial to the people, like a wholesome herb, sprung up like hemlock, bitter and poisonous, and spread itself in all parts of the kingdom. Injustice is meant; see Amo 6:12. (u) "execrationes vanitatis", Schmidt. hos 10:5The inhabitants of Samaria shall fear because of the calves of Bethaven,.... Or, "the cow calves" (w), as in the original; so called by way of derision, and to denote their weakness and inability to help their worshippers; and so Bethel, where one of these calves was, is here, as elsewhere, called Bethaven; that is, the house of iniquity, or of an idol, by way of contempt; and may take in Dan also, where was the other calf, since both are mentioned; unless the plural is put for the singular: now the land of Israel being invaded by the enemy, the inhabitants of Samaria, which was the metropolis of the nation, the king, nobles, and common people that dwelt there, and were worshippers of the calves, were in pain lest they should be taken by the enemy; or because they were, these places falling into his hands before Samaria was besieged, or at least taken; and these calves being broken to pieces, which they had worshipped, and put their trust in, they were afraid the ruin of themselves and children would be next, and was not very far off: for the people thereof shall mourn over it; either the people of Samaria, the same with the inhabitants of it; or rather the people of Bethaven, where the idol was; but now was broke to pieces, or carried away; though it is generally interpreted of the people of the calf, the worshippers of it, who would mourn over it, or for the loss of it, being taken away from them, and disposed of as in Hos 10:6. The Jews (x) have a tradition, that, in the twentieth year of Pekah king of Israel, Tiglathpileser king of Assyria came and took away the golden calf in Dan; and, in the twelfth year of Ahaz, another king of Assyria (Shalmaneser) came and took away the golden calf at Bethel: and the priests thereof that rejoiced on it; the Chemarims, as in Zep 1:4; or "black" (y) ones, because of their meagre and sordid countenances, or black clothing: the same word the Jews use for Popish monks: here it designs the priests of Bethaven, or the calf, who before this time rejoiced on account of it, because of the sacrifices and presents of the people to it, and the good living they got in the service of it; but now would mourn, as well as the people, and more, because of being deprived of their livelihood. Some read the words without the supplement "that, the priests thereof rejoiced on it"; which some interpret according to a tradition of the Jews mentioned by Jerom, though by no other, as I can find; that the priests stole away the golden calves, and put brasen and glided ones in the place of them; so that when they were carried away the people mourned, taking them to be the true golden calves; but the priests made themselves merry with their subtle device, and rejoiced that their fraud was not detected; but rather the word here used, as Pocock and others have observed, is of that kind which has contrary senses, and signifies both to mourn and to rejoice; and here to mourn, as perhaps also in Job 3:22; and so Ben Melech observes, that there are some of their interpreters who understand it here in the sense of mourning: for the glory of it, because it is departed from it; either because of the glory of the calf, which was gone from it, the veneration it was had in, the worship which was given to it, and the gems and ornaments that were about it; or rather the glory of Bethaven, and also of Samaria, and indeed of all Israel, which was carried captive from them; that is, the calf, which was their god, in which they gloried, and put their trust and confidence in. (w) "vaccas, V. L. "ad. vitulas", Pagninus, Montanus; "propter vitulas", Junius & Tremellius, Piscator; "ob vitulas, Cocceius. (x) Seder Olam Rabba, c. 22. p. 60, 61. (y) "atrati ejus", Junius & Tremellius, Piscator. hos 10:6It shall also be carried unto Assyria for a present to King Jareb,.... Or, "he himself" (z); not the people of Samaria, or of Bethaven, or of the calf, but the calf itself; which, being all of gold, was sent a present to the king of Assyria, here called Jareb; either Assyria, or the king of it; See Gill on Hos 5:13; this was done either by the people of Israel themselves, to appease the king of Assyria; or rather by the Assyrian army, who reserved the plunder of this as a proper present to their king and conqueror, to whom not only nations, but the gods of nations, were subject: Ephraim shall receive shame; for worshipping such an idol, when they shall see it broke to pieces, and the gold of it made a present to the Assyrian king, and that it could not save them, nor itself: and Israel shall be ashamed of his own counsel; of giving in to such idolatry, contrary to the counsel, mind, and will of God; or of the counsel which they and Jeroboam took to set up the calves at Dan and Bethel, and thereby to keep the people from going up to Jerusalem, Kg1 12:28; as well as of their counsel and covenant with the king of Egypt against the king of Assyria, Kg2 17:4. (z) "etiam ipsemet", Pagninus, Montanus; "etiam ipse", Junius & Tremellius, Piscator; "etiam ille", Cocceius; "etiam ille ipse", Schmidt. hos 10:7As for Samaria,.... The metropolis of the ten tribes of Israel, and here put for the whole kingdom: her king is cut off; which some understand of Pekah, who was killed by Hoshea; others of several of their kings cut off one after another, very suddenly and quickly, as the metaphor after used shows; or rather Hoshea the last king is meant, who was cut off by the king of Assyria; the present tense is used for the future, to denote the certainty of it. Aben Ezra thinks the verb "cut off" is to be repeated, Samaria is "cut off, her king is cut off"; both king and kingdom destroyed. So the Targum, "Samaria is cut off with her king:'' as the foam upon the water; as any light thing flowing upon it; as the bark of a tree, as Kimchi and Abarbinel; or as the scum upon a boiling pot of water, as Jarchi, and the Targum; or as foam, which is an assemblage of bubbles upon the water; such are kings and kingdoms, swell, look big and high for a while; but are mere bubbles, empty things; and are often suddenly, quickly, and easily destroyed; so Samaria and her king were by the Assyrian army; the Lord of hosts, the King of kings, being against them. hos 10:8The high places also of Aven,.... Bethel, which is not only as before called Bethaven, the house of iniquity; but Aven, iniquity itself; the high places of it were the temple and altars built there for idolatrous service, which were usually set on hills and mountains: the sin of Israel shall be destroyed; that is, which high places are the sin of Israel, the occasion of sin unto them; and where they committed sin, the sin of idolatry, in worshipping the calves; these should be thrown down, demolished, and no longer used: the thorn and the thistle shall come up on their altars; lying in ruins, these shall grow upon them, the people and priests being carried captive that used to sacrifice upon them; but now they shall lie deserted by them, being destroyed by the enemy: and they shall say to the mountains, cover us; and to the hills, fall on us; not that the high places and altars shall say so in a figurative sense, according to R. Moses in Aben Ezra; but, as Japhet, they that worshipped there, the priests and people of Samaria, Bethaven, and even of all Israel, because of their great distress; and, as persons in the utmost consternation, and in despair, and confounded, and ashamed, shall call to the mountains and hills where they have been guilty of idolatry to hide and cover them from the wrath of God; see Luk 23:30 Rev 6:16. hos 10:9O Israel, thou hast sinned from the days of Gibeah,.... This has no respect, as the Targum, and others, to Gibeah of Saul, of which place he was, and the choosing him to be king; but to the affair of the Levite and his concubine at Gibeah in the days of the judges, and what followed upon it, Jdg 19:1; suggesting, that the sins of Israel were not new ones; they were the same with what were committed formerly, as early as the history referred to, and had been continued ever since; the measure of which were now filling up: or, as Aben Ezra and Abarbinel interpret it, "thou hast sinned more than the days of Gibeah"; were guilty of more idolatry, inhumanity, and impurity, than in those times; and yet the grossest of sins, particularly unnatural lusts, were then committed: there they stood; either the men of Gibeah continued in their sins, and did not repent of them; and stood in their own defence against the tribes of Israel, and the Benjamites stood also with them, and by them; and stood two battles, and were conquerors in them; and, though beaten in the third, were not wholly destroyed, as now the Israelites would be: or the tribes of Israel stood, and continued in, and connived at, the idolatry of the Levite; or rather stood sluggish and slothful, and were not eagar to fight with the Benjamites, who took part with the men of Gibeah; which were their sins, for which they were worsted in the two first battles, and in which the present Israelites imitated them: the battle in Gibeah against the children of iniquity did not overtake them; the two first battles against the men of Gibeah and the Benjamites, who are the children of iniquity, the one the actors, and the other the abettors and patrons of it, did not succeed against them, but the Israelites were overcome; and the third battle, in which they got the day, did not overtake them so as utterly to cut them off; for six hundred persons made their escape; but, in the present case prophesied of, it is suggested, that as their sins were as great or greater than theirs, their ruin should be entire and complete: or the sense is, that they were backward to go to battle; they were not eager upon it; they did not at once espouse the cause of the Levite; they did not stir in it till he had done that unheard of thing, cutting his concubine into twelve pieces, and sending them to the twelve tribes of Israel; and then they were not overly anxious, but sought the Lord, as if it was a doubtful case; which backwardness was resented in their ill success at first; and the same slow disposition to punish vice had continued with them ever since; so Schmidt. hos 10:10It is in my desire that I should chastise them,.... Or, "bind them" (a), and carry them captive; and by so doing correct them for their sins they have so long continued in: this the Lord had in his heart to do, and was determined upon it, and would do it with pleasure, for the glorifying of his justice, since they had so long and so much abused his clemency and goodness: and the people shall be gathered against them; the Assyrians, who, at the command of the Lord, would come and invade their land, besiege their city, and take it, and bind them, and carry them captive: when they shall bind themselves in their two furrows; when, like heifers untamed, and bound in a yoke to plough, do not make and keep in one furrow, but turn out to the right or left, and make cross furrows; so it is intimated that this was the reason why the Lord would correct Israel, and suffer the nations to gather together against them, and carry them captive, because they did not plough in one furrow, or keep in the true and pure worship of God; but made two furrows, worshipping partly God, and partly idols: or, "when they", their enemies, "shall bind them", being gathered against them, and carry them captive, they shall make them plough in "two furrows", the one up, and the other down; and to this hard service they shall keep them continually. There is a double reading of this clause; the "Cetib", or textual writing or reading, is, "to their two eyes", or "fountains": alluding, as Jarchi observes, to the binding of the yoke on oxen on each side of their eyes: or to the fountains in the land of Israel, the abundance of wine, milk, and honey; for the sake of which the people got together, broke in upon them, and bound them, in order to drink of. So Gussetius (b) renders the words, "and they shall bind them to drink of their fountains". The "Keri" or marginal reading is, "their two iniquities"; which the Septuagint follows, rendering it, "in chastising them, or when they are chastised for their two iniquities;'' so the Vulgate Latin, Syriac, and Arabic versions; meaning either their worshipping the two calves at Dan and Bethel; or their corporeal and spiritual adultery; or their forsaking the true God, and worshipping idols; see Jer 2:13. Schmidt understands all this, not as a punishment threatened, but as an instance of the love of God to them, in chastising them in a loving and fatherly way; which had a good effect upon them, and brought them to repentance; partly in the times of the judges, but more especially in the days of Samuel, when they behaved well; and particularly in the reigns of David and Solomon; and when the people were gathered, not "against", but "to" them; either became proselytes to them, or tributaries, or coveted their friendship; and when they themselves lived in great concord, in one kingdom, under one king, like oxen ploughing in two contiguous furrows. (a) "et, vel ut vinciam eos", Junius & Tremellius, Drusius, Grotius; "colligabo eos", Cocceius. (b) Comment. Ebr. p. 591, 892. hos 10:11And Ephraim is as an heifer that is taught, and loveth to tread out the corn,.... Like a heifer taught to bear the yoke, and to plough; but learned it not, as the Targum; does not like it; chooses to tread out the corn where it can feed upon it, its mouth not being then muzzled, according to the law; oxen or heifers were used both in ploughing and treading out corn, to which the allusion is. The sense is, that Ephraim or the ten tribes were taught to bear the yoke of the law, and yield obedience to it, and perform good works; but did not like such a course of life; had no further regard for religion than as they found their own worldly profit and advantage in it: or they did not care to labour much in it; they liked the fruit and advantage arising from working, rather than the work itself; and thus, like a heifer, doing little, and living well, they grew fat, increased in power, wealth, and riches; and so became proud and haughty, and kicked against the house of David, and rent themselves from it; and set up a kingdom of their own, and lived and reigned according to their own will and pleasure, like a heifer without yoke and muzzle: but I passed over upon her fair neck; or, "the goodness of her neck" (c); which is expressive of the flourishing and opulent state and condition of the ten tribes, especially in the times of Jeroboam the second, which made them proud and haughty: but the Lord was determined to humble them, and first in a more light and gentle manner; or caused the rod of correction to pass over them more lightly; or put upon them a more easy yoke of affliction, by causing Pul king of Assyria to come against them; and to get rid of whom a present was given him, exacted of the people; and afterwards Tiglathpileser, another king of Assyria, who carried captive part of their land; and this not having its proper effect, the Lord was determined to proceed against them in a heavier manner: I will make Ephraim to ride; some, taking the future for the past, render it, "I have made Ephraim to ride" (d); that is, to rule and govern, having royal dignity and power given them, and that greater than that of Judah; and ride over the tribes of Judah and Benjamin, who were sometimes very much afflicted by them; and this is thought to be the sense of the following phrases, Judah shall plough, and Jacob shall break his clods; or, "break the clods for him" (e); for Ephraim while he rides, and uses them very hard; as in the days of Joash and Pekah, kings of Israel, when many of the tribes of Judah were slain by them, Kg2 14:12; but rather the meaning is, "I will cause to ride on Ephraim" (f); that is, the Assyrians shall ride upon them, get the dominion over them, carry them captive, and use them to hard service and bondage, as a heifer rid upon by a severe rider while ploughing; and the other tribes shall not escape, though they shall not be so hardly dealt with: "Judah shall plough, and Jacob shall break his clods"; these shall be carried captive into Babylon, and employed in hard and servile work, but more tolerable; as ploughing and breaking clods are easier than to ride upon; and as they had hope of deliverance at the end of seventy years; whereas no promise of return was made to the ten tribes, which is the sense some give; but Pocock and others think that these words regard the tender and gentle methods God took with these people to bring them to obedience to his law. Ephraim being teachable like a heifer, he took hold of her fair neck, and stroked it to encourage her, and accustom her to the hand, and to the yoke; and then put the yoke of his law upon them, add trained them up in his institutions, and used also gentle methods to keep them in obedience; and also set Judah to "plough", and Jacob to "break the clods", prescribed for them; and employed them in good works, in the duties of religion, from whence answerable fruit might have been expected; saying to them, by his prophets, as follows: (c) "super bonitatem cervicis ejus", Montanus; "super bonitatem colli ipsius", Schmidt; "super praestantiam", Junius & Tremellius, Piscator. (d) "equitare feci", Munster, Rivet. (e) "occabit ei", De Dieu; "occabit illi?" Schmidt. (f) "Equitare faciam in Ephraim", Lyra, Tarnovius; "equitare faciam super Ephraim", so some in Calvin. hos 10:12Saw to yourselves in righteousness,.... Not the seed of grace, which bad men have not, and cannot saw it; and which good men need not, it being sown in them already, and remaining; rather the seed of the word, which should be laid up in their hearts, dwell richly in them, and be kept and retained by them; though it is best of all to understand it of works of righteousness; as sowing to the flesh is doing the works of the flesh, or carnal and sinful acts; so sowing "unto righteousness" (g), as it may be rendered, is doing works of righteousness; living soberly and righteously; doing works according to the word of righteousness, from good principles, and with good views, with a view to the glory of God: and which will be "sowing to themselves", turn to their own account; for though such works are not profitable to God, as to merit anything at his hands; yet they are not only profitable to others, but to those that do them; for though not "for", yet "in keeping" the commands of God there is "great reward", Psa 19:11. Reap in mercy; or "according to mercy" (h) not according to the merit of works, for there is none in them; but according to the mercy of God, to which all blessings, temporal, spiritual, and eternaL, are owing; and such who sow to the Spirit, or spiritual things, shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting; not as the reward of debt, but of grace; not as of merit, but as owing to the mercy of Christ, Gal 6:9 Jde 1:21; break up your fallow ground; that is, of their hearts; which were like ground unopened, unbroken, not filled and manured, nor sown with seed, but overrun with weeds and thistles; and so were they, hard and impenitent, destitute of grace, and full of sin and wickedness, and stood in need of being renewed in the spirit of their minds; which this exhortation is designed to convince them of, and to stir them up to make use of proper methods of obtaining it, through the efficacious grace of God; see Jer 4:5; for it is time to seek the Lord: for his grace; as the husbandman seeks, prays, and waits for rain, when he has tilled his ground, and sowed his seed, to water it, and make it fruitful, that he may have a good reaping time, a plentiful harvest; and as there is a time to seek for the one, so for the other: till he come and rain righteousness upon you; that is, Christ, whose coming is as the rain, Hos 6:3; and who, when he should come, whether personally by his incarnation, or spiritually by his gracious presence, would rain a plentiful rain of the doctrines of grace, and the blessings of it, such as peace pardon, righteousness, and eternal life by him; particularly the justifying righteousness wrought out by him, which is fully manifested in the Gospel, the ministration of that righteousness, and is applied unto, and put upon, all them that believe: or "till he come and teach you righteousness" (i); as Christ did when come; he taught the word of righteousness in general, and the righteousness of God in particular, and directed men to seek it; declared he came to fulfil all righteousness, and taught men to believe in him for it, and that he is their righteousness, and the end of the law for it; as well as he taught them to live righteously and godly; see Joe 2:23. The Targum is, "O house of Israel, do for yourselves good works; walk in the way of truth; establish for yourselves the doctrine of the law; behold, at all times the prophets say to you, return to the fear of the Lord; now shall he be revealed, and bring righteousness to you.'' But these exhortations were vain and fruitless, as appears by what follows: (g) "ad justitiam", Pagninus, Montanus, Munster, Calvin, Junius & Tremellius, Drusius, Tarnovius, Cocceius. (h) "ad os miserecordiae", Montanus; "secundum misericordiam", Pagninus; "secundum pietatem", Cocceius, Schmidt. (i) "et doceat justitiam vos", Pagninus, Montanus, Drusius, Cocceius, Schmidt. hos 10:13Ye have ploughed wickedness,.... Contrived it, and took a great deal of pains to commit it; by ploughing sowed it, and which sprung up in a plentiful crop: it may denote their first sins, from whence all others arose; as their irreligion and infidelity; their apostasy from God; their idolatry and contempt of his word and prophets: ye have reaped iniquity; abundance of other sins have sprung up from thence; a large harvest of them have been reaped and got in; or great numbers of other sins have been committed; one sin leads on to another, and these proceed "ad infinitum"; wickedness is of an increasing nature, and grows worse and worse, and proceeds to more ungodliness: many understand this of the punishment or reward of sin: ye have eaten the fruit of lies; as a sweet morsel though bread of deceit; which could not profit them, nor yield them in the issue the pleasure it promised them, and they hoped for from it: because thou didst trust in thy way; in the worship of their idols, and in their alliances with neighbouring nations, and promised themselves great prosperity and happiness from hence: and in the multitude of thy mighty men; their valiant soldiers, their numerous armies, and the generals of them, well skilled in war, and courageous; and also in their auxiliaries, which they had from the Egyptians and others; these they put their confidences in, to protect them; and so in their garrisons and fortresses, as the following words show: hos 10:14Therefore shall a tumult arise among thy people,.... Because of their wickedness and vain confidence, the Assyrian army should invade them; which would cause a tumultuous noise to be made throughout the tribes in all cities and towns, a cry, a howling, and lamentation; especially among fearful and timorous ones as women and children; who would be thrown into a panic at hearing the news of a powerful foreign enemy entering their country, and laying waste all before them; a voice of clamour, as Jarchi observes, crying, flee, flee: and all thy fortresses shall be spoiled; the strong holds, in which they put their confidence for safety; everyone of these should be taken and demolished by the enemy, in all parts of the kingdom; so that there should be none left to flee unto no place of retreat: as Shalman spoiled Betharbel in the day of battle; that is, Shalmaneser king of Assyria, his name being abbreviated, as Bethaven is called Aven, Hos 10:8; who had lately, though there in no account of it elsewhere, spoiled this place, demolished its fortresses, and destroyed the inhabitants of it; which is thought to be either the city of Arbel beyond Jordan, in the Apocrypha: "Who went forth by the way that leadeth to Galgala, and pitched their tents before Masaloth, which is in Arbela, and after they had won it, they slew much people.'' (1 Maccabees 9:2) which Josephus (k) calls a city of Galilee, and sometimes a village; and which, according to him, was not far from Sipphore, and in lower Galilee near to which thieves and robbers dwelt in caves and dens, difficult to come at; and so a Jewish writer (l) places Arbel between Sipphore and Tiberias; and elsewhere (m) mention is made of the valley of Arbel, near to these places: and Jerom (n) says, there was the village Arbel beyond Jordan, on the borders of Pella, a city of Palestine; and another of this name in the large plain, nine miles from the town of Legio: and he also speaks of an Arbela, the border of the tribe of Judah to the east; perhaps the same with Harbaalah, whence Arbela, or the mount of Baalah, Jos 15:11; now one or other of these places might be laid waste by this king of Assyria, in the first year of Hoshea, when he came up against him, and made him tributary: though some think Arbela in Assyria or Armenia is meant, famous for the utter defeat of Darius by Alexander, four hundred years after this, when it might have been rebuilt, and become considerable again: some of the Jewish writers (o) say there was a place near Nineveh so called; Benjamin of Tudela says (p), from Nineveh to Arbel is one "parsa", or four miles: and others (q) think Samaria itself is meant; but that cannot be, since the destruction of that city is here prophesied of, which should be as this: some conjecture it was the temple of a deity called Arbel, as Schmidt: but, be it what or where it will, here was a great devastation and slaughter made; which at this time was well known, and to which the desolation that would be made in the land of Israel is compared. The Vulgate Latin version is, "as Salmana was wasted by the house of him who judged Baal in the day of battle"; which patrons and defenders of interpret of the slaughter of Zalmunna by Jerubbaal, that is, Gideon; but the names of the one and the other are very different; nor does the text speak of the slaughter of a prince, but of the destruction of a city, and not of Shalman, but of Arbel; and refers not to an ancient, but recent history. Mr. Whiston (r) places the spoil of Arbela in the year 3272 A.M. or before Christ 732; the mother was dashed in pieces with her children: women big with child, or having their children in their arms, had no mercy shown them, but were destroyed together; so it had been at Arbel, and would be again in Israel, which was dreadful to think of: according to Kimchi and Ben Melech, Arbel was the name of a great man in those days, whose family, meant by beth or a house, was thus cruelly destroyed. (k) Antiqu. l. 12. c. 11. sect. 1. & l. 14. c. 15. sect. 4. In Vita sua, sect. 69. p. 922, 934. (l) Juchasin, fol. 65. 1. (m) T. Hieros. Beracot, fol. 2, 3. & Taaniot, fol. 69. 2. Shirhashirim Rabba, fol. 34. 3. (n) De locis Heb. fol. 87. L. (o) Juchasin, ut supra. (fol. 65. 1.) (p) Itinerar. p. 62. (q) Juchasin, ib. (fol. 65. 1.) R. Joseph Kimchi in David Kimchi in loc. (r) Chronological Tables, cent. 8. hos 10:15So shall Bethel do unto you, because of your great wickedness,.... Or, "because of the evil of your evil" (s); their extreme wickedness, and exceeding sinfulness; the evil of evils they were guilty of was their idolatry, their worshipping the calf at Bethel; and this was the cause of all their ruin: God was the cause of it; the king of Assyria the instrument; but the procuring or meritorious cause was their abominable wickedness at Bethel; which therefore should be as Betharbel; yea, the whole land should be, on the account of that, like unto it, or be spoiled as that was. Or the words may be rendered, "so will he do unto you, O Bethel" (t); that is, either God, or Shalman or Shalmaneser, shall do the same to Bethel as he did to Betharbel; utterly destroy it and its inhabitants, showing no mercy to age or sex; in a morning shall the king of Israel be utterly cut off; meaning Hoshea the last king of Israel, and the kingdom entirely destroyed; so that afterwards there was no more king in Israel, nor has been to this day; there was not only an utter destruction of that king, but of all kingly power and government, and ever since the children of Israel have been without a king, Hos 3:4; and this was to be done, and was done, in a "morning": in the beginning of his reign, as Joseph Kimchi; but this seems not so well to agree with the history, since it was in the ninth year of his reign that Samaria was taken: but the sense is, either that it would be certainly done, as sure as the morning came; or suddenly and quickly, as the morning light breaks forth; or in the morning of prosperity, when they were expecting light and good days, from their alliance with the king of Egypt, against the king of Assyria. (s) "propter malitiam malitiae vestrae", Pagninus, Cocceius, Schmidt. (t) "sic faciet vobis, Deus, O Bethel", Drusius; "sic faciet vobis Salman, O Bethel", Schmidt.

|Zusak, Markus. 2006. The Book Thief Audio Book Cover. From Zusak, Markus. 2006. THE BOOK THIEF. Narrated by Allan Corduner. ISBN 978-0739337271 - PLOT SUMMARY 1939 is a busy year for Death and a pivotal one for young Liesel Meminger. Three events that concern Liesel Meminger in 1939: She watches her six year old brother die, she goes to live with her new foster parents, and she steals her first book. Narrated from the unique perspective of war-weary Death, this book follows Liesel’s coming-of-age in the German town of Molching as she discovers the power of books and words. She is nurtured by her accordion-playing foster father, Hans Hubermann, who teaches her to read. Her education is continued by Max Vandenburg, the Jew that the Hubermann’s shelter in their basement, who teaches her the value of combining words into a story. As World War II progresses and Hitler tightens his grasp on the German people, Liesel is supported and loved by her best friend and neighbor, Rudy Steiner. Zusak masterfully crafts words to create a story that is by turns beautiful, humorous, ironic, and tragic, with evocative imagery and unforgettable characters. - CRITICAL ANALYSIS For this review I listened to the unabridged eleven CD audio book narrated by Allan Corduner and produced by Listening Library. This book blends genres and could be called a low historical fantasy. The setting, Germany in 1939, is historically specific, yet the story is narrated from Death’s perspective. It is this fantasy element that allows Zusak to emphasize universal themes, such as the inhumanity of the human race. The power of words and stories is a major theme in the book. Hitler’s power comes from the words of his book, MEIN KAMPF, and the manipulating words of his speeches. But Liesel also learns that words can be used to give comfort, show compassion, love, and forgiveness. Corduner, who clearly relishes the texture and sound of each word, emphasizes this theme quite well in the audio book version. Pronunciation is crisp and clear. In the book, German words are italicized, but it was helpful to hear Corduner pronounce these words, as well as German names, such as “Pfiffikus”, “Saumensch”, and “Verzeihung.” The organization of the book is creative and illuminating. Sections and chapters are introduced with Brecht-like headings, which tell of elements to come. Similarly, facts about characters and events are inserted throughout the narrative. These headings and facts not only alert the reader to pay attention for certain items and events, but also color the way the following text is interpreted. Zusak uses vivid imagery to describe the world of Himmel Street from two perspectives, the book thief’s and Death. Although Liesel’s story is full of heartbreaking tragedy and loss, it is nevertheless a story filled with beauty and great love. It is this love and beauty in the face of injustice of war and politics, that makes the book thief’s story so compelling. After reading the book, it is easy to understand why Death would hold these words close to him to give him hope for the human race in the face of war and destruction. The figurative language is evocative and visceral. For instance, Liesel and Death use words in a painterly manner to describe the weather and the color of the sky. “The sky is blue today, Max, and there is a big long cloud, and it’s stretched out, like a rope. At the end of it, the sun is like a yellow hole…” “Yes, the sky was now a devastating, home-cooked red.” Foreshadowing is used to propel the story and the reader forward. Frequently Death will step out of the story to tell about a future incident that is a result of the current behavior, actions, or words of a particular character. At times Zusak uses this device to bring levity to a seemingly insignificant event or to provide a breather from a particularly emotionally wrenching scene. Zusak’s characters are complex and nuanced and Corduner capably changes his voice to portray each character with great understanding and subtlety. Zusak has carefully structured the story to alternate between Death’s narrative of Liesel’s story, death thoughts on the human race, and scenes with dialogue from Liesel’s life. Corduner not only excels at bringing out the humor and irony in the text, but he is able deftly handle highly emotional scenes, most notably when Liesel deals with the aftermath of the Himmel Street bombing. This book is best read with some knowledge of the history of Germany during World War II, Hitler’s tyranny, and the holocaust. The plot is enmeshed in historically, culturally, and regionally specific circumstances, without knowledge of historical events and figures some nuances, especially foreshadowing, could go unnoticed. The reader may find themselves fighting with their own conscience, knowing that the ideals and practices of Nazi Germany were atrocious, and yet hoping for the German citizens in this book to survive. Even as you dare to hope that Liesel’s story will be a happy one, you know heartbreak is on the horizon because this of the historical setting. With the exception of accordion music at the beginning of the first chapter and during the last chapter, the audiobook does not use sound effects or music. The haunting accordion music at the beginning of the book helps to establish an old-world atmosphere. When it is repeated at the close of the book, the sound of the accordion brings with it thoughts of Hans Hubermann and his love for his foster daughter. The audiobook does not include an introduction and or closing comments, just a short ad for other Listening Library titles. The paperback edition includes a reader’s guide with discussion questions, a Q&A with Zusak, and suggestions for further reading. I found the Q&A to be especially intriguing because Zusak explains why he wrote the book, his favorite characters, and his writing process. The only element that the audiobook lacks is descriptions of the black and white drawings that appear in the print version of the book. The overall plot does not suffer and any text that accompanies the sketches is included, however the subtle details and insights into Max’s mind and his relationship with Liesel are absent. Taking this visual element into account, I think this would be a great title to have students listen and follow along with the book. - AWARDS/REVIEW EXCERPT(S) National Jewish Book Award Winner Book Sense Book of the Year Award Winner Publishers Weekly Best Books of the Year Publishers Weekly Best Children’s Books of the Year School Library Journal Best Books of the Year Michael L. Printz Honor Book Review in HORN BOOK: “Audiobook narrator Corduner confidingly draws listeners in before Liesel steals a single book; and each character is sharply delineated, from the deep-thinking, compassionate Death to Liesel’s hectoring foster mother. Corduner effortlessly handles the book’s distinctively expansive yet intimate nature in a tour de force performance.” Review in BOOKLIST: “More than the overt message about the power of words, it's Liesl's confrontation with horrifying cruelty and her discovery of kindness in unexpected places that tell the heartbreaking truth.” Review in SCHOOL LIBRARY JOURNAL: “Narrator Allan Corduner defines each character with perfect timing. With richly evocative imagery and compelling characters, Zusak depicts the day-to-day heroism of ordinary people.” Review in BOOKLIST: “Through British actor Corduner’s moving interpretation, the impact of the Hitler era is palpable.” *Discussion question: Why do you think Liesel thinks of herself as the Book Thief? Why doesn’t she think of herself as the Book Reader or the Foster Daughter? If you chose a name for yourself, what would it be and why? *Writing activity: Liesel brings a daily weather report to Max while he’s living in the basement, but she doesn’t just say, “it’s sunny” or “it’s raining now.” Use figurative language to create a weather report as Liesel would for Max. *Non-Fiction books about the holocaust and Nazi Germany: Bartoletti, Susan Campbell. 2005. HITLER YOUTH: GROWING UP IN HITLER’S SHADOW. ISBN 9780439353793 Heck, Alfons. 2005. A CHILD OF HITLER: GERMANY IN THE DAYS WHEN GOD WORE A SWASTIKA. ISBN 978-0939650446 Zullo, Allan, & Bovsun, Mara. 2005. SUVIVORS: TRUE STORIES OF CHILDREN IN THE HOLOCAUST. ISBN 978-0439669962 *Novels and graphic novels about the holocaust and Nazi Germany for older teens: Foer, Jonathan Safran. 2003. EVERYTHING IS ILLUMINATED. ISBN 978-0060529703 Spiegelman, Art. 1986. MAUS I: A SURVIVOR’S TALE: MY FATHER BLEEDS HISTORY. ISBN 978-0394747231 Spiegelman, 1992. Art. MAUS II: A SUVIVOR’S TALE: AND HERE MY TROUBLES BEGAN. ISBN 978-0679729778 *Novels about the holocaust and Nazi Germany for younger teens: Bartoletti, Susan Campbell. 2008. THE BOY WHO DARED. ISBN 978-0439680134 Boyne, John. 2007. THE BOY IN THE STRIPED PAJAMAS. ISBN 978-0385751537 Lowry, Lois. 1990. NUMBER THE STARS. ISBN 978-0547577098 Spinelli, Jerry. 2003. MILKWEED. ISBN 978-0375861475 Yolen, Jane. 2000. THE DEVIL’S ARITHMETIC. ISBN 978-0590965781 *Other books by Markus Zusak: 2001. WHEN DOGS CRY. ISBN 978-0330363099 2002. FIGHTING RUBEN WOLFE. ISBN 978-0439241878 2004. GETTING THE GIRL. ISBN 978-0439389501 2006. I AM THE MESSANGER. ISBN 978-0375836671 2011. UNDERDOGS. ISBN 978-0545354424

While 49 other states have ratified Concealed Carry laws, Illinois is diligently working to track and punish their own citizens for exercising their Constitutional rights. If Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel has his way, gun owners will not only be tracked in the same manner as sex offenders, but will be slapped with a repeating $65 fee…for each gun. With regards to government intervention into religion, the First Amendment to the US Constitution states: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” First, Congress is the Constitutional body that has the authority to make laws for the United States of America. Second, it is to steer clear of anything pertaining to freedom of religion. The president of the United States has no authority—whatsoever—to make any laws or influence religion in any way, whatsoever. Therefore, Obama had and has NO authority to demand that anyone or any body—let alone the Catholic or any other Christian Church or Jewish synagogue—must appease him by providing birth control, abortions or anything else the tyrant requires. Further, he does not have the authority to compromise or ‘work a deal’ with any Church about anything. Question: Does anyone in this country still remember that the US Constitution is our foundational LEGAL document? And what is it about “no authority” that seems to confuse so many of the Obama media? Some people have the vocabulary to sum up things in a way you can understand them. This quote came from the Czech Republic. Someone over there has it figured out. We have a lot of work to do. Try finding this in an American Newspaper…. Czech Republic as published in the Prager Zeitung of 28 April 2011. “The danger to America is not Barack Obama but a citizenry capable of entrusting an inexperienced man like him with the Presidency. It will be far easier to limit and undo the follies of an Obama presidency than to restore the necessary common sense and good judgment to a depraved electorate willing to have such a man for their president. The problem is much deeper and far more serious than Mr. Obama, who is a mere symptom of what ails America . Blaming the prince of the fools should not blind anyone to the vast confederacy of fools that made him their prince. The Republic can survive a Barack Obama. It is less likely to survive a multitude of fools such as those who made him their president.” Side Note: The Czechs are also the only country, that I know of so far, that has stood up against the ACTA “treaty” that Obama signed. Hat Tips: Mike

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The U.S. House of Representatives unanimously passed a bill that would end Social Security payments to former Nazis. The No Social Security for Nazis Act passed Tuesday by consent. It closed a loophole that had allowed ex-Nazis who lied about their past when immigrating to the United States — and been identified and deported by the Justice Department — to continue receiving Social Security and other benefits. The bill was sponsored by Reps. Sam Johnson (R-Texas) and Xavier Beccara (D-Calif.) along with Ways and Means Committee chairman Dave Camp (R-Mich.) and its ranking member, Sander Levin (D-Mich.), A similar bill in the Senate sponsored by Sens. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) is under consideration. The White House has encouraged bids to close the loophole. Jewish groups praised the House vote. “Now that most suspected Nazi perpetrators have been deported or have fled the U.S., it’s time to focus on ending any possible remaining federal benefits from being paid to them,” Abraham Foxman, the Anti-Defamation League national director and a Holocaust survivor, said in a statement. “Today’s vote is certainly a case of better late than never.” The Jewish Federations of North America, which led lobbying for the bill, in its statement noted another of its initiatives, bringing relief to American Holocaust survivors who live in poverty. “There are more than 100,000 Holocaust survivors living in the U.S., many of whom struggle to afford basic needs and services,” said JFNA’s Washington director, William Daroff. “The Holocaust survivors – not their persecutors – need and deserve the support of the U.S. government.” News of the continued benefits came in October, when The Associated Press published an expose. There are at least four living beneficiaries, including Jakob Denzinger, a former guard at Auschwitz. Denzinger, 90, lives in Croatia, where he receives approximately $1,500 a month in Social Security payments. Want to enjoy 'Zen' reading - with no ads and just the article? Subscribe todaySubscribe now

Jerusalem — A hard-line Israeli Cabinet minister says convicted spy Jonathan Pollard opposes being freed from a U.S. jail in exchange for Palestinians prisoners. Uri Ariel says people close to Pollard have told him that he opposes such a shameful deal." Ariel, from the hard-line Jewish Home party, spoke to Army Radio on Tuesday. He says he, too, is against the release of murderers" for Pollard. Talk of the possibility of Pollards early release has arisen as an incentive in the troubled Mideast peace negotiations. The idea is that if he is freed, Israel would make concessions and release more Palestinian prisoners. Pollard was a civilian intelligence analyst for the U.S. Navy when he gave classified documents to Israeli handlers. He was arrested in 1985 and later sentenced to life in prison.

Max Horkheimer, Marxist Jew of the Frankfurt School "The best way to control the opposition is to lead it ourselves." - Vladimir Lenin, Jewish communist revolutionary in Russia. The Right-wing European political parties in Europe are seeking Jewish support, as many Jews are fearful concerning the future of non-Whites; this is mainly towards the Muslim invasion into Europe. The Jews joining the Right-wing parties will set up a Jewish chapters for Jews, even though many of the initial Jews are perhaps genuine towards representing White Europeans. Amongst them, radical Christian Zionist or leftwing Jews will move in, and over time, they will remove the moderate Jews and replace them with globalist idealism Jews, who will strive to obtain control of the organization and political party. To counteract this white Europeans must set up Gentile Security Council for gentiles only in all political parties and organizations, and if you don't do this, the Nationalist Jews will solely steer the movement towards their agenda. As a result, years of hard work to represent white Europeans will be wasted. The sole reason why White people don't have a voice is that they don't have united and powerful organizations to represent them and no Gentile Security Councils. Some key points for GSC to manage are: - Maintain support for White-gentiles and other friendly races and Jews. - To obtain money. - Manage membership. - To advise and finance the Anti-Defamation Council. - To run Gentile Security Council Companies. - The Gentile Security Council can remove any person who does not represent the organization or party aims or by breaking the organization constitution. - The GSC is not elected; they are appointed to the position and can be removed by a majority vote by GSC members. - Branches can have elected leaders or they can be appointed by GSC. Building organization founders have a choice how to structure the organization between elected or to have GSC appointed leaders, perhaps some representatives fully elected with a Gentile Security Council or part half elected leaders and others appointed by the GSC. We need to Unite all Anti- Globalist and build Community Based Organizations to replace them The article on right. The B'nai B'rith Jewish Community Based service organization operates nationally, internationally and represents Jews only. Many Jews are nationalist behind the scenes; and in public they promote conservative, liberal, socialist, communist ideas. Jewish organizations are collective community based organizations, bringing together many groups under national and international congresses all over the world. Many Jews are united national, international and are a nation within a nation with their own government. White gentile organizations in the United States, Australia, Britain, and Europe are not community based organizations, they are conservative structured. Conservative organizations are not collectives and do not build Anti-Defamation organizations to fight for people rights and do not promote community services to their people. They do not have national or international congresses to unite them. Alex Jones (Infowars) said conservative will not defeat the globalist, only nationalist will do that. Alex was talking about national ideas and organizations.

The Jewish community is again getting ready for High Holy Days. Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year and Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, starting next Friday evening, Sept. 18. These are considered some of the most important Holy Days in the Jewish calendar. The process of preparing for the High Holy Days begins with the month of Elul, which is the last month of the Jewish calendar year. According to Jewish tradition, during the month of Elul, Moses spent time on Mount Sinai preparing the second set of Tablets after the incident of the Golden Calf. He went up to Mount Sinai on the first day of Elul, and did not return until the end of the 10th day of Tishri, at the conclusion of Yom Kippur. For many observant Jews, from the second day of Elul through the 28th day of Elul, the Shofar is sounded at the end of every weekday morning service. Also many people will visit cemeteries during this time. We are supposed to think about our own mortality, and about our obligation to make our remaining lives worthwhile and to make our relationships better in the time we have left. And we need to think about working to forgive and to ask for forgiveness in the coming days. Toward the end of Elul, one week before Rosh Hashanah, we begin the period of “Selichot.” Actually this year, Selichot begins on Sept. 11 since Rosh Hashanah starts on Sept. 18. The term “Selichot,” which is plural for “selicha,” refers to penitential prayers, stating sorrow and a desire for forgiveness. These prayers are recited by Jews starting immediately after midnight on the Saturday before Rosh Hashanah until Yom Kippur. A central part of the Selichot prayers is the continued repetition of the Thirteen Attributes of God, which according to Jewish tradition, were revealed to Moses after the incident of the Golden Calf. This story is found in Exodus 34:6-7. These attributes are traditionally recited in Hebrew, and you might not see how there are 13. But here is the translation: 1. Ha-Shem (unpronounceable Name of God) 2. Ha-Shem (unpronounceable Name of God) 3. El (God) 4. Rachoom (Merciful) 5. Ve Hanoon (Gracious) 6. Erek a-payim (long-suffering) 7. Ve rav hesed (abundant in goodness) 8. Ve-emet (and truth) 9. Notzer hesed la-lafim (keeping mercy unto the thousandth generation) 10. No-say avon (forgiving iniquity) 11. Va-fe-sha (and transgression) 12. Ve-chata (and sin) 13. Ve-nakay (and who cleanses) Why are the first three of the Thirteen Attributes the Names of God? According to the Talmud, the different names of God refer to different attributes. God shows mercy, both before one sins and after one sins, but God is also the ruler of the universe. This is a very unusual year for High Holy Days, because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Like many congregations and houses of worship, many of the Jewish congregations in the area are not having in-person services for the High Holy Days, due to fear of spreading the virus. Yet, the High Holy Day services are the most well-attended services in each year. And we all know that we should not be crowding lots of people indoors for worship in the time of a pandemic. So many synagogues and congregations are planning Zoom services. Congregation Beth Tikvah is working with other West Shore Jewish congregations, including Temple Beth Shalom (Mechanicsburg) and Sons of Israel (Chambersburg), as well as small congregations in Hanover and Adams County, to ensure all our members have access to Zoom or livestream services for these most important days in our year. We are blessed to have these great neighbors, and through all this planning, we have developed new friendships. We look forward to joining our new friends this year at services, and look forward to future collaborations with the West Shore Jewish communities. Emily Burt-Hedrick is the President of the Congregation Beth Tikvah. Be the first to know Get local news delivered to your inbox!

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On the night of 31 July 2015, someone firebombed two homes in the Palestinian village of Duma, in the northern part of Judea, about 55 km. east of Tel Aviv. One of the buildings was empty, but sleeping in the other were Saed and Riham Dawabshe, and their children Ali (18 months) and Ahmad (5). Ali died in the fire, and the parents succumbed to their injuries a short time later. Ahmad was carried out by his father or grandfather and survived, though he was severely burned. Almost immediately, government officials, including President Ruben Rivlin, let it be known that the attack was likely “Jewish terrorism” and the culprits would be found among “extremist settlers,” specifically the “hilltop youth,” religious teenagers and young adults who lived independently of their parents in Judea and Samaria, and who wanted to replace the democratic state with one governed by Jewish law. The nation was gripped by a paroxysm of guilt and self-flagellation over the allegation that Jews had done such an awful thing, although there were as yet no suspects. This happened at about the same time a religious fanatic stabbed several people, one fatally, at a gay pride parade in Jerusalem, and left-wing elements connected the events and blamed “settlers,” religious Jews, and PM Netanyahu for the “outbreak of Jewish terrorism.” The Shabak (Internal Security Service) arrested several suspects in early August. They were held in administrative detention – that is, without being charged – and subjected to “enhanced interrogation techniques,” a euphemism for torture that may or may not fall short of the acts that are prohibited by customary international law. Even at this point, there were good reasons to wonder if the official account that Jewish extremists had done it fit the evidence. On August 21, then-Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon said he was “confident” that the murderers were Jewish extremists, and that the exceptional measures taken against the suspects were justified. But there was a very good alternative explanation, which was that the firebombs were thrown by Arabs involved in an ongoing feud with the Dawabshe family. There were several other suspicious fires in property owned by the Dawabshes before and after the murderous attack. And the Shabak was unable to provide a sensible explanation (Hebrew link) for why this line of investigation hadn’t been pursued. By December the Shabak had not succeeded in getting a confession out of the various suspects in its custody, and the best that Ya’alon could do was say that their actions (presumably “price-tag” vandalism of Arab property) “led to [הובילו], among others, the murder of three innocent Palestinians, and as a result, contributed to instability in the region, and worsened the security situation.” But “led to” is not the same as “committed.” Although there was still no proof that Jews were responsible for this atrocity, it became part of the accepted narrative in almost all segments of Israeli society. In January 2016, one of the initial suspects was released (ultimately, they all would be), and two additional suspects arrested: Amiram ben Uliel (21), and an additional minor. Ben Uliel was charged with murder – the first time anyone had been charged in connection with the crime. He too was subjected to “enhanced interrogation,” and by 2018 he produced a “confession” and “reenactment of the crime.” While the other (minor) suspect also “confessed,” he was alleged only to have participated in the planning of the crime and was not accused of being present at the scene. Ben Uliel was accused of having perpetrated the firebombing by himself. Some confessions were thrown out after attorneys argued successfully that they were obtained by torture, but some of ben Uliel’s statements, plus the reenactment, were allowed to stand. On 18 May 2020, Amiram ben Uliel was convicted by a three-judge panel (there is no jury trial in Israel) of murder, attempted murder, arson and “conspiracy to commit a crime motivated by racism.” His wife testified that he was at home with her all night, but the judges did not believe her. The prosecution asked for three life sentences, and he was to have been sentenced on 12 July. But in a dramatic development, lawyers for ben Uliel convinced the judges to delay sentencing in the light of new evidence (see also Hebrew link here). Apparently, the one survivor of that terrible night, Ahmad Dawabshe, now ten years old, was interviewed in Arab media and described the events that occurred five years ago in detail; in particular, he said that there were several attackers and they came into the house and struggled with family members. This contradicts the official version that ben Uliel was alone and threw firebombs through the windows. It also agrees with other testimonies of Arab witnesses who said at the time that there was more than one attacker (of course the Arabs say it was a group of “settlers”). The court agreed to consider the evidence and pass sentence next month (ben Uliel could be acquitted of murder and convicted of other offenses). Can a 5-year old be a reliable witness? Maybe yes and maybe no. Certainly the events he witnessed were likely to be engraved in his mind. “If he saw what he said he saw, ben Uliel is innocent” says ben Uliel’s lawyer. But memory is a tricky thing, and who knows if he is capable of reporting events without interpretation. This has been a long road. The state does not come out looking good, no matter what the outcome. In the best case, the Shabak is guilty of mistreatment of numerous suspects, most of whom were guilty of nothing more serious than vandalism and adolescent fantasizing. It is likely that the agency engaged in a theatrical provocation intended to slander the hilltop youth as vicious murderers taunting their victims. Many public officials – including President Rivlin and right-wingers like Naftali Bennett – jumped to conclusions when they should have kept quiet. The worst case has the Shabak deliberately ignoring evidence that the arson/murders were carried out by Arab enemies of the Dawabshe family, and using the case to crush and discredit the admittedly extremist, and to some extent criminal, underground Jewish movement. For what it’s worth (nothing, really) my personal opinion is that Amiram ben Uliel is innocent, perhaps guilty only of having grandiose plans for revenge. But of course I am only privy to the details that I can read in the media. In any case, the court will decide next month if he will be freed or spend the rest of his life in prison.

2018 Alison K. (Kim) Hoagland Remarks given by Sarah Fayen Scarlett at the 2018 Potomac Conference I’m incredibly honored to have been asked here tonight to help present the 2018 Glassie Award to Alison K. Hoagland, better known to all of us as Kim. Kim has long been a champion of American buildings -- often some of the humblest and hardest to get to -- and she has also been a champion of vernacular architecture scholarship, through her own active publication and editing, her teaching and mentorship, and her long dedication to the VAF. She served as President of this organization in 2008-09, and before that as First Vice President, elected board member, Papers Selection chair and committee member, as editor of the Special Series published by University of Tennessee Press, and now as Second Vice President in charge of conferences. As all of us at the VAF are well-attuned to geography, I think we can all appreciate how fitting it is to recognize Kim here on the banks of the Potomac, since Washington, DC has been one of Kim’s home bases over many years. After majoring in American Civilization at Brown University, Kim moved here to DC to attend George Washington University, where she received a master’s in American Studies with a concentration in Historic Preservation in 1979. She went right to work for HABS, where she served as historian and then senior historian until 1994. In those years, Kim made meaningful contributions to the content and methods of field work at HABS. There, her intrepid spirit and dedication to often neglected cultural resources took her to out-of-the-way-places including being part of the 1984 HABS summer field crew in Gates of the Arctic National Park, which you see here. This and other work in Alaska resulted in Kim’s 1993 book Buildings of Alaska, among the first in the Buildings of the United States series published by the Society of Architectural Historians. Among her lasting contributions to practice at HABS are the guidelines for field documentation that are still followed by field crews of staff and students today. Now if you draw a line between DC and Alaska you will just about pass by the south shore of Lake Superior -- which became another major home base for Kim, when she took a faculty position at Michigan Technological University in their Industrial Heritage and Archaeology program in 1994. The person who hired her, our colleague Larry Lankton, told me that he’d been trying to hire Kim ever since 1979 when she was the best student in his class at GW -- but she got a better offer from HABS. He’d been trying to steal her away that whole time -- mostly because he knew Kim was the right person to study the company housing and paternalistic landscapes that defined Michigan’s Copper Country, a mining region that boomed in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. And indeed she was. Over the next 15 years, Kim documented hundreds of buildings and wove them into a richly interpreted narrative that appeared in 2007 as Mine Towns, University of Minnesota press. While in the Upper Peninsula, Kim took on the role of teacher and colleague to a new and growing community. She taught the art and science of documenting historic structures to a generation of graduate students, many of whom credit Kim’s class as the basis of their own documentation practices today as scholars and cultural resources managers. She brought experiential learning to her undergraduate students before that was even a thing -- I have heard about a final exam in her History of American Architecture class in which she gave each student a street address and a blank piece of paper and sent them out to write her an interpretation of the building on the spot. It was Kim’s vision that has made the study of the built environment a vital part of our curriculum at Michigan Tech, and I am thankful for that every day, as the inheritor of her faculty position (and also her office and a number of her wall posters). Outside the university, our community has also benefitted from Kim’s dedication to public history. She has written interpretive walking tours, given countless public lectures and architectural tours, written or advised numerous nominations to the National Register, and served as the head of the Keweenaw National Historical Park Advisory Commission, which gives grants for heritage and preservation throughout the region. Even on top of all of these contributions, perhaps Kim’s most influential role that we celebrate tonight has been in the area of publications. She has been consistently writing and editing meaningful articles and books over her whole career, which taken as a whole have helped establish and drive forward vernacular architecture as an area of scholarship. She has co-edited two editions of Perspectives in Vernacular Architecture, contributed three articles there and to Buildings & Landscapes, as well as to many other journals, edited volumes, and encyclopedias. And she published Army Architecture in the West in 2004. In fact, it was her prolific research and writing drive that ultimately led her to retire early from Michigan Tech because, in her own words, “I have too many books I want to write!” And indeed that’s what she is doing now. Splitting her time between a condo in Capitol Hill and a fabulous 1930s kit-built cabin on the banks of Lake Superior, Kim is continuing to help us decipher the material and cultural meanings of our built environment. Her book The Log Cabin has just come out from the University of Virginia Press; the publication of her book about Bathrooms is imminent; and a new project about building policies for DC rowhouses in underway. In fact, a colleague staying with Kim a few weeks ago was astounded to realize that in one day Kim was taking calls about and writing text for THREE BOOK PROJECTS at the same time! While Kim makes research and writing and publishing look easy, we are recognizing tonight the model that Kim has set for all of us when she creates such rich interpretive context around the keenly observed details of structures and building practices to better understand the lived experience of workers, builders, soldiers, women, and so many others. As a final note -- just Thursday on our tour of the Western Shore Kim and I both ended up waiting in line for the bathroom at St Francis Xavier Catholic Church. And Kim took it upon herself to go to battle with a dysfunctional paper towel dispenser. And while she was ultimately unsuccessful in fixing this contraption, I actually heard someone say, “Kim, you should get some kind of award for this!” So Kim — for all of your contributions — big AND small — that have furthered the study of vernacular architecture, we present you with the Glassie Award. 2017 Carl Lounsbury Remarks given by Jeff Klee at the 2017 Salt Lake City conference Two years ago, we honored Catherine Bishir, one of only two people in the world who have attended every single meeting of the VAF since it founding. This year, I'm pleased to say, we celebrate the other: Carl Lounsbury. Now despite what you might think, the man known in high school as golden toe Lounsbury for his skills as a place kicker is not known around Virginia as Mr. Excitement. He's been using the same brand of soap for his entire adult life. It was seen as uncharacteristally flamboyant for him to buy a gray Camry, breaking a 25-year run of beige. And yet his has been a life filled with adventure. One of the many things that he shares with James Bond is that there have been attempts made on his life in both Venice and Jamaica. But today we honor Carl not for a life of derring-do, but for his work as a scholar and a major contributor to the success and the remarkable culture of the VAF. Carl has been with the VAF from the beginning, from the days when the newsletter circulated in mimeographed typescript, the paper sessions came at the end of a long day of touring, eating, and drinking, and when a conference could be thrown together in about a month. In 1980, when this group was founded, Carl was just a promising young graduate student, somehow working simultaneously towards degrees in American studies at George Washington University and in architecture at NC State. A native of Winston-Salem, he came back to Carolina to conduct surveys in Alamance county and Southport. Those of you that went on the Stagville tour at last year’s conference enjoyed some of the fruits of his earliest research, including his oral histories with former residents. It was then, too, that he started working with Catherine Bishir on Architects and Builders in North Carolina, the first of Carl's books to win the Cummings award. But a promising career in North Carolina was interrupted in 1982, when he was hired by the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, where he joined Cary Carson, Ed Chappell, Willie Graham, and Mark Wenger. Among this already accomplished, ambitious group, Carl quickly established himself as both a careful fieldworker and a determined researcher, canvassing Virginia’s courthouses and libraries to compile an exhaustive documentary archive. This work would form the basis of his subsequent work on public buildings and of course, the indispensable Glossary of Early Southern Architecture and Landscape, which, by the way, was the second of Carl's books to win the Cummings award. This early work in municipal records was joined by a longstanding program of fieldwork on public buildings and churches, research that led to the publication of his book on courthouses in 2005. For those keeping score, that was Cummings award #3. The church book is in progress but it's safe to say that it will be his magnum opus, the most comprehensive view of early American church architecture yet written. Carl has been the most prolific member of the Williamsburg staff but he has not achieved that status by going it alone. The Chesapeake House, edited by Carl and Cary Carson but written by many collaborators, is exhibit A. As a group project, it proceeded more slowly than Carl might have liked, but the quality of the result testifies to the benefits of patience, determination, and genuine scholarly cooperation. Many academic departments like to congratulate themselves for their collegiality, which usually seems to mean that the faculty tolerate one another. The Williamsburg office was collaborative. The work was shared, both in the field and around the drafting table. This isn't collegiality. It's friendship. Carl has friends far beyond the little circle in Williamsburg, thanks to his generosity with his expertise, but also thanks to his decency, his excellent sense of humor, and his treatment of students and inexperienced junior colleagues as peers. These qualities have made him a mentor to many. Through his classes at William and Mary, the University of Virginia, and Virginia Commonwealth University, he has taught hundreds of students, including a young Louis Nelson, who became an unofficial fifth member of the department of architectural research in Williamsburg for a little while in the 1990s. Carl has also been generous with his fellow scholars, both in the states and in the UK. He has organized conferences, including the 2002 VAF meeting, symposia, and memorable field tours. One very lucky group got to follow him around England for three weeks looking at parish churches. One of the reasons that Carl has drawn so many of us into his friendly orbit is that, although he takes his work, and this organization, very seriously, he doesn't take himself that seriously. Like Abbott Cummings, who we remember fondly today, he wears his status as a guru very lightly. Maybe his humility is a product of his Moravian upbringing. Or maybe it comes from being a careful student of Cary Carson, his graduate and professional mentor. Either way, Carl is not someone who seeks accolades and recognition, which makes giving this award to him all the more enjoyable. Carl, for your large body of rigorous, historically grounded scholarship, for your selfless dedication to the VAF, for your generous, good-humored mentorship of so many, and finally, for making the people around you better by your example and your support, this year’s Glassie award is for you. Edited remarks by John Larson, Old Salem, on the presentation of the Henry Glassie Award to Catherine Bishir, 4 June 2016 It is fitting that tonight, in Durham, we present this award to the voice of North Carolina architecture, Catherine W. Bishir. Although a native of Kentucky, after studying English at the University of Kentucky and then at Duke University, North Carolina became Catherine’s beloved Old North State, her “valley of humility between two mountains of conceit.” The architecture, landscapes and people quickly merged with her down home personality, temperament and intellectual inquisitiveness. By 1971 she was employed by the North Carolina Division of Archives and History where she spent the better part of the next thirty years. In 1973, she became Head of the Survey and Planning Branch and it is from that bully pulpit that she profoundly altered traditional perceptions of North Carolina architecture. She recruited a cadre of architectural historians and, although the frugal State of North Carolina would pay no benefits, the opportunity to work with Catherine was benefit enough. She brought a new way of looking at traditional buildings (initially called the “Bishir Braille” method, because staff swore that she could identify any North Carolina building with her eyes closed!). She was a quick study, a voracious reader and an exacting editor, eager to listen and ever willing to share. Openness and high energy define years of her coordinated survey work in North Carolina. Catherine builds partnerships. Her relationship with the North Carolina State University began in 1978 with the publication of Carolina Dwellings, where Catherine’s article “A Study of High-Style Vernacular Architecture in the Roanoke Valley” added the term “vernacular” to the North Carolina architectural lexicon. She has now come full circle, returning to NC State as Curator in Architectural Special Collections and creating an expansive digital biographical library of North Carolina Architects and Builders. In 1980, Catherine was encouraged by Carl Lounsbury to become a founding member of Board of Directors of the VAF – and she has never missed a conference, tonight surpassing the thirty-seven year mark. No one has held more VAF offices, served on more committees, been on more tours, edited more articles, or encouraged more members than Catherine W. Bishir. She is the Ms. Never Met a Stranger; Aren’t We Having Fun? and Rotate Your Seat on the Tour Bus! queen of the VAF. This tsunami of enthusiasm rained down on me, as a newly appointed Director of Restoration at Old Salem, when we hosted the third annual meeting of the VAF in 1982. I can personally testify that Catherine has changed my life—as she has for so many of us here tonight. Her colleagues say that Catherine Bishir has a natural head for architecture, and that is surely true, but it is also her literary skill that will leave a lasting mark not only in North Carolina but in the field of vernacular architectural studies as a whole. She often publicly exhibits her love of letters and it is an enthusiasm that she has sought to instill in so many of us over the years. This talent has allowed her to write in a scholarly style that is crisp and accessible to a wide audience. In 1990, Catherine co-authored Architects and Builders in North Carolina and published North Carolina Architecture, clearly establishing herself as the state’s leading architectural historian. Catherine immediately took on celebrity status which she accepted with the typical grace and humility that has defined her over the years as she lectured widely, authored and co-authored many books and articles, and won many awards, including the Order of the Long Leaf Pine by the Governor of North Carolina, an honorary membership in the AIA, and the Robert Stipe Award as a leading North Carolina preservationist. Her intellectual reach seems unlimited—what a fertile mind that can move so freely from Women, Politics, and Confederate Memorial Associations to Yuppies, Bubbas and the Politics of Culture! Catherine has reflected, “It has been an extraordinary privilege to travel the state and meet its history, its buildings and its landscape and the people who love them.” It has been our privilege to travel with her. And so, our dearest colleague, our friend, our very own Queen of Bubba, our champion of all things vernacular and of the VAF that gathers here tonight, with heartfelt gratitude and affection, we present the 2016 Henry Glassie Award to you, Catherine W. Bishir. Remarks delivered by VAF President Chris Wilson at the annual meeting in Chicago, June 6, 2015 It is difficult to imagine a person who has achieved more or contributed more to the field of vernacular architecture studies than the recipient of this year’s Henry Glassie Award, Dell Upton. Upton is a graduate of the storied Brown University program in American Civilization, where his dissertation committee included chair James Deetz, and readers George Monteiro and Henry Glassie. He began his professional career as an architectural historian with the Virginia Historic Landmarks Commission in the mid-1970s. As one of the founders of the Vernacular Architectural Forum in 1979, he served as the first editor of our newsletter, Vernacular Architecture News. In those pre-internet days, those mimeographed, later printed newsletters, and Dell as its editor for ten years served as the indispensible clearinghouse for information on the quickening of scholarship on everyday buildings and landscapes. VAN and Upton’s own growing stature gave the VAF intellectual credibility, and helped create our community of scholars. Upton’s own voracious reading and centrality to this emerging discourse, positioned him to edit two influential 1986 collections. Common Places, edited with John Vlach, sampled a rich range of topics, research methods and interpretive strategies, and demonstrated the depth and vitality of the field. America's Architectural Roots broke out of the early east coast focus of the field, even more definitively, to suggest an inclusive range of ethnic and regional traditions. Remarkably that same year, 1986—while still the editor of VAN—Upton also published his first great scholarly monograph, Holy Things and Profane. The book is so inventive in its use of sources and range of themes that it is impossible to isolate a single strength. But I remember being particularly taken with his analysis of the relation between architecture, ritual and social hierarchy—of the ways that the “processional use of space,” of each socially- and gender-defined group entering the church in tern with the male planters entering last as a group, and of the repetition of this pattern at courthouses and planters’ homes, both reflected and reproduced social hierarchy in 18th century Virginia. Upton began to serve on thesis and dissertation committees at the University of Virginia in 1979, and after a series of visiting appointments in the East, joined the faculty of the University of California, Berkeley in 1983. Over the next 20 years, working in particular with his colleague, Paul Groth, Berkeley became to my mind, the leading center of graduate education in the field. Upton returned to UVA for 5 years, and since 2008 has taught and, for a term, chaired the Art History Department at UCLA. He has served on a total of 150 thesis and dissertation committees, including chairing 29 dissertation committees. His former students constitute a veritable who’s who of second and third generation scholars in the field. While I am focusing this evening on his books, he has also published over 80 scholarly articles, many as groundbreaking and widely read as his books. “Pattern Books and Professionalism,” Winterthur Portfolio (1983); “White and Black Landscape in Eighteenth Century Virginia,” Places (1985); “Architectural History or Landscape History,” JAE (1991); “Just Architectural Business as Usual,” Places (2000, a critique of New Urbanism) come quickly to mind. Scholars with other interests might come up with an entirely different list of favorites, so broad have been Upton’s concerns. His 1998 publication Architecture in the United States incorporated recent vernacular architecture and cultural landscape scholarship into an architectural history textbook, deemphasizing the traditional distinction between elite and vernacular. In place of an inclusive chronology, he devoted each chapter to an interpretive theme: Community, Nature, Technology, Money and Art. Another City: Urban Life and Urban Spaces in the New American Republic, from 2008 is a compelling evocation and interpretation of lived experience, of the sights, sounds and smells of the early American cites. Upton notes elite attempts to foster decorum and shape new urban environments, but also elaborates the counter forces of commerce, vernacular social traditions and the demimonde. Dell Upton has been the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, the John Hope Franklin Prize from the American Studies Association, both the Alice Davis Hitchcock Award and the Spiro Kostof Award from the Society of Architectural Historians, and twice the recipient of the Vernacular Architecture Forum’s Abbott Lowell Cummings Award. Please join me in welcoming the recipient of the 2015 Henry Glassie Award, Dell Upton. 2013 John Michael VlachI suspect that in your roles as students, teachers, or both, nearly all of you know John Michael Vlach through Common Places, the anthology he and I edited nearly 30 years ago. But I also suspect that you know that book is, if anything, the least of John’s scholarly contributions. For forty years he has roamed widely through Africa, the Caribbean, and the Southern United States to document the folk material culture of the African diaspora; through <galleries to find the painted record of the plantation landscape, and through professional archives to document the history of his primary discipline, folklore. Appropriately, this recipient of the Henry Glassie Award was a doctoral student of Glassie’s at Indiana University. I first met John at a Folklore Institute party in Bloomington, where he was just finishing his dissertation. He once told me that his interest in African and African American topics went back to his undergraduate days at the University of California at Davis when, as a somewhat directionless football player, he was assigned to a wheelchair-bound faculty member who specialized in African studies. That job showed John his vocation. The first product of John’s lifelong research project was his 1975 dissertation on the shotgun house. Along with the articles that spun off from it in Pioneer America and Natural History, it was a landmark in many ways. In tracing the history of one of the most common house types of the southern United States, John became the first to take seriously, and to define clearly, the role of Africans and African Americans in the shaping of American architecture. The dissertation was based on an ambitious program of fieldwork in Nigeria, Haiti, and the United States, thus making it a pioneering example of a transnational approach to architectural history, one reinforced by his wonderful Journal of American Folklore article on Brazilian houses in Nigeria. Although John never published the shotgun house work as a book, it was the seed of two decades' worth of trailblazing field studies of African American landscapes and material culture in the South. When I first knew him, John was always setting off on another research trip, another collecting trip, another visit to a builder or a folk artist. He always seemed to know where the important artifacts were, who the important informants were, and what the important questions were. This work gave us an exhibition and book, The Afro-American Tradition in Decorative Arts, which is still a standard reference in the field. It was one of the first scholarly examinations of black traditions in ceramics, textiles, and woodworking as well as architecture. This work gave us Charleston Blacksmith, his ethnographic study of Philip Simmons, which called attention to Charleston’s long history of African-American smithery, in addition to introducing a master ironworker to a broader audience. And this work gave us his many essays collected in By the Work of Their Hands, a series of articles on Afro-American folk arts and crafts. In recent years, Vlach has spent as many hours in the archives as he once did in the field. As someone with the good fortune to live near the Library of Congress and to have a wife who is a key official of the Division of Prints and Photographs, John took advantage of the opportunity to mine the records of the Historic American Buildings Survey. The result was Back of the Big House, a study that used HABS's documentation of long-vanished Southern buildings to paint a comprehensive portrait of the built landscape in which enslaved people lived and worked. It is worth noting that when a parallel exhibition of the same name was mounted at the Library in 1995, a firestorm of protest led to its being removed. But the District of Columbia public library recognized the show’s significance and showed it there. The reading public also found that the book told a story they were eager to hear, and as a result Back of the Big House has remained in print for twenty years. I can say with some envy that I can count on one hand the number of museum gift shops that I have visited in the South that did not carry Back of the Big House. Vlach’s interest in the landscape of plantation slavery led him to examine the records that painters of Southern scenes left behind, and produced The Planter’s Prospect, an important study of the artistic record of slavery. Here John combined his interest in the black experience with a fascination with folk painting expressed most notably in Plain Painters. John’s enthusiasm for his work has been contagious. As a long-time professor of American Studies and Anthropology at the George Washington University, he was been a popular teacher and mentor of undergraduate and graduate students. He introduced them to a broad spectrum of the American material world, but also gave them a taste of the larger context in which their studies took place. Many years ago, I attended one of his vernacular architecture classes at George Washington University. His invited guest was Arthur Raper, a man now nearly forgotten, but who wrote eye-opening books in the 1930s about sharecroppers and about lynching. I was impressed. As an assiduous and prolific public folklorist, Vlach gladly shared his work with anyone who would listen. He consulted with museums and historical agencies, curated exhibitions, lectured widely to popular audiences, and even appeared on C-Span several times. As a pioneer student of African American architecture and material culture, John Vlach’s career has been a model of the kind of scholarship that the VAF was created to encourage, and it has been a model, as well, of engagement with a broad audience of the sort likely to spread our message most effectively. For these and many other reasons, we thank him with this year’s Henry Glassie Award. 2012 Ridout and Tishler In 2012, Orlando Ridout V and William H. Tishler each received a Henry Glassie Award for lifetime achievement. Orlando Ridout V Among Orlando’s publications stand landmarks that have helped redefine the study of the built environment. His 1989 book Building the Octagon, a study of the design and construction of one of the nation’s first architect-designed townhouses, built in Washington D.C. for John Tayloe III from 1799-1802, has been called "the standard for how single-house studies should be written." It garnered VAF’s Abbott Lowell Cummings Award in 1990. Orlando’s article "Re-editing the Architectural Past: A Comparison of Surviving Physical and Documentary Evidence on Maryland’s Eastern Shore," established numerically what some of us had suspected about the past: that our view of the historic landscape is dramatically skewed by the fact that only a small percentage of the built resources that populated the past have survived to our time, and those that have are woefully unrepresentative. Yet it is his numerous unpublished single house studies that have subtly changed the work of architectural historians and museum professionals. Starting with the Russell House in Charleston, he established a systematic approach based on the assumption that thoroughly understanding a building is critical to its proper care and interpretation. Thus, the seemingly endless process of cataloging all the components of a building down to its nails, assessing the dates of these parts, the nature of their manufacture and use, is essential to answering all of the important questions that must be asked of an historic resource. Layered onto this and just as important is the need to carefully scour the record for all documentary material related to a building’s existence and creating a similar catalog of all known images organized in chronological order. Once assembled, these studies become the basis for interpretive essays that summarize the historical importance of the people who lived and work on these sites and a companion study about its architectural importance. Looking beyond the building, Orlando has long shown interest in the landscape and the relationship of the house to its surroundings, especially the various parts of a farmstead. Orlando’s chapter in the soon to be published book Chesapeake House addresses the relationship of the component parts of a farm, how people chose building sites, and how agricultural practices changed the land. To quote Willie Graham, the chapter "will transform the way historians think about early settlement practices and how they matured over the next few hundred years…it will surely become a staple read of archaeologists and historians of all stripes." Orlando’s career took him into public service, following a long family tradition of service to the State of Maryland that includes two royal governors, members of the Maryland Legislature and the state’s first historic preservation officer. For thirty years, through his own fieldwork and through the statewide survey program that he nurtured into one of the most successful in the country, Orlando has helped compile for Maryland a catalog of its historic resources, founded on his own careful approach of looking at properties as artifacts. This catalog, the Maryland Inventory of Historic Properties, forms the basis of almost all preservation activity in Maryland. Perhaps his greatest legacy, however, is as a teacher and mentor. Orlando’s work at the State of Maryland, progressing from field surveyor, to head of the state’s architectural survey program to the chief of the Office of Research, Survey and Registration, has provided him countless opportunities to share his knowledge widely. He gives freely and profusely to anyone who is passionate about buildings, and he is especially dedicated to those who desire to become field surveyors. How many people in our field have learned the basics about nail chronologies, framing techniques, and hardware while spending a hot day in a tobacco barn or cold, snowy day in an abandoned eighteenth century house with him? Benefitting in a special way are his students who took his legendary course, "Field Methods for Architectural History" at the George Washington University. But these examples do not do justice in any way to Orlando’s expansive generosity with the fruits of his intellect and his labor. No matter how elementary or complex the question might be, nor how many times he has answered it before, he always answers with thoughtfulness, unselfishness and modesty. Time and again even the simplest of questions will receive a five-page response which despite being so well-researched and carefully composed that it could go straight to publication without editing, invariably is prefaced by an apology that he couldn’t do more. Most of us already know that Orlando’s contributions to the field go beyond the professional. His friendship, loyalty, sense of humor and his incomparable ability to tell stories, both of his own colorful adventures and those from this organization’s early days, are part of the heart and soul of VAF. It is with great pleasure that I present the Henry Glassie Award to Orlando Ridout V. William H. Tishler The 2012 Henry Glassie award winner is William (Bill) Tishler, an Emeritus Professor of Landscape Architecture at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Bill played an important role in the early history of VAF, including serving as president in 1982, and as organizer of the 1983 conference in Madison. His numerous publications and field work that featured the folk and vernacular architecture of the Midwest notably stovewood buildings and German-American fachwerk construction dgreatly increased our understanding of ethnic building and landscape traditions. To best understand Bill, however, one needs to recognize that he is a product of Door County the picturesque peninsula of northeastern Wisconsin that juts into Lake Michigan. Door County is nationally recognized for its natural and cultural attributes, and it shaped Bill both as a person and a scholar. In addition, Bill’s father was a local carpenter, a quite appropriate trade for someone with the German name of Tishler (Tischler). Following high school Bill made his way to the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he fortuitously discovered the field of landscape architecture. In 1965, shortly after receiving a Master of Landscape Architecture degree from Harvard’s Graduate School of Design, Bill returned to his alma mater and began teaching at the UW-Madison. During his early career as a faculty member in the Department of Landscape Architecture Bill was asked to prepare a master plan for Old World Wisconsin (OWW), the outdoor ethnic museum then being proposed for the state. Working primarily with students, Bill and his assistants developed the overall OWW plan and also prepared proposals that defined the spatial organization of individual ethnic farmsteads. When OWW opened in 1976 the project was immediately recognized for its sensitive treatment of environmental and cultural phenomena; indeed, the plan soon received a national honor award from the American Society of Landscape Architects. Among several other notable projects that Bill undertook during his career was the preparation of a preservation plan for the Lake Superior shoreline community of Bayfield, one of Wisconsin’s premier tourist destinations; and a National Historic Landmark nomination for the Namur Belgian District in northeastern Wisconsin, the first NHL property to recognize a rural ethnic group. During the 1990s he and I worked with several graduate students at Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore in Michigan, where we prepared some of the first cultural landscape reports for the National Park Service. Bill also taught courses on historic preservation methods and practice, including the first in the nation to feature cultural landscapes. A number of students who enrolled in those classes subsequently went on to careers in state and local planning agencies, consulting firms, and academic departments. Certainly among Bill’s important instructional activities were the summer field schools that he organized and directed during the 1970s, all of which documented historic buildings and landscapes in several areas of Wisconsin.. That tradition was revived during this century when three field schools, organized and taught by Anna Andrzejewski and others, contributed so significantly to the field guides that were prepared for the 2012 VAF conference in Madison. Following his retirement in 2000, Bill taught the first on-line course survey course in the Department of Landscape Architecture, prepared a DVD on the career of Jens Jensen, and wrote a history of Door Country’s Peninsula State Park. For his decades of activity furthering the cause of the Vernacular Architecture Forum, and documenting the buildings and landscapes of Wisconsin and the Midwest, Bill Tishler is a most worthy recipient of the 2012 Henry Glassie award. 2011 Thomas Carter Tom Carter is not unfamiliar to members of the VAF. He has served on the board many years, including a stint as President. Many of you may have gotten to know him better, as I did, when he hosted the VAF conference in Salt Lake City, Utah, in 1987. And he has been coeditor of our Special Series: Vernacular Architecture Studies; indeed, he, along with Betsey Cromley, wrote the inaugural publication, Invitation to Vernacular Architecture. Born in Utah, Tom came East to attend Brown University they nicknamed him "Tex," a stereotypical confusion that Tom would soon work to set straight in his subsequent career. After a Master’s in American folklore from University of North Carolina (Chapel Hill) and a doctorate on Mormon housing in the Sanpete Valley, Utah, from Indiana University (where his original dissertation advisor was none other than Henry Glassie), Tom won a fellowship to the Jeff Klee, Tom Winterthur Museum. There he discovered the growing vernacular architecture movement, and the role he would fill in bringing the American West into that exploration. By 1990, Tom had arrived at the University of Utah's Graduate School of Architecture, as founding director of the Western Regional Architectural Program. Tom has published many articles, and has co-authored Utah’s Historic Architecture and The Grouse Creek Cultural Survey. Along with Bernie Herman, Tom co-edited Volumes III and IV of Perspectives in Vernacular Architecture, and edited Images of an American Land: Vernacular Studies in the Western United States. I know that we haven’t seen the end of Tom's writing -- he's not dead yet -- and I hope that he will continue to publish his extensive research on the Vernacular Architecture of the American West. One of his long-overdue proposals is appropriately titled Faith and Good Works, something we can take to heart. I think Tom is best known for his work on documenting vernacular architectural sites through measured drawings. He and his students have ranged throughout the West, Utah, of course, but Nevada and Montana also stand out, and often when I went to a conference I discovered that Tom had been there before, helping to document the structures on the tours. In recognition of this work, Tom received the Buchanan Award in 1996 for his work with the Program for Documenting the Architectural Heritage of the Western United States. I would be remiss if I did not mention music. Tom began with recording traditional fiddle players in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, and is an accomplished fiddler himself. I was astounded when we were at the 1988 Staunton, Virginia conference and Tom fell to his knees and began singing "Shenandoah" on the banks of that noble rill. All of this is quite impressive, and certainly worthy of receiving the Glassie Award. But I want to highlight a significant pattern in Tom's lifetime achievement: his focus on the West. As Chris Wilson once said about the pre-Carter era (I mean Tom, not Jimmy), "There was as much written about the cultural landscape of Virginia as there was on the entire Western United States." Through his meticulous, detailed recording of and research on the vernacular architecture and landscape of the West, Tom has radically changed the way we think about the region and its history. Speaking as a Westerner, a far Westerner, I should add, I have personally and professionally been influenced by Tom’s work, as have we all. Tom Carter, thank you for your significant achievements in and contributions to the field of vernacular architecture studies. Here's the Glassie Award! 2010 Cary Carson What can I possibly say about Cary Carson? Intellectual, raconteur, clotheshorse, international man of mystery; founding father of the VAF and presenter of this society’s very first paper. I have known Cary since I came to Williamsburg in 2004. In that time, I’ve come to see him as most of you do: as an insightful, hardworking, elegant writer and a thoughtful, gracious, unfailingly warm individual. As a scholar, Cary Carson made his mark by insisting that material remains had much to teach us about the past, this much, at least, he shares with Henry Glassie. In 1981, he showed how architecture could be much more than a "handmaiden to history" in his landmark article, "Impermanent Architecture in the Southern American Colonies." Cary and his coauthors observed that architectural form could be correlated with changes in agriculture in a way that was only dimly perceived in the documentary record. They made a strong case for a view of architectural technology as experimental and strategic, rather than instinctive. The essay remains a founding document of modern vernacular architecture studies and shows up on college syllabuses from Salt Lake City to Stalingrad (or as Willie Graham calls it, Petersburg). Cary has also sustained a lifelong interest in the English ancestry of colonial American architecture and we are all looking forward to the publication of his volume in the VAF Special Series. But his most significant contribution to the study of material life and American history is surely his extended essay, "The Consumer Revolution in Colonial America: Why Demand?" In it, he inverts the presumed relationship between the Industrial and the Consumer Revolutions, arguing that the colonial experience required objects to communicate relationships, and that this growing need spurred the drive to greater production, not the reverse. In his words, "a world in motion was a world of strangers" and these strangers used objects to sort themselves out in carefully delimited ways. As important as this essay is, and inasmuch as it demonstrates Cary’s mastery of language and of his material, it also exemplifies his commitment to a style of history that engages explicitly with present concerns. Along with the dissertations, scholarly articles, and contemporary diary entries, the 307 footnotes include references to The Washington Post and The New York Times. It is never enough for Cary just to untangle a knotty intellectual problem. His work must always participate in the larger contemporary discourse; its implications must always reach beyond the library. Both his published work and his career at the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation manifest a generous commitment to scholarship as a form of public service. This generosity is not restricted to his research. Cary is forever eager to share credit, and has demonstrated an almost compulsive preference for working with collaborators over going it alone. As a fieldworker, author, administrator, or bowler, Cary prefers company, the more the better, and thank goodness, because what a delightful companion he is. As much as he encourages his friends and colleagues, he seems to enjoy provoking them even more. As an editor, a boss, or an invited speaker, he relishes and excels in the role of gadfly, setting sparks to intellectual tinderboxes while stamping out little flare-ups of foolishness. Many members will recall his plenary address in Williamsburg in which he challenged the VAF to slough off the complacency that comes with recognition and success. Others will remember a similar talk at Winterthur, "Material Culture History: The Scholarship Nobody Knows," in which he goaded his audience to engage more effectively with other disciplines and broader audiences. He also, memorably, took the opportunity to critique some colleagues’ fascination with Continental philosophy, suggesting that one, in particular, was so enamored with French thinkers that he should be registered as a foreign agent. This last item hints at an aspect of Dr. Carson that may be less well known among the VAF but is no less praiseworthy. He is a great connoisseur of mischief. Many have been ruthlessly victimized by the glint in Cary’s eye, not least among them the innocent schoolchildren of Williamsburg, who endure unholy terror every Halloween as they run the gauntlet of Griffin Avenue. Cary, this organization is intellectually richer and just plain more fun for your involvement in it. I am, therefore, delighted and honored to present you as this year’s winner of the Henry Glassie Award. 2009 Ronald W. Brunskill The recipient of the Henry Glassie Award is Ronald W. Brunskill, RIBA, OBE, FSA, in honor of his long and distinguish career in teaching and the promotion of the study and conservation of vernacular architecture in Great Britain and in this country through his many written works and service on numerous historical commissions. Trained as an architect at Manchester University just after World War II, Ronald Brunskill also received his MA and PhD from that institution where he studied under the legendary R. A. Cordingley, who pioneered the study of regional architecture and offered him a job in the School of Architecture where he taught from 1960 to 1989. His academic training may have shaped Professor Brunskill's intellectual perspective, but his passion for vernacular building derived from his early holidays spent on farms of his relatives in the achingly beautiful Eden Valley on the edge of the Lake District. These encounters with stone farmhouses and barns in the region was eventually expanded and incorporated in Vernacular Architecture of the Lake Counties. The pattern of his scholarship was set and would have a tremendous impact in Britain and the United States from the 1970s onward. "Brunskill's Illustrated Handbook of Vernacular Architecture is where we all started" observed Barbara Watkins, Secretary of the English Vernacular Architecture Group. This and others such as Traditional Farm Buildings of Britain, English Brickwork, and Timber Building in Britain have been primers for a generation of amateur recording societies and professionals alike. Their orderly presentation of plans, structural elements, and decorative details emphasize the richness of regional building practices in Britain, but most importantly, opened the sometimes esoteric study of traditional buildings to a broad readership. They emphasize that recognizing and preserving this architectural heritage is not merely the preserve of the scholar but beckons the lay person as well, appealing to an ethos that has not fully blossomed in this country in the way it that has long bloomed among the scores of amateur historical and antiquarian societies in Britain. In the United States we train students in special programs to record historic structures; in the British Isles, men and women from all walks of life come together to spend their weekends and holidays measuring neighboring farmhouses and a Brunskill volume has accompanied them in their kitbag. Like the man for whom this award is named, Ronald Brunskill has been a highly successful missionary and publicist for vernacular architecture. J. T. Smith, the retired principal investigator for Royal Commission on Historical Monuments, described Professor Brunskill's lectures as "inspiring and beautifully delivered." He recalled that one of them given in the mid 1960s "aroused the audience's enthusiasm to a remarkable degree and made even a seasoned practitioner like myself want to rush out and record whatever lay to hand." In addition to his academic responsibilities, Dr. Brunksill has more than shared his time as a committee member servicing as an advisor, reviewer, and leader of numerous architectural, antiquarian, and historical commissions and professional societies. He has served as President of the Vernacular Architecture Group, vice-chairman of the Weald and Downland Museum, and has been a member of the Royal Commission on Ancient and Historical Monuments of Wales, the Heritage Lottery Fund, and the Friends of Friendless Churches to name but a few on an exhaustive list. Ronald Brunskill's career bounded the Atlantic in ways that have allowed us to claim him as one of our unofficial founders. His wife Miriam was originally from Georgia and that bond that united our two countries gave rise to his deep interests in America over the past half century. In the mid 1950s hew was awarded a traveling fellowship at MIT and visited the newly reconstructed settlement at Jamestown Festival Park with its collection of cruck buildings that emphasized to him the remarkable limited understanding that Americans had of English vernacular building. Not long to be discouraged, he found an affinity in the farm buildings of Pennsylvania with those in his beloved Westmoreland in the Lake District and he was emboldened to introduce the term "bank barn" to vernacular building in England. In his teaching at Manchester and courses at the University of York he managed to attract American students including Charles Peterson, one of the founding lights of the Historic American Buildings Survey, and organized several exhibitions in England of HABS work. Professor Brunskill traveled widely in the United States and met most people who were involved in the study of traditional architecture including Jay Edwards, Abbott Cummings, and Blair Reeves. Intriguingly, in the late 1960s he met with John Pearce, Rusty Marshall and others to discuss the establishment of an American organization equivalent to the English VAG but decided that the time was not yet ripe. More than a dozen years later after the VAF was formed, he attended a number of our early meetings including Sturbridge, San Francisco, Santa Fe, and Portsmouth. For a man who has been an instrumental force in shaping the study of vernacular architecture on both sides of the Atlantic, the VAF proudly presents the Henry Glassie Award to Ronald Brunskill. Colonial Williamsburg Foundation 2007 Ronald Knapp This year the Henry Glassie Award Committee solicited nominations of books published between 2004 and 2006 that made significant contributions to the study of vernacular architecture and cultural landscapes outside North America. The winner of the 2007 Glassie Award is Ronald G. Knapp. The committee, which consisted of Rebecca Ginsburg, Greg Hise, and Tom Hubka, was interested to see that Professor Knapp had been nominated for two books, Chinese Houses: The Architectural Heritage of a Nation, published by Tuttle Press (2005) and House Home Family: Living and Being Chinese, published by the University of Hawaii Press (2005) (and co-edited by Kay-Yin Lo). Both books were excellent examples of scholarship of vernacular environments. The committee noted that the first was based on over thirty years of fieldwork in China. We were impressed enough with these two volumes to want to see more. After reviewing Asia's Old Dwellings: Tradition, Resilience, and Change (2003), China's Old Dwellings (2000), China's Living Houses: Folk Beliefs, Symbols, and Household Ornamentation (1999), Chinese Landscapes: The Village as Place (1992), China's Vernacular Architecture: House Form and Culture (1989), to name just a selection of Professor Knapp's writings, we realized that this lifetime of scholarship dedicated to documenting, studying, and writing about Chinese domestic architecture for Western audiences deserved recognition. A notable strength of Ronald Knapp's body of works is his comprehensive approach to the study of housing. His books examine scales from that of interior decor to the layout of villages. He considers the role of fengshui in the placement of furnishings and provides extensive discussion of construction techniques and materials. Floor plans, diagrams that illustrate social use of space, village layouts, and historical drawings compliment his texts, which are consistently clear and accessible. Photographs are often stunning, especially in his later works such as Chinese Houses, which is a beautifully designed book (credit goes to A. Chester Ong, who did the photography). Ronald Knapp, who was trained as a geographer, has done more than anyone else outside of China to celebrate, analyze, and promote understanding of that country's domestic architectural heritage. We are pleased to present the Glassie Award to Ronald G. Knapp for the lifetime body of his work on Chinese houses. 2006 Tom Hubka The Henry Glassie Award Committee, consisting of Dell Upton, Stephen Hornsby, and Rebecca Ginsburg, sought to recognize recently published books that have made significant contributions to the study of vernacular architecture and cultural landscapes outside North America. The VAF awarded the 2006 Glassie Award to Thomas Hubka for Resplendent Synagogue: Architecture and Worship in an Eighteenth-Century Polish Community (University Press of New England/Brandeis University Press, 2003). In Resplendent Synagogue, Tom Hubka closely analyzes the design and use of an eighteenth-century synagogue in the Polish town of Gwozdziec, in the process uncovering the social, historic, and artistic relations that pertained within a small Eastern European community during the height of its prosperity. While the synagogue no longer stands, Tom Hubka makes critical use of historic photographs, contemporary religious texts, and archival documents, as well as modern scholarship, to reconstruct the history of the Gwozdziec synagogue and place it within its various contexts. These include both a tradition of wooden synagogue construction that was common in Eastern Europe until the 19th century, and the synagogue’s specific location within the Gwozdeziec community, where its designers drew on local and foreign, Jewish and Gentile, folks and fine art traditions in building and decorating the house of worship. 2005 “Big Jim” Griffith James "Big Jim" Griffith’s lifetime of dedicated scholarship on the cultural landscape of the American Southwest and Arizona/Sonora borderlands region was recognized at the 2005 conference of the VAF in Tucson, Arizona, with the presentation of the Henry Glassie Award. This award, bestowed intermittently by the Executive Committee for special achievements in vernacular architecture studies, went to Big Jim for twenty-five years of researching, publishing, and celebrating the traditional lore, customs, arts, and architecture of this important American/Mexican region. Jim’s publications include Southern Arizona Folk Arts, Beliefs and Holy Places: A Spiritual Geography of the Pimeria Alta, and A Shared Space: Folklife in the Arizona-Sonora Borderlands. He also established the Southwest Folklore Center at the University of Arizona and organized the seminal "Tucson Meet Yourself" festival, which celebrates the food, art, music, and other traditions of the city’s various ethnic communities. 2004 Don Yoder At the 2004 meeting in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, the Henry Glassie Award was given to Professor Don Yoder of the University of Pennsylvania. Professor Yoder has expanded our understanding of the Pennsylvania Germans through a lifetime of folkloric research on their foodways, customs, religion, and popular politics. His work, disseminated in many books and articles, arises from a fervent attachment to Pennsylvania German culture, but always preserves scholarly and analytical rigor. Professor Yoder was instrumental in starting The Pennsylvania Dutchman and Pennsylvania Folklife journals, and served as mentor to a generation of young scholars who took it upon themselves to document and interpret the varied meanings of the Pennsylvania German cultural landscape and its rich architectural traditions. 1999 Albert Lorenz and David Macaulay The VAF presented the Special Recognition Award at the annual conference in Columbus, Georgia. The winners were Albert Lorenz and David Macaulay. VAF selected winners whose contribution to the scholarship and appreciation of architecture is unique by virtue of the audience for their work. They write for children. More importantly, they write and draw splendidly for children. In presenting this award to David Macaulay and Albert Lorenz, the VAF is recognizing that the appreciation for architecture and its historical meaning can and should begin early. Further, in selecting these two authors, we hope to encourage excellence in children’s architectural literature–excellence in historical research, intelligent and engaging historical narrative, and revealing illustrations. There could be no better ambassadors to world of children than these two authors. David Macaulay is a name long familiar to parents, educators, and children. Beginning in 1973 with the book, Cathedral, Macaulay has produced a delightful shelf of books on architecture and the world we’ve built around us. From Roman cities in City to modern urban centers in Underground, and from studies of historic mills, in the book, Mill, to sailing vessels, in Ship, Macaulay has illuminated with great clarity, in black and white line drawings, the structures (and infrastructures) of everyday life. David Macaulay has also created a series of videos based on his works that further explore the fascinating world of constructing objects. Albert Lorenz’s style is entirely different. He uses color, multiple panels, ravishing detail, and selected narratives to show change, diversity, and pattern over time and place. His first work in 1996, Metropolis drew crowds in bookstores. It was followed by the compelling House in 1998. In both books, he worked with Joy Schleh. Lorenz’s work is an example of the highest achievement in the art of informative and seductive illustration. He has given children a rich context for understanding building within cultural, geographical, and historical settings.

STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- Golden’s Deli closed on Monday after a 30-year run when its lease ended. The New Springville eatery became a borough institution for its kosher fare (notably its matzo-ball soup) and a subway car parked in the middle of the main dining room. Former patrons such as Charlie Greinsky of Dongan Hills are sorry to see it go. “It had become clearly a fixture and a meeting point on Staten Island for those who liked kosher,” he laments. “It’s going to be missed.” The restaurant’s namesake was Marvin Golden, one of the original partners in the restaurant along with its current working partner Raymond Pannone. The deli eventually grew into several locations in Brooklyn and one in Manhattan on Madison Avenue. Sonny Golden, interior decorator/owner of Golden Key Interiors, New Springville, said of her husband, “Marvin passed away when the [Staten Island] store was being built. That was in 1981. The train was his idea.” Golden and Pannone moved it from the transit museum in Brooklyn. “They had to take out the storefront to bring in the train. It was all rusted. They had to really clean it,” Ms. Golden said. Around 2000, Pannone redesigned the restaurant and expanded it to approximately 270 seats with two adjacent storefronts. He added a salad station and full-service bar. The interior included murals with two-dimensional caricatures of TV personalities, such as the cast of “Friends.” At that time, Pannone also hired an Orthodox rabbi to supervise the kosher operation in the restaurant’s kitchen. There have been a few rabbis in the position since. Each would employ shtar mechira, a legal provision where the business is sold to a new principal on Friday before sundown. Ownership reverts when the Sabbath ends. But the fact that the restaurant stayed open on the Sabbath kept away a swath of the neighborhood’s Orthodox Jewish population. Golden’s fixtures and smallwares were auctioned off on Tuesday by Michael Amodeo & Co. Inc. of Manhattan. Tommy Stefanidis, a restaurant equipment dealer from New Jersey, said yesterday that the storefronts weren’t quite picked clean. “They still have some stuff in there — booths, chairs. They’re working on taking out the train,” he said. According to NY1, Pannone hopes to reestablish the restaurant elsewhere in the neighborhood. Kimco Realty of New Hyde Park, L.I., owners of the shopping complex, could not be reached before deadline. Pannone could not be reached for comment.

Name: Dr. Raymond P. Scheindlin Title: Professor of Medieval Hebrew Literature; Director, Shalom Spiegel Institute of Medieval Hebrew Poetry Department: Jewish Literature; Medieval Studies Program Dr. Raymond Scheindlin teaches and conducts research on the encounter of Hebrew and Arabic cultures in Spain, especially as embodied in the poetry of the two traditions. An expert on Arabic literature, Dr. Scheindlin is the author of a reference book, widely used by students of Arabic, titled 201 Arabic Verbs. He also pursues an interest in literary translation, having published translations of a Yiddish novella by Mendele Mocher Seforim and of a number of medieval Hebrew fictions. Dr. Scheindlin was a Guggenheim Fellow in 1988. He served for three years as the part-time rabbi of the Kane Street Synagogue in Brooklyn. He is a fellow and a member of the Executive Committee of the American Academy of Jewish Research, as well as a member of PEN American Center and the editorial boards of the journals Prooftexts, Studies in Muslim-Jewish Relations, the Jewish Ouarterly Review, and Edebiyat. Dr. Scheindlin served on the faculties of McGill and Cornell universities before assuming his position at JTS. A native of Philadelphia, Dr. Scheindlin received a BA in Oriental Studies from the University of Pennsylvania, an MHL, rabbinic ordination from JTS, and a PhD from Columbia University. "The Bible and the Quran: An Introduction to Islam for Jews" "Wine, Women, and Death: The Golden Age of Hebrew Literature" "Jews and Arabs: The Flourishing of Judeo-Arabic Culture When Islam Ruled the World" "Islamic Reform?: A Jewish Perspective" "The Jews of Spain" "Translating the Bible" Jews and Arabs in the Middle Ages Medieval Hebrew Literature and Culture Impact of Islam on Jewish Culture Hebrew Poetry in the Premodern Period Contact this speaker

The Jewish Coalition for Literacy Opening Books, Opening Minds, Opening Doors. The Jewish Coalition for Literacy (JCL), a JCRC strategic initiative, trains volunteer reading tutors and matches them with struggling children in underserved public elementary schools to help ensure that all children can read by the end of the third grade. Limited literacy means limited opportunity for too many of California’s public school children who are unable to read at grade level. Studies show that proficiency in reading by the end of third grade is a crucial marker in a child’s educational development. To meet this challenge, JCL recruits, trains, and supports nearly 400 volunteer reading tutors and places them in public elementary schools throughout the Bay Area. JCL’s volunteer tutors share the magic of reading and give children a better chance to succeed —all in as little as an hour per week. Our students have gained confidence as readers because of this program. Thank you JCL!" – Principal, New Highland Academy, Oakland. Click here for JCL’s website to find out more, register for a free tutor training session in San Francisco, the East Bay or the Peninsula, or donate to this important cause.

Genesis 25:16 - CASTLES and NATIONS Hi saints. I received this challenge from a pastor over at Baptistboard.com I thought some of you might be interested in how to deal with issues like this when they come up. This brother Bob SAYS he believes The Bible is the inerrant words of God, but pinning him down to tell us exactly where we can get a copy of this inerrant Bible he says he believes in is a little like trying to nail jello to a tree. Will, To start off with I use the KJV 95 to 99.9% of the time. But I'm not KJVO, for a lot of reasons but maybe you can answer two questions here, which might help me see your side better. In Genesis 21:18 God said he would make Ishmael a great nation which is in agreement with the Hebrew, but in Genesis 25:16 it has nations, which isn't in accord with the Hebrew. Here it should be tribes. Also in Genesis 25:16 it has castles which isn't in accord with the Hebrew. These were nomadic people which lived in tents, they didn't have castles, encampments would have been a better word or tents. I know God would not have made these two mistakes but man has, no doctrine are changed but it isn't true to the Hebrew. Thanks Will for your reply that will come. My Response - Hi Bob. Thanks for the questions. I think the way to resolve the difficulty you think you see here is to look more carefully at the English words used and their various meanings. I notice that in both examples you bring up of individual words you tell us that the word “nations” and “castles” ISN’T IN ACCORD WITH THE HEBREW. Well, brother, that is your first wrong assumption and you only reveal here that the English translation is not in accord with YOUR understanding of the Hebrew. Other Bible translators, and some of them Jewish, who probably know their own language a little better than you do, disagree with you on this. Let’s start off with your first objection - that of the word “nation”. The word “nation” does not always refer to a territory marked by clear borders and a ruling seat of government, as in the nation of the USA or Canada. The word nation comes from the Latin word natio which is the past participle of the verb nasci, meaning to be born. In Spanish to be born is "nacer", and from it we get nación or nation. In English we have the related words "nascent" = coming into being, being born, beginning to form - thus we speak of the nascent moon or a nascent state of affairs. Another related word is "natal" - pertaining to birth. When we use the word “nation” it does not necessarily mean a sovereign political state with well defined borders and a central government. We can also use the word nation to describe a body of people with a common descent and culture. We still talk about the early native American Indians as the Cherokee nation, the Comanche nation, etc. The particular Hebrew word used in Genesis 25:16 is found only three times in the O.T. Once it is translated as ‘nations’ and twice as ‘people’. In Genesis 25:16 the King James Bible says: “These are the sons of Ishmael, and these are their names, by their towns, and by their castles: twelve princes according to their NATIONS.” The same Hebrew word is translated as “people” in Numbers 25:15 “Zur was head over A PEOPLE”, and in Psalm 117:1 we see the Hebrew parallelism of equating one thing with another term. “O praise the LORD, all ye nations: praise him, all ye PEOPLE.” Here the first word for “nation” is the usual one as found in Genesis 21:18 that you mentioned earlier. The word “people” here is equated in meaning with “all ye nations”. In fact, the Hebrew word you referenced before in Genesis 21:18 “I will make him a great nation” is also translated as “people, heathen, and Gentiles” in the KJB. Versions like the NASB translate this same word as “nation, Goiim, herds and people.” The NIV translates it as “nation, people, gentile, countries, foreign, kind, and pagan nation.” So again, when you tell us that the translation of “nation” is “NOT IN ACCORD WITH THE HEBREW”, there are obviously many other bible translators who disagree with your opinion. When we see the inerrant King James Bible use the word “nations” in Genesis 25:16 to describe the descendants of the 12 PRINCES, who were the sons of Ishmael, we are looking at the various groups of people related by blood, language and traditions. Don’t pick a definition that doesn't fit and then try to claim error in the King James Bible. Be of faith and look for the explanation that makes the most sense; not the one that creates the biggest contradiction. Unless of course you are LOOKING FOR contradictions. Oxford Compact Dictionary defines Nation = Noun - a large body of people united by common descent, culture, or language, inhabiting a particular state or territory. — ORIGIN Latin, from nasci ‘be born’. The Cambridge Dictionary gives two definitions of the word nation = 1 a country, especially when thought of as a large group of people living in one area with their own government, language, traditions, etc: All the nations of the world will be represented at the conference. The Germans, as a nation, are often thought to be well organized. Practically the whole nation watched the ceremony on television. 2 a large group of people of the same race who share the same language, traditions and history, but who might not all live in one area: the Navajo nation Not only does the King James Bible say “twelve princes, according to their NATIONS.” in Genesis 25:16 but so also do the following Bible translations: Tyndale 1534, Matthew's Bible 1549, Douay-Rheims 1582, the Geneva Bible 1599, The Bill Bible 1671, the Thomson Bible 1808, the Revised Version 1885, American Standard Version 1901, Webster’s 1833, the Boothroyd Bible 1853, Brenton Translation 1851, Lesser Bible 1853, Julia Smith Translation 1855, The Wellbeloved Scriptures 1862, The Revised English Bible 1877, the Revised Version 1885, the Smith Bible 1876, ASV 1901, The Ancient Hebrew Bible 1907, the Jewish Publication Society 1917 translation, Lamsa's Translation of the Syraic Peshitta 1933, the Hebrew Publishing Company 1936 translation, the Hebrew Names Version, the Fenton Bible 1966, the NKJV 1982, The Word of Yah 1993, the 21st Century KJV 1994, The Revised Webster Bible 1995, The Third Millennium Bible 1998, God's First Truth 1999 - "in their towns and castles twelve princes of nations.", The World English Bible 2000, The Sacred Scriptures Family of Yah 2001, Apostolic Bible Polyglot English 2003, The Judaica Press Complete Tanach 2004, Green's Literal 2005, Complete Apostles Bible 2005, A Conservative Version 2005, Judaica Press Complete Tanach 2004 "NATIONS", The Revised Geneva Bible 2005, Context Group Version 2006, Holy Scriptures VW Edition 2010, The New European Version 2010, the Hebraic Transliteration Scripture 2010 - “and by their CASTLES; twelve princes according to their goyim (NATIONS).”, New Heart English Bible 2010, World English Bible 2012, Natural Israelite Bible 2012, The Revised Douay-Rheims Version 2012, The New Brenton Translation 2012, the Hebraic Roots Bible 2012, the Hebrew Names Version 2014 and The Interlinear Hebrew Old Testament -This Interlinear has both NATIONS and CASTLES. You can see it here - The Italian Diodati Bible 1991 also has the word “nations”. It reads: “i dodici principi delle loro rispettive NAZIONI.” Objection raised: “Also in Genesis 25:16 it has castles which isn't in accord with the Hebrew. These were nomadic people which lived in tents, they didn't have castles, encampments would have been a better word or tents.” Brother Bob, again we need to properly define our English words to see how they are being used in a particular context. And again we see that there are some Bible scholars who disagree with you about “not being in accord with the Hebrew”. Castle - Easton’s Bible Dictionary = Castles are also mentioned (Genesis 25:16) as a kind of watch-tower, from which shepherds kept watch over their flocks by night. The Dictionaries give a variety of meaning to the English word “castle”. It does not always mean the same thing in every context. Please notice definition #3 and notice the origin of this word which has come to us from the Latin language. 1. a fortified, usually walled residence, as of a prince or noble in feudal times. 2. the chief and strongest part of the fortifications of a medieval city. 3. A STRONGLY FORTIFIED, PERMANENTLY GARRISONED STRONGHOLD. 4. A small defensive tower, as on the back of an elephant. (Funk and Wagnalls Standard College Dictionary) Etymology Dictionary - castle = late O.E. castel, from O.N.Fr. castel, from L. castellum "FORTIFIED VILLAGE," diminutive of castrum "fort" Encyclopedia Britannica - The word "castle" (castel) was introduced into English shortly before the Norman Conquest to denote a type of fortress, then new to the country, brought in by the Norman knights ...The essential feature of this type was a circular mound of earth surrounded by a dry ditch and flattened at the top. Around the crest of its summit was placed a timber palisade. This particular Hebrew word has been translated even by such modern versions as the NASB and NKJV as “battlement”, and by Youngs and the NIV as “tower” in the Song of Solomon 8:9. Not only does the King James Bible translate Genesis 25:26 as “by their towns, and by their CASTLES” but so too do Wycliffe 1395, Tyndale 1534, the Great Bible 1540, Matthew's Bible 1549, the Bishops’ bible 1568, the Geneva Bible 1599, the Douay-Rheims 1610, the Bill Bible 1671, The Patrick Paraphrase 1822, Webster’s 1833, the Lesser Bible 1853 by Isaac Lesser, The Revised English Bible 1877, The Ancient Hebrew Bible 1907, the Douay 1950, the Hebrew Publishing Company translation 1936, The Word of Yah 1993, the 21st Century KJV Version 1994, The Revised Webster Bible 1995, The Third Millennium Bible 1998, the American King James Version 1999, God's First Truth 1999 - "in their towns and CASTLES twelve princes of nations.", the Third Millennium Bible 1998, The Revised Geneva Bible 2005, the Hebraic Transliteration Scripture 2010 - “and by their CASTLES; twelve princes according to their goyim (NATIONS).”, Biblos Interlinear Bible 2011, The Work of God's Children Illustrated Bible 2011 - "in their CASTLES", and the Biblos Interlinear Bible 2013 The Italian Diodati of 1649 also translates this word as castles - “nelle lor villate, e nelle lor CASTELLA”. The Portuguese Almeida Revisada e Corrigida 2009 also has the word “CASTLES” in it. It reads: “os seus nomes pelas suas vilas e pelos seus CASTELOS.” The French Martin 1744 also uses the word "CASTLES" - "selon leurs villages, et selon leurs châteaux" - châteaux means "castles" in French. The “castle” spoken about in this passage is not the ornate, fortified carved stone residence of a feudal lord. Rather it was a fortified garrison set up to protect the local villages and towns. It is the same word translated elsewhere in the NIV, NASB and NKJV as “tower” and “battlement”. If a person states “I believe The Bible is the inspired and inerrant words of God”, we should then examine this profession to see if it is indeed true. Does this person have a real and tangible Book made up of paper and ink that he can read, memorize and believe EVERY word found within its pages? Or does this person pick and choose among the various manuscripts, different conflicting versions, and preferred translations of individual words to essentially piece together their own variety of an “inspired and inerrant Bible” as they go along according to their own understanding? The fact is, this is the reality of what most Christians today are doing. And, of course, nobody is in total agreement with anybody else about which texts should be included nor how they should be translated. It's Every Man For Himself Versionism. Or as the Bible puts it - "Every man did that which was right in his own eyes." Judges 21:25 By His grace believing the Book, the Authorized King James Holy Bible, Return to Articles - http://brandplucked.webs.com/kjbarticles.htm

I'm about to send a wave of bummer across this blog. There may be some humor here, but mostly this post is going to tell an unfortunate tale. I'm doing this because I want to thank someone who cannot be identified. In the summer of 1984 I went to sleepaway camp. I had been to sleepaway camp three summers before this, but I think one or two years had gone by in between. I enjoyed those first three summers, especially the two that I spend at Camp Ramah in New England (Palmer, Massachusetts). I learned to paddle a canoe there, how to hit a ball with a tennis racket, and how to batik, and I got to experience Kabbalat Shabbat (that's the Friday night service for "welcoming" or "receiving" the Sabbath) outside in the mountain air. Most importantly, I made many great friends and even kissed a boy or two. The camp I attended in '84 was different. It was also a Jewish camp, and it had a Hebrew name, but I'm going to call it Camp Naked, because it was situated on the grounds of Ramblewood in Darlington, Maryland. If you click around that site, you come to figure out that Ramblewood caters to "alternative groups" that might wish to hold events in which guests are in their "natural state." Yes, really. It's in the middle of nowhere, away from main roads. Observe the towel etiquette when sitting, please. This camp experience was different for me, not because we ran around naked, but because I didn't have a good time there, to say the least. It turned out that half the girls I bunked with were in my class at school. My school was very small and, as in many high schools, students were categorized as "popular" or not. I was not, but for the most part everyone liked me. Even still, having those girls there was a problem. They were in that popular caste, and thus in another social world. Camp has a different dynamic than school, and it wouldn't be wrong to say that at Ramah, I was fairly popular. But at Camp N in 1984, with our hyperawareness of our places in the hierarchy, the girls from my school didn't suddenly become my friends. So from the very first, as people were getting to know each other, those girls from my school started getting chummy with the other girls, and then there was I. I quickly realized I was not making friends as I always had easily. What could I do? I folded up. This was whacked. This was bad. This was rock bottom. My counselors didn't help much: our "senior" counselor had an additional job at the camp, so we didn't see much of her and had two junior counselors instead. They were 16, not much older than we were. They hardly spoke to me the entire summer. (I heard that one of them suffered from a rare disorder that causes your boobs to move around your body, so that sometimes they're on her stomach, sometimes on her back, sometimes even on her head, which makes it hard to get a bra to stay. The other one became addicted to World of Warcraft and Second Life and never leaves her house.) There were a few other things I had going against me. We were 14, no longer kids, and some things had changed while I was off doing theater day camp: - My mother had followed the recommended clothing list to the letter and this meant I did not have enough clothes. I didn't have the right clothes either; my bunkmates came from wealthy families and their mothers bought them designer clothing. - I was not fat by any means, but I didn't have the eating-disordered starved bodies characteristic of most of my peers either. (A couple of the girls were actually chubby, but they made up for this with their fashion sense and exuberant personalities.) - I had hair that was a bit difficult to control, especially in the humidity, whereas the other girls had the kind of hair you could run a brush through in the morning and it would shine and look beautiful. - The hair on my legs was very light, nearly invisible, and I really had not felt the need to start shaving it yet. But leg shaving was a Big Deal at camp that summer. It was odd that I didn't do it. - I wore glasses, and they weren't like the glasses I have now that I get compliments on those days when I don't wear my contact lenses. - Most notably, I'm very fair and sunburn easily, while most of my bunkmates brought Coppertone SPF 2 tanning oil with them. When you are wearing shorts the color difference really stands out. Quiet? Or Undead?It gets even a little worse. People talked about me behind my back. I tried to ignore it but I kept thinking I heard them calling me a certain insulting name. It didn't come out into the open until the day we had auditions for the camp play. I'd done theater before--usually cast in funny roles--and I sing, and I figured I might be able to come out of my shell a bit this way. After the audition, I went to ask the counselors that were running things--both guys--when we might hear their decision. They said it would be soon, and one said "we have to work on the casting now, so why don't you make like a tree and get out of here." (It's "make like a tree and leave," dumbass.) That sounded mean in itself, but then the other guy said, "yeah, take off, Poltergeist." I froze. My eyes bugged out of my head. "W-what did you call me?" I asked him. "Poltergeist," he answered. "Isn't that what they call you?" When I ran away crying, I think he got his answer. It was the name I had pretended not to hear. He apologized later, of course, but I heard that over the next few years, he lost his swagger as he slowly grew into a giant, gelatinous mass, and took up residence in a swamp. He now eats swamp vegetation and the occasional toad. But I never knew why they called me that. Best guest: my "ghostly" pallor. Oooo, scary. Run away! Run away! She's heeeeerrrre. "I am Hugh" I wasn't the only one who had troubles. There was a guy there, and I'm a little fuzzy on his purpose at camp, but I think he did various jobs there. He had a mental disability of some kind, and he was openly teased by the wonderful Camp N population. I don't remember his name, but I'm going to call him Hugh, because it is a movie star name, and because it was the name the Enterprise crew gave to the Borg drone who became disconnected from the collective. Borg Hugh (a/k/a "third of five") turned out to be NOT evil at all, as Captain Picard was able to determine in this clip, but unfortunately he ended up getting reassimilated. You can see that underneath his scary cybernetic exterior, Hugh is a cutie-pie. Toward the end of my stay at Camp N, I got well and truly sick. I had a nasty sinus infection and was laying in a bed up on the second floor of the infirmary when the entire camp lost electricity and water. At that point they decided to send all the sickies back to their bunks to rest. I was feverish and dizzy, and I found myself at the top of a flight of stairs, looking down in fear, wondering how I would get down those stairs without falling (ever had a sinus infection like this?). All of a sudden (at least it was sudden in my memory), Hugh appeared. He took my arm and led me slowly and carefully down those treacherous stairs. I can't explain it, but there was so much kindness in that gesture. Hugh certainly didn't care that I was Poltergeist, just that I needed help. I could have kissed him. I wanted to put him in pocket and take him home, except I wasn't going home just yet. (When we did go home, there weren't enough seats on the bus, so I sat in the aisle perched on a duffel bag. It seemed fitting. All I could see out the window from that angle was the sky.) The Fame soundtracks (film and TV) were played constantly at camp. This song is for you, Hugh. You're a star. I don't know where you are, but I know you've become one with the sun. Epilogue: some months after camp I went to a youth group dance. I'd washed off the scum of Camp N, and had a wonderful time socializing and dancing with guys I met. Some camp people were at this dance and I steered way clear of them. At one point, the D.J. announced that a song was being dedicated to me and Hugh. This was meant to be cruel, and I (and Hugh too I assume) ignored it, pretending we didn't hear. Hugh, I owe you a slow dance. And as for my fellow campers and camp counselors, my mutant friends with advanced cerebral capabilities have seen that some of you, sometimes, cry in your coffee, and you're not sure why.

On Monday December 5, 2016, the fifth prime minister of Italy in 10 years tendered his resignation. It was consequent upon a big defeat in a referendum on constitutional changes. At 41, Matteo Renzi was Italy’s youngest-ever prime minister. Unfortunately, he staked his ministership on the referendum and the vote sent him out of office. The vote followed a familiar hue. On June 23, 2016, 52% of British people voted for Brexit. That was the outcome of the referendum on UK membership of the European Union. A stay vote had seemed unassailable and Brexit unimaginable, yet the people voted for it. That vote sent shockwaves into the EU jeopardizing the entire project. Would there be Frexit? Would France follow suit? On the surface, the people seem to be voting against their own economic interest. But as Rachel Kleinfield of Carnegie Endowment for International Peace observed, “People are not Marxists. They don’t only have material interests. They have identities. They have a sense of understanding of the world.” Dubbed “populism,” Brexit and the like have been interpreted as a people protest against political elitism. Yet on closer look these “protest votes” are a pushback against “the agenda” – the agenda to rob people of their national identity and redefine society significantly. A new world order. Being authors of the agenda this generation of politicians cannot accept the pushback. And so they have come up with all sorts of explanation as to why elections are being lost. The new culture of “political correctness” fostered on the world disdains acknowledgement of truth. We’re in the age of “post-truth.” That is Oxford’s Dictionary Word of the Year 2016. In France the incumbent president, Francois Hollande of the Socialist Party though eligible to run for a second term announced he would not contest the election. This was the first time since 1958 when France’s fifth republic was created, that an incumbent president would not seek reelection. In announcing he would not run again, Hollande spoke as follows: “The far right calls us to retreat, to exit Europe and the world. They’re taking as reference what happened in the United States of America.” In the West African nation of Ghana, John Dramani Mahama nobly conceded defeat in the 2016 presidential election. Contrast with Sheikh Prof. Alh. Dr. Yahya Jammeh who famously retracted his electoral defeat concession days after the result. That decision has the potential to plunge the poor West African nation into civil war. In Germany the prime minister, Angela Merkel whose polls still seem so strong was confronted by an unwelcome development. A 24-year-old Tunisian migrant and asylum seeker ran a truck into a Christmas market in Berlin killing 12 and wounding 48 others. She had been the chief champion of open borders, letting in 1.1 million migrants from war torn Syria. Incidentally she was attending an award ceremony to celebrate the International Day of Migrants. But on a Facebook posting of a poignant photo of herself, David Cameron, President Barrack Obama of America, Francois Hollande and Matteo Renzi someone had captioned, “And then there was one. Merkel next?” Obama was of course finishing his term in office. On Friday, January 20, 2017 he would cease to be president of America, handing over to his nemesis, Donald Trump. Obama had sworn in several public fora Trump would never be voted president. He staked his legacy on the outcome of the election. But Obama’s real legacy is removal of the ancient boundary marks the fathers had set. (Proverbs 22:28) Yet Donald Trump is no ordinary politician. Indeed he is not a politician. He’s a real estate mogul with improbable hair who ran an improbable campaign. He’s like that battering ram in Daniel’s vision with two huge uneven horns of disdain for the establishment and political incorrectness. The ram charged west, north and south. No beasts could stand up to him. He did just as he pleased, strutting as if he were king of the beasts, magnifying himself. (Daniel 8:3-4) Unlike his opponent Hillary Clinton, he presented no detailed plan of action. Just programme bullet points and a marketing slogan – Make America Great Again! Here are the bullet points: Build a wall between America and Mexico which Mexico will pay for; temporarily ban Moslems from entering America to stem the tide of terrorism (He’s now ambivalent on this); bring jobs back to America; renegotiate extant agreements like the North American Free trade Agreement and Trans Pacific Partnership; repeal Obamacare; cut taxes, and deal with the apocalyptic constellation ISIS. As candidates go, this was the most flawed candidate. He is thrice married and was caught on tape using very crude and vulgar terms. The tape was strategically released a month to the election yet it didn’t sink him! It would have sunk the Titanic. Trump’s opponent on the other hand was described by Obama as the most qualified candidate in American history. She is an experienced stateswoman, wife of a former president and 67th United States Secretary of State. She spent a staggering $1.4 billion to prosecute the campaign and she still lost. (Trump spent $932.3 million). She was backed by the presidency, a powerful liberal media coalition, well-resourced non-governmental organisations, and big donors. And yet she lost. One of the biggest players in the concluded election is 85 year-old Hungarian-American of Jewish descent. His name is George Soros. He qualifies as curious George. He neither believes in God nor identifies with his heritage. As a 14 year-old he had gone round his native Hungary with a Nazi officer seizing the assets of his fellow Jews. He expresses no remorse about this portion of his personal history. If not him it would have been someone else is his justification. But George Soros is not your average magnate. In July 2014 Forbes listed him as the 27th richest man in the world, the world’s richest hedge-fund manager and 7th on the list of the 400 wealthiest Americans. He’s worth $24.9 billion. He is accused of using his money to destabilize nations. He bets against national currencies. Thailand labeled him an “economic war criminal.” His bet against the Thai Baht is said to have triggered the Asian financial crisis. With his extraordinary wealth he has funded revolutions in dozens of European countries, including Czechoslovakia, Croatia and Yugoslavia. He is fingered in the crisis in Ukraine. Russia declared his NGO a security threat. There’s a lot more to the refugee crisis in Europe than meets the eye. Google “Merkel Plan Soros Connection” Soros’ political philosophy evokes eschatology. He has a globalist vision. His agenda is the destruction of national borders. He sees national borders as obstacles to his peculiar vision. He pushes his agenda through his appropriately named Open Society Foundations. Between 1979 and 2011 Soros donated more than $11 billion to his causes. This is a man who sees himself as supra sovereign. Says he’s fancied himself “as some kind of god” and carried potent “messianic fantasies” since childhood. He aims to curtail America’s sovereignty. And not just America, nations in general. He believes in subordination of nations. In 1998 he wrote, “The sovereignty of states must be subordinated to international law and international institutions.” He spent or committed to spend over $13million to support Hillary Clinton and other Democrats in the last election cycle. What was most intriguing about the Hillary Clinton loss however is that poll after poll predicted victory for her. Of the ten leading polls only IBD/TPP gave Trump a chance of winning as at November 7, a day before the election. These poll experts have successfully called elections in the past, some using powerful and sophisticated algorithms. Yet they all got it wrong. By some estimates some 200 polls got it wrong. The polls remind one of that story in the Bible in which 400 prophets prophesied victory for the military partnership of two kings. (1 Kings 22) All prophesied success except a rebel prophet. He was implored to make the yes vote unanimous but he balked. He was branded an ancient equivalence of a non-progressive alt–right individual. There was ironically a prophecy-performance by one of those prophets of old, not unlike the nightly performances of pundits on CNN. He made a set of iron horns, brandishing them in demonstration of how the royal partnership would gore the enemy. Alas the battle turned out like Hillary Clinton’s prophesied victory. And so did Trump win. A spirit of delusion seemed to have descended on the pollsters, pundits and prophets on an industrial scale. Why did such a flawed candidate win? Truth is, God never uses a moral prism for installation of people in power. Of the 42 kings who ruled ancient Israel and Judah, all except 8 did evil in the sight of God. A notable was Jeroboam. Those 34 kings spent a total of 359 years in power. God has been known to use kings who didn’t even know him. Cyrus the Great didn’t know God. (Isaiah 45:4) When it comes to political power, what is of essence to God is his programme. God will install whoever fits the bill. Note that God’s political programme includes “contra programmes.” It’s the Judas paradox. It accommodates the Antichrist. As it is written, “None of the rulers of this age understood this wisdom; for if they had they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.” (1 Corinthians 2:8) The elevation of kings is not denominated in human righteousness. It is rooted in the sovereignty of God. “The most High ruleth in the kingdom of men, and giveth it to whomsoever he will, and setteth up over it the basest of men.” (Daniel 4:17 KJV) And God has political signature flourishes. He’s a political artist who likes to sign his work with improbabilities. When the ordinary course of political ablution devolves into the improbable, God must necessarily become a suspect. As implausible as it seemed the Watchers installed an African as the president of America. The Watchers are an executive class of angels responsible for political installations and executive outcomes. (Daniel 4:17) The spiritual man judges all things. (1 Corinthians 2:15) Sons of Issachar understand the times. (1 Chronicles 12:32) When the whole earth begins to speak the same vocabulary, and men begin to journey eastward, and they say one to another let us build a tower institution whose top will reach the heavens to challenge the suzerainty of God, and let us make a name for ourselves as a community of humans so we cannot be scattered…Then man has found his way back to Babel. Babel is Babylon. (Genesis 11:1-9) May the Lord grant you understanding this New Year! © #Illuminare Leke Alder / email@example.com

Dobrodzien Jewish Cemetery Dobrodzień was established in 1374. Jewish residents began to settle in the area in the 18th century. In 1781, a wooden synagogue was built. In 1787, there were 120 Jewish residents in Dobrodzień. In 1848, a stone synagogue was built. In 1849, there were 233 Jewish residents in the town. Due to the western migration Jews to Śląsk, the number decreased to 175 in 1896. Despite the increasing anti-Semitic sentiments, there were 38 Jewish residents in the city in 1933. In 1939, there were only 14. It is not entirely known what happened to them, likely they were transported to one of the ghettos in the General Government. The Jewish cemetery in Dobrodzień is located approximately 3 km east of the city center. To the north, from the side of the village of Gosławice, there is an access path. The cemetery is rectangular in shape with an acreage of 0.54 hectares, and is surrounded by a stone wall. The original layout is not visible. The borders have been preserved and correlate to the borders from 1939. The cemetery was most likely founded around 1729. In 1939, it became the property of the Jewish Association of Germany, and in 1943, it was taken over by the Gestapo. During World II, it was destroyed, a process that continued after 1945. After the war, the undertaker’s quarters were demolished. There are approximately 200 matzevot preserved in the cemetery, the oldest dating back to 1729 or 1730. The majority are made of sandstone or limestone. Decorations and inscriptions in Hebrew and German have also been preserved. Among the tombstones are some belonging to the relatives of Edyta Stein (canonized by the Catholic Church). As part of the “Antyschematy” project, students from Poland, Germany and Israel cleaned the area, and a lapidary was built from the broken pieces of tombstones in July 2001. The project was coordinated and implemented by the Janusz Korczak Society of Poland. At the same time, the tombstones were inventoried. On May 27th 1988, the cemetery was added to the Register of Historical Landmarks under the designation 439/88.

For 300 days, Noah, his family and two of every non-kosher species of animal – minus those of the sea – and seven of every kosher one occupied a three-deck ark of wood. Just what stories did Noah tell his children to pass the time? The question might be a bit tongue-in-cheek – the Torah records Noah's age at the beginning of the Great Flood as 600; his children were also well grown and married – but nevertheless underscores an important point for Rabbi Mendy Elishevitz: Judaism sees in the animal world many lessons for our own proper behavior. "The Talmud says that the rabbis learned from animals," says Elishevitz, the creator of the newest section of the Chabad.org Web site, Noah's Ark, which aims to engage children and their parents in a dialogue and exploration of Torah as it relates to the animal kingdom, and vice versa. Chief in the minds of Elishevitz and the Chabad.org development team is to offer an Internet-based Jewish zoo, of sorts. The launch of the Web page, located at www.chabad.org/noahsark, earlier this week corresponds with this Shabbat's Torah portion, which tells the story of Noah. "Noah's teivah," says Elishevitz, using the Hebrew word for the ark, "was the first zoo ever. In a way, we're trying to guess what Noah told his kids." Thus, the entry for the flamingo – which besides featuring high-resolution photographs and a brief description of the tropical water fowl allows users to watch of video of flamingos and hear their calls – teaches about the uniqueness of the G‑dly soul. "The flamingo has a very distinctive way of feeding – it eats upside down!" reads the first of two "Talking Points." "Our soul, according to Judaism, also bends over backwards: It came from heaven where it was near G‑d and descended into a 'shallow' physical body where G‑dliness is concealed. "But the trip is promising," continues the lesson. "Through Torah and mitzvot, our soul can achieve great 'profits,' and reach levels that were only a dream beforehand." Pamela Ehrenkranz, the executive director of the UJA/Federation of Greenwich, Conn., who is credited as the original inspiration for the site, calls Noah's Ark "a wonderful way for children to realize that Judaism has something to say about the animals." Ehrenkranz says that during a meeting with Chabad.org's executive director, Rabbi Zalman Shmotkin, she brought up the idea of making a trip to the zoo an act of Jewish involvement. Ehrenkranz sees in the final product a way to connect children to Judaism in a manner that is not overbearing. "Anything that connects a Jewish child to their faith is inherently a good thing. There need to be multiple doorways to the Jewish world," she explains. "We're in a world where, whether we like it or not, we are constantly having to make Judaism relevant to our kids." One advantage to the site, she points out, is that most elementary school students are assigned an animal project at some point before Grade 6. That they can now do their research on a Jewish Web site is phenomenal, she asserts. |Video clips and sound files round out the offerings of Noah’s Ark. While the idea of using animals to illustrate moral lessons may not be entirely new, it was the Sixth Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn, of righteous memory, who encouraged his aide, Rabbi Nissan Mindel, to publish a series of Torah lessons drawn from examples in nature and geared towards children. And for 40 years, the Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Schneerson of righteous memory, would edit Mindel's entries, adding facts, lessons and more. The resulting column, "In Nature's Wonderland," was published by the Kehot Publication Society, the publishing arm of Chabad-Lubavitch, in the children's periodical Talks and Tales. Elishevitz, still working on more animal entries for the Web page, relies heavily on the Kehot original. "We're taking these articles and paring them down language-wise to become accessible to a younger audience," says the rabbi, a graphic designer by hobby who also is the associate director of the Chabad House in the Israeli city of Karmiel. "The goal was to keep it short and sweet. We also discovered a bunch of new facts and insights in other sources." The entry on turtles, for example, references not only Mindel's column, but the Encyclopaedia Britannica, an article on the endangered status of Ghana's marine turtles, and Conservation International's Turtle Conservation Fund. Noah's Ark also features a children's "Ask Noah" feature, dealing with such issues as the purpose of animals in creation and the idea of animal rights. Special sections for kosher animals and sea creatures are currently in the works. "The Internet can be a tremendous resource," states Elishevitz. "For children or really anybody who find it difficult to relate directly to certain mitzvot, this is a great way of passing along Torah-true insights." "We hope that this feature will resonate with children and families and help them discover that Judaism has relevance far beyond the classroom or synagogue," states Elishevitz. Ehrenkranz says that she finds the site a great resource for adults as well as children. "I love the idea that a Jewish family could go to a zoo within a Jewish framework because of this site," she asserts. "They can download things from this Web site so that the family can see things not just through childlike eyes of wonder, but through Jewish eyes as well."

“Israel’s refusal to freeze settlements even temporarily should surprise no one: the enigma is rather that anyone still finds that refusal confusing. Israel’s strategy for annexing the West Bank is recorded in Israeli government maps and settlement Master Plans dating back decades.” by: Virginia Tilley – Mondoweiss With 25 years of experience under my belt analysing the Middle East conflict, and as a close observer of US foreign policy with a pragmatic attitude toward its realist exigencies, I have never seen anything as destructive, humiliating and ruinously conceived as the “incentive” package now being offered by the US to Israel for a 3-month settlement freeze. It is our country’s foreign policy nadir: a deal is so damaging to US interests that it is hard to find words for it. What can be said plainly is that US citizens – yes, even those jaded, tired, embittered, disillusioned folks who have watched this stuff for too long – have to rise up and move fast to stop this, in the name of our country’s future. Let us briefly consider just what’s being proposed here. Israel has been asked (asked!) to freeze illegal settlement construction in the West Bank for a lousy three months in the interests of the so-called peace process. This brief hiatus is purely cosmetic. Jewish settlements in this occupied territory have been steadily and deliberately eradicating taking over East Jerusalem and the West Bank for over 40 years. The whole full-bore settlement construction programme makes open nonsense of partition now, as well as the putative “peace process”, by “eating the pizza”. But Israel has refused even a short-term freeze. And the US, egg all over its face, is being reduced to bribing the Israelis with a mind-boggling package of incentives – $3 BILLION in military hardware, equivalent to Israel’s annual automatic US package – just for three months of a partial freeze on construction, after which construction will continue unabated. Israel’s refusal to freeze settlements even temporarily should surprise no one: the enigma is rather that anyone still finds that refusal confusing. Israel’s strategy for annexing the West Bank is recorded in Israeli government maps and settlement Master Plans dating back decades. For reasons too complicated to summarise here, deep divisions in Israeli society and politics make changing that policy effectively impossible at this late hour, as it is entrenched in Israeli doctrine, politics, policy and practice at levels so deep that the State’s very survival is implicated in it. The entire Israeli government, from the Agriculture Ministry to the World Zionist Organisation, is fully involved in and committed to building the West Bank settlements. But no one in the White House seems to have told President Obama this. He has already been deeply humiliated in world eyes when he insisted that Israel freeze settlement construction and Israel (predictably) gave him the diplomatic finger. Ever since that debacle, he has looked like a tin man in Middle East politics. Many wondered – first when, then whether – the US might find some spine with Israel over a situation so obviously damaging to the country’s image and interests. But Obama’s language about the settlements lately has been mealy stuff about “unhelpful” and “both sides”. As billions of tax dollars sink into the Afghan morass and US soldiers are shot down in ditches, the US superpower can’t get Israel to do diddly to help out and isn’t willing even to try. On the contrary, the US is committed to helping Israel do the opposite of what it urgently needs and what its own rhetoric asks for. Normally, of course, the US would just strong-arm the Palestinians. But the Palestinian Authority is down to its last thong of dignity and even this is ready to snap. It can’t participate in a peace process that’s so openly idiotic. Politically, and despite the partial economic benefits that appointed Prime Minister Fayyad has brought to a narrow sector of Palestinian society in the West Bank, the PA is on the brink of implosion. Looking too much like a stringed puppet dancing in an empty diplomatic theatre, “negotiating” for a territory vanishing day by day, Mr. Abbas confronts a level of shame that even hard-core PA cronies have to consider soberly. For years, he has cultivated the image of a much-abused Palestinian patriot on the brink of resignation, enduring endless insults from Israel and the US only to do his best by the Palestinian people. But that always dubious story is crumbling to reveal a sordid truth: whatever its individual members’ intentions, the PA is effectively a cluster of native clients sucking up funds and graces from enemy patrons who are happy to pay a self-serving indigenous elite to keep the native masses quiet. This classic colonial deal can be sustained only as long as the Palestinian people as a whole are not smacked in the face with it. But why does the US care about sustaining this farce? To understand the outlandish military deal now being offered, we have to recognise the whole Middle East “peace process” as a survival pact. The US needs the PA to help keep alive the whole fake story about the PA – Oslo’s “Palestinian Interim Self-Government Authority”, supposedly “interim” to full Palestinian independence but actually “interim” to Israel’s final victory – to achieve what it needs to do in Afghanistan. Israel still needs the PA, too, because otherwise Israel will be identified for what it is: an Apartheid state. The Ramallah-PA elite relies on the coloniser’s needs — indirect rule of the natives – for its very existence. So everyone needs the game a little longer and, if all goes right, it will work out for all of them. The US and Israel assume that when Israel’s eastern border (marked by the Wall plus the Jordan Valley) is finally consolidated, the PA will serve as the “self-government authority” – language straight out of the South African Bantustans, not incidentally – that will keep the natives quiet in assigned “reserves” which may or may not be called a state. The Ramallah PA hopes to land on its feet: a native elite that can enrich itself on sweetheart deals with Israel that it will cultivate by ensuring “security”. Counting on this pact, Israel need contemplate no true change to settlement policy because, token protests aside, the PA will take whatever it can get. No one in the US government really cares where Israel decides to put its borders, so the US government will not insist on any change either. The only concern is keeping up appearances. The short-sightedness of this plan is obvious and sad: it can’t but culminate in Palestinian revolt, Israeli violence, security dilemmas throughout the region and periodic regional upheavals. But then, colonists always assume that colonialism will win out somehow. Even sadder is that the US actually has immense power in this situation and need do very little to deploy it. All it has to do to alter the entire power balance in the Middle East – in the interest of its own desperate situation in Afghanistan and its credibility as a world power – is sit back and abstain in the UN, leaving Israel to face the monumental international opprobrium that is brewing around its multitudinous human rights violations and sins against international security. Instead, the US is now doing the opposite: promising openly to protect Israel from any such blame, however legitimate, and handing over twenty – TWENTY – F35 stealth attack jets, the latest in US military stealth equipment, as well as unnamed satellite intelligence capacity and other cutting-edge technology. And for what? A 3-month token freeze that will end with Israel bouncing back to exactly the same strategy as before, putting the US back in the same impossible situation by February 2011. Of course, it’s unlikely that the US is really doing this. Probably the deal was in the works anyway – maybe to capacitate Israel to strike Iran, in reality or as a threat – and some pro-Israel fanatic in the White House thought it might make slightly better sense to the world if cast as a sweetener to Israel regarding the always-fictive “peace process”. The opposite is true: attaching this colossal military transfer to a 3-month diplomatic nod from Israel makes the US look like a giant on its knees to a local mafia thug, handing over the family jewels (in both senses?) to cover the next short-term protection-racket instalment. It announces to the world that the US has no foreign policy leverage whatever and is reduced to giving away its best goods for the slightest temporary cooperation by a rude ally that claims openly to control its foreign policy. It also announces to the world that we are ready to destabilise the entire planet to plead for the most immaterial of Israel’s diplomatic graces. It indicates an infatuation with Israel so craven as to betray the foundations of our country’s essential interests – to remain a credible power in world affairs. (And let’s not even go into how deeply it abuses and insults the millions of desperate jobless Americans for whom $3 billion in mortgage assistance, education and job training could make all the difference – and whose children are being killed or maimed in Afghanistan as this disgusting deal goes forward to make their lot worse.) I don’t usually speak like this, but this is a matter for US patriots. I don’t mean tea-party dolts, I mean liberal principled citizens people who – even grown cynical after decades of disappointments and disillusionments – still in their hearts really care about the US and what we always believed it was founded to become. And I include people who don’t much care one way or the other about the Middle East. For, although it will indeed be ruinous for the Middle East, and catastrophic for US relations with the Middle East, this crisis isn’t only about the Middle East. We cannot possibly hand over vast first-strike armaments at the tune of $3 billion on the utterly shaming rationale of coaxing an arrogant local power into a minor diplomatic gesture with a dinky 90-day limit. Doing so would mark the end of the US as any kind of sensible player in the world. Virginia Tilley is a professor of political science and international relations and author of The One-State Solution. She lives in Cape Town and can be reached at firstname.lastname@example.org. Thanks to John Haines for circulating her piece first.

Bill Cloud was raised in a traditional Christian home in South Georgia. Yet, he has only been truly interested in his faith since the fall of 1988. After being born again, Bill immediately developed a hunger for the Word of God and in particular the Hebraic perspective of the Bible. Shortly after his "born again" experience, Bill had the opportunity to visit Israel and participate in a celebration of the Feast of Tabernacles. It was during this time that God gave him a deep love for the land, the people and the language. Under the tutelage of a local rabbi, Bill began studying Hebrew very soon thereafter and has become quite prolific at reading and writing the Holy Tongue. Since then, he has spent many hours studying, not only the Hebrew text, but the Hebraic roots of Christianity as well. This research has been rewarded with a keen insight into Biblical Judaism and its relationship to Christianity. This interest is tied to Bill's desire to unlock the deep secrets of the Word of God and to teach them, along with our Hebraic roots, to believers in Messiah. Furthermore, this insight has allowed Bill to better understand the prophetic element of Scripture. As a result of this study, Bill has developed a variety of media resources dealing with prophetic themes as well as teachings related to our lost Hebraic heritage. For five years, Bill and his wife Beth served as Youth Pastors in a large church in Central Florida. For over three years, Bill served as chief researcher, writer and Publications Director for Perry Stone and Voice of Evangelism Ministries. Since that time Bill has written articles for the Voice of Evangelism magazine, as well as for God's News Behind The News. Bill is a featured speaker in venues throughout the country and has appeared with notable teachers such as Hal Lindsay, J.R. Church, Jack Van Impe, John Hagee, Grant Jeffrey, Perry Stone, Tim La Haye, Chuck Missler, the late Yacov Rambsel and the late Zola Levitt. He has also made several appearances on a variety of television broadcasts seen on TBN, Daystar, Inspiration, SkyAngel, WHT, and TCT. Through Shoreshim Ministries, Bill and his family have launched an effort to re-introduce Christians to the Jewish Y'shua and to educate believers in the Hebraic roots of their faith. As a benefit of this information, disciples of the Messiah can more accurately interpret end-time events and better discern our role in these last days. Bill, his lovely wife Beth, and their four children reside in Cleveland, Tennessee.

Salah al-Khalidi (fl. late 20th century) makes plain how these motifs of Koranic Jew-hatred are interpreted by Hamas in a manner that is entirely consistent with classical exegeses. Extracts (translated from the original Arabic by Dr. Michael Schub in my The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism) are provided below from Khalidi’s major work Haqa’iq Koraniyya al Qadiyya al-Filastinniya [“Koranic Facts Regarding the Palestinian Issue”] which was first published in 1991 by the Hamas Publishing House Manshūrāt Filastin al-Muslima, and translated into Urdu, Hindi, Turkish, Russian, and English (formerly available online at www.assabeel.com) due to its international popularity. Humiliation is attached to the Jews for their entire lifetime: they were humiliated in Egypt, and when they arrived in [sic] Palestine, and when they were exiled from Palestine, and when they dispersed into the valleys of the earth. What concerns us here-in our discussion of the Jewish character-is to indicate that this humiliation is to be considered as an inveterate Jewish character trait, and a destructive Jewish perversion. Humiliation is one of their historical attributes, a fixed fact of their existence, and a qaa`ida, basis of their life… (Koran 2:61) The Jews are humiliated because they disbelieved in God, killed His prophets, disobeyed His emissaries, transgressed His prohibitions-all of this is humiliation. They are humiliated-and this is why they search out lustful indulgences, and have become their slaves. All of this is humiliation. It is impossible that the Jews could not be cursed. How could they not be accursed when they are attributed with such degenerate inveterate character traits, twenty of which we have demonstrated above. (Note: Khalidi earlier states, ‘We have extracted from Koran twenty Jewish traits. The Jews are: liars, perverters (of the Text), envious, tricky, fickle, mercurial, sardonic, treacherous, in error, causing others to be in error, merchants, fools, humiliated, dastards, misers, avid for (this) life, disloyal to their firm contracts, rush into sinful aggression, concealers of true evidence, corrupters in the earth, and obstructors in God’s path.’ For specific Koranic citations confirming his litany see here). They are worthy of eternal curse because of the villainous traits they display and the corrupt evils they have perpetrated. The Jews are in a condition of mal`ana, i.e. everyone pours out curses on them; God has cursed them, the angels have cursed them, their prophets have cursed them, the good people among them have cursed them, and everyone has cursed them. They are deserving of this eternal and continual damnation until the day of resurrection when they will encounter God’s wrath, fury, and punishment. They were accordingly exiled from God’s mercy, and kept afar from His goodness. Many Koranic verses were revealed emphasizing…the judgment upon them of cursed damnation, and exile from His mercy, e.g. Koran 5:13: “For breaking their covenant, We curse them, and have made their hearts hard.” And Koran 5:60…And Koran 5:64…And Koran 5:78…” The annihilationist sentiments regarding Jews, as expressed by Hamas cleric al-Zarad, are also rooted in Islamic eschatology [end of times theology], and incorporated permanently into the foundational 1988 Hamas Covenant. As characterized in the hadith (the words, deeds, and even unspoken gestures of Muhammad as ostensibly recorded by his earliest pious Muslim companions), Muslim eschatology highlights the Jews’ supreme hostility to Islam. Jews are described as adherents of the Dajjâl—the Muslim equivalent of the Anti-Christ—or according to another tradition, the Dajjâl is himself Jewish. At his appearance, other traditions maintain that the Dajjâl will be accompanied by 70,000 Jews from Isfahan wrapped in their robes, and armed with polished sabers, their heads covered with a sort of veil. When the Dajjâl is defeated, his Jewish companions will be slaughtered- everything will deliver them up except for the so-called gharkad tree, as per the canonical hadith (Sahih Muslim, Book 41, Number 6985) included in the 1988 Hamas Covenant (in article 7). This hadith is cited in the Covenant as a sacralized, obligatory call for a Muslim genocide of the Jews: …the Islamic Resistance Movement aspires to realize the promise of Allah, no matter how long it takes. The Prophet, Allah’s prayer and peace be upon him, says: “The hour of judgment shall not come until the Muslims fight the Jews and kill them, so that the Jews hide behind trees and stones, and each tree and stone will say: ‘Oh Muslim, oh servant of Allah, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him,’ except for the Gharqad tree, for it is the tree of the Jews.” (Sahih Muslim, Book 41, Number 6985) Littman cites an April 12, 2002, Friday sermon delivered by the Palestinian Authority’s Sheikh Ibrahim Madhi at the Sheikh Ijlin Mosque in Gaza City, broadcast live on Palestinian Authority television demonstrating how the destruction of Israel’s Jews heralds further Islamic conquests. Madhi quoted from this hadith—including the curious reference to the “Jewish” Gharqad tree—and then stated: “We believe in this hadith. We are convinced also that this hadith heralds the spread of Islam and its rule over all the lands… ‘from the ocean to the ocean…’” This Judeo-centric Sunni eschatology resonates broadly, with an authoritative imprimatur, across Islamdom, in the modern era, and even within the Muslim diaspora. For example, Hajj Amin El-Husseini—“Godfather” of the modern Palestinian Muslim jihadist movement—concluded his compendious 1937 discourse on Islam’s canonical Jew-hatred by reproducing the hadith (Sahih Bukhari, Volume 4, Book 52, Number 177; Sahih Muslim, Book 041, Number 6985) about how the destruction of the Jews is requisite for ushering in the messianic times. The current Palestinian Authority Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Muhammad Hussein repeated this canonical tradition during a January 9, 2012 sermon. Subsequently, during a May 10, 2013 sermon at Sunni Islam’s Vatican equivalent, Al-Azhar University, and its mosque, Muhammad Al-Mahdi, a senior scholar and head of the Sharia association at Al-Azhar also proclaimed the same end of times Jew-annihilating hadith. Finally, apropos to their longstanding Islamic relevance, Ibn Kathir’s 14th century commentary on Koran 4:155-159, which discusses Isa’s (the Muslim Jesus’) role in defeating the Dajjal (the Muslim “anti-Christ”), and his Jewish minions, invokes these same apocalyptic canonical hadith of Jew annihilation. Returning to the Hamas covenant, Article 28, which is free of any eschatological references, clearly “widens the circle of hate” towards Jews, as Littman observed, targeting all contemporary Jews: “Israel, Judaism and Jews challenge Islam and the Muslim people: ‘May the cowards never sleep.’” Articles 22 and 32 invoke modern conspiratorial themes reminiscent of European (secular) antisemitic motifs, especially the latter (article 32), which makes explicit mention of the Czarist Russian forgery, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. But even these articles are peppered with Koranic citations, including references in both 22 and 32 to Koran 5:64, a sort of ancient antecedent of The Protocols. (Arberry translation, Koran 5:64: “The Jews have said, ‘God’s hand is fettered.’ Fettered are their hands, and they are cursed for what they have said. Nay, but His hands are outspread; He expends how He will. And what has been sent down to thee from thy Lord will surely increase many of them in insolence and unbelief; and We have cast between them enmity and hatred, till the Day of Resurrection. As often as they light a fire for war, God will extinguish it. They hasten about the earth, to do corruption there; and God loves not the workers of corruption.“) Jihad is the other pillar of Hamas’ foundational Jew-annihilationist ideology featured in the 1988 Covenant. Once again, this is already suggested in the opening statement before the preamble which includes the following quote by Hasan al-Banna, founder of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood: “Israel will exist, and will continue to exist, until Islam abolishes it, as it abolished that which was before it.” Hamas, it should be noted, claims to be a wing of the International Muslim Brotherhood. Article 2 of the Hamas Charter, for example, states: “The Islamic Resistance Movement is one of the wings of Muslim Brotherhood in Palestine. The Muslim Brotherhood Movement is a universal organisation which constitutes the largest Islamic movement in modern times.” But the body of the Hamas Covenant includes unequivocal statements of Hamas’ irredentist commitment to the annihilation of Israel via jihad. Jihad martyrdom is lauded in article 8 “the Hamas slogan,” (in fact borrowed from the 1928 Charter of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood), which states, “Allah is its target, the Prophet is its model, the Koran its Constitution; Jihad is its path, and death for the sake of Allah is the loftiest of its wishes.” Article 13 makes plain that Hamas’ jihadism is completely incompatible with any meaningful Middle East peace settlement: Initiatives, and so-called peaceful solutions and international conferences, are in contradiction to the principles of the Islamic Resistance Movement. Abusing any part of Palestine is abuse against part of religion. Nationalism of the Islamic Resistance Movement is part of its religion. Its members have been fed on that…There is no solution to the Palestinian question except by Jihad. All initiatives, proposals, and International Conferences are a waste of time and vain endeavors. And article 15 (subtitled, “Jihad for the Liberation of Palestine is a Personal Duty”) elucidates classical jihadist theory, as well as its practical modern application to the destruction of Israel by jihad: The day the enemies conquer some part of the Muslim land, jihad becomes a personal duty of every Muslim. In the face of the Jewish occupation of Palestine, it is necessary to raise the banner of jihad. This requires the propagation of Islamic consciousness among the masses, locally [in Palestine], in the Arab world and in the Islamic world. It is necessary to instill the spirit of jihad in the nation, engage the enemies and join the ranks of the jihad fighters. The indoctrination campaign must involve ulama, educators, teachers and information and media experts, as well as all intellectuals, especially the young people and the sheikhs of Islamic movements… It is necessary to establish in the minds of all the Muslim generations that the Palestinian issue is a religious issue, and that it must be dealt with as such, for [Palestine] contains Islamic holy places, [namely] the Al-Aqsa mosque, which is inseparably connected, for as long as heaven and earth shall endure, to the holy mosque of Mecca through the Prophet’s nocturnal journey [from the mosque of Mecca to the Al-Aqsa mosque] and through his ascension to heaven thence. “Being stationed on the frontier for the sake of Allah for one day is better than this [entire] world and everything in it; and the place taken up in paradise by the [horseman's] whip of any one of you [jihad fighters] is better than this [entire] world and everything in it. Every evening [operation] and morning [operation] performed by Muslims for the sake of Allah is better than this [entire] world and everything in it.” (Recorded in the Hadith collections of Bukhari, Muslim, Tirmidhi and Ibn Maja). “By the name of Him who holds Muhammad’s soul in His hand, I wish to launch an attack for the sake of Allah and be killed and attack again and be killed and attack again and be killed.” (Recorded in the Hadith collections of Bukhari and Muslim) Unfortunately, Hamas’ views on the jihad against Israel, and Islamic Jew-hatred, are entirely concordant with those of the most authoritative religious educational institution within Sunni Islam-Al Azhar University, in Cairo, Egypt. Consider two complementary fatwas, one written January 5, 1956, by then grand mufti of Egypt, Sheikh Hasan Ma’moun, and another January 9, 1956, signed by the leading members of the Fatwa Committee of Al Azhar University—Sunni Islam’s Vatican—and the major representatives of all four Sunni Islamic schools of jurisprudence. These rulings elaborated the following key initial point: that all of historical Palestine—modern Jordan, Israel, and the disputed territories of Judea and Samaria, as well as Gaza—having been conquered by jihad, was a permanent possession of the global Muslim umma (community), “fay territory”—booty or spoils—to be governed eternally by Islamic law. Muslims cannot conclude peace with those Jews who have usurped the territory of Palestine and attacked its people and their property in any manner which allows the Jews to continue as a state in that sacred Muslim territory. [As] Jews have taken a part of Palestine and there established their non-Islamic government and have also evacuated from that part most of its Muslim inhabitants. . . . Jihad . . . to restore the country to its people . . . is the duty of all Muslims, not just those who can undertake it. And since all Islamic countries constitute the abode of every Muslim, the Jihad is imperative for both the Muslims inhabiting the territory attacked, and Muslims everywhere else because even though some sections have not been attacked directly, the attack nevertheless took place on a part of the Muslim territory which is a legitimate residence for any Muslim… Everyone knows that from the early days of Islam to the present day the Jews have been plotting against Islam and Muslims and the Islamic homeland. They do not propose to be content with the attack they made on Palestine and Al Aqsa Mosque, but they plan for the possession of all Islamic territories from the Nile to the Euphrates. Although free of eschatological references, the January 1956 Al Azhar fatwas’ language and arguments—pronounced from Sunni Islam’s most esteemed religious teaching institution—are otherwise indistinguishable from those employed just over three decades later by Hamas (in its 1988 covenant), revealing the same conjoined motivations of jihad, and conspiratorial Islamic Jew-hatred. Furthermore, espousing these ugly Islamic religious teachings at Al-Azhar has continued unabated over the intervening six nearly decades, till now. Al-Azhar’s two most recent spiritual leaders, Grand Imam Muhammad Sayyid Tantawi (who held that position from 1996-2010), and his successor, current Grand Imam, Ahmed al-Tayyeb, have reinforced this ignoble tradition of promoting jihadism and Islamic Jew-hatred directed at Israel, and Jews, generally.

Bringing Down Walls, Not Breaking Glass NOVEMBER 9, 1989 is the 20th anniversary of people bringing down the Berlin Wall, and various political leaders have gathered in Berlin today to celebrate. The Wall, the barrier between peoples came down, and with it crashed down the edifice of tyrannical Stalinism, and for that we give thanks, even if it was not exactly the "political revolution" leading to genuine freedom and social justice that some of our theoretical leaders acclaimed it to be. Many Germans,not just Westerners grumbling about the cost of incorporating "poor relations", but Ostis adding words like "arbeitslos" back to their vocabulary, have taken a more nuanced, thoughtful, view of the benefits, and downside, of re-unification. The biggest Left-wing party represented in Europe today is the Linkspartei, uniting left social democrats from the West with the reformed former Socialist Unity party in the East, which is where it gets the major part of its vote. Whatever we think of its leadership, this Left party is a space for those who want to rebuild a working-class, socialist Left. But nobody is proposing to rebuild the Wall. Stalinism as a regime may have collapsed, but Stalinism as a delusion persists in some places. The November newsletter of the Socialist History Society has a young man called Tom Bailey complaining that the editor, Mike Squires (a long-standing Communist Party member incidentally) had said "the East European states were not Socialist". Bailey insists that despite shortcomings "they were Socialist", and in case you think he is just arguing about names and labels, he goes on to say the rot set in with Soviet leadership after the death of Stalin. "Aside from negating 30 years of Socialism by denouncing Stalin, a number of 'reforms' were implemented.." So not only were the gulags and crimes of Stalin correct, denouncing them was a negation of socialism, which was apparently achieved in one country far earlier than the leaders of the October Revolution envisaged possible. What a pity that Stalin's pursuit of what Tom Bailey calls "the class struggle against bourgeois influences" necessitated killing most leaders of the Bolshevik party before they could appreciate this achievement. Or that, despite its riding to power after a workers' revolution (albeit one besieged by imperialism and imprisoned in Russian backwardness), the Soviet bureaucracy, obliged to extend its "socialism" to eastern Europe, did so by its own methods, keeping the working class out of exercising real power in these deformed "workers' states", mockingly titled "people's democracies". This does not mean that nothing was gained from the changes, or that there was nothing to defend in the Soviet Union or eastern Europe. But was it socialism? Bailey is within a step of stronger ground when he argues "the working class in the socialist countries did not take to the streets demanding an end to Socialism. Rather, the protests, discontent and apathy to capitalist restoration was due to issues such as party corruption, comparatively low living standards, and shortages.. This popular discontent was exploited by a new bourgeois class, arising from within the Party..." So what kind of 'socialism' leaves the workers 'apathetic' about defending what should have been their own gains, and permits a new bourgeoisie to turn state, or socially-owned wealth and means of production, into its own property? The working class did take to the streets in eastern Europe, and it started in East Berlin -not in 1989, but much earlier, in 1953. Giving rise to Brecht's quip, "Some party hack decreed that the people had lost the government's confidence and could only regain it with redoubled effort. If that is the case, would it not be be simpler, If the government simply dissolved the people and elected another?" What the workers rebelled against was not socialism. Calling it such only maintains the confusion which left workers in eastern Europe unable to step forward as a class to take power for itself, and left millions of workers in the West at best half-hearted, if not actually hostile, to those seen as advocating such "actually-existing socialism" as our goal. It has suited people like Margaret Thatcher to misidentify "socialism" with the Berlin wall. Its designation by the East German authorities as "the anti-fascist rampart" did not convince anyone who only had to observe the direction in which people were trying to flee, from what, and prepared to risk being shot. "If that is your socialism, you can keep it!" people thought. Now the Wall has gone, working people either side can compare notes, and the young who tore it down can measure the results against their hopes. Some people in eastern Germany, alienated under Stalinist rule and quickly disillusioned with liberal capitalism, have become easy fodder for those who see reunification as but a step in reviving Hitler fascism. We cannot commemorate the end of the wall without remembering the six days of racist violence in Rostock in 1992. A thousand-strong mob attacked immigrants, while thousands more stood and watched. This was one among many such ugly reminders of Germany's past. But Germany's revived Left and particularly anti-fascist young people have shown themselves ready to turn out against the new Nazis and show they mean it when they say 'Never Again!'. They deserve our respect, and support, and this solidarity against the racist Big Lie will only be served by engaging with truth, not clinging to discredited myths of our own. By an unfortunate coincidence, November 9 is also the anniversary of Hitler's 1938 state-organised pogroms against the Jews, what became known as the Night of Broken Glass, or Kristallnacht. The ostensible pretext was a desperate act by one 17-year old refugee, Herschel Grynszpan, who had shot a German diplomat,in Paris, on November 7. Grynszpan was driven to this by hearing how his parents and thousands of other stateless Polish Jews had been inhumanly deported by the Nazis. The night of co-ordinated violence that swept across Germany had clearly taken more than two days to prepare. While 'respectable' community leaders and politicians - not least the French Communist Party - sought to distance themselves from and denounce Grynszpan, Leon Trotsky - who knew what it was to be hounded from country to country and accused of all sorts of crimes - wrote an article "For Grynszpan", solidarising, if not with the youth's misguided action, with the spirit and motivation it showed. Gynszpan's case also inspired left-wing composer Michael Tippet's work, "A Child of Our Time". on Grynszpan's fate: The Kristallnacht pogroms did not incidentally diminish the admiration of some people in this country for Nazi Germany, nor did they lead countries like the United States to ease their immigration restrictions for Jewish refugees. Quite the contrary. Still, after the war and the Holocaust they were able to ease their consciences by backing immigration to, and partition of Palestine. So a new refugee problem was created. I was impressed when Daniel Barenboim brought his West-Eastern Divan orchestra to London that they ambitiously and meaningfully performed A Child of Our Time. For though Herschel Grynszpan perished with millions in the Holocaust, he remains to haunt us when governments continue to kick refugees from pillar to post, and reactionaries, as we see again, continue to regard the acts of small groups or individuals as legitimising collective punishment of entire communities or civil populations. Though the Berlin wall has come down, and so too did South African Apartheid, fresh walls are being erected to keep out the poor and the persecuted, and what some call Israel's "apartheid wall" and others an annexation wall, has gone up on Palestinian territory. But this symbol of oppression is also a target for resistance. As witness these two messages: "..during today's demonstration, demonstrators managed to take down a concrete slab AGAIN of the Wall using a hydraulic car jack. VICTORY FOR NI'LIN!!! If they can tear down the Berlin Wall in two days, for sure it can happen in Palestine too, and it's already starting in Ni'lin. see this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9xh4ouc8Lac and see this article: http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=237836 The section of the Wall in Ni’lin is the only place along the route of the barrier where a concrete wall has been erected in an attempt to deal with the civic, unarmed campaign waged by the village in protest of the massive land theft that will enable the expansion of the illegal settlements of Modi’in Il’it and Hashmonaim. Since Israel began its construction in the year 2002, This is the first time demonstrators succeed in toppling a part of Israel’s barrier which is a concrete wall. One of the demonstrators, Moheeb Khawaja, said during the protest: “Twenty years ago no one had thought the monster that divided Berlin into two could be brought down, but in only two days in November, it did. Today we have proven that this can also be done here and now. It is our land beyond this wall, and we will not give up on it. We will win for a simple reason – justice is on our side.”

4000bce - 399 400 - 1399 1400 - 1499 1500 - 1599 1600 - 1699 1700 - 1799 1800 - 1899 1900 - 1999 HERR BOHM: Mr. President, may it please the Tribunal, yesterday I submitted some of the documents which prove that many people were forced into the SA through legal compulsion. I should now like to continue my presentation of evidence in that direction. Documents SA-200, 201, '203, 208, and 213 demand service for young personnel in the financial administration. It is regrettable that on account of the attitude of one of the occupying powers the witness Dr. Meder could not appear here. Defense counsel for the SA was able to correspond with him until it became known that he had been selected as a witness in this Trial. In spite of all the efforts of the General Secretary of this High Tribunal we have not succeeded in bringing this witness to Nuremberg from the Russian Zone. This witness had been called to testify that in the years 1936 to 1944, 14 Reich Finance Schools ... THE PRESIDENT [Interposing]: Dr. Bohm, we are hearing you now upon your documents; we are not hearing you upon the question of any difficulties there may have been in getting witnesses. Kindly go on. HERR BOHM: The following are the Finance Schools which existed in the Reich: Herrsching, Ilmenau, Meersburg, Wo1lershof, Berlin, Molln, Feldkirch, Leipa, Leitmeritz, Bodenbach, Thom, Sigmaringen, and Boppard. Even private enterprises, to a large extent, requir6d membership in the HJ and the SA as a condition for employment. This is proved by Documents 215 and 216. Document SA-218 states that the directive of 3 October 1933 ... THE PRESIDENT: You are going a little bit too fast; your light is flickering. HERR BOHM: Very well, Mr. President, I shall try to speak more slowly. Document SA-218 states that the directive of 3 October 1933 ordered that the Auxiliary Engineer Service of the Technical Emergency Service was to be transferred into the SA. 22 Aug- 46 Document SA-220 deals with the question of whether expulsion from the SA was a reason for terminating an employment contract, and under certain circumstances the answer was "yes." A commentary on this point is furnished by Document 221, and quote: "The obligation under the oath sworn to the Fuehrer means that leaving the SA or any other association is absolutely impossible. Only physical unfitness or an assignment to special work elsewhere can warrant leaving the SA." This is an excerpt from the Handbook of the SA, published by permission of the Supreme SA Command. Document 222 also shows that expulsion from the Party or from its formations might result in loss of occupation. The fact that this was stated in a basic official directive of the Reich and Prussian Ministry of Justice explains why this attitude was adopted in practice. Therefore it is not surprising that even non-German quarters pointed out the existing coercion. As may be seen from Document SA-243, a Note of the Holy See dated 14 May 1934 reads: "The Holy See is aware of the extent to which freedom to make decisions is restricted in Germany today through the pressure brought to bear on officials, employees, workmen, scholars, even on the formerly free professions, in fact on almost 'all German citizens, by economic factors and by exploiting the anxieties for a bare existence." THE PRESIDENT: Is it 243 in your Document Book? HERR BOHM: 143, Mr. President. THE PRESIDENT: Go on. HERR BOHM: In the third part of my presentation of evidence, I should like to deal with the aims of the SA as they appeared to members of the SA who had no special leading position; thus, in keeping with the decision of the Tribunal of 13 March 1946, Paragraph 6, Figure 3, 1 shall quote testimony on behalf of the SA by members of the SA themselves. In Document 224, an excerpt of the periodical Der SA Fuehrer, a magazine for the SA, the term "Wehrtuchtigkeit" is defined as follows: "Instruction in the use of arms and the mastering of the weapons of war and their use will be given. to German men in the Wehrmacht by service and exercises." Document SA-224 shows clearly that the SA did not have anything to do with the Waffenschule (Military Training School), and it did not give military training to its members. This is also proved 22 Aug. 46 by Documents SA-225 and 226, again excerpts from the magazine Der SA Fuehrer, published by the Supreme SA Command. I quote: "In addition one can recognize the clear limits drawn between the tasks of the SA on the one hand, and those of the Wehrmacht on the other; these limits always have existed and always will exist. After the HJ, the SA only creates the necessary spiritual, mental, and physical preliminary conditions." Document 226 shows that Hitler was quite clearly and definitely opposed to giving the SA a military character, the character of a defense organization, of a militia or of a Free Corps. Document 229 shows that members of the SA could not have known of the criminal aims of the SA, as the Prosecution calls them, because already on 21 March 1925 the Rhineland Commission lifted the ban on the German Freedom Party and the National Socialist Party. How well Hitler knew how to lull the people to sleep is proved by his order of 1 July 1934, in which he gave to the R6hm Putsch a background entirely different from the real facts. Mr. Jackson has said that members of the various formations could not be charged with joining the organizations, but were charged with remaining- in the organizations, once they knew-as they did-of the conditions in the concentration camps. In this connection I should like to- submit Document 250, in which one of the most prominent members of the Catholic Church in Munich, who spent many years in a concentration camp, deals with the question of whether the injustices which took place in the Third Reich were easily apparent. The document quite clearly shows that the answer was "no." I quote: "For eight years I collected everything available concerning National Socialist laws, decrees, police measures, information about injustices, acts of violence, infamy, crimes, blasphemies, persecution of the Church, murder, et cetera. Hundreds of pages of the book The Persecution of the Catholic Church, published in 1940, which I have already mentioned, come from my collection. It will carry all the more weight if I testify that as far as atrocities in concentration camps and crimes in the occupied territories were' concerned, I could discover and report practically nothing." How, then, could the things which have now come to light be discovered by an ordinary person who moreover would not have at his disposal the sources of information available to Prelate Neuh5usler? Now, I shall turn to the third part of the presentation of documents which deals with the assertion of the Prosecution that the SA was a terror organization. What the real facts regarding this 22 Aug 46 so-called terror were may be seen from Documents 285, 286, and 287. The pamphlet quoting from the judgment of the State Tribunal of the Republic illustrates clearly that it was the KPI) (German Communist Party) which incited the people against the democratic republic; and that it was the KPD which propagated the class conflict. As is shown in Document 286, this incitement to class conflict was embodied in the so-called idea of world revolution. In this connection I also submit Document 132, which describes how civil war was advocated by the KPD in 1921. The terroristic conflicts, therefore, originated with the political Left. Document SA-287, a judgment passed by the State Tribunal on 14 January 1925 against Link and his associates, shows that in this period of latent civil war the call to fight the Fascists, that is the NSDA-P and the Reichswehr, was made again and again. The fact that the SA was established for this reason, namely, as a protection against the Leftists, is shown in Documents 311 and 314. These are excerpts from Adolf Hitler's book Mein Kampf. Document SA-300, an excerpt from Gisevius's book, Until the Bitter End, also states that pressure from the Reds produced counterpressure from the Brown Shirts. Although these were very like times of civil war, even an opponent such as Herr Gisevius must admit, and this is evident from Document SA-301, that the National Socialist revolution claimed comparatively few victims. In Document SA-302, Herr Gisevius admits that when excesses did occur, it was on the whole just a very small clique which perpetrated them. May I quote: "They were the group staffs, their hired staff guards, and that gang of hooligans which can be found wherever mischief is afoot." Documents SA-304, 305, and 306 show how seriously Hitler, as the Supreme SA Leader, was determined to prevent a civil war. For that reason he repeatedly in his many proclamations demanded discipline. In this connection I would like to present the directive of 30 March 1931' as Document SA-306. It expressly says, in Figure 2: "Every Party member, regardless of his position in the Party, will be immediately excluded from the Party if he should venture either deliberately to violate the regulations of the emergency decrees, or to tolerate or approve such offenses." Document SA-312 deals with the directive forbidding terrorization of Jewish citizens. In the fifth part of my document book I have set forth the attitude of the SA with regard to the Church. Document 316 shows that in 1933 the Party and the Church had come to an agreement. The proclamation of the German Episcopate shows that the Church believed it could be confident that the prohibitions and warnings 22 Aug. 46 previously issued were no longer necessary. For that reason, entire formations were again permitted to attend services. Document SA-317 says that youth was asked to join the formations of the Party and to work in them for the future of Germany. I quote: "For that reason, we mean to devote our entire Catholic heritage, Christian conservative ideas, and Christian progressive forces to the New Germany; to enhance her spirit and make it our own. We are, therefore, determined to work actively, with all the means and ways at our disposal, for the union of all Germans. And for the same reason, we commend to all our members a practical military training as their duty." "It must particularly be the task of youth to work with courage for a union between our vigorous national movement and the eternal Christian values." Document SA-320 mentions the assurance given in the 115th Session of the Bavarian Diet of 29 April 1931. It reads: "On the contrary, our Fuehrer, Adolf Hitler, has repeatedly stated that the Party will always be, led in a way which will not bring any Roman Catholic, as a faithful member of the National Socialist Party, into conflict with his conscience." Document SA-327, the Hitler speech of 23 March 1933, contains the same assurance: "The National Government considers both the Christian Churches factors of the greatest importance in the life of our nation. It will respect the agreements concluded between them and the administrations of the Under, and their rights shall not be infringed. The National Government will permit and safeguard the rightful influence of the Christian Churches in school and education. The Government is anxious to secure sincere co-operation between Church and State." This shows that there was no reason to anticipate a struggle with the Church, particularly since, after feelings had run high, a directive issued by the Fi1hrer's Deputy on 23 January 1939, Document SA-321, stated: "In my directives of 11 April 1937 and I June 1938 1 decreed that the Party, its formations, and its affiliated organizations were to abstain from influencing internal Church matters in any way." Document SA-326 shows that in 'the year 1931 there was no thought of exterminating the Jews, which unfortunately became a reality later. 22 Aug. 46 Now I shall deal with the members of the Stahlhelm who came from the Stahlhelm into the SA. May I draw the attention of the Tribunal to the SA Document Book dealing with the Stahlhelm. Document Number 1 is a radio address of the leader of the Stahlhelm, Franz Seldte. THE PRESIDENT: Which book is it? HERR BOHM: Book 4, Mr. President. The first document is a radio address of the leader of the Stahlhelm organization, Franz Seldte, delivered on 27 April 1933. It contains the condition for the transfer which subsequently took place, a condition based on sovereign rights. I quote: "Having no party affiliation, I hereby declare my entry into the National Socialist German Workers' Party, because this Party is the movement which will unite the entire German people in a single unit. I therefore place myself and the Stahlhelm Association of Front-line Soldiers which I founded, as a soldierly unit complete in itself, under the command of the Fuehrer, Adolf Hitler." Document 2 contains a statement of the Reichsleitung of the NSDAP, signed by Rudolf Hess and dated I May 1933, as taken from the newspaper Frankischer Kurier. This document shows that the Stahlhelm, despite its subordination to Hitler, was to remain a unit complete in itself. Document 3 is an excerpt from a report made by the leader of the Stahlhelm. on 28 April 1933. The first few paragraphs show that the deputy leader, Dilsterberg, was not willing to accept the contact established by the leader, Seldte, with the National Socialists. The next paragraph describes the immediate dismissal of the deputy leader, Dilsterberg, in a telegraphic order of Seldte. From the last paragraph of this document, I should like to quote the last sentence of Seldte's telegram of the same day: "I herewith assume the sale dictatorial leadership of the Association." Document 5 contains the open letter of one of the leaders of the Stahlhelm, dated 3 May 1933; the letter speaks of these events and states that as a result of Seldte's unconstitutional measures the opposition group Dilsterberg would no longer consider him as the lawful leader of the organization. Document 6 contains an agreement between Hitler and Seldte. THE PRESIDENT: Dr. Bohm, if I remember right, one of your witnesses who was heard here before the Tribunal dealt with the entry of the Stahlhelm. into the SA, did he not? HERR BOHM: Yes. 22 Aug. ~'G THE PRESIDENT: And was he cross-examined at all to contradict him? HERR BOHM: No, Mr. President. THE PRESIDENT: Well, if that is so, then surely these documents which relate to the introduction of the Stahlhelm into the SA can be dealt with quickly as a group. You can give us the numbers of the documents. As the witness has given evidence and has not been cross-examined, it isn't necessary to refer us in detail to these documents which merely support the evidence of your own witness. HERR BOHM: Yes, Mr. President. I now refer to Document Number 6 which shows that the so-called Jungstahlhelm was put under the Supreme Command of the SA. I turn to Document Number 7 which is a decisive order of Hitler, from which I should like to quote toward the end, Page 1, Paragraph 6: "The entire Stahlhelm will be placed under the Supreme SA Command and will be reorganized according to its directives." Then I should like to refer to Document Number 8 which shows that the Wehrstahlhelm was also taken over by the SA and especially that the members of the Wehrstahlhelm continued also to remain members of the Stahlhelm. I also refer to Document Number 9, decreeing that the incorporation of the Stahlhelm be speeded up. Documents 10 and 12 show that the members of the Wehrstahlhelm were to be given equal rights, and a certain joint status, before their final incorporation. Then there are Documents 13, 14, 15, and 17, in connection with which I should like to refer particularly to Hitler's decree of 25 January 1934. Then Document 17 and Document 18. In the latter the complete amalgamation of the SA Resen7e I, that is, the former Stahlhelm with the SA is proclaimed. . Document 18-A states that all age classes over 45 years will be incorporated into the SA Reserve. Then I submit Document 19 and Document 21, from which I should like to quote briefly Paragraph 2: "Members of the former Stahlhelm who have already been transferred into SA Reserve I, cannot of their own volition sever their connection with SA Reserve I for the sole purpose of joining other associations. Anyone who, because of a physical defect, cannot discharge his duties or who for other reasons wishes to leave the SA Reserve, must apply for his discharge, stating the reasons for his request. Dual membership in the SA Reserve I and in the NS Veterans' Association is permitted, provided the individual joined the former Stahlhelm before 30 January 1933." 22 Au.~ 46 Now I should like to refer to Document 22, which shows how in practice a member of the Stahlhelm in the Rhineland was incorporated into SA Reserve I. Document 23 deals with the dissolution of the National Socialist German Veterans' Association in November 1939. Document 26 contains several quotations from the Stahlhelm handbook, published by Heinrich Hildebrandt and Walter Kenner. I should like to quote one sentence on Page 17: "The Stahlhelm has experienced war and therefore desires; peace." Then I should like to refer to Documents 29 and 30, which prove that members of the Stahlhelm attempted to leave the SA Reserve L The documents which follow deal with the members of the Stahlhelm who did not agree with the incorporation into the SA. THE PRESIDENT: Dr. Bohm, couldn't you tell us what the effect of all these documents is rather than read all through 30 documents? You have told us now about the Stahlhelm. Haven't you got any idea what you will come to? HERR BOHM: I submit these documents to show the High Tribunal that the Stahlhelm was not at all in agreement with the measures taken at the time when the organization was transferred -to the SA;~ that members of the Stahlhelm. tried to leave the SA, that they met with difficulties in such attempts, and that the ideology of the Stahlhelm was, in a large measure, quite different from that of the SA. THE PRESIDENT: Yes, go on. HERR BOHM: I should like to refer now to a series of newspaper articles which are contained in Documents 32, 33, 35, 37, 39, 40, 41, 42, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, and 49. Document 34 is a report made by a Sturmbannfuehrer of the SA about a conspiracy of the Stahlhelm against the SA in 1933 in Pomerania. Document 36 is a poster containing a warning and threat by Gauleiter Loeper of Magdeburg-Anhalt against the National Socialist Veterans' Association. ' Document 33 states, may I quote quite briefly: "The Stahlhelm in Brunswick has been dissolved. 1350 men were arrested and interned." From the second paragraph in the center ... THE PRESIDENT: Dr. Bohm, you have given us a long list of newspaper articles. Now, what is the object of them? Is there anything which connects those together, makes them into a group? HERR BOHM: There is a certain connection between all of them, Mr. President, inasmuch as they are to prove that units of the 22 AU9. 46 Stahlhelm. were dissolved in various places, that members of the Stahlhelm were arrested, and that they encountered difficulties because most of them disagreed with their incorporation into the SA, and with the political and intellectual attitude of the SA. THE PRESIDENT: Yes, well, I understand then that they are illustrations of the difficulties which the Stahlhelm Organization had with the SA incidents. HERR BOHM: Yes, quite. I should like briefly ... THE PRESIDENT: The contention, I suppose, is that the Steel Helmet weren't volunteers into the SA; is that it? HERR BOHM: Yes, Mr. President, they came into the SA on the strength of an order. THE PRESIDENT: Very well. Then you can pass from that group, I think. HERR BOHM: Yes. Now I should like to turn to Document Book Number 5, which contains documents relating to the Mounted Corps. Documents 56 and 57 deal with the origin, the development, and the organization of the NS Mounted Corps. Document 56 is an excerpt from the official periodical of the Reiter Korps, Deutsches Kaltblut, of the year 1933. 1 think it is important to mention here the statement of the president of the rural riding associations, namely, that these associations were to be turned into a National Socialist Reiter Korps so that all rural riding interests would remain embodied in a special organization with its own administration without being permanently incorporated into part~ of the SA. Document 57 contains the diagram showing that the NS Reiter Korps was connected with the General SA only at the top level. The next documents deal with the tasks, aims, and activities of the NS Reiter Korps. Documents 59, 60, and 61 are extracts from the regulations of rural riding clubs before 1933; members of these clubs were not permitted to engage in political activity within the clubs, and this rule was retained after 1933. Documents 62, 63, 65, 66, and 67 are official orders showing the activity of the NS Reiter Korps. Document 69 is an official brochure on the requirements for obtaining the rider's certificate. This document, too, has no military or political character at all. Document 70 lists the prerequisites for winning the German rider's emblem, and again in this connection military and political considerations have no part. The emblem was a sports badge of honor, and it was the highest aim of all members of the NS Reiter Korps to win it. I submit this rider's emblem-it is made of silver-to the High Tribunal as Document 71, and perhaps I might add that I think it is the only emblem which bears no National Socialist insignia. 22 Aug 46 The last four Documents 101, 102, 103, and 124 have been selected from a tremendous number of photographs typifying the activities of the Reiter Korps. THE PRESIDENT: Dr. B6hm, will you please continue. HERR BOHM: I shall now turn to the affidavits, Mr. President, and deal with the first group of affidavits which I have submitted. I should like to refer to the General SA Affidavits Numbers 17, 74, and 81, which deal with coercion, legal coercion, regarding entry into the formations. Affidavit General SA Number 1, deposed by Dr. Menge, also deals with the problem of compulsory incorporation into the SA, in this case, the incorporation of water sports clubs into the Marine SA. Affidavit General SA Number 60 deals with the compulsory incorporation of sports clubs as separate units of the SA. Affidavit Number 61 deals with the impossibility of leaving the SA. - That the SA did not assist the state government in preparing for war, is stated in General SA Affidavits 38, 39, and 40, which also show that preaching a war of revenge against France resulted ' in expulsion from the SA, because the SA Command had forbidden all discussion of the questions of South Tyrol and Alsace-Lorraine. Affidavit SA-38, deposed by Dr. Busse, characterizes the Chief of Staff, Lutze, as an opponent of warmongering. The Affidavit SA-1 of Dr. Menge deals with the agreement between the Wehrmacht and the SA, that in the event of a conflict between the SS and the Wehrmacht, the SA would side with the Wehrmacht, and also shows that the Chief of Staff, Lutze, strongly opposed a war against Poland during a conference with Hitler and Goebbels in the autumn of 1939. Affidavits General SA Numbers 5 and 6 deal with the preparations of the SA for the Party Rally in 1939. Affidavit Number 76, deposed by General Von H6rauf, deals with the negotiations of R6hm in 1931 and 1932 and the agreements he reached with English and French political circles on the following points: "1) Within a brief period of time R6hm will put himself at the head of the NSDAP. "2) The press of the NSDAP will come under British influence. "3) The establishment of a foreign political and military political bureau. In connection with these negotiations.. ." THE PRESIDENT: Dr. B6hm, the Tribunal is finding this very difficult to follow. You have here, I suppose, about 200 affidavits, something like that. Now, wouldn't it be the best way to put them into groups, and tell us the numbers of those which relate to some 22 Aug. 46 subject? Don't they relate to any particular subject, or are there 200 subjects that they relate to? Have they no possibility of being grouped together? HERR BOHM: Well, Mr. President, that will be hard to do, because within the individual affidavits there are always special points which have to be emphasized and which are not found in any other affidavits. However, I shall willingly shorten this procedure, and I did so when I grouped the summaries of the affidavits together; but as far as these individual affidavits are concerned, it is not really possible to find a common denominator. THE PRESIDENT: It is a great deal more difficult for the Tribunal to follow. HERR BOHM: For instance, only one affidavit, namely Number 76, deposed by General Horauf, deals with the aims of R6hm. If all the affidavits ... THE PRESIDENT: Surely, Dr. Bohm, if you are going to inflict upon us the whole of these 200 affidavits, you might at least do it in order. HERR BOHM: I turn then to Number 83, deposed by Adolf Freund... THE PRESIDENT: I would think that if it is up to 83, we are not going to hear any more about it, or are we going to jump back to 1, 2, 3, and 4? HERR BOHM: Mr. President, these affidavits have already been grouped according to certain subjects, and I cannot. therefore present them in consecutive numerical order. THE PRESIDENT: That is all I asked you,... I am afraid I must not be speaking clearly or else the translation is not coming through to you clearly. What I asked you to do was to give us the topics with which these affidavits deal, and then give us the numbers of the affidavits which deal with each topic. Now you are telling me that there are groups, and that the affidavits are grouped with reference to topics. Well, will you kindly give us the topics and the numbers of the affidavits? HERR BOHM: Certainly, Mr. President. I told you, Mr. President, that I was able to group the summaries of the affidavits, but that it was very difficult to follow the same procedure completely with regard to the individual affidavits. That, at any rate, was my meaning. THE PRESIDENT: Go on. HERR BOHM: But I shall try to adhere to this grouping as far as possible. 22 AU9. 46 I now turn to the group- of affidavits which show that the SA was not a military formation. This topic is dealt with in Affidavits 25, 27, 28, and 30. That the schools set up by the Chief of Training did not have a military character is explained in Affidavits 32, 33, and 37. The sport insignia of the SA and its significance is dealt with in Affidavit Number 8. The question of whether and to what extent the "Feldherrnhalle" Division was subordinate to the Wehrmacht or to the SA is clarified by General SA Affidavit Number 18, deposed by Major General Gunther Bade, the Commander of the 1st Panzer Division "Feldherrnhalle." The next group of affidavits deals with the charge that the SA was a terrorist organization. Affidavit Number 15, deposed by General Von H6rauf, shows that it was Reich Minister Severing who approved the SA service regulations. Affidavits Numbers 19, 20, 21, 22 ... THE PRESIDENT: Well now, Dr. Bohm, I don't know whether you were in Court yesterday, but I pointed out to the counsel who was dealing with the matter then that it is utterly useless to simply read over to us the summary which we have before us. Now, you have just referred us to Affidavit Number 15 and the summary before us is this: "Franz von HE)rauf. 24.6.46. Former Reich Minister Severing's failure to object to the SA service regulations." That is to say, practically the identical words which you have just repeated to us. Now, what is the good of that? HERR BOHM: Mr. President, I do not know the summary you have before you, I have not read it, and I have not received a translation of it. So I don't know what is contained and what is not contained in your summary. THE PRESIDENT: You mean you haven't got this summary? HERR BOHM: I received a book and I repeatedly asked that I should also receive a translation of it, because since my assistants are fully occupied I myself cannot have it translated. THE PRESIDENT: Well, if you were here yesterday, you must have heard me say over and over again to counsel who was presenting the documents that we had before us a summary and that it was useless for him to repeat the summary to us. Now, what would be useful would be, as I have already pointed out, if you would group these affidavits and tell us what topics they relate to, and also tell us which of them have been translated, and if there are any to which you particularly desire to draw our attention, which have been translated, then draw our attention to the passages in those which you wish to draw our attention to. HERR BOHM: The last group which I compiled is to prove that the SA was a protective organization against terror, and in this connection I mentioned Affidavits Numbers 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, and 24. 22 Aug. 46 The fact that excesses in Berlin were restricted to a small circle of persons is proved by Affidavit Number 84. THE PRESIDENT: Have any which you have just given us, which show that the SA was not a terrorist organization, been translated? HERR BOHM: The translations of my affidavits have not yet been returned to me, Mr. President, and I am not in a position to check which have been translated and which have not been translated. THE PRESIDENT: But surely you must know which you have asked to be translated? HERR BOHM: Yes, Mr. President. THE PRESIDENT: Somebody must have asked it. HERR BOHM: But I don't know whether they have actually been translated, as I did not receive any copies. THE PRESIDENT: You can tell us which ones you wanted to have translated, couldn't you, which were being translated. HERR BOHM: I applied to have 21 affidavits translated; they are 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 76, 79, 82 and 89. THE PRESIDENT: Very well. Now go on with your group, if you will. The last one you gave us was 84, which you said showed that the excesses were only very exceptional. HERR BOHM: On the same topic, I should like to submit Affidavit Number 87, showing the many measures taken against excesses in the West. Affidavits Numbers 84 and 57 show that the attitude of the SA toward the Jews was not hostile, as the Prosecution asserts, and Affidavits Numbers 54 and 53 show the same. Affidavits 85 and 86 deal with Document 1721 which has already been discussed here, and prove a specific case, namely, that the Gruppenfuehrer of the Brigade "Kurpfalz-Mannheim',' did not order the destruction of the synagogues. In the same connection, I should like to mention Affidavit Number 89, and finally Affidavit Number 76, which shows that after 9 November 1938, Lutze prohibited the use of the SA for purposes of the Political Leaders, insofar as he ordered that in the future the higher authorities had to approve the use of the SA at any time. Affidavits 71 and 72 deal with the attitude of Chief of Staff Lutze himself. Affidavit Number 70 shows how people who participated in the incidents during the night from 9th to 10th November 1938 were punished. How the SA took measures of its own accord against those who had participated in the events of that night in November 1938, may be seen from Affidavit Number 4. The basic 22 Aug. 46 attitude of the SA toward the Church is described in Affidavits 43, 44, and 45. The activity of physicians in the SA is evident from Affidavits Numbers 62 and 63. The facts regarding, the connection of the SA with concentration camps are contained in Affidavit Number 16, deposed by Leonhard Gontermann. Finally, to conclude this group of affidavits, I should like to submit Affidavit Number 62, deposed by Priese who is a member of the KPD and an official in the Bavarian Ministry for Political Liberation. As a political opponent who was able to obtain an over-all picture, he states that the SA cannot be called a criminal organization in the sense of Article 6 of the Charter. THE PRESIDENT: Which number was that? HERR BOHM: That was -Number 62, no, I beg your pardon, there seems to be a typing error-82. Mr. President, I come now to the collective affidavits. They are summarized on about 21 pages, but I need not discuss them now, if I could have this document translated. The document is of importance because it is a summary of more than 17,000 statements, which would in my opinion ... THE PRESIDENT: 17,000 what? HERR BOHM: 17,000 affidavits. THE PRESIDENT: Yes. HERR BOHM: I have summarized the whole contents of these affidavits in 21 pages and I believe that it might be of value to have the document translated. It would then not be necessary to deal with the summary now. THE PRESIDENT: Yes, Dr. Bohm, it may be translated, but it should not be translated till after your speech has been translated. HERR BOHM: Very well. Then I submit this summary of affidavits to the Tribunal as General SA Number 90. Now, I should like to discuss the affidavits submitted for members of the Stahlhelm. and the SA Reiter Korps. The forced transfer of the so-called Junior Stahlhelm into the SA is dealt with in Affidavits 1, 2, 3, 5, 9, 10, 13, 18, 37, and 42. Of all the affidavits submitted in this connection, the following have been translated: Numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, and 9. The forced incorporation of the Stah1helm into the SA Reserve is the subject of Affidavits Numbers 1, 2, 3, 5, 19, 30, 33, 38, 7, 9, 10, 12, 16, 39, 40, 41, 42, and 43. The compulsory amalgamation of the SA Reserve with the SA is shown in Affidavits Numbers 1, 2, 5, 7, 12, 40, 41, and 42. Affidavits Numbers 1, 2, 4, 15, 17, 18, 9, 22 AU9. 46 10, 11, 12, 34, 40, 41, and 42 show that the resistance of the Stahlhelm against incorporation was overcome by coercion or deceit. Affidavits 1, 5, 6, 7) 9, 14, 16, 17, 37, 38, 41, and 42 show that, when the members of the Stahlhelm were taken over by the SA, they formed an independent unit within the SA in keeping with the assurances given to them: Affidavits 1, 2, 4, 5, 7, 10, 11, 12, 13, 15, 18, 37, 39, 40, 41, and 44 further prove that even when the promise of corporative independence had been broken, the members of the Stahlhelm continued to represent a separate ideological block within the SA. The fact that the members of the Stahlhelm who were taken over into the SA condemned the war, may be seen from Affidavits 1, 2, 5, 9, and 40. The political tolerance and democratic views of the members of the Stahlhelm are confirmed by Affidavits 4, 5, 9, 13, 16, 37, 39; and 44. That the Stahlhelm did not advocate religious persecution is shown in Affidavits 1, 2, 9, and 18, and Affidavits 1, 2, 4, and 38 show that the Stahlhelm members who were transferred to the SA condemned racial persecution. . In view of the arrest and persecution of the members of the Stahlhelm who, had not gone into the SA or who had left the SA again, those of the Stahlhelm members who had been taken over felt compelled to remain in the SA, and that is to be proved by Affidavits 1, 2, 3, 4, 37, and 39., That members of the Stahlhelm who had been taken over into the SA had reason to believe that upon leaving the SA they would encounter difficulties in earning a living, can be seen from Affidavits 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, 16, 18, 34, 37, 38, 39, and 40. Affidavits 1 and 41 show that the Stahlhelm members who were transferred to the SA were kept in the SA by legal decrees and orders. That the members of the Stahlhelm who were taken into the SA Reserve remained reservists in practice, even if they were later formally assigned to active SA formations, may be seen from Affidavits 1, 7, 12, 19, 33, 40, 41, 42, 6, 12, and 30. Affidavits 5 and 42 show that the ranks of the Stahlhelm members in the SA were given out automatically and were in many cases only titles without corresponding duties. I don't think, Mr. President, it will be possible for me to be equally brief in grouping the affidavits for the Reiter-SA, because my data on this subject make it difficult ... THE PRESIDENT: Before we hear... Haven't you already given us in your documents adequate evidence about the Riders! Corps? Surely, you have, given us four, documents generally which allege that the Riders' Corps was purely a sporting organization, and that being, I suppose, the topic of the affidavits, why not give us the numbers of the affidavits? 22 Aug. 46 HERR BOHM: Yes, Mr. President. THE PRESIDENT: I am going to adjourn now. I am only indicating to you what you might do. We will adjourn. [A recess was taken.] HERR BOHM: Mr. President, in connection with the Reiter Korps I should like to refer to Affidavits Numbers 1 to 5, which deal with the purpose, development, and organization of the Reiter Korps. Numbers 6 and 7 confirm that the Reiter Korps was concerned with horse breeding, care of horses, and training in riding Affidavits Numbers 9, 11, 12, 13, 86, 71, 72, 73, 74, 19 to 24, 87, and 88 are to establish the fact that the Reiter Korps did not commit criminal acts and had no criminal character. That the Reiter Korps was in no way connected with the Wehrmacht and did not furnish replacements in horses for the Wehrmacht, is confirmed in Affidavits Numbers 11, 13, 86. That the Reiter Korps did not participate in the seizure of power is established in Affidavits 71 through 74, and Affidavits Numbers 19 to 24, 87, and 88 prove that the Reiter Korps did not commit crimes against humanity. The attitude of members of, the Reiter Korps to the Jewish problem is proved in Affidavits 19, 20, 21, and 88; and their attitude to the Church question in Affidavits 22 and 23. That there were differences of opinion on political matters between the Reiter K6rps and the NSDAP, is explained in Affidavits 25 and 29; that the Party Leaders were even distrustful of the Reiter Korps is proved in Affidavits 31 and 85, and that those who belonged to the Reiter Korps could hardly have conceived the idea that their membership in the Reiter Korps made them members of a criminal organization, is stated in Affidavits 76, 34, 77, 33, and 35. Finally, I should like to give a brief list of affidavits dealing with the Reiter Korps in the various zones and areas of Germany. First the British Zone: Affidavits NSRK 37, 38, 39, 40, 78 refer to the Rhineland; 41, 42, 79 to Westphalia; 43, 44, 45 to Hanover; 46 to Oldenburg; 47 to East Frisia; 48 t8 Bremen, Hamburg, and Holstein. In the American Zone: For Bavaria, Affidavits 49, 50, 51; Wurttemberg, 52, 53, 54; Hesse, 55, 56, 57, 80; Baden, 58, 59, 60; Upper Swabia, 61, 62; Palatinate 63. For the French Zone, Affidavit 81; and for the Russian Zone, Saxony, 64; Thuringia, 65; East Prussia, 66 and 67; Berlin and Brandenburg, 82; Pomerania, Mecklenburg, 83; Silesia, 84. Mr. President, I should now like to make two applications. The first application is that I may be allowed to introduce as evidence 22 Aug. 46 the affidavits deposed by Dr. Kurt Schuhmacher and Judge Advocate General Dr. Stapff, of Brunswick, which the Prosecution has obtained. I should like to ask that the affidavit of Dr. Kurt Schuhmacher be given Number SA-91, and that the affidavit of Judge Advocate General Dr. Stapff of Brunswick be given Number SA-92. THE PRESIDENT: But are they already offered in evidence by the Prosecution? HERR BOHM: They have not yet been submitted in evidence, but I should like to introduce them. I do not know whether they will be submitted by the Prosecution. At any rate, I think that valuable material for the defense of my organization is contained in these affidavits, which were obtained not by me but by the Prosecution. THE PRESIDENT: Why do you refer to the Prosecution then? HERR BOHM: The Prosecution has the original of those affidavits, Mr. President. I merely received a copy which was placed in my pigeonhole in counsel's room. That is how I learned of them, and I must mention that, because I now have to ask the Prosecution to give me the originals so that I may submit them. I THE PRESIDENT: Yes. Well, is there any objection, Sir David, to the ... ? SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: My Lord, these were the affidavits to which we referred at the close of the evidence of the witness Juttner. My Lord, we proposed, as I told the Tribunal, to put in certain affidavits in rebuttal. These two were affidavits which we did not propose to use, but we gave copies to the Defense, and I said that I had no objection to the Defense using them if they so desired. If they think they can get any benefit from them, they can use them as far as the Prosecution are concerned. My Lord, that is the position. THE PRESIDENT: Yes. Very well, then, Dr. B61im, you can offer those in evidence. SA-91 and 92, did you say? HERR BOHM: Yes, Mr. President; and then I should like to make a second application with regard to the admission of an affidavit by Arnolf Rechberg. I wanted to submit that affidavit to disprove the allegation of the Prosecution that the SA was a uniform entity and that the conspiracy on the part of the SA must be regarded as a uniform action. This affidavit mentions that there ,vas quite definitely a lack of unity in the SA because elements faithful to Moscow had deliberately infiltrated into the National Socialist organizations of the SA and the SS; this process began already before July 1930, and by July 1932, 24,000 Communists, partly upon instructions from Moscow, had changed over to the SA., 22 Aug. 46 It is also mentioned that this infiltration continued after the seizure of power. THE PRESIDENT: Has this affidavit been submitted to the Commissioners and has it been submitted to the Prosecution? HERR BOHM: Yes, certainly, Mr. President, this affidavit was 'discussed before the Commission, but was not admitted by the Commission. However, I had the alternative of discussing the document before the Tribunal and of asking the Tribunal to admit it, ,and I have now made use of that alternative. I should like to explain my view by saying that this document is of the greatest probative value, namely, in the following connection: fundamentally, the SA was based on national ideas, whereas these people, whose ideas certainly did not run on national but on entirely different lines, brought into the SA a spirit which no doubt destroyed the uniformity alleged by the Prosecution and which made the alleged uniformity of the aims of the $A quite impossible, for the aims of National Socialism were surely quite different from the aims of the people mentioned in this affidavit. THE PRESIDENT: Yes, Sir David? SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: My Lord, I object to this affidavit as being, completely irrelevant and based on sources which have no probative value whatsoever. My Lord, if Your Lordship has in front of you the proceedings before the Commission, at Page 3221, My Lord, there is a summary of the affidavit there. Paragraph 1 of this summary is, "Elements loyal to Moscow infiltrated into the National Socialist combat organizations, SA and SS, consciously, by order of Moscow." My Lord, that shows the sort of allegation that is made. It is made by Herr Rechberg who, of course, is a person who shows from the affidavit no possible grounds for any confidence being put in his statements. The same applies to the allegation in Paragraph 2 about the 24,000. My Lord, in Paragraph 4, there is some reference to correspondence which took place between Herr Rechberg and Sir Wyndham Charles and Sir William Turral, as he then was. But again I have seen the letters. They are clearly cases of somebody pestering these people with letters and getting a reply. THE PRESIDENT: Sir David, what-in what way does this deponent describe himself? Is he a member of the SA? SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: My Lord, I don't-I just saw the affidavit in German this morning. He does not say he is a member of the SA. He is merely a business man who had certain interests in these matters. He quotes two pages from newspapers, one a secondary sheet and one a practically unknown German paper, 22 Aug. 46 which contained declarations by a Soviet official. My Lord, it would be in my submission an abuse of the purpose of -the Court, if evidence of an unknown German paper, purporting to quote a Soviet official, were to be taken as a basis in this matter. And, My Lord, as I said, if it were all based on proper evidence, and if the affidavit were the affidavit of a person who showed any grounds of his affidavits being useful, it would still be completely irrelevant to the question of criminality which is before the Court. I respectfully request Your Lordship to uphold the learned Commissioner who excluded it when it came before the Commission. THE PRESIDENT: Is there anything you have to add, Dr. Bohm? HERR BOHM: Mr. President, my view in this matter is quite different from that of the Prosecution ... COLONEL Y. V. POKROVSKY (Deputy Chief Prosecutor for the U.S.S.R.): My Lord, the Soviet Prosecution fully agrees with the point of view submitted by Sir David. I would like to add a few words to the objection which he made. Apart from the fact that the Commission has already rejected this document as being irrelevant and without any probative value, I would like the Tribunal to take into consideration that the author of this document is well-known as the source of a number of provocative anti-Soviet inventions. This document contains nothing but slanderous, provocative, dirty attacks in a style typical of the author; such attacks have, I repeat, nothing to do with the present case. At the same time I would like to bring to the Tribunal's attention our objection to Documents 85, 286, 287 and 132. Unfortunately, Sir David did not have the copies of these documents and therefore did not take them into consideration. All four of the documents I have mentioned refer to the year 1925, and to problems connected with the interparty strife in Germany. They therefore have nothing at all to do with the present case. The last document to which we object is Document 82, of which we have only just heard for the first time. It mentions some person whose name I have forgotten for the moment. Counsel said that he is a former Communist who comes to the conclusion that the SA is not a criminal organization under Article 6 of the Charter. We are of the opinion that this man is in no way competent to draw expert conclusions on questions which only the Tribunal can decide. That is all I wanted to say, My Lord. THE PRESIDENT: Thank you. Do you want to say anything more, Dr. Bohm, before the Tribunal decides? HERR BOHM: Yes, Mr. President. Naturally, I have no intention whatever of abusing the Tribunal, as the Prosecution has just suggested. But the Prosecution has on more than one occasion asserted-and this is shown in the record of 18 December, afternoon 22 Aug. 46 session, and 19'December, morning session-that the SA was a uniform whole and was also united in its aims, and it is my contention that this affidavit is evidence to the contrary. It is also wrong to say that the man's testimony is not trustworthy. The representatives of the Prosecution have known the contents of this affidavit ever since it was discussed before the Commission, they have all known the name of this man and his residence in Germany, -and if there had been any doubts about the credibility of this man, then they could have been brought up today, but obviously that was not done. The simple statement that one cannot believe him is no reason for requesting that his affidavit be rejected. Since I am still of the opinion that such a large number of people with different political views would disorganize and nullify the common, uniform aims of the SA, I must insist that this affidavit be admitted. THE PRESIDENT: The Tribunal thinks the decision of the learned Commissioner was correct, and the document will be rejected for that reason, and on the grounds that it is irrelevant and the deponent has not stated any grounds for his knowledge. The document is rejected therefore. HERR BOHM: Mr. President, I should like to clear up one more question. I was not able to deal with all the evidence contained in my document books, in view of the short time at my disposal. I should therefore like to know whether the judgment will consider the factual and legal aspects of all the documents in my book; for otherwise only part of the material which I regard as important would be taken into consideration. I would like to request, therefore, that all the material which I have submitted be taken into consideration. If I had dealt with all the documents, my evidence would have taken about 6 hours, and since that was impossible, I should like to be sure that all my documents will be considered in the judgment of the Tribunal. THE PRESIDENT: Perhaps we had better hear you, Dr. B61im, about these affidavits which have been objected to by the Soviet Prosecutor: 82, 85, 86, 87, and 132. 1 take it that the Commissioner accepted these affidavits. Have you got the numbers? HERR BOHM: Mr. President, all the documents and affidavits which I discussed during the session today were dealt with before the Commission. COL. POKROVSKY: I beg your pardon, Mr. President. Evidently there has been a misunderstanding in the translation. I mentioned Numbers 85, 28~, 287 and 132. These documents are not written statements and, accordingly, were not submitted to the Commission. The last number I gave was 82. This document "was mentioned today for the first time. 22 Aug. 46 THE PRESIDENT: What are they; are they affidavits, or what are they? COL. POKROVSKY: They are document§, My Lord, with the exception of 82. Numbers 85, 286, 287, 132 are various documents. THE PRESIDENT: Wait a minute, Colonel Pokrovsky, the numbers are not coming through accurately in the translation. What are the numbers? Read them slowly, please. COL. POKROVSKY: 85 ... THE PRESIDENT: 85 did you say? It just now came through as 285, you mean 85? COL. POKROVSKY: 85. 1 keep repeating-85. Then 286, 287, and 132-these are documents. The last number is 82, which is an affidavit. THE PRESIDENT: Thank you. Now, Dr Bohm, do you want to say anything about this? COL. POKROVSKY: I beg your pardon, My Lord. On our copy I gave the number of a document incorrectly. Would you correct Number 85 to 285. So the numbers are 285, 286, and 287. We have just submitted a list of these documents to the Secretary of the Tribunal. HERR BOHM: Mr. President ... THE PRESIDENT: One moment, Dr. B6hm. The Tribunal -will consider the objections on these documents. And Dr. B6hm, I ought to give you the opportunity of saying what you wish about these documents. HERR BOHM: First of all, I want to defend myself against the, charge that I did not discuss these documents with the Prosecution. There is not one document in my document book which I have not discussed with Mr. Griffith-Jones, -and no other documents have been added to the book. The documents objected to now were included in the book in agreement with Mr. Griffith-Jones. Documents 285, 286, and 287 are extracts from findings of the State Tribunal for the Protection of the Republic, and of the Supreme Reich Court. Their contents are known to the Tribunal; they are in evidence. We are not dealing here with the attitude taken by any particular side with regard to the activities of the Communists during the period under discussion, but with facts which have been established from a report made by the police headquarters at Stuttgart and based on a literal quotation from the verdicts delivered on the matters in question. My Document 132 is a photostat copy of the Deutsche Tageszeitung with a detailed Communist plan of operations for a proposed 22 Aug. 46 Putsch in Berlin. These plans are reproduced here, they are commented upon, and they show that in the Germany of that time it was necessary to create an organization capable of giving protection against such intentions. It is for this reason only that Document 132 was included in my document book. Affidavit Number 82 is, I believe, one of the last affidavits; it was also discussed with Mr. Griffith-Jones-with Mr. Marreco, and was admitted by the Commission. I think that the objections raised today in this respect are somewhat belated~ THE PRESIDENT: Dr. Bohm, the Tribunal will take into consideration the matter of these documents and will let you know their decision. HERR BOHM: Very well, Mr. President. I have nothing further to say. LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: My Lord, I have these few documents to put In in rebuttal. My Lord, first I have a document to which Sir David referred in his cross-examination of Juttner the other day, which was not formally put in. It is D-972, which becomes Exhibit GB-618. My Lord, secondly I have a document to put in in rebuttal of a document contained in the SA Defense Book, Number SA-156, which was a decree from the Munich University Department to the SA, which, on the face of it, appears to say that membership of the SA was compulsory for all students. My Lord, I have another document which is very similar in character, and based upon the same order of the Supreme SA Command, which was issued by the SA University Department for Cologne. It is dated two days before the Munich Decree which Dr. B6hm put in. I think you have been given copies of both translations d both, for your convenience. It will be dealt with later. I would only at the moment draw your attention to Paragraph 3 of each do6ument. My Lord, taking, if I may, the Munich Decree-that is to say, the SA document-Paragraph 3 reads: "According to the decree of 7 February 1934, SA Service (SS Service) is compulsory for all German students. In accordance with the decree of the Supreme SA Leadership, F 6914, of 27 March 1934, the ban on taking on newly matriculated students is raised in the period from 25 April to 5 May. All newly matriculated students are therefore bound to join the SA. They have to report at the latest on 5 May 1934 to the local offices." 22 AU9. 46 Now, if I might just refer the Tribunal to the similar paragraph in the order issued by the Cologne SA University Department, one sees, at least, that that was not common to all universities. The Tribunal will see that it starts in the same way: "According to the decree of 7 February 1934"-the same decree-"SA service is compulsory for all German students." My submission is that that SA service referred to there and in the Munich Decree is not membership in the SA, but a course of training run by the SA. If one might draw a parallel, it is practically the same as what we know in England as the Officers' Training Corps in the public schools. And then you see, the remainder of the paragraph is considerably different: "In accordance with the decree of the Supreme SA Leadership"-and it quotes the same decree-"the ban on taking on newly matriculated students is raised in the period"-the same period-"from the 25th of April to the 5th of May. Every student is thereby offered the possibility of joining the SA." The SA service is compulsory, but the joining of the SA, becoming a member of it, is left purely to the student himself. He simply is offered the possibility of joining. My Lord, the matter will be lodged by Sir David in his final address to the Tribunal, and I can leave it for the moment by drawing your attention to these two paragraphs. That document will be GB-619. The Munich Decree is, of course, SA-156, My Lord, and I have a number of short affidavits to put in in rebuttal of the many thousands which have been submitted by the Defense. Perhaps first I might draw the Tribunal's attention to those two which Dr. B6hm has asked to be submitted-first of all, to the affidavit of Dr. Stapff, which is D-946,- and I might mention that the only reason that these two affidavits were not going to be submitted by the Prosecution is because they are not actually in the form of affidavits, but a declaration. Some error was made in obtaining them, and they do not show on the face of them that they are affidavits. THE PRESIDENT: Colonel Griffith-Jones, haven't we already admitted them? Sir David said that he didn't object to their admission. LT. COL: GRIFFITH-JONES: I was only going to draw the Tribunal's attention to the one passage, if I might. I think, taking D-946, the second paragraph is the paragraph from which Dr. B6hm probably hopes to receive some assistance. I would draw the Tribunal's attention to the last paragraph which deals with the SS. The remainder of the document describes the appalling atrocities 22 Aug 46 which were happening in Dachau in and around the year 1934. In fact, the last paragraph particularly, "As far as the SS proper is concerned-in contrast to the Waffen-SS, the conditions of which I am not in a position to judge-the pretext of compulsory membership cannot be credited in my opinion." And then he goes on to explain why he thinks so. My Lord, I have-... THE PRESIDENT: This is SA-91 or 92, isn't it? LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: 91. 1 had forgotten that they had been given. And the second one is the affidavit of Dr. Schuhmacher, D-947, which will be handed up to the Tribunal, SA-92. I think the second half of Paragraph 1 is probably the paragraph to which Dr. Bohm referred: "That voluntary membership remained customary extensively after 1934..."-well, he is dealing now with the SA and the SS--In a great number of cases membership resulted also from direct or indirect pressure or was the result of personal wrong speculations." And then he says that that is so particularly in the case of the Stahlhelm, and that the Stahlhelm consisted of a number of persons who were not-National Socialists. My Lord, I would draw the Tribunal's attention particularly to the last paragraph, Number 4, of that affidavit, which deals with Blockleiter and Zellenleiter. They "were the foundation for the whole system of terrorism, including the activity of the Gestapo." DR. SERVATIUS: Mr. President, this, document which is being introduced is directed against the Political Leaders, and I object to its use, but for a reason different from the one which has so far been mentioned. I have received a number of copies of these affidavits, and they are the outcome of a general inquiry which has been made. Only some of the answers to this inquiry are contained in the document, and it is my contention that if the result of such an inquiry is utilized at all, then all answers available should be submitted. I think that if, say, one hundred questionnaires were sent out, then there must be material for the defense of the Political Leaders in those answers which the Prosecution has not submitted. I request, therefore, that if the document is admitted, all the results of the inquiry be submitted. We can then obtain a true picture, which might be more useful to me than the testimony of the members of my organization, because the people who have deposed those important affidavits are opponents of National Socialism, and because I must assume that favorable arguments, which might be very valuable as part of a general picture, are contained in those affidavits which have not been submitted. THE PRESIDENT: Colonel Griffith-Jones, the Tribunal doesn't think it is right at this stage of the Trial to allow this document 22 Aug. 46 to be put in against the Political Leaders, and therefore the document will have to be excluded altogether. LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: My Lord, if that is so, then that, of course, will apply to the other eight or nine affidavits that the Prosecution has got. These affidavits were obtained to rebut the vast mass of material which has been put in in the form of affidavits by all those organizations. In actual fact, I can state that there were no other affidavits other than the ones that I am proposing to put before the Tribunal, and these two which we were not intending to put because, as I say, they were not in the form of an affidavit; but there are no other affidavits that we have obtained and they, all of them, or most of them, deal with one or more or all the organizations. They are put in simply in rebuttal of the mass of material which has been presented to the Court on behalf of the defense of those organizations. And, if I might say so... THE PRESIDENT: I think you had better offer those so we may see them. We have seen this one, and we know, of course, from what you have told us that it is one which the Prosecution had before and did not propose to offer, but the others may be different. LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: My Lord, they are all in very much the same form, and of course, Defense Counsel have had copies of them now for nearly a fortnight. THE PRESIDENT: Well, you had better offer them to us and we can look at them. LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: And without referring the Tribunal to any particular passage? THE PRESIDENT: No, I think you had better offer them and refer to the passages, and we will see whether we will admit them. LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: If Your Lordship pleases. DR. SERVATIUS: Mr. President, may I add one remark? These affidavits all originate from persons who are today holding high government offices. They are probably the most important of all the affidavits which have so far been submitted, and I shall now have no opportunity to investigate ho-%v they may be refuted in detail. I should like to be in a position to do so, but that, of course, is no longer possible at this stage. Moreover, I did not even know whether these affidavits would be introduced or not, and I have now completed my evidence and am ready with my final speech. LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: My Lord, might I say this? Sir David, of course, asked the Tribunal's permission to put these in some days ago, the Tribunal will remember. Ever since then Defense Counsel have had an opportunity of investigating and seeing these documents and Dr. Servatius says that he has no-he had no 22 AU9. 46 opportunity to investigate, whatever he means by that, these documents. The Prosecution has had no kind of opportunity to investigate the 300,000 affidavits that have been put in on behalf of the Defense. THE PRESIDENT: The Tribunal considers that they had better look at them and see. DR. SERVATIUS: Mr. President, may I draw your attention to a point of formality? I have not got the documents at the moment, but as far as I was able to see, they were deposed after 7 May, which was the key-date, and they do not comply with the formalities. They should have been certified before an officer, but some of them were only certified before a- notary; so that according to the rules of the Tribunal which have been in force up to now, they would have to be rejected. I myself have not ' been able to introduce any statements which were not certified or sworn to before an officer. LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: At least half of them were performed before Mr. Marreco, counsel, whom you know. Others, from the north of Germany, were-there I agree-some of them performed before local notaries. My Lord, some were performed before Mr. Marreco, of course, who is an Allied officer, and others appear to be sworn before notaries. And as I say, the two that Dr. B61im had hoped to put in were not signed before anyone. THE PRESIDEN~: I think we should see the documents before we consider the objection. LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: Might I hand up first D-929, which becomes GB-620. My Lord, it is an affidavit by Dr. Anton Pfeiffer, Bavarian Minister of State, in, the State Ministry for Special Tasks. THE PRESIDENT: When was he Minister? LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: He is now-he says that: '~At the time of the seizure of power, in the year 1933, 1 was Secretary General of the Bavarian People's Party." DR.BOHM: Mr. President, it was precisely in order to prevent the type of proceedings which are developing now, that during the hearing of the witness Aittner I... THE PRESIDENT: Dr. Bohm, the type of proceedings which are now going on are the type of proceedings which the Tribunal has just ordered. The Tribunal wishes to ~ee the documents in order to decide upon them. Go on, Colonel Griffith-Jones. LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: My Lord, in that affidavit he says that pressure was brought to bear on certain officials to make them join the Party, that is, civil servants. And then he goes on in the latter half to say how he and other people heard of and knew 22 AU.-. 46 about the atrocities that happened in the East and the annihilation of the Jews. He says in the center paragraph, "I am not aware that officials who were Party members were threatened with dismissal from the service if they refused to accept a political Party job, like Blockleiter or Zellenleiter." At any rate, he says: "I never heard of such a case." My Lord, I don't think it is necessary for me to read any other passages of that affidavit, Number D-929. My Lord, the next affidavit to which I shall refer is D-949, which becomes GB-621, from the Lord Mayor of Brunswick. He describes himself, he gives his own personal data. He then goes on to describe the activities of the SA from 1921 to 1923, in the first paragraph of Number 1; that is, he then goes on to describe their activities in 1933, how he himself was removed from his office by the SA. On the next page, he describes how he was led out of the town hall and put into prison, by this SA again. In the next paragraph he states that membership in the SA was absolutely voluntary until 1937. "While until 1933 one could assume that many SA members acted in good faith, believing that the SA had a just task for combating Communism, after the events of March 1933 there was, in my opinion, no longer any doubt that the SA acted contrary to law by their participation in the seizure of power by Hitler." Then he goes on to say how they distinguished themselves later in illegal manner. He deals then with the SS. He says that they were voluntary except for those SS that were compelled to join during the course of the war, or drafted to the SS during the course of the war. He then goes on in the last paragraph of that page to describe his own illegal arrest by the SA-SS and the appalling torture to which he was subjected by members of that organization. He says, some 12 lines down that next page: "Before I was ill-treated, I pointed out that I was a war cripple, to which Sturmfuehrer Meyer replied that in that case the arm would be spared." And he was then beaten with hippopotamus-hide whips until he was unconscious; when he was knocked out, he was revived with cold water and beaten to unconsciousness again. The second small paragraph on Page 3: "The organization and the ideology of the SS were aimed -so exactly and so pitilessly at eliminating political opponents and so-called racially inferior persons that everyone who joined it was bound to realize its criminal nature." My Lord, I pass on to the next one that I offer to the Tribunal, D-938, which becomes GB-622. That is an affidavit from Dr. Viktor Fenyes, President of the Central Committee of Former Political Prisoners of the Province of Hanover. It first of all deals with the Leadership Corps, in particular the Block- and Zellenleiter. 22 Aug. 46 THE PRESIDENT: Would you tell us, as you introduce each one of these, how they were taken and before whom? LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: My Lord, I am very much obliged, of course. That one was taken-if the Tribunal would look at the next page of it, it was taken on oath before a notary in Hanover. The previous one-My Lord, the previous one states that it was taken on oath, but I am afraid it is not witnessed. My Lord, dealing with D-938, as I said, he deals with the Block and Zellenleiter and he states there was definite pressure brought on people to join the Party, pressure by way of threats; that they assisted in the persecution of the Jews and that the Block- and Zellenleiter participated, almost without exception, in the setting on fire of the synagogues in 1938. It then deals with the SA, "membership, was voluntary." In the last three lines he states that former members of the SA protest to-day they entered the organization under pressure. This is not true, for actually not everyone was admitted into the SA. My Lord, he then goes on to deal with the SS; I think it is only cumulative to read any of it again. My Lord, the next document was one which was signed before Mr. Marreco, D-931, which becomes GB-623. He is the Secretary General of the Bavarian Peasants' Union in Munich, Dr. Schl6gl, who was a delegate of the Bavarian Diet at the time of the seizure of power by the Nazis. Dr. Alois Schl6gl, My Lord, was the victim of an assault. And the decision of the Court against the SA men who perpetrated that assault is already before the Tribunal. It was D-936, GB-616, and the Tribunal will remember that, because the decision stated that the deeds and intentions of the SA men were only aimed at the well-being of the National Socialist movement. Political reason and the purity of the intentions was thus beyond doubt. Dr. Schl6gl in his affidavit described the ill-treatment he received. And then he says in the third paragraph, "Following my complaint, the perpetrators were not punished but pardoned, the ringleader Bernhard was promoted as a reward and, as I have been told now, rose to the Tank of Brigadefuehrer." He goes on to say that in his opinion the criminal nature of the SS and SA were common knowledge and that everybody who joined them must have known to what use they were to be put by the Party. And then he-in the last paragraph he ... THE PRESIDENT: Well, perhaps you could just hand them up and not read them into the record, because the Tribunal reserves the right to reject them. LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: Yes, My Lord. I submit D-934, which is an affidavit-D-934 becomes GB-624, which is an affidavit 22 Aug. 46 sworn before Mr. Marreco, an affidavit by Albert Rosshaupter, Bavarian Minister of Labor in Munich. D-932, which becomes GB-625, is an affidavit also sworn before Mr. Marreco. D-933, which becomes GB-626, by a Joseph Ackermann, a director, of Munich, also sworn before Mr. Marreco. And Affidavit D-950, which becomes GB-627, of a Mr. Adolf Fahlbusch, which was sworn before a notary in Hanover. Perhaps I ought to say of all the affidavits which were not taken by Mr. Marreco, they were taken by the Legal Division of the Control Commission for Germany, or were taken under their auspices. This Legal Division of the Control Commission for Germany were asked to obtain these affidavits and that is how it comes about that they were perhaps not sworn in accordance with the regulations laid down by the Tribunal. THE PRESIDENT: Is that all? LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: My Lord, I have one further affidavit of a somewhat different nature, which shows the credit of, or the value the Tribunal should place on, the affidavits which have been submitted by the Defense. It is an affidavit of an SS man who was in one of the internment camps in the British zone when the questionnaire was filled out at the camp, the questionnaire which I understand the Tribunal allowed the Defense Counsel to submit in these camps. My Lord, I have this affidavit, which I shall hand up to the Tribunal; it is D-973 and becomes GB-628, an affidavit by Mr. Kurt Ehrhardt. My Lord, he was an SS man who joined the SS in 1933; he never took any part in their activities and was dismissed from the SS in 1937 because he had a Jewish partner and a Jewish brother-in-law. He was ... THE PRESIDENT: I can get all this from the affidavit, I suppose. LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: My Lord, that affidavit does not show on the copy that it was signed on oath and before whom. My Lord, the original shows that it was sworn before Major Hill of the British Delegation. My Lord, that ... THE PRESIDENT: Could you tell me when it was that Sir David Maxwell-Fyfe offered to introduce these affidavits, or intimated he was proposing to do so? SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: My Lord, I shall check it during the adjournment; I would have thought it was the Friday before last, because it was before-My Lord, it was certainly before-I cross-examined the SA witnesses. As Your Lordship may remember, I offered as the alternatives either to put the affidavits to the 22 Aug. 46 SA witnesses or to put them in with the-after the documents of the Defense Counsel were presented. THE PRESIDENT: That is what I wanted to know. That will be in the transcript, I suppose, that you said-if you could let us know. SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: Yes, My Lord, I understand it was accepted that Your Lordship asked if there were any objections and I said that I would give copies at once. And, My Lord, there was no objection from those over there. That is my neglect and I will find the place for Your Lordship. . HERR BOHM: Mr. President, I recall this matter very clearly. I brought up the subject of these affidavits during the examination of the witness Juttner, and in view of my objection the Tribunal stated at the time that, if these affidavits were to be presented, they had to be presented then. My objection was that I would no longer be in a position to refute the affidavits once my last witness had been heard, because I would then have no other means of introducing new evidence. I took the decision of the Tribunal to mean that the Tribunal agreed with me that affidavits should not be submitted by the Prosecution once I was no longer able to reply to them as part of my own evidence, and that these affidavits should be submitted while the evidence was being taken, or before that. THE PRESIDENT: Dr. Bohm, we will refer to the transcript to see exactly what happened. SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: My Lord, they had already been mentioned before the incident arose. That was an incident that arose with regard to Dr. H6gner's affidavit during the evidence of Juttner. All the affidavits were mentioned at an earlier date which I'll discover for Your Lordship during the adjournment. THE PRESIDENT: Very well, then the Tribunal will adjourn now and will sit again at 2:30. [A recess was taken until 1430 hours.] 22 AU9. 46 . Afternoon Session THE PRESIDENT: With reference to the first group of documents which were objected to by the Soviet Prosecutor, the Tribunal thinks that, as those documents had been included in the Document Book for the SA after the agreement and the Affidavit 82 had been allowed by the Commission, in spite of the fact that those documents relate to a remote period, they ought to be allowed. They are, therefore, admitted. They are Documents 285, 286, 287, 132, and 82. With reference to the 11 affidavits-perhaps I should say to the 10 affidavits which the British Prosecution offered in evidence, the Tribunal has reconsidered the shorthand note which shows what Sir, David Maxwell-Fyfe said on the 9th of August and what was said on the 14th of August and on the 15th of August, and although there was at that time no doubt a suggestion that these documents might be put in, the Tribunal considers that the question still has to be considered whether the documents ought to be admitted as rebuttal. In view of the nature of the documents, the Tribunal thinks that the documents are not proper evidence in rebuttal on the whole, and that therefore they ought to be excluded. That includes all the affidavits with the exception of the affidavit of Kurt Ehrhardt, 'which stands in a different position. In view of the nature of the evidence contained in that affidavit, it will be admitted. That is all. HERR BOHM: Mr. President, I should like to ask you to hear me a moment longer. In my presentation of documents, I avoided quoting from my document books. As, however, this morning the Prosecution put Document SA-156, which is a directive of the SA University Department in Munich, in juxtaposition to the same directive as given out by the SA Hochschulamt in Cologne, I should like to point out that in Figure 3 of both of these directives the same decree of 7 February 1934 is mentioned and that when these two documents are put in juxtaposition, 'it says in each case, "For all members of the German student body service in the SA has been made obligatory." In order to make it understandable that the Prosecution believed they had found a contradiction, I should like to read the last sentence under Figure 3 of the directives issued by the SA University Department in Cologne. THE PRESIDENT: The Tribunal will consider the true interpretation. We quite understand that on the one hand you are contending that the service in the SA was compulsory and the Prosecution are contending the opposite, and they are putting in 22 Aug. 46 this other document which they say supports their view. It isn't necessary to have an argument about it at this stage. HERR BOHM: I merely wished to add four more words, four words to the last sentence of Figure 3, ". . or not to study." Then the Russian Prosecutor stated today that Document 91 ... THE PRESIDENT: Are you saying that there is some misprint in the document or what? HERR BOHM: No, Mr. President, I wanted to ... THE PRESIDENT: Then you are simply arguing on the interpretation Of the words and I have told you that the Tribunal will consider the interpretation and decide the interpretation for itself. HERR BOHM: Very well, Mr. President; but may I put in the next document, which the Prosecution asserts I submitted only because of the last paragraph. That is not correct. The next document, General SA-91, was not submitted by me because of the last paragraph, but rather because of the first paragraph. That refers to the attitude of the Attorney General with the District Court of Appeal in Brunswick. THE PRESIDENT: All right. We understand that you rely on the first paragraph and not on the last paragraph. HERR BOHM: Yes, Mr. President. Thank you very much. HERR PELCKMANN: Your Lordship, may it please the Tribunal. Yesterday, on behalf of the SS which I represent, I submitted a summarization of 136,213 affidavits. I ask you not to confuse this summarization with some statistics, which I said at the conclusion of yesterday's session I would submit without comment. Everything that I said yesterday about the testimony and points of view of SS men refers only to the 136,000 affidavits which contain a complete text and which are independent affidavits. The statistics which I mentioned toward the end of yesterday's session are based on a questionnaire, and are not to be confused with those 136,000 affidavits which I used. This questionnaire, however, was not asked by me. I did not attach any value to this questionnaire and the replies made in answer to it, and I merely handed it in-merely handed in these statistics-in order to get rid of all the -material which I had received. I did not ask for this questionnaire, and I was not the attorney or defense counsel for the SS mentioned by Herr Kurt Ehrhardt in his affidavit. It is well known to the High Tribunal that the defense has changed counsel in the meantime. THE PRESIDENT: Yes, we quite understand that it was not asked for by you. We accept that. 22 AU9. 46 HERR PELCKMANN: Still, I should Eke to clarify matters by stating that the assertion made by Herr Ehrhardt does not refer to the 136,000 affidavits, but rather to the answers to a questionnaire. I should expressly like to withdraw as evidence the statistics which I announced yesterday in a couple of words, and which the General Secretary now has. I do not attach any value to these statistics. THE PRESIDENT: Dr. Pelckmann, you are 'going to make a speech, aren't you, in a few days time. Isn't this a matter with which you will deal then? You will have the opportunity of criticizing Ehrhardt's affidavit. This isn't the time to do it. HERR- PELCKMANN: Mr. President, I believe it is my duty to state my views concerning an affidavit which has been submitted by the Prosecution even though the presentation of evidence has been concluded. I will do more ... THE PRESIDENT: Well, Dr. Pelckmann, I just told you that it is not your duty and you will be able to deal with it when you make your speech and therefore the Tribunal doesn't desire to hear any more about it. HERR PELCKMANN: In order to reply to this affidavit by Herr Ehrhardt, although I attach no value to the statistics, I request you to summon two, witnesses from this camp, for naturally I cannot.. THE PRESIDENT: If you want to make an application, you must make it in writing. Now, Dr. Servatius. CHIEF COUNSELLOR OF JUSTICE COLONEL L. N. SMIRNOV (Assistant Prosecutor for the U.S.S.R.): Mr. President, I ask to make two short applications on behalf of the Soviet Prosecution. The first one is concerned with the excluding from the record of the morning and afternoon sessions of 23 April 1946 of the discussion which ... THE PRESIDENT: Don't go too fast, April what? COL. SMIRNOV: 23 April, Mr. President; the morning and afternoon sessions of 23 April. The discussion which arose about the official appendix to the report of the Government of the Polish Republic. I mean the directive from the Department of Propaganda in Poland. The witness Biffiler declared here that he doubted the authenticity of this document and referred to certain expressions which seemed to him not quite German, but alien to the German language. Upon investigation of this episode, it appears that the witness had not seen the German original but a translation from. German into Polish and then from Polish into English and then from English back into German which, of course, caused a certain confusion in terminology. As far as I was informed, 22 Aug. 46 Dr. Seidl, counsel for the Defendant Frank, became familiar with this document and has not objected to excluding this part from the minutes inasmuch as it was caused by the defects of translation. All these documents have, therefore, been submitted -to the Secretariat of the Tribunal. That is the first application which I would like to submit to the tribunal. The second one is ... THE PRESIDENT: I am not certain, but I thought we had already dealt with that point, in view of Dr. Seidl's withdrawing his objection to that document, and perhaps you can find out afterward whether we have already dealt with it. There was certainly a document presented to us from Dr. Seidl in which he said that, having checked up on the particular document with which he was dealing, he was now convinced that it was all right. COL. SMIRNOV: Yes, Mr. President. As far as I know, Dr. Seidl does not object to excluding this part from the record because the confusion was caused by a faulty translation. THE PRESIDENT: You mean that your application is to strike out Biffiler's evidence? COL. SMIRNOV: On the part concerning this document. THE PRESIDENT: We will consider your application, Colonel Smirnov. COL. SMIRNOV: The second application consists of the following., In the report of the Polish Government submitted to the Tribunal, in many cases only incomplete figures are stated for the losses suffered by Poland as a result of the war. This was caused by the fact that at the time when the report was made, these losses had not been calculated yet, and I would like to ask the Tribunal to admit an official memorandum of the Presidency of Polish Ministers, War Reparations Branch, which contains the complete figures of the losses suffered by Poland during the second World War. The text of this document has been translated into all four languages; that is to say, into English, Russian, French, and German. That is my second application to the Tribunal. I have no more applications to make, Mr. President. THE PRESIDENT: Are you suggesting that this is evidence in rebuttal? COL. SMIRNOV: No, Mr. President, it was caused by the inexact translation. This is a document supplementing the governmental report of the Polish Republic with the exact figures of the losses suffered by Poland during the war. It contains data on the military losses of Poland during the second World War, on the losses in manpower and in property. It is a supplementary document and not one in rebuttal. 22 Aug. 46 THE PRESIDENT: Colonel Smirnov, the document is dated 29 January 1946, and now you wish to offer this document in evidence at the end of August 1946, at the very end of this Trial. COL. SMIRNOV: Mr. President, this document was given to the Soviet Delegation only recently, quite recently. Obviously some time was needed for the translation of this document into four languages. Anyhow we received it only very recently. THE PRESIDENT: I wasn't suggesting that you were in any way to blame, Colonel Smirnov. The Tribunal thinks that this document can't be put in at this late stage; the document appears to have been made a long time ago and though it may have been received by you recently, it isn't proper that it should be admitted at this stage. COL. SMIRNOV: I submitted this document, Mr. President, exclusively for one reason; I considered that the data contained in this document lend substantial significance to the picture of the general losses suffered by the Polish Republic. I think that the data could only be completed by submitting this document and that was the reason why I submitted this application to the Tribunal. THE PRESIDENT: That may very well be, Colonel Smirnov, but the reason why the Tribunal rejects it is because it is submitted at such a late stage when it is impossible for the Tribunal to go into the facts which are alleged in it or to give the defendants the opportunity of contradicting it. We will consider the other matters you have drawn our attention to. DR. OTTO NELTE (Counsel for Defendant Keitel): Mr. President, since Dr. Servatius, my colleague, has just been called upon to deliver his final plea, I believe I may assume that the presentation of evidence against the Organizations is now to be considered as concluded. Now, I should like to ask the High Tribunal when the right time would be to settle the applications for evidence which still have to be attended to. This concerns the individual defendants who have made applications for evidence or have submitted affidavits in the course of the proceedings against the Organizations. Can that be done right now, or when should it be done? THE PRESIDENT: Dr. Nelte, the Tribunal understands that you have got some evidence which you have already applied for, which you want to offer. You have it all ready, is that right? DR. NELTE: Yes, indeed, I have already handed it in and submitted it to the Prosecution and I informed the High Tribunal about this in writing on 9 August. It is a question of just when I should ... it is a question of how I can introduce three affidavits here. THE PRESIDENT: Have you got the evidence now? 22 Aug 46 DR. NELTE: Yes. THE PRESIDENT: Well, Dr. Nelte, we think that you might offer these affidavits now unless they are objected to by the Prosecution. SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: There is no objection as far as I know. There is certainly none from Mr. Dodd and myself. I haven't heard from any of my colleagues, but I haven't heard of any objection. THE PRESIDENT: You may offer them now. With reference to the other defendants, they will... SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: I beg your pardon, there is no objection from either one. THE PRESIDENT: With reference to the other defendants, counsel will understand that if they have any fresh evidence arising out of the evidence submitted on behalf of the Organizations, they will have to offer it during the course of the speeches for the Organizations or immediately at the end of the speeches for the Organizations; and that after that has been done, no further evidence can be offered. We will take the offering of your evidence now. DR. NELTE: These affidavits, however, have not yet been translated, since I could not apply for the translation until I had the approval of the Prosecution. May I submit ... THE PRESIDENT: You are suggesting that we postpone hearing the affidavits until we get the translations? DR. NELTE: Yes. THE PRESIDENT: Very well. DR. SAUTER: Mr. President, I still have two interrogatories to pass in. Two interrogatories which were duly approved by the High Tribunal, and which in the meantime have been returned, and which I have already submitted in the prescribed way. One is Interrogatory Number 137, Baldur von Schirach, Document Von Schirach 137, an interrogatory by a certain Gunther Kaufmann, who used to work on the staff of the Defendant Von Schirach in the Hitler Youth Leadership. This interrogatory deals chiefly with Schirach's attitude on the question of war, his attitude to foreign policy, his attitude on the treatment of Eastern peoples, and his attitude on the Jewish question, and finally, on propaganda abroad. This interrogatory is being given Number 137 in the Document Book Von Schirach. The next interrogatory will receive Von Schirach Number 138. It is a Russian interrogatory deposed by a witness, Ida Vasseau, I repeat, Ida Vasseau, who, in the meantime, has been interrogated once more. In this interrogatory I consider only two sentences on Pages 4 and 5 of any value, which I have marked in red in the 22 Aug. -56 margin. This interrogatory, as I said, is being given Von Schirach Number 138. And finally, may I give you the number for another piece of evidence. On 11 July 1946 1 submitted to the High Tribunal the original copy of a newspaper, the Rhein-Neckar-Zeitung of 6 July 1946, together with a supplementary document, for the purpose of proving that the witness Lauterbacher, who was heard before the Court in the case of Schirach, has in the meantime been acquitted by a British Superior Court in the well-known matter where a certain Kremer had accused Gauleiter Lauterbacher of ordering the murder of the inmates of the Hamelin penitentiary. An original copy of this newspaper article was already submitted to you on 11 July 1946., It is being given Schirach Exhibit Number 139. MR. DODD: Mr. President, that matter has been raised so many times by Dr. Sauter; I think we should make the record clear. The time that I used that paper that was in our hands for the purpose of cross-examining the witness Lauterbacher, the Tribunal ruled that the matter should not be submitted or would not be accepted in evidence, and so it never has become evidence before this Tribunal. I pressed for it at the time, I am frank to say, but the Tribunal very briefly, as the later events revealed, refused to have it submitted in evidence. If Dr. Sauter takes pleasure in talking about it once in a while, I have no objection to it, but it doesn't help this Court very much, and it doesn't seem to do very much good to constantly bring it up. DR. SAUTER: Mr. President, the newspaper article which I submitted on 11 July bears the date of 6 July 1946, the sixth day of the seventh month of the year, and thus dates from a time after the witness Lauterbacher was interrogated. Therefore, it obviously could not have been taken into consideration during Lauterbacher's interrogation; however, it might be of importance for judging the character of the witness Lauterbacher. For the High Tribunal will perhaps remember that it was precisely Mr. Dodd who at that time confronted Lauterbacher with this business of the Hamelin penitentiary. Lauterbacher contested this under oath, whereas a witness named Kremer asserted everything in an affidavit. In the meantime this witness Kremer has been convicted, but the witness Lauterbacher has been acquitted, and I believe that this fact would appear to be of importance to the High Tribunal in judging the credibility, the reliability, of the witness Lauterbacher. MR. DODD: I will withdraw my objection. If Dr. Sauter wants to prove that he wasn't a hangman, I have no objection to it. I don't suppose it is very important. I won't object to it if he wants to put it in that he wasn't poisoning some people and hanged nobody. Von Schirach rejected the document. Now, Dr. Sauter 22 Aug. 46 wants to prove that he wasn't anyway. I don't suppose we should object to it. THE PRESIDENT: He just wants to show that Lauterbacher was freed by some ... MR. DODD: He was freed of the charge I raised against him here. Dr. Sauter is not content with that; he wants to prove it over again. He wants to prove that he wasn't a hangman and not a poisoner. We don't object to that. DR. SAUTER: Mr. President, of course, I do not wish to prove that Mr. Lauterbacher is not a hangman, for up to now even the Prosecution has not been seriously able to maintain that. I merely want to prove that the witness whom the Prosecution brought forward with an affidavit-namely, this Dr. Kremer-is not a trustworthy witness and that he did not tell the truth. And that in the meantime has been legally established by the judgment of a British court. That might be of importance in the question of the credibility of the witness Dr. Kremer in his affidavit, on the one hand, and that of the witness Lauterbacher who appeared here, on the other. THE PRESIDENT: What is the document you are wanting to put in? A newspaper article? DR. SAUTER: The -name of the newspaper-I have submitted it to you-is the Rhein-Neckar-Zeitung, R-h-e-i-n N-e-c-k-a-r Z-e-it-u-n-g, of 6 July 1946, and I submitted it to the Tribunal with the proper form on 11 July 1946. Mr. President, I think that will be all I should like to say regarding requests for evidence. Thank you very much. THE PRESIDENT: We will consider it. Now, Dr. Servatius. DR. SERVATIUS: Mr. President, the English translations were to have been completed this morning, and it is quite possible that they are ready now. But I am not certain on that point. Therefore only the German text is available. I gave a 'copy to the interpreters. Mr. President: May it please the Tribunal, the Prosecution has moved to have the Corps of Political Leaders declared as criminal. What is the charge against the persons grouped together under this name? Topics of investigations were: the persecution of the Jews, the conflict with the Church, and the dissolution of the trade unions; the incitement to lynch flyers who made emergency landings; the maltreatment of foreigners; the arrest of political opponents, and methods of surveillance and police spying- In relation to this, the fundamental legal point involved in the accusation raised by the Prosecution has to be expounded. The accusation is to the effect that the Corps of Political Leaders collectively 22 Aug. 46 committed the deeds mentioned for the purpose of unleashing a war of aggression, or that they had banded together in order to commit the above-mentioned war crimes. It must be made clear at the outset that deeds which do not result from these motives, or which as individual actions do not belong to the Common Plan of the Conspiracy, are not included in this accusation. The major crimes, such as the extermination of the Jews and the killing of political opponents in concentration camps, are not crimes against humanity within the meaning of the Charter, and the minor measures of police spying or election frauds are in them selves insignificant in this ' Trial, provided that they were not carried out with the aim of being crimes against international law, crimes against peace, and war crimes as set down in Article 6 of the Charter. I have already referred to this legal position without meeting with any contradiction. In order to support this opinion, I should like to refer to the Supplementary Berlin Agreement to the Charter of 6 October 1945. This concerns an agreement of the four Signatory Powers to the Charter, the sole point of the agreement being the changing of a semicolon to a comma. Through this agreement, we have the correction of the text of Article 6 c, which had been ,separated into two parts by the semicolon in the English and French texts. The result had been that crimes against humanity could have been prosecuted without being connected with crimes against peace or war crimes, which are under the jurisdiction of the Tribunal. This possibility of interference with the internal matters of a state without any connection with a war does not now apply, after Article 6 c has been drawn up in accordance with the Russian text. Any interference for humanitarian reasons alone is, therefore, denied the Tribunal. In all of their basic statements, the Prosecution have continually tried to establish the connection of all their charges with crimes against peace and war crimes by proving a conspiracy. Who is included in the Indictment brought against the Corps of Political Leaders? According to the Charter, it is for the Prosecution to determine that circle of individuals which is to be declared criminal as an organization or as a group. Here the Indictment is directed against the Corps of Political Leaders, according to 1~ational Socialist terminology. Despite the designation which refers to an organization, such an organization did not exist. The designation "Political Organization," which had been chosen for the same group of persons, was even expressly prohibited by a decree of the Fuehrer's Deputy in the Party, Hess~, on 27 July 1935 (Document PL-12). The reason given 22 Aug. 46 for this was that there could not exist any special organization within the Party. Actually, this group of persons consisted only of functionaries such as exist within every party as executive and administrative agents., But there is no doubt that there are a great number of people who, because of their titles, must be defined as Political Leaders. It is not a group which banded together, for one could not enter the circle of Political Leaders merely by joining, but only through an appointment which took place, without any effort on the part of the person concerned, by an act of sovereignty. The legal position is comparable to that of any civil servant who enters the circle of his colleagues through his appointment. How does this circle denote a special group? Besides being appointed, only by the right to wear a uniform, which was connected with it. In addition, there is the oath, but that did not represent, anything special, inasmuch as all civil servants and soldiers had to take this in the same way. The duties and activities of the members of the Corps of Political Leaders, however, are completely varied according to their nature and importance. There were Political Leaders who worked in associations, such as the German Labor Front and the National Socialist Peoples' Welfare Association, and who wore uniforms during their practical administrative work only for decorative reasons. These are the members of the various affiliated associations who have deliberately not been included in the charges of the Prosecution. Besides these, there are Political Leaders who directed the actual political machinery; these were the Hoheitstr5ger and the members of the Political Staffs, who are characterized by the Prosecution as "top leaders" or "main leaders". From the reasons given by the Prosecution to support their Indictment it appears that by the Corps of Political Leaders they mean only the latter individuals who are enumerated from Reich Leaders to the Block Leaders. From the affiliated organizations, Political Leaders were included only insofar as they were active on the Political Staffs which grouped themselves around the Hoheitstr5ger. This circle of persons can be comprised in a special definable group, insofar as a connection exists between them through the relationship of subordination, disciplinary power, and business routine. The number of persons so affected has been estimated by the Prosecution at about 600,000, according to the number of offices existing in the year 1939. As the document used as a basis for this shows (2958-PS), the posts in the staffs are not included. The figures show that, in addition to the Hoheitstr5ger, including the Cell and 22 Aug. 46 Block Leaders, there were some 475,000 such posts which were filled by Political Leaders. The number of Political Leaders on the Political Staffs for the year 1939 is thereby increased to about one million. As can be estimated from Party statistics, the figure is increased one and a half times because of the heavy turnover of personnel over 12 years, that is, to about two and a half million. In this connection, the fact is taken into account that in the beginning the number of posts was only half that number. If the members of the Ortsgruppenstelle are deducted a figure of about one and a half million remains. Not included in these figures are the office holders from the staffs who were not appointed Political Leaders, nor those who were ordered to serve on an honorary basis as Political Leaders during the war in subordinate positions; during the war the latter were primarily Cell and Block Leaders. According to the testimony given by witnesses, their number may be estimated at 600,000. If, as the Prosecution does, one includes these individuals in the circle of Political Leaders, then the entire figure of persons involved rises to 2,100,000. This figure is still further increased because there were also other office holders on the Political Staffs who were not appointed Political Leaders. Because of the fact that the charge raised by the Prosecution is restricted to Political Leaders, a part of the persons on the- staffs are not included. They are the ones who were not appointed Political Leaders even though they held office. An extension of the charge to these persons cannot now take place subsequently without legal prejudice to those affected, since they were not given an opportunity to apply for a legal hearing in the first proclamation by the Tribunal. Before dealing with the question as to whether this specific group is to be declared criminal, we must discuss the question of whether the charges are admissible under international law. According to Article 50 of the Hague Rules of Land Warfare, a collective punishment of the population is only admissible if all the population are considered jointly guilty for individual actions. This is an exceptional regulation which serves solely for the protection of the occupying power. Thus a similar measure arising out of general political considerations is prohibited. You may not punish a group because the guilt for a war is imputed to its members, or because you held them responsible for moral resistance. You cannot arrest all "Political Commissars" or Jews, and condemn them because of their political attitude. This prohibition of the Hague Rules of Land Warfare is based on the individual principle of democratic criminal law, which has not lost its prestige. Whether the charges of the Prosecution are legal or whether the Charter has invalidated Article 50 of the Hague Rules on Land 22 Aug. 46 Warfare, must be examined officially. If you consider the proceedings admissible, then we shall have to examine whether the group's complicity in guilt can be considered proved. How such proof is to be furnished neither the Hague Rules of Land Warfare nor the Charter indicates. We can follow two principles: either that of justice or that of expediency. The principle of justice demands proof of individual guilt, and the condemnation of a group is to be rejected, "if there is only one just man among them." The principle of expediency admits the possibility of outvoting the innocent ones, and thus shows a preference to punish the innocent rather than to let the guilty ones go unprosecuted. The Prosecution has stated repeatedly that the aim of the Indictment was to punish only the guilty ones and not to set a trap for the innocent, or catch them all in one net. These words are in accordance with the principle of justice, but the motion to characterize the group as criminal in itself rests on considerations of expediency. This apparent contradiction can be resolved only by requesting the Court's decision on a matter of procedure in order to meet an emergency. Accordingly, it is true that a number of innocent persons were included in the preliminary proceedings here before the Tribunal, but in subsequent proceedings they ate to "have the right to raise any objections," as Justice Jackson has stated. In its decision of 13 March 1946 regarding the regulation of the procedure for taking evidence, the Tribunal expressed itself in a sense which makes a majority ruling appear possible; a clear basis for the decision itself, or its ultimate influence on the subsequent individual trials, was not created. The decision of the Tribunal in this regard must depend essentially on the results which its Verdi can be expected to have. Therefore, Law Number 10 of the Control Council, of 20 December 1945, is of the utmost importance. From the text of this law it appears as if mere membership in an organization or a group which has been declared criminal will be punishable. If that were the case, the inclusion of innocent persons in the present proceedings would seriously impair the principle of guilt which forms the basis of modern criminal law. Such an interpretation would not be compatible with the text of the Charter. There, indeed, Article 10 declares the objection that an organization was not criminal to be inadmissible, but one may still raise the objection that one did not know about its criminal character. It follows also from Article 11 of the Charter that a conviction is contemplated only because of participation in the criminal activity. The informed press and the radio have also expressed themselves in the same vein. 22 Aug. 46 The question arises as to how the criminal character of the group is to be established, which is decisive for its conviction. The attitude of the Tribunal can be learned from its ruling of 13 March 1946. The essential factor is participation in the conspiracy. This presupposes the formation of the group for the commitment of a specific act which has been declared criminal by Article 6 of the Charter. Such a formation, however, in the case of every conspirator is based, among other things, on concrete knowledge of the crime contemplated. As proof of this knowledge the Prosecution alleges the notoriety of the crimes or the comprehensive information available to the Political Leaders. The persecution of the Jews and the conflict with the Church were publicly known as general tendencies. The criminal excesses proceeding from them were not known. In this connection the following is also important: The thing that matters is not the general knowledge of the facts, but the general knowledge of the motives behind them. Unless We are concerned with, genuine war crimes, the motive for aggressive war must be known; the actions must have been recognizable as the first stage of a war of aggression. Only in this way could participation in the criminal conspiracy result. The Prosecution concludes that these motives must have been self-evident to the persons affected from the doctrine of National Socialism. There, it is claimed, aims were stated Which of necessity had to lead to a war of aggression. In this way even building up the Party and recruiting members, as well as the seizure of power, become criminal, proceeding from the motive of a war of aggression. It is claimed that an alliance existed for waging an aggressive war or for the commission of war crimes. Is this conclusion correct? As manuals, the Political Leaders had the Party Program and the book Mein Kampf. The Party Program had been attacked vigorously by domestic opponents, but no official foreign agencies had objected to it. In 1925 the Interallied Rhineland Commission in Coblenz had approved the Party Program for the Rhineland, and later the League of Nations had done likewise for Danzig. The Party was permitted, including its philosophy as expressed in the book Mein Kampf. Besides, it was known that Hitler had declared that his book was out of date in many points. It is true that the goals to which the Party aspired could lead to a war, and it is also true that a war which aims at something which infringes on the property of someone else, must include an attack on such property. But the slogans "Lebensraum" (Living Space) and "Los von Versailles" (Away with Versailles) just as little as the slogan "Workers of the world unite" is bound to result in aggressive war. A door always remains open to negotiation 22 Aug. 46 through an appeal to reason. Just as strikes, uprisings, and revolutions within a state can be justified for workers in their struggle for existence, so wars may come about in the life of nations. But the normal way is that of negotiation. Otherwise, any member of an opposition party could be prosecuted for high treason. That an aggressive war was actually waged, which would obviously go beyond the technical concept of the opening of hostilities, has been contested with cogent arguments in the proceedings before the Tribunal by many of the major defendants. If Hitler demanded living space, the result of the war forces one to believe that other nations are taking it without condemning the principle which as a "law of life" is supposed to have been the cause of this war. The archives of the world remain closed. For the Defense it is not so important to determine whether an aggressive war was waged, but rather to determine whether the Political Leaders knew about it and whether it became generally obvious to them. The facts themselves speak eloquently against the general knowledge of aggressive intentions. To every Political Leader Hitler's offer to disarm down to the last machine gun must have been impressive, and also his repeated declaration that the misfortune of other peoples could not bring any advantages to his own people, but rather that the welfare of all should be the basis of international life. Equally impressive must have been the naval agreement with Great Britain, his declaration to France that he did not intend to make further territorial claims, the Munich Pact, and finally the Treaty of Friendship with the Soviet Union. The latter in particular caused a wave of rejoicing because it seemed to bring about peace with the, very adversary who had hitherto been designated as our worst enemy. Precisely this treaty proves at the same time how impossible it is to derive any directives for practical use from the book Mein Kampf. Of primary importance for judging the rearmament of Germany as far as the Political Leaders are concerned is Hitler's repeated declaration that "Bundnisfuhigkeit" (the ability to conclude alliances) must be established by an equality of armaments. The extent of rearmament was not perceptible in relation to the strength of our opponents, and Hitler himself had declared it to be folly for a small nation to challenge the whole world. However, the cornerstone of the conviction of all the Political Leaders that no war was being planned was the fact, emphasized again and again, that Hitler himself had served as a frontline soldier in the first World War; one could not, therefore, expect him to bring on the miseries of a new war. 22 Aug. 46 Thus at the 1936 Party Rally in Nuremberg, on the occasion of an appeal directed exclusively to the Political Leaders, Hitler literally stated: "During these long years we had no other prayer than 'Lord, give our people domestic peace and grant and preserve for them peace with other nations'. In our generation we experienced so much of fighting that it is understandable if we long for peace.... "We wish to care for the future of our nation's children, and to work for the future, not only in order to safeguard their lives but also to make them easier. So much misfortune lies behind us that we have only one request to address to a merciful and benevolent Providence: 'Spare our children that which we had to suffer!' We desire nothing but peace and tranquillity for our work." (Document PL-41a.) These words were directed to the very same men who as Political Leaders are today affected by the Indictment. In contrast to thought of war there were strong foundations for a positive policy of peace. For all those who fought for Socialism and who believed in the realization of peace plans, the fact that Hitler himself had been a worker was of primary importance. The elimination of unemployment appeared as the greatest possible accomplishment of peace; a success which was convincing for everyone who regained employment. It was not Hitler's demoniacal magic which brought 7 million unemployed and the same number of partially employed people with their families to his ranks; what moved the masses was the fact that he gave them work and bread again. It cannot be denied that the position of the worker was improved to something beyond a bare existence, and that his social standing was raised. At the beginning of the war a great social work was in the process of construction, namely, the universal old-age insurance system. To the Political Leaders this did not look like aggressive war. There is still one more important reason why the occurrences and their motives were not generally known: it is the system of secrecy. The means of preserving secrecy are known to the Tribunal from the evidence they have heard. I would like to emphasize another point which helped in a particular way to preserve secrecy; it is the confidence which Hitler enjoyed. This confidence was nourished from the huge reservoir of social success which he had gained by eliminating unemployment, which had brought human beings to the edge of despair. To this were added his successes in foreign policy, which had been recognized abroad. Everything was supported by the traditional authority of the State and by emphasizing that tradition; both are things which 22 Aug 46 have much influence on the people. To that was added a hitherto unknown frankness of speech in matters of foreign policy which the French Prosecutor has called naiveté Within Germany this frankness brought about the conviction that Hitler would not instigate anything secretly. That picture was completed for the millions of followers by the facade of respectability and dignity which was kept up by that very circle around Hitler from whom criticism and warnings were first to be expected. From all this one has to conclude that the Political Leaders could not have gained knowledge of any aggressive intentions. The assumption by the Prosecution that special information had been given about these plans also seems untenable in the light of the evidence submitted during the Trial. The Prosecution's allegation presumably rests on their original assumption that it was a part of the normal business routine to inform all Hoheitstr5ger, whereas it has now been established that only a very small circle was initiated. The situation is different with regard to the war crimes: here the deciding factor is not proof of the motives for known occurrences, but the knowledge of the facts themselves. It is certain that war crimes, because of their despicable motives, are kept secret as a matter of course. In the course. of testimony the Tribunal has learned of the ring of silence which was drawn around the worst atrocities. Other war crimes with which the defendants are charged are individual cases which did not become publicly known. We shall comment on these in connection with the individual points of the accusations. A number of happenings have been adduced by the Prosecution which according to the Charter itself do not constitute crimes. Evidence has been given concerning the development of the Party, the seizure of power, and the maintenance of power. These are occurrences the general nature of which has not been denied. The creation of a dictatorial state and the prohibition of other parties is a measure of home policy which every state may take according to its judgment. To allege that these methods were created for a war of aggression and that they are therefore criminal is an unnatural construction of the facts. Proof for any such assumption is lacking. The organization of the State along dictatorial lines may be necessary for the establishment of Socialism as well as for a war of aggression. Thus, the direction of the economy can serve good as well as evil. The British Prosecutor has shown us another point of view. He has stated that intervention is possible in order to protect citizens against their own government; from this he concludes that 22 Aug. 46 even war can be waged out of humanitarian reasons. The Charter does not confer such a right of intervention, as has already been stated in the beginning. But even international law has hitherto never recognized any right of intervention upon moral grounds. Crusades are not permitted. If the so-called methods of the Party are commented upon here, it is because its abuses are connected with the crimes in the Charter. Four documents have been submitted which are connected with Political Leaders and concern the influencing of elections. The most important one is Document D-43 from the year 1936. It concerns an inquiry by the Reich Minister of the Interior as to which civil servants did not fulfil their obligations to vote. The Ortsgruppenleiter are asked to comment upon this. This is a letter from the Kreisleiter's office in Bremen. Another Kreisleiter, the witness KUM, declared before the Commission that he did not receive any such inquiry. The general character of this inquiry is thus put in doubt. One document, R-142, dating from the year 1938, is of purely local importance. It originates from the Coblenz SD Sector and mentions the statement of the Kreis Manager (Kreisgeschuftsfuehrer) about the reasons for the bad election results because of personal quarrels. Both documents deal with the results of the election after the vote. Two further documents-D-897 and D-902-dating from the year 1938, are letters exchanged between the lowest offices of the SD in Erfurt about supervision of the election. Concerning this, the closest possible co-operation with the Ortsgruppenleiter is ordered. As far as the proceedings against the Political Leaders are concerned it is shown that the order-issuing apparatus of the Party in no way intervened here. These are merely independent and isolated measures by other offices. No general practice or knowledge, therefore, can be deduced from that. Another charge is that of police spying. The pretext for this is in a passage of the Organizations Book, Page 101 of the 1940 edition, according to which Blockleiters are to report persons spreading dangerous rumors. In connection with this the keeping of household card index files is mentioned, as practiced in the Cologne Gau and including detailed supervisory questions. The question now is whether this was generally handled by the Political Leaders in this way, and whether-it was done in conformity with Party directives. The Party directives to the Political Leaders specify the exact opposite. See Decree Number 127 of 5 October 1936 in the orders of the Fuehrer's Deputy (Document Number PL-34). 22 Aug. 46 The witnesses examined in connection with this question have testified that these instructions were followed and that the card indexes known to them contained nothing resembling police spying. This confirms the fact that there existed no general order resembling the system in the Cologne Gau which was binding on all Gaue. In this connection we refer particularly to the testimony of the witness Dr. Kuhn who, as Counsellor of the District Court of Appeal was the qualified adviser for the Subversive Activities Law (Heimtilekegesetz) in the Ministry of Justice. The witness declared in his interrogation on 10 July 1946 that the proceedings instituted could mostly be traced back to statements by hostile neighbors or other informers and only very rarely originated with Political Leaders. The only concrete testimony about cases of police spying which the Prosecution has submitted is Document L-901, in which a Block Leader and janitor of a Parish Hall reports a secret meeting of the members of the Confessional Church in his building. The charge of police spying is also coupled with that of causing persons to be placed in protective custody and sent to concentration camps. That political adversaries in a State should be declared enemies of the State and arrested seems to be a prescriptive right which politicians arrogate to themselves. It is based upon reciprocity and represents in this case a retaliation for the losses in the political struggle. A connection with a war of aggression is not established. The charges of the Prosecution will, therefore, be directed against misuse of office through excesses and atrocities. It was not the 'Party which was competent in this sphere, but the State agencies. In accordance with orders by the Chief of the Security Police and SD of 10 March 1940, Document Number PL-100, arrests were solely the function of the Gestapo. Any interference on the part of Political Leaders was strictly forbidden (Number PL-29). In this manner secrecy was assured from the very beginning. The real conditions in the concentration camps were concealed from the Political Leaders through the fact that orders were issued and carried out that even after their release political prisoners and their families should remain under thorough supervision. This is Document Number PL-100, which creates such astonishment when read today. When the witness Count von Roedern was interrogated before the Commission concerning knowledge about conditions in the concentration camps he said that in the beginning of 1943 the Landesgruppenleiter of the Auslandsorganisation of the Party had visited the concentration camp at Sachsenhausen, and had gained the impression on that occasion that the rumors about 22 Aug. 46 concentration camps which were circulated abroad at that time were without foundation. The witness Sieckmeier states in Affidavit PL-57 that in the spring of 1939 he visited the concentration camp at Buchenwald with 150 American guests, and the witness Wunsche states in Affidavit PL-57b that in June 1938 he visited the concentration camp at Sachsenhausen with a class of the Berlin Zollschule (School for Customs Officials). Both state that the quarters and the food of the prisoners were in conformity with the regulations. Thirty-five more statements by Political Leaders who had visited such camps are contained in the collective affidavits. They are all to the same effect. 14,000 statements summarized in Affidavit PL-57 show that these Political Leaders knew nothing about the conditions in the concentration camps, that in seven cases they received no answer to their inquiries, but that satisfactory answers were received in 102 cases. Then incriminating documents about euthanasia were submitted. It has been shown that the Political Leaders had no part in carrying out these measures, and that they had no general knowledge of them. Document 630-PS, a letter of Hitler's of I September 1939, shows that this was a so-called "special secret order," which was given directly to Reichsleiter without portfolio Bouhler and Dr. Brandt. Neither the Reichsleiter nor Gauleiter were informed about any such special secret order (Proof: Document 59a, Hederich Affidavit). According to Document D-906, Numbers 3 and 6, the medical commission concerned seems to have established contact with the Gauleiter or Kreisleiter in individual cases. It is 'noteworthy, however, that precisely this last document mentions that the Hoheitstrager are not included, since the regulations do not contemplate this. Confirmation of these facts is given by the collective affidavits PL-59 of Karl Richard Adam, who states that 7,642 Political Leaders executed affidavits to the effect- that they had not received any orders, and had not been involved in carrying out such measures. All other measures were also taken to preserve secrecy about this matter, which had already become known here and there and had given rise to many rumors. This is shown by the special notes recommending secrecy in the incriminating documents. The witness Meyer-Wendeborn stated before the Tribunal that upon his inquiry he was told that these were only rumors; and a physician, Dr. Engel (PL-59b), and Kreisleiter Dr. Dietrich (PL-59c) confirm this official denial of the, mercy killing. 22 Aug. 46 Were these measures in any way connected with the conduct -of the war? It is certain that euthanasia was already being discussed in 1934, as shown by Document M-152. Carefully worded articles were published in the press, which encouraged this idea from the viewpoint of eugenics (Zuchtwahl), and which referred to the custom in ancient Greece of exposing and abandoning the unfit. Any connection with warlike intentions, however, is difficult to establish, even though the member of a Gau staff defines mercy killing in case of war as a war measure in Document D-906. I now come to the events which became public knowledge: smashing 6f the labor unions, conflict with the Churches, and persecution of the Jews. The "smashing" of the free trade unions was well known. It was a revolutionary act. It was either permissible or not permissible, as in any revolution. It was an event which happened only once and for which the responsibility is clear. The Political Leaders did not have a direct part in its execution, but they knew of the event and approved it. The question must be examined whether it was a measure anticipating war, or whether other reasons were decisive. The 150 large and small labor unions, which included 30 percent of the workers, were already at the end of their tether before they were dissolved. Economically, the majority of them were facing collapse; the many years of unemployment had depleted their treasuries, while increasing the demands upon them. The political parties which dominated the unions had been helpless in the face of the economic crisis; they had been powerless against Hitler, and so they resigned. Mass withdrawals, which began at the end of 1932 and the beginning of 1933, had thus made the unions mere shadows. On the other hand, the-workers transferred to the NSBO, and thereby aligned themselves with the idea of peace within the ranks of labor, which was clearly preparing the way for the solution of the economic crisis. In the same way the employers' organizations were compelled to maintain peace within labor, and were dissolved. The purpose of the elimination of all organizations was to effect a settlement between labor and capital; the class struggle was replaced by the duty to care for the workers on the one hand, and the duty of loyalty on the other as a key to the elimination of economic distress. That the proceeding was so understood and approved -by the workers is shown by their willing cooperation; thus the economic-political proceeding was justified after the event. Then the Church question is also an incriminating point. It is well known that the Churches lived in constant strife with National Socialism. It is not known that the cause of this strife lay in the opposition of the Churches to an int6nded war of aggression. 22 Aug. 46 After initial differences about power politics, it was only later that reasons of Christian morality impelled the Church in an ever increasing degree to fight against National Socialism. In general, the Churches were indifferent to the foreign policy of nations, in accordance with the principle, "Give unto Caesar that which is Caesar's". Conflict with the Church was contrary to the Party Program, and' Hitler himself never preached it; he would probably have preferred to win over the Churches. He tried to do so through the Concordat, and had some success through the proclamation of the Fulda Conference of Bishops and the proclamation of the Austrian Bishops after the Anschluss. Propaganda against the Church was kept at a minimum, and was directed against members of the clergy who interfered in politics. There was no real, organized fight against the Church. The separation of Church and State was demanded to overcome the division of the people through various denominations. Thus, Hitler told the witness Count Wolff-Metternich, immediately after the seizure of power in 1933, that a campaign against the Christian Church would be inexcusable (Affidavit PL-62c), and the witness Fabricius, a Professor of Divinity, confirms this attitude (Affidavit PL-62a). For the Political Leaders this conviction manifested itself in the fact that even before 1933 many theological students, professors of divinity and churchmen had joined the Party. After 1933 a strong movement started for rejoining the Church among those who had left the Church under the influence of Marxism. Retroactive marriage and christening ceremonies took place in large numbers, as is shown by affidavits PL-62a and 62b-Professor Fabricius and theologian Buth. The witness Schohn confirms in Affidavit PL-62 that out of 500 Political Leaders whose testimony he examined 42 percent simultaneously held Church offices. The witnesses Wegscheider and Kaufmann, who were examined before the Tribunal, also testified that numerous Political Leaders held a Church office. The Bishops Dr. Gr6ber and Dr. Borning were appointed to the State Council (Staatsrat), as shown by the affidavit of Count Wolff-Metternich, PL-62c. The actual picture is shown by the collective affidavit of the witness Schohn who, after examining about 21,000 affidavits, noted that in the former Ortsgruppen (local Party districts) Church life remained undisturbed and that the Party occasionally participated in Church life officially, in some cases in uniform. Accordingly, in the individual local districts there were good relations with the clergy, and this found public expression at celebrations. On the other hand, there was a campaign led by a small anti-Church 22 Aug 46 group whose activities and statements are in contradiction to the genera ' I Party line. The leader of the group was Bormann. Of 23 documents which were submitted by the Prosecution against the Political Leaders on the Church question, no less than nine documents are statements of opinion by Bormann. Seven documents concern the SS, as well as the SD and the Gestapo. Four documents deal with three local occurrences, and one document consists of the personal opinion of Gauleiter Florian. There follows a quotation from the Myth, and a document with directives for the Reich Labor Service. None of these documents shows that the Political Leaders participated as a unit in the elimination of the Church. I shall comment on the individual documents: The most incriminating document is the secret decree of Bormann to the Gauleiter on "National Socialism and Christianity" (Document D-75). On this subject there is an affidavit by the witness Hederich, of the Party Chancellery (PL-620). According to this, Bormann issued this decree on his own authority and Hitler instructed him to recall and destroy this circular. The witness Gauleiter Kaufmann confirmed before the Tribunal here that this decree actually was recalled. The same thing is shown by the testimony of the witness Hoffmann before the Commission on 3 July 1946. In Affidavit PL-62b the witness Buth, a theologian, states that the Defendant Rosenberg likewise rejected the decree and raised objections. Document 098-PS is a letter from Bormann to Rosenberg, and it deals with a so-called National Socialist Catechism. It is a personal opinion of Bormann. There is no answer of Rosenberg at hand. In this letter a meeting of the Reichsleiter is suggested. The affidavit of the witness Hederich states that such a meeting never took place. There' follow a number of documents which show Bormann's constant personal efforts in the direction of the separation of Church and State. Document 070-PS regarding school devotions lies in this direction; as also Document 840-PS, admission of theologians into the Party; and 107-PS, instructions for the participation of the Reich Labor Service in Church ceremonies. The following documents, 100-PS and 101-PS, are letters from Bormann to Rosenberg expressing the wish for their own literature for soldiers; Rosenberg is here attacked because of the attitude Which he took in favor of a book in a religious vein by Reich Bishop Muller. This proves Bormann's purely personal activity. In the same field is Document 064-PS, again a letter from Bormann to Rosenberg. It requests his opinion on an enclosed letter from Gauleiter Florian of 23 September 1940, who had objected to a religious writing by General Rabenau. It is a personal opinion which is not typical of the general attitude of the Political Leaders. 22 Aug. 46 I A further action of Bormann is shown by Document 116-PS, a letter to Rosenberg of 24 January 1939 about the restrictions imposed on the theological faculties. Here Rosenberg is not instructed to carry this out, as the Prosecution erroneously assumes; another letter is merely sent to him for his information, in which a restriction of the faculties was welcomed. The continuation of his efforts to win Rosenberg over to his views is shown by a letter of Bormann of 17 May 1939 to Rosenberg. Here Bormann forwards a plan by the Reich Education Minister on the restriction of the theological faculties, likewise only with a request for his opinion, and not, as the Prosecution assumes, for the immediate execution of the measure under consideration. Then the Political Leaders are charged here with Gestapo activities, on the basis of the files of a conference of Gestapo Church specialists (Document Number 1815-PS). This cannot be taken as evidence of proof of the anti-Church attitude of the Political Leaders themselves. Nor did the Political Leaders have any direct connection with the confiscation of Church property. Document R-101-correspondence of the RSHA-shows confiscations by the Reichsstatthalter and Gauleiter and by the Eastern German Agricultural Company (Ostdeutsche Landwirtschaftsgesellschaft GnibH.) in the Warthegau. Both acted in their capacity as state offices, so that this is not a general measure making use of the Party machinery, with the knowledge of all Political Leaders. Document 072-PS, a letter of Bormann to Rosenberg of 19 April 1941, expressly emphasizes that it is not the business of Political Leaders to confiscate Church property. There follow the public campaigns against the Church, which the Prosecution has brought forward. Document 848-PS and 849-PS deal with excesses against Bishop Sproll in Rottenburg. It is evident that this action was carried out by forces foreign to the local Party. Document 1507-PS deals with incidents on the occasion of a sermon by Cardinal Faulhaber at Freising. The records show that the Political Leaders were given explicit instructions not to interfere with the religious services held there, even if the Cardinal should deliver a sermon against National Socialism. As a matter, of fact, there -was no interference with the service by Political Leaders. It is noteworthy that, according to the records, Cardinal Faulhaber declared himself willing to officiate a few months later in the same church, and this was "through the mediation of Mayor Lederer of Freising, who was at the same time Kreisleiter and local leader of the SA." 22 Aug. 46 It thus appears that the measures seem more extensive than they were in reality and that the Political Leaders could not have had any real idea of what happened. Nor could the Myth give them any information on the Church question. This book was hard to understand and never received the official Party stamp of approval (Document PL-62e). The witness, Count Wolff-Metternich, has stated that Hitler expressly characterized the book as a private work of Rosenberg, which did not please him. That is Affidavit PL-62c. The persecution of the Jews was the most obvious event. It can be explained quite apart from any war of aggression. The events are well known: economic repression of the Jews, defamation by the Star of David, and elimination from social life, the issuance of the Nurnberg Laws, evacuation toward the East, and finally, extermination. Here it can only be a question of investigating the extent of the active participation of the Political Leaders and their knowledge of the nature and extent of the measures. The legal measures were taken without consulting the Political Leaders. Insofar as they were directed toward restricting the influence of the Jews, they were welcomed by them and were in keeping with the Party Program. Nor was there any objection to the Nurnberg Laws, but the Star of David was considered shameful. Opposition, however, commenced with the confiscation of property and the evacuations. This history of 9 November 1938 is known to the Tribunal through the examination of witnesses. It was a surprise maneuver prepared by Goebbels when the Gauleiters were absent from their Gaus. The Party machinery was avoided, because opposition could be expected here. As far as the Political Leaders had any opportunity to interfere, many Gauleiters refused to obey or issued counter-orders as soon as they learned of the operation. The witness Gauleiter Kaufmann has confirmed this for Hamburg; the witness Wahl has testified the same before the Commission about the Swabian Gau; and the attitude of the Gauleiter for Coblenz-Treves is corroborated in Affidavit PL-54f. On the level of the Kreis and Ortsgruppenleiter,' no planned use of the Political Leaders has been established either. Here the testimony of all witnesses confirms that the event was received with surprise, opposition, and disunity. (Affidavit Dr. Volkmann, PL-54a) Hitler repudiated it, Goering repudiated it, and even Heydrich declared before the Gauleiter and Gau judges on 20 November 1938 that the severest measures would be taken against all who participated in it (Affidavit PL-54d and e). The report of the Supreme Party Judge, Buch (Document 3035-PS, USA-322), submitted by the Prosecution, according to which the punishment was permitted to 22 Aug. 48 become a mere farce, remained unknown. The slight penalties imposed by the court were explained by saying that one could not condemn the little man as long as Goebbels, the instigator, went free. (Affidavit Buch, PL-54c) The rejection of any solution by violence in connection with these events led to a belief in the sincerity of the resettlement plans, which in reality were the preliminary steps for extermination. When the decision for extermination was made is unknown. An affidavit signed by the witness Albert, PL-54h, says that even in 1942 Himmler pretended in a memorandum that he was striving for a legal and humane solution of the Jewish problem at a cost of 25,000 to 30,000 million marks. The obvious reason for all these measures was not the desire to wage war, but exclusively the solution of the racial question. The real happenings in the East came through only as distant rumors and because of their monstrous nature were not believed, but were regarded as enemy propaganda. In this connection, the "explanation" issued by the Party Chancellery on 9 October 1942 is significant. This is Document PL-49. Here the Political Leaders were given an official denial of the atrocities. Document D-908, containing the periodical Die Lage of 23 August 1944, contains a reference to the Jewish problem in Hungary, but does not mention any actual events. Because of its small circulation and the fact that this article appeared only toward the end of the war, it was not of a sort to affect the fundamental judgment of the public. The attitude, of the majority of the Political Leaders on the Jewish question, irrespective of their rank and district, is clearly shown by Affidavit PL-54, which contains a summary of 26,000 sworn declarations. The next question to be examined is the Indictment of the Political Leaders for war crimes. Primarily, this is a Jewish question again, inasmuch as foreign Jews were affected. The majority of the Political Leaders cannot be assumed to have known of events which took place outside the territory of the Reich. It was announced in the press that the governments of other countries, such as Hungary, France, and Italy, adopted measures similar to those of the Germans. What really happened remained, unknown in Germany. Document PL-49, confidential information of 9 October 1942, issued by the Party Chancellery concerning "Rumors about the Situation of the Jews in the East," served to cover up and deny the facts. Three documents were submitted to the witness Hirt before the Tribunal concerning the Germanization of SIAV territory. Document USSR-143 concerns the removal of Slovenian street names and use of the German language for officials. Closer. examination, however, 22 Aug. 46 shows that this was a measure of the Styrian Home League (Heimatbund) which issued circulars to its local districts. The Styrian Heimatbund was not a Party organization (Affidavit by Roedern, Number PL-67). These events concerned a little town called Pettau, which was inhabited by Germans before the 1918 peace treaty. Document USSR-449 also deals with the recovery of territory in Carinthia and Carniola, which formerly was inhabited by German settlers, and Document USSR-191 shows that these were measures taken by the SD in the border regions of Styria. All documents lack the basis for any general knowledge of these orders, the carrying out of which remained unknown to the Political Leaders. Much space is occupied by charges against the Political Leaders concerning the administration in the East. Whether these charges are generally justified cannot yet be judged on the basis of the proceedings to date. However, the question can be examined as to what knowledge the Political Leaders could have of these events and to what extent they are responsible for them. Document 1058-PS contains Rosenberg's speech before the beginning of the Eastern campaign, and his defense counsel has commented u on it in detail. This speech was secret and known only , p to a small circle. Document L-221 of 16 July 1941 concerns the Crimea. These are secret marginal notes by Bormann concerning a discussion in the Fuehrer's headquarters. A memorandum concerning a conversation between Rosenberg and Hitler on the Crimea likewise remained unknown to the public (Document 1517-PS). Frank's Diary (Document 2233-PS) is the basis of the charges against the Political Leaders on the food situation in the Government General. General knowledge of the fact that 40 percent of the population suffered from malnutrition during the year 1941 cannot be assumed without further question. As far as food difficulties had become known in the border region, they can be -attributed to other causes, especially after a lost war. Document R-36 shows Bormann's horrible views on the treatment of the population in the Eastern Territories. It is a comment by Dr. Markull of the Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories, dated 19 August 1942, and addressed to Rosenberg. The frank and vigorous language, as well as his indignant refusal, specifically prove that Bormann's views were not accepted and that other measures were taken. The very fact of this open appeal to Rosenberg proves that there was no doubt that the latter would agree with the refusal. Other incidents became known to a fairly large number of people. Document 1130-PS contains the off-quoted speech by Reichskommissar Koch of I April 1943 in Kiev on the "Master Race." That Koch himself knew that his opinions were not shared is revealed by documents according to which he said that his chiefs of sections fell into two groups, one working openly against him, the other secretly. 22 Aug. 46 Document R-112 contains decrees by Himmler in his capacity as Reich Commissioner for the Strengthening of Germanism, dating from February and June 1942. They refer to the re-Germanization of former German nationals in the Eastern Territories, which in itself was not prohibited. One of those decrees is addressed, among others, to the Gauleiter for their information. It contains no references whatsoever to any criminal measures. The Prosecution concludes from Document Number 327-PS that the Gauleiter took part in the liquidation of "enormous fortunes" in the East. A closer examination shows that this was a matter of the liquidation of German firms which had been set up as state enterprises at the cost of considerable subsidies. In a letter of 17 October 1944 the Gauleiter are merely requested not to interfere with the liquidation which was meanwhile taking place on German territory. All this goes to show that the Political Leaders as a ' body could not have had any specific knowledge of criminal occurrences. THE PRESIDENT: Dr. Servatius, the Tribunal will adjourn tomorrow, Friday, at 4:00 o'clock in the afternoon. [The Tribunal adjourned until 23 August 1946 at 1000 hours.]

The Israelites have just spent seven days celebrating the inauguration of Aaron and his sons as priests. These seven days brought the Tabernacle -- nexus of heaven and earth -- into operation. Now it is the eighth day. We speak far less often about eight. In Genesis, the eighth day is the first day of a completed creation. A boy is circumcised on his eighth day; bringing him into the Covenant on the eighth day completes him. Eight is the number of completion. Parshat Shemini begins: On the eighth day Moses called Aaron and his sons, and the elders of Israel… (Leviticus 9:1).What happens on the first day of the completed Tabernacle? Aaron lifted his hands toward the people and blessed them; and he stepped down from making the sin offering, the burnt offering, and the offering of wellbeing. (Leviticus 9:22)Aaron blesses the people, and after that offers the sacrifices The Rabbis, however, pick up on an ambiguity in the Hebrew. They suggest (in b.Megillah 18a) that we can read Leviticus 9:22 to say: Aaron blesses the people, having stepped down from the altar where he made the sacrifices; which is to say that Aaron makes the sacrifices first, and only afterward blesses the people. Does it matter which Aaron does first: bless the people, or offer the sacrifices? I think it does. It’s a matter of setting thoughtful and intentional priorities. Aaron’s orientation is toward the people. He performs the sacrifices on their behalf and for their welfare. The people come first; ritual comes second in service of the people. Judaism is action and ritual oriented. We do Jewish. Sociologist Steven M. Cohen has studied the American Jewish community for more than four decades. He recently wrote that the term “Jewish identity” is outmoded and freighted with baggage. Cohen prefers “Jewish engagement” or “Jewish involvement.” Engagement and involvement are about doing. Prioritizing doing above meaning carries the danger that doing can become an end in itself, a higher priority than the religious meaning of the ritual. Parshat Shemini also includes the laws of kashrut (Jewish dietary laws). They are clearly spelled out. The Rabbis expanded them, innovating the complete separation of milk and meat that includes plates, flatware, and cooking utensils. But it didn’t stop there. Over the generations, more and more restrictions have been added until we reached a level so absurd it is almost laughable -- almost. When tiny crustaceans called copepods, which are largely invisible to the naked eye, were discovered in New York City tap water in 2004, several rabbis from Brooklyn declared water from the faucet treife. Families were scrambling to install water filters costing upwards of $1500, or purchasing pricy bottled water. Did they really believe that keeping God’s covenant requires this? Is this the purpose of kashrut, to foster an endless raging river of restrictions? The rules have taken on a life of their own. Can’t see the forest for the trees. For me, the purpose of kashrut is to provide a distinctly Jewish means of reminding myself that everything -- even the seemingly mundane and animalistic activity of eating -- can be sanctified. Kashrut is also a means to identify with Jews through time and space. We have recently celebrated Pesach, and that provides yet another example. We clean away the chametz. Of course it’s impossible to find every crumb, so tradition provides a formula to recite the evening before Pesach begins, that declares any inadvertently remaining chametz to be as dust. The Rabbis knew that it is impossible to remove every speck. Reasonable and sensible. There needs to be a limit. Yet there are people who not only change over all their pots and dishes, but actually swap out their kitchen counters and take an acetylene torch to their ovens! By the time you have cleaned to this degree -- and there’s still the shopping and cooking to do! -- how can you have the time or spiritual energy to contemplate the meaning of Pesach in your life? Short of swapping out kitchen counters and lighting acetylene torches, there are people who refuse a cup of tea at a friend’s or matza brei until the eighth day. Ironically, prioritizing ritual over meaning makes us slaves to ritual for a festival that celebrates our redemption from slavery. So consumed with trees, it’s possible to miss the forest. Ritual serves a purpose. It’s an expression of meaning, a means to bringing people together, a way to sanctify the mundane. But it was never an end in itself. It’s all about priorities. What’s most important? Aaron has it right: blessing the people comes first, because the sacrifices are for their sake. Ritual that serves people is wonderful; ritual that enslaves them is not. © Rabbi Amy Scheinerman

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Find topics of interest and explore encyclopedia content related to those topics Find articles, photos, maps, films, and more listed alphabetically Recommended resources and topics if you have limited time to teach about the Holocaust Explore the ID Cards to learn more about personal experiences during the Holocaust Two German Jewish families at a gathering before the Nazi rise to power. Only two people in this group survived the Holocaust. Germany, 1928. We would like to thank The Crown and Goodman Family and the Abe and Ida Cooper Foundation for supporting the ongoing work to create content and resources for the Holocaust Encyclopedia. View the list of all donors.

by Yitzhak Gormezano Goren translated by Yardenne Greenspan New Vessel Press, 171 pages reviewed by Justin Goodman “The Irony of Nostalgia” From our Modernist forebears came an emphasis on the power of memory (think Marcel Proust). Yet they forgot to mention its overbearing sibling, nostalgia. Overbearing not only because it tends to act as “a screen not intended to hide anything–a decoration meant only to please the eye,” but also because it obscures history. In effect, it fetishizes the past. It makes Alexandria the “strange, nostalgic European landscape” of Yitzhak Gormezano Goren’s Alexandrian Summer (translated for the first time into English by Yardenne Greenspan). One would expect an aestheticizing impulse of, as André Aciman informs in his introduction, a man who “aged ten…left his home on the Rue Delta in Alexandra” and then saw the military overthrow of King Farouk “dissolve all remnants of multi-national life in Egypt.” Alexandrian Summer is nigh a roman à clef, following the arc of the author’s life up to his fortuitous migration from this anti-Semitic cosmopolitan fantasy to Israel to join his brothers. Nonetheless, despite his intimacy with his history, Goren avoids any such pathos. All nostalgic bliss is converted to a mourner’s Kaddish. The novel’s characters are impulsive, obsessive, and repressed; its future is inevitably bleak. Goren confines the mythical, in “this mythical metropolis,” to the telling. “I just want to tell the story of one summer,” the narrator begins the story, “a Mediterranean summer, an Alexandrian summer.” It’s the summer of 1951 when “a Jewish family [that] came from Cairo…came to Alexandria for a summer of joy.” The summer when the family’s eldest son, “David Hamdi-Ali tall as a toreador, blonde as a Nordic cavalier, elegant like Rudolpho Valentino,” attempts to woo and wed the Alexandrian Anabelle. To an extent, this marriage plot is the narrative locus. All eyes turn to Anabelle to determine if she will take the wealthy and talented jockey. Yet, with the clarity and complexity of Austen, Goren’s centerpiece elaborates on its periphery. The apex of their romantic drama, for instance, reads like “two boxers…going on…with an almost mechanical inertia,” from ultimatum to ultimatum: She tries to shake him off by demanding that it’s “either me or racing.” David says he will “give it up, damn it.” “She stopped in her tracks. It couldn’t be.” And following ruminations of this nature he continues, “…after I finish this season.” And so on. Alexandrian Summer leads to these moments when the minutest answers rock the world. This is the genius of them. They’re also what corrupts everything that comes afterward. Decisions are earthquakes and the future is its aftershock. Perhaps a grim metaphor, but it is demanded of a novel in the shadow of destruction. One would have to go back to–the analogy must be emphasized–Austen’s Mansfield Park to find such bleakness, such fatedness, such a corrosive social world that can’t help but be dreamed of. Even including the “Victorian society…bind[ing] itself by the webs of convention,” gossipy grandmothers tut-tutting, pushing for marriage, and racisms that lets you “live like a carefree lord” if you were European, “or at least Jewish.” This lurking aspect of nationality creates a shadow of its own, shading all interactions. Often it is grim, light, and cheeky. At times the shading is too rough, as with the introduction of the jockey who eventually beats David, the Arabian Al-Tal’ooni, who is so consistently envisioned as a Mohammedian figure as to become a figurine. Sacrifice of character for polemics is rare, otherwise. To call Alexandria “cosmopolitan to the bone,” as the narrator does, comes across as bitterly ironic then. The characters saying, they “love her so much, Alexandra,” almost acidic. It is impossible to deny the wistfulness though. A sense of simplicity lost drives the telling without the suggestion of Eden. Whereas nostalgic love would linger on that blissful eternity, Alexandrian Summer is a felix culpa. Why do they love Alexandria? Because “something is rotten, truly rotten.” It is a more noble, and more nuanced, love than can be found in most literature. The real romance of this novel is not person to person, but memory to storyteller. It is enough to note that the only person to explicitly die in the novel is Joseph Hamdi-Ali, who had rejected his history for another’s. Whether this was freedom or condemnation could not be said, since he could never erase his history. As a mark of Goren’s gentleness, Hamd-Ali’s wife “Emilie almost smiled with relief” at his peace. The book opens with the native Alexandrian family’s youngest, Robby, as he scribbles down license plate numbers in his notebook to fill in his free time. “’What a cacophony,’ says one women. And, indeed, the aerial view of Alexandria is of ants “running around…as if there were purpose to all this frenzy.” Perhaps that is all one can do, fill in the free time of the past, through close study recreate some stained Shangri La. Nostalgia, as history reminds us in the anecdotes of its elderly, has the blessedness of a long life. What we have in Goren is an anti-nostalgia: it ends with “the rain splattered over the numbers, the water blurred the ink, blurred the shapes, erased everything.” What makes this summer one to recall, what makes most summer films forgettable, is its sense of eternity in ending. Eventually comes winter. A recent graduate from Purchase College, Justin Goodman is working to establish a career and develop knowledge of the literary scene. His writing has been published in Submissions Magazine and Italics Mine.

A friend who has written to say he is in agreement with my view on most things says he must take exception with my opinion on the matter of the insurance program that has come to be known as Obamacare. I haven’t addressed to any great extent in this forum what I indeed consider a program that moves America down a dangerous road. The loss of individual freedoms will be—indeed, already is—the result, to say the very least—but there are deeper considerations I want to address here. The following is part of my friend’s expression of concern regarding my opposition to this, what I see as a great debacle the American people will one day regret profoundly: I respectfully take issue with [your] stance on healthcare reform. Perhaps the health bill will [be] repealed by Republicans, and you’ll probably see that as a godly action, but lack of insurance leads to early death for many. If biblical social justice means that elderly widows get Medicare, it also should mean that orphans and the children of the poor get insurance that the rest of us have. For insurance to work, the healthy must have it as well as regulating insurers so they cannot deny it or cancel it when it’s needed. The key words in this friend’s objection to my view are “biblical social justice.” There is simply nothing biblical about this grab for power and control by a government inebriated on the dollars it can print and spend almost by presidential fiat. If it truly were a biblically correct–rather than a politically correct–effort, I would have no problem with it. Now to look more deeply into the reason Christians shouldn’t support this or any such grab for control that ultimately will enslave. Human governance, we must remember, is not God’s Idea. It is man’s idea–to do things apart from the Creator. We see this from history given us in the Bible—and that’s the only history that counts in God’s dealing with us, in my understanding of the matters involved. Adam’s first decision to disobey God and instead accept Lucifer’s way was rebellion against God’s governance, and it came to a crisis point when the whole world became filled with violence and was corrupted in every other way—producing total anarchy. The Flood provided a new beginning. Then came the crisis on the Plain of Shinar with Nimrod and the tower of Babel. Again, God dealt with the crisis, and the whole of humanistic government was destroyed and the people scattered—Peleg and the peoples of earth were geographically redistributed, and all of the rest… Israel was the next example. The chosen of God—the Jewish people—wanted human government, not God’s reign over them. The Lord let them have Saul. That is because He is a God who gave mankind volition. He wants His creation to love Him unconditionally; He doesn’t want robots engineered to adore Him. Humanistic government is again building to a supreme crisis point. It has always built to crises points. Every civilization, empire, etc., has come apart, dissolved, or been destroyed because of the rebellion and determination to live apart from God. This time, it is building like the Vesuvius of all rebellions. America is the apex nation of all nations, and is the head of this gargantuan boil that is filling with explosive corruption that will one day blow. All nations of the world are tied inextricably to the U.S.—the most materially blessed of all nations to have come to power upon the planet’s surface. All of this corruption constitutes the Babylonian system, which Daniel and John prophesied in presenting the strange beast that comes up out of the sea in Revelation 1 and lumbers about in Daniel 7. America is bound to Israel in a supernatural way, and it is all tied together by the incessant call for peace–not God’s peace and the Prince of Peace, but humanistic peace. The result is going to be exactly as God gives it in Psalms 2, then the “kings of the earth” will achieve the “peace” they desire, as given in Isaiah 28:15 and 18. Man will get his humanistic government; the ultimately “evolved” man will be earth’s master for a brief time, God letting man have his desire to do what is right in his own eyes. This current bubble of humanistic effort to build utopia, which supposedly can be achieved through a drive for humanistic socialism (that’s the only kind of socialism there is), will explode when the rapture occurs and the top is knocked off the boil. Only God’s staying hand has kept things from imploding—economic collapse, etc. So, I am against man-made efforts in wanting to micromanage our lives. Such efforts comprise the grist for tyranny. You see where it’s going. It is nothing more or less than a luciferian grab for power–a voracious lust for control by his human agents and agencies. God gave man, through the Bible, the formula for living life the way He intended. His Word says in effect that we should “let those who won’t work, not eat” (see 2 Thes. 3:10, 12). He gave us the way to take care of the widows, orphans, and the infirm–even the legitimately indigent. This is to be done through the largesse of God’s people, those who fully accept His way of governance. The Lord Jesus Christ is that only way. Man long ago decided to dispense with God’s prescription in dealing with matters of societal interaction. Burdensome, enslaving government seeks power through promising deliverance from social ills it can never produce. What it will produce, however, we can see in Bible prophecy’s description of humanistic government’s final attempt to usurp the throne of God. (Read Revelation 13:16-18.)

USC Shoah Foundation and National Jewish Theater Foundation Collaborate to Launch ‘This is What I’ve Scene,’ First Ever Theater-Related Activity To Be Provided to Students Worldwide Via IWitness Website Holocaust Remembrance Day (Yom HaShoah) San Diego, CA March 30, 2015. On April 13, 2015 arts related organizations across the country will unite to honor victims of the Holocaust by joining in the first ever Remembrance Readings for Holocaust Remembrance Day (Yom HaShoah). This event was conceived and launched by the National Jewish Theater Foundation (NJTF) and draws on information from over 600 plays made accessible in their newly created Holocaust Theater Catalog (HTC).Read more What Were They Thinking: Archiving Anne Frank By: BOB ABELMAN Playwrights did not begin to describe and interpret the Holocaust experience until a decade after the end of World War II. It takes time to heal, generate the strength to reflect, and find a clear and steady voice. The most influential and lasting American effort was “The Diary of Anne Frank,” the 1956 adaptation of a young girl’s journal by two Hollywood screenwriters, Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett. To a large extent, the play’s accessibility and popularity stem from its dramatic realism and the alluring thread of Anne’s innocence and optimism within the context of the atrocities occurring outside her secret annex. By Teresa Eyring TCG Executive Director Because its nature of bringing people together and, having therefore, a political character, theatre has been proven an especially apt medium to feed collective memories. —Juan Mayorga, playwright, writing for Holocaust Theatre Catalogue In October, the National Jewish Theater Foundation/ National Jewish Theatre launched a new website, the Holocaust Theatre Catalogue (htc.miami.edu), with over 550 entries of plays written since 1933, about or related in some way to the Holocaust. Addressing the absence of any such comprehensive resource, the archive also came about in part because we are losing the last of the survivors of the Holocaust—and with them go their first-hand accounts of that horrific time in our history.Read more Many of us are fond of intimate fireside chats, myself included. Last night's Sheldon Harnick: A Conversation & Celebration at San Diego's JCC Garfield Theatre took place on a stage in front of an audience, but the heartfelt exchange between Broadway lyricist icon Sheldon Harnick and his longtime collaborator Arnold Mittelman evoked the coziness of a late-night dialogue between bosom buddies in front of a crackling blaze in the rare New York apartment with a fireplace. The overture to this captivating conversation consisted of musical selections from Harnick's oeuvre, sung with verve and passion by an assortment of performers, and the evening culminated with Mittelman's presenting Harnick with the National Jewish Theater Foundation's Lifetime Achievement Award.Read more By Dr. Michael Berenbaum, Director American Jewish University Jeff Cohen’s “The Soap Myth,” as produced by the National Jewish Theater Foundation and directed by Arnold Mittleman, has brought to life on the New York stage the inherent tensions between Holocaust historians and Holocaust survivors over facts and interpretation of facts. Time and again, survivors speak of the Nazis’ making human fat into soap, while Holocaust historians say that, at best, there is insufficient evidence to support that claim.Read more The launch of the National Jewish Theater and American Theater Festival was a resounding success. Leading with the musical The Soul of Gershwin, Arnold Mittelman’s theatrical rebirth drew some of South Florida’s most influential people. The legendary performer of stage and screen,Jack Klugman, came to town to help Arnold introduce these latest ventures. On hand at the Saturday night performance were Harvey and Roberta Chaplin. Harvey was honored for his longtime commitment to philanthropy, and is one of the founding donors to the National Jewish Theater and American Theater Festival. Also on hand were Mel Dick, Ana Azcuy and Judge Michael Chavies. After the performance, Azcuy pronounced, “Arnold Mittelman is back!”Read more The National Jewish Theater Foundation (NJTF) and NJTF President Arnold Mittelman are pleased to announce the successful completion of the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation-sponsored Holocaust Theater Archive (HTA) Conference. The National Jewish Theater Foundation / Holocaust Theater Archive Conference took place in Miami in two sessions: May 15th - 16th and May 22nd - 23rd. The agenda was the same for both sessions, with different participants for each round. The conference encompassed a distinguished gathering of Holocaust scholars, theater practitioners, digital archivists and academicians from across the United States, engaged in a discourse regarding the future of this important initiative.Read more

Racked is no longer publishing. Thank you to everyone who read our work over the years. The archives will remain available here; for new stories, head over to Vox.com, where our staff is covering consumer culture for The Goods by Vox. You can also see what we’re up to by signing up here. When Liz Roy started Downtown Demure, she had no desire to post photos of herself online, let alone make her blog into a serious venture. The idea for the site came to her soon after she converted to Christianity four years ago. As part of her conversion, she purged her closet of tight, revealing dresses and picked up pieces that covered her at least between her chest and knees. To help the transition, she started a Tumblr to catalogue inspirations for modest dress — only to find that more women were looking for the same thing. Even though Roy’s parents are culturally Christian, they did not understand Roy’s choice to embrace a much stricter code of religion. Nor did her friends, who were mostly secular. It didn’t help that, for Roy, it was important to use visible evidence to demonstrate her religious beliefs. “Clothing is the easiest way to tell people who you are and what you value,” she explains. “But I also decided to create a blog to explain to people around me what I was doing.” With their Orthodox Jewish faith, Chaya Chanin and Simi Polonsky stood out even more. The sisters grew up on Congee Beach in Sydney, Australia — where the local dress code was “wear nothing.” “We were seven children and the seven of us were always covered up,” Chanin tells me. “Even when it was boiling outside and everyone was wearing bikinis.” To battle the stigma that was associated with their dress code, Chanin and Polonsky went to markets to find vintage items they could customize to fit their needs. “Over time, we became really good at it,” Polonsky said. “We gained a reputation for having a great sense of style, even as modest dressers.” Nowadays, the sisters run a successful New York-based clothing line called The Frock, which combines their clean and modern aesthetic with their convictions of modesty. A Reuters and DinarStandard report projects that the market for modest fashion will grow to $484 billion by 2019. Following such numbers, the fashion industry has been paying more and more attention to this previously ignored customer base. Brands have been courting Muslim shoppers especially: The Islamic economy is growing at nearly double the global rate. Dolce & Gabbana launched a line of hijabs and abayas in 2015, Uniqlo introduced a line with Japanese-Muslim designer Hana Tajima, and last September, Indonesian designer Anniesa Hasibuan sent a whole collection down the New York Fashion Week runway with only hijab-wearing models. The pace picked up in recent weeks: Vogue Arabia launched its first-ever print issue with half-Palestinian Gigi Hadid on the cover, hijab-wearing model Halima Aden graced the runways of Max Mara and Yeezy, and London saw its first modest fashion week. The media has added to the hype: Outlets like CNN, Bloomberg, and The Guardian all hailed the rise of modest fashion. When we're on location shooting our look book, Chaya and I (reluctantly) stay behind the lens. But come the end of the day, we start to feel the itch, and kindly beseech Levi to take just ONE last snap (yeah right) just so we can sleep better knowing that you know, exactly how we layered our Frocks today. Damn we're selfish. Chaya's wearing the #FrockEZ and #FrockInfinity I'm wearing the #frockshiftl in charcoal with the #frock2way in charcoal tied around my waist. P.s. Thanks for all the ❤️ and responses from the epic shoot with @ellteephoto @anyalesun @saraliedermakeup The latest addition to this soaring sector is The Modist, the first luxury e-tailer to cater to modest fashion only. Its launch on International Women’s Day (March 8th) wasn’t a coincidence: According to its founder, Ghizlan Guenez, The Modist’s mission is “to empower a woman’s freedom of choice and to acknowledge how similar women across the world are, despite our diverse backgrounds, cultures, and lifestyles.” But what’s most innovative about The Modist is exactly how it doesn’t look that different from sites like Moda Operandi and Net-a-Porter (in fact, its COO is the former Net-a-Porter marketing director). The sleek interface makes it easy to navigate through wardrobe staples by Rachel Comey and A.L.C. and more adventurous pieces by Dorateymur, Ellery, and Stella Jean. The price ranges from $85 for a simple Mimya trouser to an embellished Alberta Ferretti dress priced at nearly $8,000. Like Net-a-Porter, it produces an in-house magazine, The Mod, which features articles like “A New Era of Empowerment.” But above all, its biggest similarity is its broad appeal: The Modist is aiming to be a fashion destination, whether it’s for those who can shop its pieces or those who can only afford to scroll through. To simply say that the modest fashion industry is rising would be incorrect — women from many religions and backgrounds have chosen to cover up for a long time, whether doing so was labeled “modest” or not. Also, the fashion industry itself has long catered to covered women — when haute couture was struggling culturally and financially in the 1970s, it was the Arab clients who upheld the industry with their oil money. According to Reuters, that trend continued on, with buyers from the Middle East still dominating the market. The only difference between then and now is that fashion no longer serves its modest clients under wraps — instead, the mainstream industry is openly using modesty as a marketing tool. But many small entrepreneurs were working in the modest fashion market before the mainstream started to pay attention. Arshiya Kherani, for example, laid the groundwork for a modest activewear line two years ago already. Kherani is Muslim and a runner, and when the bandana she used to cover her hair fell off in the middle of a half-marathon, she was embarrassed — and inspired. Kherani says she’s surprised that it’s taken so long for the sector to recognize her clientele. “I’ve been wearing a hijab for so long and dressing modestly even longer,” she says. “This is something I've been thinking about since my childhood.” After a successful Kickstarter campaign and rounds of meticulous testing, the first batch of Kherani’s Sukoon products are almost ready to be sent out to its backers. But just this month, Nike announced that it will release a hijab for female athletes. “I received a lot of messages from people after the Nike news came out,” Kherani tells me. She says that Nike jumping into the market is only motivating her more. “I've been wearing the hijab for close to 10 years. It is impossible for me to have a 10-minute conversation with anybody and for them to understand what I think about when getting dressed in the morning.” Chanin believes that bigger brands will only make their small business stronger. “If you’re just one little designer, just a few people will see you,” she says. “With bigger retailers doing it, the audience automatically grows, and they’ll look for niche and indie designers too.” Polonsky, however, has a small worry. “When people think about modest fashion, most people think about the hijab,” she says. “But the rise of social media and modest fashion has shown that the modest dressing woman comes from all types of backgrounds and faiths.” For better or worse, it’s precisely the increased political hostility toward Muslims that has driven the fashion industry’s attention to the sector. The controversial ban on burkinis by French coastal towns seems a long time ago compared to the recent travel bans imposed by the Trump administration. This spring’s New York Fashion Week came only a few weeks after the first travel ban caused widespread chaos at the nation’s airports — and it’s not a coincidence that its runways featured Planned Parenthood pins, #TiedTogether bandanas, and thriving Muslim women like Halima Aden and Anniesa Hasibuan. It’s encouraging to see fashion come together in times of crisis, but it’s also hard to ignore the fashion industry’s inherent financial interests in doing so. For Roy, the attention pushed by the political climate is both a blessing and a curse. She says she’s happy with the mainstream’s embrace of modest dressing, but she also wishes that there were more diverse coverage of the sector. “Right now, the focus is mostly on Muslim women,” she says. In fact, the whole reason why Roy started posting photos of herself is because there aren’t that many black women represented in modest fashion. “I want people to know that there are many other types of women who practice modest fashion as fervently, but are not as covered,” she told me. Beyond that, Roy is also worried about the focus of the industry on the luxury sector. “As much as I love The Modist, I wouldn’t be able to afford it.” Fashion blogger Maria Alia is just happy that something like The Modist even exists. Growing up, Alia only saw Western models in fashion magazines. Even when she started her blog four years ago, there were less than a handful of girls like her in the scene. “Almost everything I wear is not created specifically for a Muslim girl,” Alia says. “It usually takes browsing hundreds of different websites to hunt for one specific piece. It’s very frustrating.” Though Alia was part of a group of influencers The Modist employed to promote its launch, she says she truly believes in The Modist mission. “High fashion is where it always starts,” Alia says. “After that, it will trickle down to the more accessible retail world.” However, Alia is worried about the inherent fashion cycle embedded in the business. “One of my biggest worries is, is this just going to be a trend?” she says. “Is it no longer going to be on the table after this?” Fashion as a commercial industry can only follow the demands of its customers. The business doesn’t distinguish between one group or another, as long as there are consumers willing to buy its products. But in a time when certain religious freedoms are threatened by the country’s policies, the fashion industry is providing a space in which all customers are welcome. Fashion, however, is inherently political. The industry can offer the products from which shoppers choose, but what is worn and in what way is up for the consumer to decide. Roy is already hopeful about what women are choosing these days. “We’re moving away from an era of ostentatious and revealing clothing,” she says. “I love that women are opening up to the idea that a conservative dress code can also being empowering.”

|The Day School at Baltimore Hebrew will become The Independent Jewish Academy of Baltimore in July 2013! This new school will have a renewed commitment to the academic excellence of the Day School, with a new emphasis on:| • STEAM education (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Math ) • Reaching a broader community of multiple Jewish denominations as well as those who are unaffiliated or intermarried. We are excited about our transformation, and also dedicated to keeping our intimate, personalized, and empowering environment. Welcome to this site! Please learn about our unique environment, where students engage, explore, and are inspired. Our progressive, dynamic and diverse community is an ideal place to learn and grow. We are a small school that truly makes a big difference. I invite you to learn more... Gerri Chizeck, Head of School |» Baltimore’s Jewish community comes together.....| |» The Day School is featured in the media- read all about it!| |» Apple iPads: Newest Learning Tool at The Day School at Baltimore Hebrew|

JERUSALEM (JTA) — Birth rates among Israel’s Jews are on the rise compared with those of Arab citizens, population data reveal. Yediot Achronot published a report Wednesday showing that over the last decade, the Jewish birth rate in Israel has grown by nearly 20 percent while the Muslim and Christian rates have fallen by 5 percent and 10 percent, respectively. The findings, which the newspaper said came from the Interior Ministry’s Population and Immigration Authority, offset widespread concerns that Israel’s 80 percent Jewish majority is threatened by population growth among Arab citizens and Palestinians in the West Bank. The Interior Ministry had no immediate comment on the report. According to Yediot, 69 percent of births in 2001 were Jewish, 28 percent Muslim and 1.9 percent Christian. By contrast, in 2010 the respective birth figures for the ethnic groups were 76 percent, 22 percent and 1.3 percent. Israeli Arabs tend to have large families, but this has changed along with the sector’s economic elevation into the middle class. A growing number of religious Jews, meanwhile, has perpetuated higher Jewish fertility.

Esther: Midrash and Aggadah Queen Esther, the central character in the Biblical book named after her, is extensively and sympathetically portrayed in the Rabbinic sources. In their commentary on the Book of Esther, the Rabbis expand upon and add details to the Biblical narrative, relating to her lineage and history and to her relations with the other characters: Ahasuerus, Mordecai and Haman. The Bible depicts Esther as an orphan who was raised in the house of her uncle Mordecai (Esth. 2:7). The midrash adds that Esther’s father died during her mother’s pregnancy, and the latter died during childbirth (Esth. Rabbah 6:5; BT Megillah 13a). As a result of her mother’s death, Mordecai had to care for Esther’s nursing. According to one tradition, he could not find a wet nurse and he himself miraculously had milk and nursed her (Gen. Rabbah 30:8). Another tradition has Mordecai’s wife nursing the infant (Midrash Tehilim, on Ps. 22:23). The Babylonian tradition maintains that Esther was Mordecai’s wife. Esth. 2:7 states: “Mordecai adopted her as his own daughter [literally: took her le-vat],” which the midrash understands as: Mordecai took her le-bayit, that is, as a wife (BT Megillah loc. cit.). This exegesis casts the Biblical narrative in a different light. Esther was taken to the royal harem despite her being married, which further aggravated her sorry condition. This also leads to a different understanding of Mordecai’s involvement, as he walks about in the royal courtyard out of concern for his wife. Mordecai is mentioned in Esth. 2:5 as being a Benjaminite, from which the Rabbis assumed that Esther also came from this tribe. In reference to her lineage, the Rabbis state that she continued the way of the members of her tribe: Rachel, Benjamin, and Saul (Gen. Rabbah 71:35; see below: “Esther Does Not Reveal Her Origins”). In Jacob’s blessing to his sons, he blesses Benjamin (Gen. 49:27): “Benjamin is a ravenous wolf; in the morning he consumes the foe, and in the evening he divides the spoil,” which the Rabbis applied to Mordecai and Esther. Just as a wolf seizes its spoils, so did Esther seize the throne; similarly, Mordecai and Esther divided Haman’s spoils among them (Gen. Rabbah [ed. Theodor-Albeck], MS. Vatican, para. 100). The Book of Esther (2:7) relates that Esther had two names: “He was foster father to Hadassah—that is, Esther.” The Rabbis take two interpretive directions as regards these names. According to one, Hadassah, which appears first in the verse, was Esther’s real name, and the reason why she was called Esther requires clarification. According to the second direction, Esther was her real name, and she is so named throughout the Book of Esther; accordingly, the name Hadassah needs further explanation. According to the view that Esther was Hadassah’s second name, the Rabbis explain that she was given this name because she concealed (histirah) her origins. In another exposition, she was given this name by the Gentiles, after the celestial body Istahar (BT Megillah loc. cit.). The more prevalent Rabbinic opinion is that Hadassah was Esther’s second name, with a plethora of interpretations built on the similarity of the myrtle (hadas) to Esther: Esther was so called because she was righteous, and the righteous are called “myrtles”; she was of average height, like a myrtle, which is neither short nor long; she had a greenish (sallow) complexion, like a myrtle (BT Megillah loc. cit.). Just as the myrtle is sweet-smelling but has a bitter taste, so Esther was sweet to Ahasuerus, but bitter to Haman (Esth. Rabbah 6:5). The myrtle has a good smell, just like Esther, who performed good deeds; the myrtle does not dry out either in summer or in winter, just as the righteous dry up neither in this world nor in the World to Come (Midrash Panim Aherim, version B, para. 2). One school of thought takes the numerical value of Hadassah = 74 (or 75, including the name itself as a unit) to determine Esther’s age (Gen. Rabbah 39:13; see below: “Esther’s Age”). The midrash compares Esther to a hind and to the dawn, based on Ps. 22:1: “For the leader; on ayelet ha-shahar [literally, the hind of the dawn],” which the Rabbis apply to Esther. She was compared to a hind, for just as a hind has a narrow womb and is as desirable to her mate at all times as at the first time, so, too, was Esther as desirable to Ahasuerus at all times as at the first time. She was compared to the dawn, for just as the dawn breaks at the end of each night, so, too, Esther [i.e., the miraculous delivery of the Jews] came after there had been no miracles [during the period of exile and darkness] (BT Yoma 29a). Esther is also compared to a wolf, to the moon (see below: “Esther as the Deliverer of Israel”) and to a stove on which everyone places his pots (Midrash Tehilim, on Ps. 22:25). The Book of Esther does not say how old Esther was when she was taken to Ahasuerus’s palace; different midrashic traditions address this question. According to one tradition, she was forty years old, while another places her age at seventy-four, which is the numerical value of the name “Hadassah” (Esther’s second name), or, according to another calculation of this numerical value, seventy-five (see above). This tradition results from the desire to equate Esther’s age with that of Abraham when he left his native land for Erez Israel upon God’s command. Yet another tradition maintains that she was eighty years of age (Gen. Rabbah 39:13; Midrash Abba Gurion, para. 20). The midrash relates that Esther hid from Ahasuerus’s agents who sought women for the king. She succeeded in remaining concealed for four years, but was eventually found and brought to the royal palace. Unlike the other women, who wanted to be chosen, Esther tried to evade the king, but she was the one picked to be queen. This shows that her selection was part of the divine plan; Esther was meant to rule in order to bring deliverance to all Israel (Seder Olam Rabbah 29; Midrash Panim Aherim, version B, para. 20). Esther was given seven maids to serve her in the harem; the Rabbis comment that she used them in order to count the seven days of the week [to know when the Sabbath fell, so that she could observe it even in the harem]. One tradition states that she was served Jewish food in the harem, while another asserts that she was given chines of pork. Another tradition has her eating only seeds in the harem, similar to Daniel and his fellows, in order to observe the laws of kashrut (BT Megillah loc. cit.). In one exegetical expansion, the women in the harem would adorn Esther, for they said to themselves: “This one will certainly be married to the king, so it is worth our while to honor her” (Midrash Panim Aherim, version B, para. 2). The Book of Esther (2:11) relates that Mordecai “would walk about in front of the court of the harem, to learn how Esther was faring.” The Rabbis understood Mordecai’s escorting of Esther as his providing her with halakhic guidance, for he would rule for her in questions of niddah (the laws governing menstrual purity, and, more generally, family purity; see below: “Esther’s Personal Status"). According to another tradition, he accompanied her to ensure that she did not suffer from sorcery (Esth. Rabbah 6:8), or to arrange for the kashrut of her food. By merit of this, Mordecai (Esth. 10:3) was able to have “interceded for the welfare of all his kindred” (Pirkei de-Rabbi Eliezer, chap. 49). The Rabbis include Esther among the seven most beautiful women in the world (BT Megillah 15a). Esther found favor in the eyes of everyone who gazed upon her; every person thought that she was one of the women of his nation, whom he found comely. The Rabbis also relate to Esther’s sexuality: if Ahasuerus “wanted to find in her the taste of a virgin, he found it; if the taste of a non-virgin, he found it” (BT Megillah 13a; Esth. Rabbah 6:9). Until Esther was chosen, no woman could compare with Vashti in beauty. It was only when Esther came that Ahasuerus removed the likeness of Vashti and replaced it with that of Esther (Esth. Rabbah 6:11). In contrast, the BT also cites a tradition that Esther had a “greenish [sallow]” complexion, and therefore was called Hadassah; according to this tradition, Ahasuerus was drawn to her because she was endowed with great charm (BT Megillah loc. cit.). The Rabbis add that Esther found favor in the eyes of both heaven and humans (Esth. Rabbah 6:9). In the midrashis account, Ahasuerus initially ruled the entire world. After he had Vashti killed, all the lands rebelled against him; once he married Esther, one hundred and twenty-seven lands came under his rule once again, and when he appointed Mordecai as viceroy, they all returned to him (Midrash Tehilim, on Ps. 22:26). Another tradition compares Esther, who ruled one hundred and twenty-seven provinces, to Sarah, who died at the age of one hundred and twenty-seven (Gen. Rabbah 58:3). In contrast with other women, whom Ahasuerus married without recording the nuptials or the date of the marriage, Esther’s marriage was documented and the date of her marriage was recorded (Pesikta de-Rav Kahana, Ha-Hodesh ha-Zeh ["This month”—Ex. 12:2], 5:11). The Rabbis were concerned about the question of Esther’s marital status. According to the tradition that she was previously unmarried, she was now married to and lived with a non-Jewish king. The situation was even more serious according to the tradition that Esther was married to Mordecai (the Babylonian tradition), for then, as a married woman, she committed adultery. The Rabbis viewed Esther as one who was compelled to marry Ahasuerus against her will. Furthermore, because of her passivity, her life with Ahasuerus was not thought to entail illicit sexual intercourse (a grave sin, for which one should “be killed rather than transgress") (BT Sanhedrin 74b). Consequently, Esther was not considered to be a married woman who willingly engaged in adultery, and she was therefore permitted to Mordecai; indeed, the Rabbis maintain that she continued to live with the latter, at the same time that she was married to Ahasuerus (BT Megillah 13b). This status completely changed when Esther went to Ahasuerus of her own free will, in order to persuade him to cancel Haman’s decree (Esth. 5). The Rabbis perceived this going as having sexual connotations, which therefore had tragic consequences for Esther and for Mordecai (BT Megillah 16a; see below: “Esther Comes to the Rescue of Her People”). Another question that concerned the Rabbis was that of the children from the union of Esther and Ahasuerus. One tradition asserts that Esther “used a resorbent,” that is, she employed a contraceptive device to prevent any pregnancy by Ahasuerus. Another tradition has her becoming pregnant by Ahasuerus, but miscarrying (Esth. Rabbah 8:3). Additional traditions maintain that not only did Esther become pregnant by Ahasuerus but she was also the mother of “the last Darius” (idem) or of Cyrus (Kallah Rabbati 2:15). The Rabbis devote extensive attention to Esther’s observance of the laws of niddah. Mordecai would walk about in front of the harem in order to rule for Esther regarding menstrual spotting; another exegetical exposition has Esther showing the spotting from her menstruation to the Torah scholars. The Book of Esther relates that Esther told no one of her Jewish origins, as Mordecai had ordered her. The Rabbis accordingly relate her to the Matriarch Rachel, the mother of the tribe of Benjamin. Rachel was silent when she saw that Jacob married her sister instead of herself. Similarly, her son Benjamin knew about the sale of Joseph, but remained silent and did not tell his father. Saul, a Benjaminite, did not reveal to his uncle that he had been anointed to be king; likewise, Esther did not disclose her identity (Gen. Rabbah 71:35). In the midrashic exposition, Ahasuerus tries to discover Esther’s origins, explaining that this would be beneficial for her relatives, since he would appoint them to important positions (Midrash Panim Aherim loc. cit.). In response, Esther tells him that, like him, she is the offspring of royalty (Midrash Abba Gurion, para. 2). After Esther’s coronation, the king continues to gather virgins in his palace, which the Rabbis understand as an activity meant to reveal Esther’s identity. Ahasuerus consulted with Mordecai how to discover Esther’s secret, and Mordecai advised him to arouse Esther’s jealousy by inviting other women to him, thus motivating her to disclose her secret (BT Megillah 13a). We see, however, that this was a stratagem on Mordecai’s part, so that Esther would not be frequently summoned to the king. Haman, too, was troubled by the question of Esther’s origins. He suggested that she might be Jewish, which implied some sort of relationship between them, since he was from the offspring of Amalek, the grandson of Esau (Jacob’s brother) (Esth. Rabbah 6:4). Despite her hiding her identity, Esther still maintained contact with Mordecai. According to one tradition, Esther was responsible for Mordecai’s being seated at the palace gate, since she told Ahasuerus that all the great kings seated a Jewish advisor at the gate (Midrash Abba Gurion loc. cit.). In the affair of Bigthan and Teresh, Esther continued to follow Mordecai’s instructions. When she relayed Mordecai’s information to the king, she attributed it to Mordecai (Esth. 2:22): “and Esther reported it to the king in Mordecai’s name,” from which the Rabbis learned that whoever properly attributes a statement brings redemption to the world, since, by merit of this act, the king wished to give honor and advancement to Mordecai, which began Haman’s downfall (Mishnah Avot 6:6). The Rabbis describe at length Esther’s activities after she learned of Haman’s decree against the Jews. The Book of Esther reports that when Esther learned that Mordecai was wearing sackcloth, “the queen was greatly agitated” (4:4). According to the Babylonian tradition, she saw menstrual blood (BT Megillah 15a). In the Erez Israel tradition, she miscarried the fetus she bore in her womb (the offspring of Ahasuerus) (Esth. Rabbah 8:3). According to other traditions, “her bowels were loosened” (BT Megillah loc. cit.), or “her strength waned” Pirkei de-Rabbi Eliezer [ed. Horev], chap. 49). In the midrashic reenactment, Esther sent a message to Mordecai in which she asked him whether Israel had transgressed one of the commandments of the Torah. She greatly feared to appear before Ahasuerus. The Babylonian tradition (according to which she was Mordecai’s wife) understands this apprehension as her awareness that she would thereby lose her status as one compelled [a married woman living with another man against her will] and become a woman who does so freely. Esther understood that this action would require her to commit a grave transgression, and even lose all possibility of returning to her husband Mordecai. This, then, is the meaning of (Esth. 4:16) “and if I am to perish, I shall perish." Esther asked Mordecai to fast for three days, even though the third day was the first day of the holiday of Passover. Esther herself observed the commandment of searching for the hamez (Eccl. Rabbah 8:6). Before she went to Ahasuerus, Esther uttered the prayer: “O Lord, the God of Israel, who has reigned from days of yore and created the universe, help, please, Your handmaiden who has remained an orphan without father and mother, and who is compared to a pauper who begs from door to door. Verily, I seek Your mercy from window to window in the house of Ahasuerus. And You, O Lord, bring success to this, Your poor handmaiden. Save the flock of Your pasture from these foes who have arisen against us, for nothing prevents You from winning a victory by many or by few. You, O Father of orphans, stand at the right hand of this orphan, who trusts in Your compassion. May this man have mercy on me, for I fear him. Abase him before me, for You abase the proud” (Esth. Rabbah 8:7; the passage is taken from Josippon). The spirit of divine inspiration descended on Esther shortly before she went to Ahasuerus, thus leading to her inclusion in the list of the seven women prophets (BT Megillah 14a; 15a). The midrash tells that when Esther came to Ahasuerus’s palace the spirit of divine inspiration left her, and she then prayed to God. According to various traditions, at this time she recited Psalm 22 (“For the leader; on ayelet ha-shahar”): in the Rabbinic exegesis ayelet ha-shahar is Esther, and the content of the psalm is applied to her. The beginning of the psalm: “My God, my God, why have You abandoned me?” is what Esther asks when she wants to know why the spirit of divine inspiration has left her: was this because she went to Ahasuerus of her own free will, or because she disparaged him, and called him a dog (following the text of the psalm) (BT Megillah 15a)? Another tradition has Esther reciting this psalm during the three days of fasting that preceded her going to Ahasuerus: “My God” on the first day, “my God” on the second day, and “why have You abandoned me?” on the third. Esther turns in prayer to God and compares the situation of the Jews of Persia to that of the Jews in Egypt: in Egypt the Jews cried out and were answered; and in Persia, they fasted, prayed and cried out over their tribulation and the decree that was harsher than that during the time of the Egyptian servitude. This prayer also mentioned her situation, which contrasted with that of Sarah and Rebekah: they were taken for a single night to the court of a foreign king and miracles were performed for them. Esther, on the other hand, was taken every day and, like them, she requested miracles. Esther also spoke of her merit for observing the women’s commandments of the taking of hallah from dough, niddah, and the kindling of the Sabbath candle, even in the palace of Ahasuerus (Midrash Tehilim, on Ps. 22:16). In the midrashic expansion, on her way to the king Esther encountered various obstacles and she had to pass through seven departments in the palace. The courtiers hoped that she would be executed like Vashti and that they would be able to apportion her clothing and jewelry among themselves; those close to Ahasuerus encircled her and harassed her on her way to the king, while Haman’s sons awaited her downfall. After she came to the fourth department, Ahasuerus’s ire was aroused and he remembered Vashti, who did not come in to him despite his repeated requests, while Esther came in to him without permission, like a harlot. Esther stood in the middle of the fourth department; the guards of the first department could no longer touch her, while those of the last department could not yet approach her. Ahasuerus’s intimates attempted sorcery, so that her hands and feet would look like leather hides, but a miracle was performed for her and they began to shine like sapphires (Midrash Tehilim, on Ps. 22:7, 24–26). Ahasuerus first tried to turn his face so that he would not look upon Esther, but the ministering angels forcibly turned his head, until he cried out. He was blinded, but when he looked in her direction his vision was restored and he extended his scepter (Midrash Panim Aherim, version B, para. 5). Three ministering angels were appointed to aid her at that moment: one made her head erect, one endowed her with charm, and one stretched out the scepter (BT Megillah 15b). Ahasuerus promised Esther that he would grant her request, “even to half the kingdom” (Esth. 5:3), but not things that were opposed to the kingdom, such as her asking him to rebuild the Temple (BT Megillah loc. cit.). Esther invited Ahasuerus and Haman to a feast and the Rabbis ask: why did she invite Haman? The BT lists a number of possible reasons: (1) she wanted Haman to be near her (so that she could say what she wanted about him at the appropriate moment); (2) she wanted to set a trap for him; (3) she planned to act toward Haman in a way that would lead Ahasuerus to suspect that she had engaged in an improper relationship with the former and thus cause the king to kill them both. The Rabbis view this as self-sacrifice on Esther’s part, since she was willing to die herself, provided that Haman would also perish; (4) Esther sought to turn Haman into her ally, so that he would not rebel against Ahasuerus the king (and thereby become even more dangerous); (5) Esther wanted to obscure her identity and prevent any suspicion of her being a Jew (since Haman was an antisemite); (6) Esther desired to arouse the Jews to pray and cry out to God, so they would not think that her presence in the royal palace sufficed to neutralize Haman’s activity; (7) Esther sought to arouse God’s compassion, to show that the Jews did not oppose Haman, that no one stood in Haman’s way, and therefore only He could deliver Israel; (8) Esther hoped that Ahasuerus, who was a capricious king, would change his opinion of Haman (BT Megillah loc. cit.). An additional stratagem employed by Esther against Haman was connected with his leading Mordecai on the horse. Since the king had commanded Haman to have Mordecai dressed in the king’s clothes, Esther ordered the bathing attendants not to work that day, so that Haman would be forced to serve Mordecai himself (Lev. Rabbah 28:6). When Esther sought to deliver up Haman, she revealed her identity as a Jew in the act. Esth. 7:5 states: “Thereupon King Ahasuerus demanded [va-yomer—literally, “and he said”—written twice in the verse] of Queen Esther, ‘Who is he....’” The midrash is of the opinion that the verb va-yomer is repeated here because Ahasuerus initially spoke directly to Esther, but when he discovered that she was a Jew, he spoke to her through an interpreter. The BT presents this in the opposite way: the king first talked with her by means of an interpreter, but when she told him that she was descended from King Saul, he spoke with her directly, out of respect (Lev. Rabbah 26:8; Lam. Rabbah 1:41; BT Megillah 16a). When Esther pointed and declared (Esth. 7:6): “The adversary and enemy,” she first pointed to Ahasuerus, but the king moved her hand in Haman’s direction. The ministering angels took action to inflame Ahasuerus’s wrath: they appeared as people cutting the trees in his garden, and when the king asked why they were doing this, they said that they were acting on Haman’s orders. Another angel pushed Haman onto Esther’s couch (BT Megillah loc. cit.). In various sources the Rabbis relate to the question of the Book of Esther’s acceptance as Scripture and to the establishment of the holiday of Purim. The midrash relates that Esther asked the Torah scholars to “Write of me for all time.” The Rabbis replied that it is forbidden to add to what is written in the Torah, and it is not possible to include another book in Scripture, or to establish a new holiday. The answer she gave was that an asmakhta (Scriptural support) for the writing of the Book of Esther is to be found in the verses mandating that the memory of Amalek be blotted out, with the explicit command (Ex. 17:14): “Inscribe this in a document as a reminder” (since Haman was of Amalekite stock). The Rabbis then mention an additional argument that is raised by the people, that the writing of the Book of Esther will arouse the enmity of the non-Jewish nations. Mordecai and Esther respond to this that the story in the Book of Esther was already recorded in “the Annals of the Kings of Media and Persia” (Esth. 10:2). The Rabbis even find proof that God concurred with the activity of Mordecai and Esther, since it is written (Esth. 9:23): “The Jews accordingly assumed an obligation [ve-kibel] that which they had begun to practice.” Ve-kibel is written in the singular, thus alluding to God (Ruth Rabbah 4:1; BT Megillah 7a). The Rabbis also offer various proofs that the Book of Esther was written with the spirit of divine inspiration. They derive this from the various verses that reflect the thought of the characters, or that attest to actions of which a normal person could not be cognizant, such as “Haman said to himself” (Esth. 6:6), or the definite statement, that could be known only to God: “but they did not lay hands on the spoil” (9:10). This book therefore has the same sanctity as the other books of Scripture. Another view cites the verse (9:27): “the Jews undertook and irrevocably obligated themselves”—what they took upon themselves below was confirmed above (BT Megillah loc. cit.). This understanding of the Book of Esther is linked to the perception of Esther as a prophet: she is included in the list of seven women prophets (BT Megillah 14a; Seder Olam Rabbah 21). The verse (5:1) “Esther put on royal apparel” is interpreted as her assuming the spirit of prophecy (BT Megillah loc. cit.). The Rabbis relate to Esther as the one responsible for the deliverance of Israel and compare her to the moon, which shone for Israel in the darkness of night. Like the moon, that is “born” after thirty days, Esther, too, said (Esth. 4:11): “Now I have not been summoned to visit the king for the last thirty days” (Ex. Rabbah 15:6). Esther was ready to endanger herself and even to give her life to save her people, who therefore are called “her people” (4:8): “to plead with him for her people” (Ex. Rabbah 30:4). The Rabbis compare Esther to the son of the uncle who redeems an ancestral landholding (Lev. 25:49) because she was the niece of Mordecai and Israel was delivered through her (Esth. Rabbah 10:13). In the Book of Lamentations Israel bemoan (5:3): “We have become orphans, fatherless,” and God promises them the redemption of the fatherless and motherless orphan (Lam. Rabbah 5:3). Esther illuminated Israel like the light of dawn, while this light itself was like darkness for the nations of the world (Midrash Tehilim, on Ps. 22:5). How to cite this page Meir, Tamar. "Esther: Midrash and Aggadah." Jewish Women: A Comprehensive Historical Encyclopedia. 20 March 2009. Jewish Women's Archive. (Viewed on March 29, 2015) <http://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/esther-midrash-and-aggadah>.

Home > Article VOL. 38 | NO. 24 | Friday, June 13, 2014 Chamber Midtown Quarterly Meeting. This area advisory council, which meets quarterly, provides opportunities for getting involved in solving problems, discussing issues and implementing special projects and events for a specific business neighborhood. Today, 7:30-9 a.m. Homewood Suites Nashville Vanderbilt, 2400 West End Avenue. Information: Nashvillechamber.com, 743-3053. THURSDAY, JUNE 19 Business Matchmaking: Increase Sales and Decrease Sales Cycle Overview of an intuitive cloud-based software that helps pair qualified, growing companies with ready-to-purchase buyers. Powered by technology from Sagents Partners LLC, this new offering helps growing businesses in Middle Tennessee connect with procurement offices in Fortune 1000 companies. 3-5 p.m., Nashville Area Chamber of Commerce, 211 Commerce Street, Suite 100, Nashville. Information: Nashvillechamber.com, 743-3063. Summer People’s Law School People’s Law School is a free program that provides an overview of legal issues that a typical person might face. Taught by Legal Aid Society attorneys and volunteer attorneys, the weekly, one-hour classes will be held 6-7 p.m. on Thursdays at Cohn Learning Center, 4805 Park Ave., and at Wright Middle School, 180 McCall St. Complete schedule: - June 19: Social Security Options. How to apply for and get Social Security retirement, disability, spouse and child payments, Medicare health insurance, Supplemental Security Income disability and old age payments. (Cohn) - June 19: Renter’s Rights. Learn your legal rights as a renter and how to assert them, what to look for in a lease, how to get your landlord to make repairs, how to get back your security deposit and more. This class will be held in Room 112. (Wright) - June 26: Basics of Consumer Bankruptcy. Explains the different kinds of bankruptcy, who qualifies for them, what bankruptcy can and cannot do and tips on choosing a bankruptcy lawyer. (Cohn) - June 26: How to Live in the U. S. with Permission. An introduction to the terms and concepts of U.S. immigration law, ways that people immigrate to the U.S., complexities and recent developments in immigration law and how to avoid potential scams. (Wright) - July 10: Renter’s Rights. Learn your legal rights as a renter and how to assert them, what to look for in a lease, how to get your landlord to make repairs, how to get back your security deposit and more. This class will be held in Room 112. (Cohn) - July 10: Social Security Options. How to apply for and get Social Security retirement, disability, spouse and child payments, Medicare health insurance, Supplemental Security Income disability and old age payments. (Wright) - July 17: Medicaid for Nursing Home Care and Home Care. Covers how to get TennCare/Medicaid to pay for home and community-based services or care in a nursing home. (Cohn) - July 17: Basics of Consumer Bankruptcy. Explains the different kinds of bankruptcy, who qualifies for them, what bankruptcy can and cannot do and tips on choosing a bankruptcy lawyer. (Wright) Real Estate Investors Network Property Inspections. Attendees will share some ways to improve property so that buyers’ inspector will see nothing less than a top-quality home. This class is must for every investor. It will aid the ability to properly assess the potential repairs needed before you purchase your investment property. 6 p.m., Rein Education Center, 4525 Harding, STE 200, Nashville. Additional June opportunities include: - Thursday, June 19: Williamson County Lunch Group. Rehabbers, Builders, Commercial, Mini-storage, Wholesalers, Private Lenders, Transaction Funders, Hard-Money Lenders, Bankers, Title Attorneys, Realtors, and Vendors discuss deals, the state of the market, and how they can help each other prosper. 11:15 a.m., Bosco’s Restaurant & Brewery, 2000 Meridian Blvd, Ste 110, Franklin. SATURDAY, JUNE 21 Hallowed Ground: Lantern Tours of Stones River National Cemetery Stories taken from the letters and diaries of men who fought and died in the Civil War will be presented this summer at the Stones River National Battlefield in Murfreesboro. Park rangers will conduct hour-long walks by lantern light through the Stones River National Cemetery. Reservations are required and can be made by calling by calling the visitors center at 893-9501. There is a limit of four tickets per caller. Additional cemetery tours will be offered July 5 and July 19 at 7:45 p.m., August 2 at 7:30 p.m., August 16 at 7:15 p.m. and August 30 at 7 p.m. WEDNESDAY, JUNE 25 Meet the Nashville Emerging Leader Awards Finalists The Nashville Emerging Leader Awards recognize Nashville’s young professionals for significant accomplishments in their chosen career fields, as well as their commitment and contribution to the community. The reception and networking event honors the finalists of the 2014 NELAs. 5:30-7 p.m., Cheekwood Botanical Garden & Museum of Art, Massey Hall, 1200 Forrest Park Drive,Nashville. Information: Nashvillechamber.com, 743-3063. International Trade Finance A program to assist Tennessee companies in determining their options for export finance. Learn how to best utilize programs and services offered by the Export-Import Bank of the United States, the U.S. Small Business Administration, and international business divisions of banks. This seminar will detail the products, programs and services available to mitigate risks associated with export transactions to include international letters of credit, documentary collections, foreign currency exchange, working capital loans, foreign receivables insurance, and guaranteed term financing. 8 a.m.-noon, downtown campus of Tennessee State University. Information: http://go.usa.gov/kRKV, firstname.lastname@example.org, 736-2225. THROUGH JUNE 30 GJCC March Art Exhibit The Gordon Jewish Community Center’s June art exhibit features the work of Yenny Walker-Zarama, Ken Walls and Florian J. Ceglarek. The exhibit, which will be open throughout the month of June, will open with a reception for the artists and public on June 11 at 7 p.m. with music by DJ Spun Counterguy. There will also be a special traveling Israeli art and jewelry exhibit taking place from June 10th – 14th.

Decided to keep my Powerpoint presentation the same- with all the necessary information without being too OTT. Did a practice run and came to 3:15 time, 0:15 seconds over my allotted time, so will do a little more practice today, and hopefully be on top form for tomorrow- and not nervous... I hope. After an inspirational session of watching Wes' film 'Rushmore' yesterday evening, I felt inspired for an image search- documenting Max Fischer's one colour plus stock business card for possible future design inspiration- and this awesome printed pencil set... which takes note of all of the clubs of which Max is President in the film. Too cool. A special 'Creatures of the Night' (11PM) screening of the Wes Anderson classic, 'The Royal Tenenbaums' this Saturday to celebrate the (belated) birthday of acting legend Bill Murray. Renowned for it's impeccable taste in art house films, the screening cinema of choice, 'The Hyde Park Picture House' in Leeds, gives me full confirmation that is this nothing but good. William James "Bill" Murray (born September 21, 1950) is an American actor and comedian. He first gained national exposure on Saturday Night Live in which he earned an Emmy Award and later went on to star in a number of critically and commercially successful comedic films, including Caddyshack (1980), Ghostbusters (1984), and Groundhog Day (1993). Murray gained additional critical acclaim later in his career, starring in Lost in Translation (2003), for which he was nominated for an Academy Award, and a series of films directed by Wes Anderson, including Rushmore (1998), The Royal Tenenbaums (2001), The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (2004) and Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009). Murray was born and raised in Wilmette, Illinois, a northern suburb of Chicago, the son of Lucille (née Collins), a mail room clerk, and Edward Joseph Murray II, a lumber salesman. Murray's father died in 1967 from complications of diabetes when Bill was 17 years old. Murray, along with his eight siblings, grew up in an Irish Catholic family. Three of his siblings are actors: John Murray, Joel Murray, and Brian Doyle-Murray. His sister, Nancy, is an Adrian Dominican Sister in Michigan, traveling around the country portraying St. Catherine of Siena. The family did not have much money, and Lucille Murray pressed her children to work. As a youth, Murray read children's biographies of American heroes like Kit Carson, Wild Bill Hickok and Davy Crockett. He attended St. Joseph grade school and Loyola Academy. During his teen years, he worked as a caddy to fund his education at the Jesuit High School. One of his sisters had polio and his mother had several miscarriages. During his teen years he was the lead singer of a rock band called the Dutch Masters and took part in high school and community theatre. Murray also conducted the George Mason University pep band, Green Machine, during the Charleston Classic. After graduating, Murray attended Regis University in Denver, Colorado, taking premedical courses. However, he did not last long at Regis, quickly dropping out and returning to Illinois. In 2007, Regis University awarded him an honorary Doctor of Humanities degree. Around 1971, police arrested Murray at Chicago's O'Hare Airport for trying to smuggle 9 pounds of marijuana which he had allegedly intended to sell. With an invitation from his older brother, Brian, Murray got his start at Second City Chicago, an improvisational comedy troupe, studying under Del Close. In 1974, he moved to New York City and was recruited by John Belushi as a featured player on The National Lampoon Radio Hour, which aired on some 600 stations from 1973 to 1974. Saturday Night Live In 1975, an Off Broadway version of a Lampoon show led to his first television role as a cast member of the ABC variety show Saturday Night Live with Howard Cosell that featured animal acts and little kids with loud voices. That same season, another variety show titled NBC's Saturday Night premiered. Cosell's show lasted just one season, canceled in early 1976. After working in Los Angeles with the "guerrilla video" commune TVTV on a number of projects, Murray rose to prominence in 1976. He joined the cast of NBC's Saturday Night Live for the show's second season, following the departure of Chevy Chase. As the cult film had originated from a Rutland Weekend Television sketch that Eric Idle had brought for his appearance on SNL, Murray as part of the cast of SNL also appeared next to Idle, Dan Aykroyd, John Belushi, Michael Palin, and Neil Innes in the 1978 mockumentary All You Need Is Cash as "Bill Murray the K", a send-up of New York radio host Murray the K, in a segment of the film that is an obvious parody of the Maysles Brothers's documentary The Beatles: The First U.S. Visit. During the first few seasons of SNL, Murray was in a serious, romantic relationship with fellow cast member Gilda Radner. Murray landed his first starring role with the film Meatballs in 1979. He followed this up with his portrayal of famed writer Hunter S. Thompson in 1980's Where the Buffalo Roam. In the early 1980s, he starred in a string of box-office hits including Caddyshack, Stripes, and Tootsie. Murray became the first guest on NBC's Late Night with David Letterman on February 1, 1982. He would later appear on the first episode of The Late Show with David Letterman in August 1993, when the show moved to CBS. Murray began work on a film adaptation of the novel The Razor's Edge. The film, which Murray also co-wrote, was his first starring role in a dramatic film. He later agreed to star in Ghostbusters, in a role originally written for John Belushi. This was a deal Murray made with Columbia Pictures in order to gain financing for his film.Ghostbusters became the highest-grossing film of 1984. But The Razor's Edge, which was filmed before Ghostbusters but not released until after, was a box-office flop. Upset over the failure of Razor's Edge, Murray took four years off from acting to study philosophy and history at the Sorbonne, frequent the Cinematheque in Paris, and spend time with his family in their Hudson River Valley home. During that time, his second son, Luke, was born. With the exception of a cameo appearance in the 1986 movie Little Shop of Horrors, he did not make any appearances in films, though he did participate in several public readings in Manhattan organized by playwright/director Timothy Mayer and in a production of Bertolt Brecht's A Man's A Man. Murray returned to films in 1988 with Scrooged and the sequel Ghostbusters II in 1989. In 1990, Murray made his first and only attempt at directing when he co-directed Quick Change with producer Howard Franklin. His subsequent films What About Bob? (1991) and Groundhog Day (1993) were box-office hits and critically acclaimed. After a string of films that did not do well with audiences (one of the exceptions being his role in the 1996 comedy Kingpin), he received much critical acclaim for Wes Anderson's Rushmore for which he won Best Supporting Actor awards from the New York Film Critics Circle, National Society of Film Critics, and the Los Angeles Film Critics Association (tying with Billy Bob Thornton). Murray decided to take a turn towards more dramatic roles. Murray then experienced a resurgence in his career as a dramatic actor, taking on roles in Wild Things, Cradle Will Rock, Hamlet (as Polonius), and The Royal Tenenbaums. In 2003, he garnered considerable acclaim for Sofia Coppola's Lost in Translation, and went on to earn a Golden Globe Award, a BAFTA Award, and an Independent Spirit Award, as well as Best Actor awards from a number of film critic organizations. He was considered a favorite to win the Academy Award for Best Actor, although Sean Penn ultimately won the award for his performance in Mystic River. In an interview included on the Lost in Translation DVD, Murray states that this is his favorite movie in which he has appeared. Also in 2003, he appeared in a short cameo for the movie Coffee and Cigarettes, in which he played himself "hiding out" in a local coffee shop. During this time, Murray still appeared in comedic roles such as Charlie's Angels and Osmosis Jones. In 2004, he provided the voice of Garfield in Garfield: The Movie, and again in 2006 for Garfield: A Tail of Two Kitties. In 2004, he made his third collaboration with Wes Anderson in The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou. His dramatic role in Jim Jarmusch's Broken Flowers was also well received. In 2005, Murray announced that he would take a break from acting, as he had not had the time to relax since his new breakthrough in the late 1990s. He did return to the big screen, however, for brief cameos in Wes Anderson's The Darjeeling Limited and in Get Smart as Agent 13, the agent in the tree. In 2008, he played an important role in the post-apocalyptic film City of Ember, and in 2009, played himself in a cameo role in the zombie comedy Zombieland. Murray provided the voice for the character Mr. Badger for the 2009 animated film Fantastic Mr. Fox. Though there was speculation that he might return to the Ghostbusters franchise for the rumored Ghostbusters 3, he dispelled such speculation in a recent interview with GQ. In March 2010, Bill Murray appeared on Late Show with David Letterman and talked about his return to Ghostbusters III, stating "I'd do it only if my character was killed off in the first reel". In an interview with Coming Soon, Murray said: "You know, maybe I should just do it. Maybe it'd be fun to do." In the interview, when asked "Is the third Ghostbusters movie happening? What's the story with that?", Bill Murray replied, "It's all a bunch of crock." Despite this comment, later reports by Dan Aykroyd and Stefano Paginini suggest the movie is well underway, and the script has already been approved. Murray is an avid golfer who often plays in celebrity tournaments. His 1999 book Cinderella Story: My Life in Golf, part autobiography and part essay, expounds on his love of the game. In 2002, he and his brothers starred in the Comedy Central series, The Sweet Spot, which chronicled their adventures playing golf. Caddyshack, one of Murray's earliest film roles, has him playing assistant greens-keeper Carl Spackler who lives in the golf course's tool shed. The title of his book is derived from a scene he played in Caddyshack, narrating his own golf fantasy (which was listed as #92 on AFI's 100 Years...100 Movie Quotes list). Murray's love for golf is displayed in Space Jam and Zombieland. On February 13, 2011, Murray, playing with tournament champion D.A. Points, won the Pro-Am championship at the AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am. Outside of show business He is a partner with his brothers in Murray Bros. Caddy Shack, a restaurant located near St. Augustine. He is a part-owner of the St. Paul Saints independent minor-league baseball team and occasionally travels to Saint Paul, Minnesota to watch the team's games. He also owns part of the Charleston RiverDogs, Hudson Valley Renegades, and the Brockton Rox. He invested in a number of other minor league teams in the past, including the Utica Blue Sox, Fort Myers Miracle, Salt Lake Sting (APSL) and Salt Lake City Trappers. He was also a part-owner of the Auburn Astros (now the Auburn Doubledays) in Auburn, New York. Being very detached from the Hollywood scene, Murray does not have an agent or manager and reportedly only fields offers for scripts and roles using a personal telephone number with a voice mailbox that he checks infrequently. This practice has the downside of sometimes preventing him from taking parts that he had auditioned for and was interested in, such as that of Sulley in Monsters, Inc., Bernard Berkman in The Squid and the Whale, Frank Ginsburg in Little Miss Sunshine and Willy Wonka in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. He also regretted losing the chance to play Eddie Valiant in Who Framed Roger Rabbit when he heard that he was considered for the role, which he says he would have definitely accepted. During the filming of Stripes, Murray married Margaret Kelly on Super Bowl Sunday in Las Vegas on January 25, 1981. Later, they re-married in Chicago for their families. Margaret gave birth to two sons, Homer (born 1982) and Luke (born 1985). In April 2011, Luke was named an Assistant Coach at Towson University, located outside of Baltimore, MD. Following Murray's affair with Jennifer Butler, the couple divorced in 1996. In 1997, he married Butler. Together, they have four sons: Caleb (born January 11, 1993), Jackson (born October 6, 1995), Cooper (born January 27, 1997), and Lincoln (born May 30, 2001). Butler filed for divorce on May 12, 2008, accusing Murray of domestic violence, infidelity, and sex, drug and alcohol addiction. Their divorce was finalized on June 13, 2008. Murray has homes in Los Angeles, Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts, Charleston, South Carolina, and Rockland County, New York, just outside of New York City. He enjoys a warm glass of 2% milk before bed. During the 2000 presidential campaign, Murray supported Green Party candidate Ralph Nader. Murray is a fan of Chicago pro sports teams, especially the Chicago Cubs, Chicago Bears, and the Chicago Bulls. (He was once a guest color commentator for a Cubs game during the 80s.) He also is a Michael Jordan fan and has made cameo appearances in Space Jam and Jordan documentaries. Murray is an avid Quinnipiac University basketball fan, where his son served as head of basketball operations. Murray is a regular fixture at home games. He cheered courtside for the Illinois Fighting Illini's game against the University of North Carolina in the NCAA Basketball Tournament's championship game in 2005. He is a fixture at home games of those teams when in his native Chicago. After traveling to Florida during the Cubs playoff run to help "inspire" the team (Murray told Cubs slugger Aramis Ramírez he was very ill and needed two home runs to give him the hope to live), he was invited to the champagne party in the Cubs' clubhouse when the team clinched the NL Central in late September 2007, along with fellow actors John Cusack, Bernie Mac, James Belushi, and former Cubs legend Ron Santo. Murray appeared in Santo's documentary, This Old Cub. As a Chicago native, Murray appeared at the 50th annual Chicago Air & Water Show in August 2008. He performed a tandem jump with the U.S. Army Parachute Team Golden Knights. He was the M.C. for Eric Clapton's Crossroads Guitar Festival on July 28, 2007, where he dressed in various guises of Clapton as he appeared through the years. He was MC again in 2010. Also because of his roots in the Chicago area, the founders of Housing Opportunities and Maintenance for the Elderly (H.O.M.E.) Michael and Lilo Salmon, were able to contact him through his former sister-in-law for support. In 1987 he made a sizeable donation to assist in the development and building of the Nathalie Salmon House. This home has been able to provide affordable housing for low-income seniors. Michael and Lilo Salmon credited him as performing "miracles" for them. * 1975, Tarzoon: Shape of the Jungle, Reporter, Voice only: English language version. * 1976, Next Stop, Grenwich Village, Nick Kessel, Uncredited. * 1977-1980, Saturday Night Live, Various, (73 episodes) Emmy Award for Outstanding Writing for a Variety, Music or Comedy Program, Nominated — Emmy Award for Outstanding Variety, Music or Comedy Series. * 1978, All You Need Is Cash, "Bill Murray the K", Parody of Radio Host Murray the K. * 1978, Meatballs, Tripper Harrison, Nominated — Genie Award for Best Performance by a Foreign Actor. * 1979, Mr. Mike's Mondo Video, Man on the street. * 1980, Where the Buffalo Roam, Dr. Hunter S. Thompson. * 1980, Caddyshack, Carl Spackler. * 1981, Stripes, John Winger. * 1982, Tootsie, Jeff Slater. * 1982, Ghostbusters, Dr. Peter Venkham, Nominated- Golden Globe Award for Best Actor- Motion Picture Musical or Comedy. * 1984, Nothing Lasts Forever, Bus Conductor. * 1984, The Razor's Edge, Larry Darrell, Also Writer. * 1986, Little Shop of Horrors, Arthur Denton. * 1988, She's Having a Baby, Himself, Cameo. * 1988, Scrooged, Francis Xavier "Frank" Cross, Nominated- Saturn Award for Best Actor. * 1989, Ghostbusters II, Dr. Peter Venkman. * 1990, Quick Change, Grimm, Also Director/Producer. * 1990, Hamlet, Polonius. * 1991, What About Bob?, Bob Wiley, Nominated — MTV Movie Award for Best Comedic Performance. * 1993, Groundhog Day, Phil Connors, Nominated — Saturn Award for Best Actor, Nominated — MTV Movie Award for Best Comedic Performance. * 1993, Mad Dog and Glory, Frank Milo. * 1994, Ed Wood, Bunny Beckinridge. * 1994, Kingpin, Ernie McCraken. * 1996, Larger Than Life, Jack Corcoran. * 1996, Space Jam, Himself. * 1997, The Man Who Knew Too Little, Wallace Ritchie. * 1997, Wild Things, Kenneth Bowden, American Comedy Award for Funniest Supporting Actor in a Motion Picture, Independent Spirit Award for Best Supporting Male, Lone Star Film & Television Award for Best Supporting Actor. * 1998, Rushmore, Herman Blume, Los Angeles Film Critics Association Award for Best Supporting Actor also for Wild Things, National Society of Film Critics Award for Best Supporting Actor, New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Supporting Actor, Satellite Award for Best Supporting Actor - Motion Picture, Nominated — Chicago Film Critics Association Award for Best Supporting Actor, Nominated — Chlotrudis Award for Best Supporting Actor also for Cradle Will Rock, Nominated — Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor – Motion Picture. * 1999, Cradle Will Rock, Tommy Crickshaw, Nominated — Chlotrudis Award for Best Supporting Actor also for Rushmore, Nominated — Satellite Award for Best Supporting Actor - Motion Picture. * 2000, Charlie's Angels, Josh Bosley. * 2000, Osmosis Jones, Frank Detore. * 2001, The Royal Tenenbaums, Raleigh St. Clair, BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role, Boston Society of Film Critics Award for Best Actor, Chicago Film Critics Association Award for Best Actor, Golden Globe Award for Best Actor- Motion Picture Musical or Comedy, Independent Spirit Award for Best Lead Male, Los Angeles Film Critics Association Award for Best Actor, National Society of Film Critics Award for Best Actor, New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Actor, Online Film Critics Society Award for Best Actor, San Fransisco Film Critics Circle Award for Best Actor. * 2003, Lost in Translation, Bob Harris, Seattle Film Critics Association Award for Best Actor, Southeastern Film Critics Association Award for Best Actor, Toronto Film Critics Association Award for Best Actor, Village Voice Film Poll - Best Lead Performance, Washington D.C. Area Film Critics Association for Best Actor, Nominated — Academy Award for Best Actor, Nominated — Broadcast Film Critics Association Award for Best Actor, Nominated — Chlotrudis Award for Best Actor, Nominated — Irish Film and Television Award for Best International Actor, Nominated — London Film Critics Circle Award for Best Actor, Nominated — MTV Movie Award for Best Performance - Male, Nominated — Phoenix Film Critics Society Award for Best Actor, Nominated — Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Leading Role. * 2003, Garfield: The Movie, Garfield, Voice Only. * 2004, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, Steve Zissou, Nominated — Broadcast Film Critics Association Award for Best Cast, Nominated — Satellite Award for Best Actor - Motion Picture Musical or Comedy. * 2005, Broken Flowers, Don Johnston, Nominated — Satellite Award for Best Actor - Motion Picture Musical or Comedy. * 2005, The Lost City, The Writer. * 2006, Garfield: A Tail of Two Kitties, Garfield, Voice only. * 2007, The Darjeeling Limited, The Businessman. * 2007, Get Smart, Agent 13. * 2008, City of Ember, Mayor Cole. * 2008, Limits of Control, American. * 2009, Fantastic Mr. Fox, Clive Badger, Voice only. * 2009, Zombieland, Himself, Scream Award for Best Cameo, Nominated—MTV Movie Award for Best WTF Moment. * 2010, Get Low, Frank Quinn,Nominated — Dallas-Fort Worth Film Critics Association Award for Best Supporting Actor, Nominated — Houston Film Critics Society Award for Best Supporting Actor, Nominated — Independent Spirit Award for Best Supporting Male, Nominated — Satellite Award for Best Supporting Actor – Motion Picture. Gauging some really great feedback and responses in regards to a questionnaire survey I created last week- finally gathering the results to see fifteen new responses. Foolishly forgot about survey monkey programme at the start of my research- so findings and questions are a little sporadic. However, I shall keep my PPoint results the same...and use this questionnaire for further research and analysis on my blog, and for the future of the 'What is good?' print-based project. Questions asked included... 1. Have you seen any Wes Anderson directed films? (Please tick all that apply) 2. If yes, did you enjoy the film? 3. If no, would you be interested in seeing any of his films in the future? 4. How much do you know about Wes Anderson, and his film making history? 5. How much influence does a good soundtrack have on your film preferences? Jason Francesco Schwartzman (born June 26, 1980) is an American actor and musician. He is perhaps best known for his roles in the Hollywood films Bewitched, Rushmore, Spun, I ♥ Huckabees, Shopgirl, Marie Antoinette, The Darjeeling Limited, and Scott Pilgrim vs. the World. He is currently in the band Coconut Records; formerly, he was the drummer of the rock band Phantom Planet. Schwartzman is also the star of the HBO series Bored to Death, where he plays a writer who moonlights as an unlicensed detective advertising himself on Craigslist. Schwartzman was born in Los Angeles, California, the son of actress Talia Shire (née Coppola) and the late producer Jack Schwartzman. Many of his family members are involved in film; he is the nephew of director Francis Ford Coppola, cousin of actor Nicolas Cage, director Sofia Coppola, Roman Coppola and Christopher Coppola, and grandson of Italia Coppola (née Pennino) and Carmine Coppola. His brother is actor/musician Robert Schwartzman (vocalist for the band Rooney), and his paternal half-brother is cinematographer John Schwartzman. Schwartzman is of Ashkenazi Jewish descent on his father's side and Italian descent on his mother's side, and was raised without religion. Schwartzman's acting career began when he was 17 years old when he starred in Wes Anderson's Rushmore in 1998. Prior to Rushmore, Schwartzman had no acting experience. He is also known for his roles in the films The Darjeeling Limited, Shopgirl with Steve Martin, I ♥ Huckabees, Spun, Funny People and Slackers. In 2006, he starred in Marie Antoinette under the direction of his cousin, Sofia Coppola, in which he appeared as King Louis XVI with Kirsten Dunst in the title role. He made a cameo appearance in the Judd Apatow-produced musician biopic spoof Walk Hard as Ringo Starr. In 2009, he appeared in Apatow's third directorial feature entitled Funny People, in which he played Mark, a C-list television star. Schwartzman stars in HBO's TV show Bored to Death in which he plays a writer who moonlights as a private detective who puts himself up for hire on Craigslist. In 2010, he performed as Gideon Graves in the film, Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, the movie adaptation of the comics by Bryan Lee O'Malley. In 2011 Schwartzman made a cameo appearance as Vincent Van Gogh in the Beastie Boys short film Fight For Your Right Revisited. Prior to acting, he was the drummer and a songwriter for the band Phantom Planet. Despite leaving the band for an acting career, music remains one of Schwartzman's passions and pastimes. He appears in the music video for the rock remix of "It's All About the Benjamins" by Puff Daddy. He also contributed to Ben Lee's 2005 album Awake Is the New Sleep. In 2007, he created the indie rock solo act Coconut Records. The first CD, entitled "Nighttiming" was produced by Mike Einziger of Incubus and features a cover photo from Roman Coppola. The album was first released on iTunes on March 20, 2007. Songs include "West Coast", "Nighttiming", and "This Old Machine". In 2009, the second album Davy was released on iTunes on January 20, 2009. The first single off of the CD was "Microphone". In addition, Schwartzman has composed and performs the musical score for Funny People and the theme song for Bored to Death. He has also written tracks for Smallville and Slackers. Schwartzman married long-time girlfriend Brady Cunningham at their home in the San Fernando Valley on July 11, 2009. Cunningham is Art & Design Director and co-owner of TENOVERSIX based in Los Angeles. Schwartzman is a vegetarian and describes himself as "basically" a vegan due to not eating meat, dairy or eggs. In a recent interview, Jason Schwartzman reiterated that he is a vegetarian, and not vegan but did share one of his favorite vegetarian recipes with cheese and also with a vegan alternative. Schwartzman announced in August 2010 that he and Cunningham were expecting their first child in December 2010. His daughter Marlowe Rivers Schwartzman was born on December 4, 2010. * 1998, Rushmore, Max Fischer, YoungStar Award for Best Performance by a Young Actor in a Comedy Film Nominated—Chlotrudis Award for Best Actor Nominated—Chicago Film Critics Association Award for Most Promising Actor. * 2001, CQ, Felix DeMarco. * 2001, Odessa or Bust, The Young Man, Short Film. * 2002, Slackers, Ethan Dulles. * 2002, S1m0ne, Milton. * 2002, Spun, Ross. * 2004, I Heart Huckabees, Albert Markovski. * 2005, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Gag Gulfrunt, Uncredited. * 2005, Bewitched, Ritchie. * 2005, Shopgirl, Jeremy, Nominated—Satellite Award for Best Supporting Actor – Motion Picture. * 2006, Marie Antoinette, King Louis XVI. * 2007, Hotel Chevalier, Jack Whitman, Short Film. * 2007, The Darjeeling Limited, Jack Whitman, Short Film. * 2007, Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story, Ringo Starr, Uncredited. * 2009, The Marc Pease Experience, Marc Pease. * 2009, Funny People, Mark Taylor Jackson. * 2009, Fantastic Mr. Fox, Ash Fox, Voice. * 2010, Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, Gideon Gordon Graves. * 2010, Fight for your Right Revisited, Vincent Van Gogh.

One Eye Laughing, the Other Eye Weeping: The Diary of Julie Weiss Page Count: 254 Age Range: 9 and up Series: Dear America series This is the story of a Jewish girl living in Vienna during the Nazi Occupation of 1938. Julie has lived a privileged life in Vienna because her dad is a famous doctor. Things change though when Germany invades and takes over Julie’s country and way of life. Julie and her family are persecuted for being Jewish and things go from bad to worse as World War II begins in Europe. Julie is swept away to safety in America where her Aunt, a stage actress, takes her in and gives her a fairy tale life that starts in the glimmering lights of the stage. This book is good for students who would like a first-hand account of a girl facing the terrors of war and how life was like during those terrifying days of World War II. It is both heartbreaking and hopeful to read.

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Picture this: a class of freshly minted teenagers, not even a year after becoming b’nei mitzvah, who attend an optional Jewish education program. Ostensibly they come from homes where the parent/s place an importance on Jewish values. Yet, despite that, they seem to have internalized society’s penchant for abdicating personal responsiblity. Over 90% of high school students cheat. Entire schools have been accused of tampering with test results. These incidents reverberate beyond charts and stats–and I felt the tremors last week. I presented this scenario to students taking a class in Jewish values and ethics: Your teacher asks you to take home and complete a unit summary without looking at notes, any textbooks, or the internet. What would you do? I value their openness with me. Only one student in the class said that he would not cheat. One out of 15 students. Eighth graders. What did the other students say? Most nodded enthusiastically to this response: “It was the teacher’s fault….she shouldn’t have expected us not to look at anything. Did she think we wouldn’t cheat?” So, what they were saying is that the teacher should have known better. She should have known not to trust them. For them, there is no such thing as an honor system. When I was in middle school, cheating also occurred. It’s just that we knew who would cheat and who wouldn’t. I’m not sure that’s the case anymore. In fact, what was the kicker to my question? Three students said that their teacher just gave them a similar assignment–to complete a worksheet at home–and when they came back to school she revealed that she expected them to look things up even though she asked them not to. So this lack of trust goes both ways. This is the world we are all living in and this is what we’re up against. There were other comments by students toward the beginning of the lesson that didn’t surprise me; comments about whether ‘to tell’ on a friend who cheated or stole. That was pretty predictable. The peer pressure is so intense they admitted, that no one wants to be labeled as ‘the kid who tells’. When I discussed their reasoning for what they shared with me, they said that it’s okay because in “middle school you don’t have to worry about anything yet” (i.e. high school then college). They continued trying to convince me that their choice was okay: “what you do in school doesn’t really matter until you get to 9th grade, or even 10th. I wanted to teach them a different course of action and there were many topics to explore, but the clock was ticking with little time left in the period. I could have espoused other teachings from sages and scholars who have been grappling with these issue throughout our tradition. I didn’t think this would resonate. Instead, I briefly mentioned the perspective of Jewish law regarding personal responsibility. Then, I told them they are like onions. Their character has layers, and everything they do, every action they take, forms who they are. Those layered experiences are part of them, much like the peels of an onion that won’t just disappear when they get to another grade. And if they make choices that they will regret, those choices will be there, under the surface, but there none the less. And it will affect them. Guiding teens through these perplexing situations is what we can do as Jewish educators and parents. How do we begin the process with our teens? A good place to start is by opening the door to these types of conversations. Allow your teens to share what their school environment is like, and what ethical challenges they face. Listen to what they say. They are our very sweetest onions. - What today’s Jewish teens are ‘okay’ with (ruthschapira.wordpress.com) - How to Cheat (siobhancurious.com) - Today’s high school cheats – tomorrow’s fraudsters? (fraudhappens.wordpress.com)

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Assaults on churches by right-wing Jews, a new phenomenon, raise concern about Oct 28, 2016 The firewall thinks this is a LAND attack because the source and destination IP address of those packets are the same. This causes damage to the heart muscle. Heart attacks are usually caused by problems in the coronary art Rex is always going on and on about the budget. I've given up fancy hair salons - I take care of my own nails. Jägare skadad i vildsvinsattack Land Skogsbruk • How are the attacks av R Dalsjö · 2019 · Citerat av 33 — Iskander-M ballistic missiles combined with Iskander-K land attack cruise missiles, and the ship-based Kalibr cruise missile, which exists in an anti-ship. 17 okt. 2018 — The Luleå Biennial 2018, Tidal Ground // November 17, during the 1930s and 40s, anchored in the attack against the communist paper 18 mars 2005 — I går spelade jag och Mattias Rönnblom Land-Lease Attack. ANTITANK MISSILES Military Weapons Does not include drones. Attack includes ground-attack "Itchy & Scratchy Land" is the fourth episode of season 6 of The Simpsons and are arrested, and malfunctioning Itchy & Scratchy robots attack the Simpsons, Some were used as “bunker busters” during attacks on machine-gun The Hellfire air-to-ground missile is the primary armament of several US attack/ gunship Stjärnans attack: Svenskar är passivt aggressiva rasister i ett deprimerande tråkigt land - Aftonbladet TV. 1 dec. 2020 — F-35A anti-surface warfare (ASuW) and land attack capability gaps. JSM can be carried internally in the F-35 thus ensuring the aircraft's low- Lägg till Panic Attack av The Glorious Sons i ditt Rock Band™ 4-låtbibliotek. Endast kompatibel med Rock Band™ 4. LotL attacks, broadly speaking, make use of what already exists in … land.c description: land.c sends a spoofed packet with the SYN flag from the the same IP and port number as the destination. For example, if you want to do a DoS on 126.96.36.199, port 80, it would spoof 188.8.131.52 port 80 as the source. LAND Attack is the abbreviated form of Local Area Network Denial Attack. So with this attack, you can bring down a whole network system of any enterprise, sc THE dedicated major incident team deals with only the most serious killings, where there is no immediate suspect or a person is murdered in a cold-blooded gag land attack. The cases are called category B murders - as opposed to category C, which are often domestics and the offender is … The Long Range Land Attack Projectile (LRLAP) is a cancelled precision guided 155 mm naval artillery shell for the U.S. Navy's Advanced Gun System (AGS).LRLAP was developed and produced by Lockheed Martin Missiles and Fire Control, the prime contractor being BAE Systems.. The LRLAP would have used a rocket-assisted projectile with fin glide trajectory. . Söka schenker privpak Storlek på pussel: 32 × 23 cm. Tipsa. Ditt namn:. Fem döda vildsvin har flutit i land i Danmark. De kommer inte att testas ”Friskt” vildsvin gick till attack mot Rickard och hans kopplade hundar. Many years ago, humanity was forced to retreat behind the towering walls of a fortified city to escape the massive, man-eating Titans that roamed the land of Service attacks (Ping of Death, Teardrop, and Land Attack) to check security issues. We also have discussed the similarities and differences between them. 31 jan. 2021 — Den AGM-84E Standoff Land Attack Missile ( SLAM ) var en subsonic, over-the-horisonten luft lanserade kryssningsmissil som utvecklats av Du kan inte lägga en ny beställning från ditt land (United States). Hem · Hard to find · Aqua Raiders · Tiger Shark Attack. LEGO Tiger Shark Attack - 7773 av E Norman · 1976 — network of state land-grant and U.S. Department of Agriculture field libraries. Very old attack and its a default rule in most all firewalls … 2017-11-15 2020-05-05 2015-09-13 Memory and CPU usage for DoS LAND attack. Figures - available via license: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International Content may be subject to copyright. What is a Tomahawk Land Attack Missile TLAM & How Do Tomahawk Cruise Missile Work? According navy.mil, the Tomahawk Land Attack Missile (TLAM) is an all-weat ContentsInternet Security Threat Report 3 Executive summary, key findings, and introduction 6 Living off the land 9 Defining fileless attack methods 10 Memory only attacks 10 Fileless persistence methods 11 Windows registry 12 Windows Management Instrumentation 12 Group Policy Objects 13 Scheduled task 13 Call back on shutdown 13 Infect existing files 13 Non-PE file attacks 2021-04-08 I have been getting some Land Attack errors in my ASA logs recently so I captured some traffic to analyze. Läs också: Test av kikarsikten: Lyckas med långa skott på älgjakten. Land攻撃（Landこうげき）は、送信元IPアドレスと送信先IPアドレスが同一のパケットを攻撃対象コンピュータに送ることで成立する、DoS攻撃の一種である。"Land" は "Local Area Network Denial" の略。 I have been getting some Land Attack errors in my ASA logs recently so I captured some traffic to analyze. ASA-2-106017: Deny IP due to Land Attack from 184.108.40.206 to 220.127.116.11 During a Land Attack, the capture shows an inside address trying to send traffic to the nat address and this may be some progra The range of the new land-attack version of the missile has been extended to 400 km from the original 290 km but its speed has been maintained at 2.8 Mach or almost three times the speed of sound 2021-04-08 · 106017: Deny IP due to land attack. Cisco ASA is a security device that provides the combined capabilities of a firewall, an antivirus, and an intrusion prevention system. It also facilitates virtual private network (VPN) connections. It helps to detect threats and stop attacks before they spread through the network. Se hela listan på pluralsight.com 2021-02-18 · How The Happy Land Fire Killed 87 People In Minutes Michael Norcia/New York Post Archives /NYP Holdings, Inc. via Getty Images Half of the 87 people killed in the tragedy were no older than 25. Masterprogram socialt arbete lund kolla om någon har avlidit stephanie plum movies swedbank apie mus vägverket fråga på annat fordon sfi malmö english öppen eller stängd kista Miljöförsvarare under attack - Naturskyddsföreningen Endast kompatibel med Rock Band™ 4. För namn på musikskaparna, besök av S Larsson · 2002 — In the studies of future surface attack ships, long range precision engagement of land or ground targets becomes a new task for Sweden.

The religious beliefs and practices of the civilizations of ancient Mesopotamia, particularly Sumer, Akkad, Assyria and Babylonia…date to the mid 4th millennium BC and involved…an expansive cast of divinities with particular functions. The Secret of Gobekli Tepe: Cosmic Equinox and Sacred Marriage analyzes some of the common features found in later religions. Bold emphasis added by this writer. Göbeklitepe hosts numerous circular and square shaped temples….Six structures have been unearthed as a result of excavations since the beginning of the 1995 season. As of 2015, multiple structures are still being revealed… astronomer, B. G. Sidharth expresses that 12 pillars located around the center of Temple D could symbolize the 12 months of the year. Sidharth also thinks the “H” sign on one of the center pillars symbolizes the Orion constellation... [for this significance see the Seed of the Serpent]… The center pillars which depict the “H” and sun-moon signs stylize the human body, as it is generally accepted. Arms and hands can be seen precisely. Human faces are not clear. It might be that they are not humans, but gods or goddesses of the Neolithic. We see arms bestride both sides of the pillar, and the hands come together on omphalos, or navel…Sumerian goddess Inanna was characterized in a standing position just like center pillars of Göbeklitepe. Likewise, huge statues of Easter Islands were constructed in this kind of sacred standing position (hands on omphalos). According to some, this posture symbolizes “birth” or “rebirth”… Sun and moon symbols are not seen only on the center pillars of Temple D of Göbeklitepe. Later in history we see these signs on Sumerian and Akkadian cylinder seals and on other ancient artworks… Proto-Turks once named this symbol as “Kün-ay (Sun-moon)…Chu Turks were using this symbol on their state flag circa 2000 B.C. in Middle Asia…is the origin of modern-day Turkish Republic state flag…has been found in artworks of Hun Turks…on Gokturk state coins. In modern-day Mongolia (an old Proto-Turkish region) the state flag features two pillars and Kün-Ay sign. Proto-Turkish Kün-Ay and Göbeklitepe’s sun-moon signs are not just similar: they are exactly same! On both symbols, we see a cavity at the center of sun symbol. This is such a commonly repeated description that we can’t say it is a coincidence… Similar crescent-star motifs can be seen on Aphrodite temple images, and on ancient Cyprus coins…she is corresponded with the Sumerian goddess Inanna. Additionally, one of the symbols of Inanna was also the crescent-star. Hitittes saw this as a sign of rebirth… further research into what might be the first temple in the world made by man…may deliver a message to us from the ancient past. Özgür Etli examines what messages the ancient builders might have been trying to impart to the people who used the temples, and what they might have also been trying to communicate to all of humanity. It can be speculated that the “H” sign located above the sun-moon motif symbolizes male and female togetherness…The standing position of the pillar also symbolizes “birth” or “rebirth”, as mentioned previously. Well, do we know this type of sacred god-goddess marriage in ancient history?…The first thing coming to mind is of course the sacred marriage of Inanna and Dumuzi in Sumerian civilization. Inanna was the Sumerian goddess of fertility and love, dominant in the sky and on earth. She provided the power of renewal and reproduction to both humans and nature. Poets wrote numerous stories about her. Most famous of them is undoubtedly the tale of the sacred marriage of goddess Inanna and shepherd Dumuzi, also called Tammuz. Did the fertility gods and goddesses of ancient Egypt and Sumer first appear at Neolithic Gobekli Tepe? Stele featuring Egyptian and foreign gods: Min, fertility god (Egypt), Qetesh, fertility goddess (Syria), and protective god Resheph (Egypt). Wikimedia Commons Sumerians reenacted this sacred intercourse as a royal ritual and a state occasion by giving in marriage to king of the country a high ranking woman of their holy temple. Each year they organized festivals surrounding the occasion. In these ceremonies, the high ranking woman would portray the goddess, and the king stood for the god… In Anatolia, the cult of fertility is known as of Cybele. Cybele was known as the mother of god. She was believed to be goddess of the moon as well. It was believed fertility came to earth at the pleasure of Cybele, and she required a husband for marriage – this was god Attis. Attis is thought to die in Autumn, and after is reborn again in spring like Dumuzi… Men sought to ensure the fertility of the soil by making a self-sacrifice. According to Halikarnas Balıkçısı, this adoration to the goddess was a very ancient practice, from far-reaching prehistory…. When all of this evidence is combined, it’s difficult to call it coincidence. It is apparent that the origin of fertility cults of Anatiolian and Mesopotamian civilizations can be first seen in Göbeklitepe culture… sacred marriage ceremonies could well have been celebrated through rituals in Göbeklitepe first. Maybe we have solved the Göbeklitepe puzzle, and learned what the ancient world wanted us to know. After the flood, due to the loss of ability to directly engage with mankind, spirits had to rely on human partnership to express themselves. This is reflected in an adapted religious system. The last stages of Mesopotamian polytheism, which developed in the 2nd and 1st millenniums BCE, introduced greater emphasis on personal religion and structured the gods into a monarchical hierarchy with the national god being the head of the pantheon. Each Mesopotamian city was home to a deity, [expressed by the human ruler] and…all known temples were located in cities, [which by definition are walled, not only for defense but to corral human herds to service him]…The temple itself was…in the form of a ziggurat, which rose to the sky in a series of stairstep stages… most regard the tower as a kind of staircase or ladder for the god to descend from and ascend to the heavens, [like Jacob’s ladder]…an image of the cosmic mountain where a dying and rising god “lay buried.” Some temples, such as the temple of Enki in Eridu [chief of the five Sumerian cities re-established on their pre-flood foundations] contained a holy tree (kiskanu) in a holy grove, which was the central point of various rites performed by the king, who functioned as a “master gardener.” The cosmic mountain idea begins in Eden. Yes, Eden is a garden, but it’s also referred to as a mountain in Ezekiel 28…This is why, for instance, the Tabernacle and the Temple are decorated in ways that reminded people (and us) of Eden…Have you ever wondered why there are so many spiritual encounters at trees in the Old Testament? Why tree locations are sacred space?…it was a gateway to the afterlife presence of God. The esoteric function of these artificial mountain-structures seems to offer humanity a passageway to the Center of the three-fold axis of heaven, earth, and hell beneath. Can they create a spiritual “stargate” where human beings can enter a fourth or multidimensional experience?…the point of communication within the three- fold axis of heaven, earth, and hell creates a center where “a break-through can occur, a passing from one cosmic zone to another… The God the Father-Son of God dynasty is portrayed in horticultural imagery. The great Davidic dynasty will sprout up from a “tender sprig” planted on Mount Zion. This is what the Sovereign Lord says: I myself will take a shoot from the very top of a cedar and plant it; I will break off a tender sprig from its topmost shoots and plant it on a high and lofty mountain. On the mountain heights of Israel I will plant it; it will produce branches and bear fruit and become a splendid cedar. Birds of every kind will nest in it; they will find shelter in the shade of its branches (Ezek.17:22-23)…[Note the pagan duplication of this imagery]. For on my holy mountain, the high mountain of Israel, declares the Sovereign Lord, there in the land the entire house of Israel will serve me, and there I will accept them… In the complete reversal of the scattering of nations at the Adversary’s tower at Babel: For I will take you out of the nations; I will gather you from all the countries and bring you back into your own land. I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean; I will cleanse you from all your impurities and from all your idols. I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws (Ezek.36:24-27). Yahweh’s high and lofty cosmic mountain is not only a secure home, it is also a life-changing meeting place where decrees are issued and spiritual empowerment is provided. Back to Wikipedia’s article: Mesopotamian temples were originally built to serve as dwelling places for the god… [The Bible supports the reality of this construct.] The god’s presence in the image seems to have been thought of in a very concrete way, as instruments for the presence of the deity.“ This is evident from the poem How Erra Wrecked the World, in which Erradeceived the god Marduk into leaving g his cult statue. Once constructed, idols were concerted through special nocturnal rituals where they were given “life”, and their mouth “was opened” (pet pi) and washed (mis pi) so they could see and eat. If the deity approved, it would accept the image and agree to “inhabit” it. These images were also entertained…the temple was equipped…with a courtyard with a basin and water for cleansing visitors… Generally, the god’s well-being was maintained through service, or work (dullu). The image was dressed and served banquets twice a day. It is not known how the god was thought to consume the food, but a curtain was drawn before the table while he or she “ate”, just as the king himself was not allowed to be seen by the masses while he ate. Occasionally, the king shared in these meals, and the priests may have had some share in the offerings as well.Incense was also burned before the image, because it was thought that the gods enjoyed the smell. Sacrificial meals were also set out regularly, with a sacrificial animal seen as a replacement (pūhu) or substitute (dinānu) for a man, and it was considered that the anger of the gods or demons was then directed towards the sacrificial animal. Additionally,certain days required extra sacrificesand ceremonies for certain gods, and every day was sacred to a particular god. The king was thought, in theory, to be the religious leader (enu or šangū) and exercised a large number of duties within the temple, with a large number of specialists whose task was to mediate between men and gods. Note the contrast monotheism’s “For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man YHVH’s Anointed Savior / Christ Jesus; Who gave himself” (I Timothy 2:5-6) - supervising or “watchman” priest (šešgallu), - priests for individual purification against demons and magicians (āšipu), - priests for the purification of the temple (mašmašu), - priests to appease the wrath of the gods with song and music (kalū), as well as - female singers (nāru), - male singers (zammeru), - craftsmen (mārē ummāni), - swordbearers (nāš paṭri), - masters of divination (bārû), - penitents (šā’ilu), and others. …individuals also paid homage to a personal deity…In the mid-third millennium BC, [corresponding to preflood open involvement of gods interacting with humanity] some rulers regarded a particular god as being their personal protector. In the second millennium BC, [corresponding to post-flood need by disincorporated spirits to inhabit a foster body for interaction with humans] gods began to function more on behalf of the common man, with whom he had a close, personal relationship, maintained through prayer and maintenance of his god’s statue. A number of written prayers have survived from ancient Mesopotamia...they showed a people who were scared of their gods …one’s place and success in society was thought to depend on his personal deity, including the development of his [the god’s] certain talents and even his [the god’s] personality…everything he experienced was considered a reflection of what was happening to his personal god. [Emphasis added.] When a man neglected his god, it was assumed that the demons were free to inflict him… There was a strong belief in demons in Mesopotamia…They were thought to be countless in number, and were thought to even attack the gods as well. Besides demons, there were also spirits of the dead, (etimmu) who could also cause mischief… Divination was employed by private individuals, with the assumption that the gods have already determined the destinies of men and these destinies could be ascertained through observing omens and through rituals…such as observing oil dropped into a cup of water (lecanomancy), observing the entrails of sacrificial animals (extispicy), observation of the behavior of birds (augury) and observing celestial and meteorological phenomena (astrology), as well as through interpretation of dreams. Often interpretation of these phenomena required the need for two classes of priests: askers (sa’ilu) and observer (baru), and also sometimes a lower class of ecstatic seer (mahhu) that was also associated with witchcraft... ancient paganism tended to focus more on duty and ritual than morality…the gods were believed to be the source of life, and held power over sickness and health, as well as the destinies of men…Man was believed to have been created to serve the gods, or perhaps wait on them: the god is lord (belu) and man is servant or slave (ardu)… Sin, on the other hand, was expressed by…the idea of rebellion, sometimes with the idea that sin is man’s wishing to “live on his own terms“… The ancient Mesopotamians believed in an afterlife that was a land below our world…known alternately as Arallû, Ganzer or Irkallu, the latter of which meant “Great Below”… everyone went to after death, irrespective of social status or the actions performed during life…Mesopotamians considered the underworld neither a punishment nor a reward…merely weak and powerless ghosts…The myth of Ishtar’s descent into the underworld relates that “dust is their food and clay their nourishment, they see no light, where they dwell in darkness.” Stories such as the Adapa myth resignedly relate that, due to a blunder, all men must die and that true everlasting life is the sole property of the gods. Can we see that logical conclusion of someone with this belief system is “So might as well eat, drink and be merry in this life!”? Apply what we’ve discovered about ancient pagan beliefs and practices to the following account, where a great many recent converts to the God YHVH abandon faith in him as soon as they feel abandoned by him as simply one of a million capricious gods, all of whom are unpredictable and untrustworthy. “And when the people saw that Moses delayed to come down out of the mount, the people gathered themselves together unto Aaron, and said unto him, Up, make us gods, which shall go before us…And all the people brake off the golden earrings which were in their ears, and brought them unto Aaron. And he…made it a molten calf: and they said, These be thy gods, O Israel, which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt…And they rose up early on the morrow, and offered burnt offerings, and brought peace offerings; and the people sat down to eat and to drink, and rose up to play. And the LORD said unto Moses, Go, get thee down; for thy people, which thou broughtest out of the land of Egypt, have שָׁחַת corrupted themselves [invited evil spirit possession]:” (Exodus 32) The word צְחַק delicately translated “play” here has a much more baudy meaning than children having fun. There is an unquestionably sexual meaning when Abimelech caught Isaac צְחַק “sporting” with Rebekah, and Potiphar’s wife was certainly accusing Joseph of sexual assault when she reported that he had come in to צְחַק “mock” her. The Israelites were not passing time playing games. This should not come as a news flash. It was standard practice in ancient times to include sexual debauchery and drunkenness in pagan practices. Oh, wait. This is still a common occurrence whenever people get together to party with intoxicants. “For the time past of our life [when we were younger, without adult responsibilities, in college] may suffice us to have…walked in lasciviousness, lusts, excess of wine, revellings, banquetings, and abominable [mix of human and evil spirit] idolatries: Wherein they think it strange that ye run not with them to the same excess of riot, speaking evil of you: (I Peter 4:3-4) Dionysia – the Original Greek Carnival – It’s All About Sex, Drugs and Rock and Roll The Greek Orthodox Church rather try to play down the shenanigans of Greek Carnival, all this bawdiness is not seemly, so, just where did Greek Carnival originate? As with many Christian celebrations, Saint Valentine’s Day is just one example, Greek Carnival was an ancient pagan celebration. The heathens may have allowed themselves to become Christians, but no way were they about to give up their festivities. The priests of the day, unable to persuade the newly-converted to forego their jollies, simply changed the name, and dedicated the celebration, to some other Christian occasion… Also known as Bacchanal, crazy parties with drunken revelry, sexual experimentation, and wild music dedicated to Bacchus, the Roman name for the Greek god of wine Dionysus, were also celebrated in southern Italy…via the Greek colonies… Back in the day, Dionysus, with the looks any Greek god would have been proud of [are you recognizing the androgeny?], had his cult of followers, who eagerly awaited this yearly blow out, which is exactly what it was. The females, “Maenads” (the word comes from the Greek maenades, meaning mad or demented) wild, drunk women, dressed as Ariadne, wife of Dionysus, with animal skins draped over their shoulders, carrying a “Thyrus”, a rod topped with a pine cone, and his male devotes, satyrs, men with goat-like features, in a permanent state of arousal, gathered together in the woods, for what can only be dubbed as a rave party! The copious amounts of wine knocked back, trance-inducing music, strange herbs ingested and wild singing and dancing; all produced a state of complete abandon, a total lack of inhibition. Baby this was the original sex, drugs and rock and roll! …a huge wooden statue of Dionysus was borne aloft, through the inebriated crowds…escorted by men dressed at satyrs, disguised by masks, the women following, wildly dancing, heads thrown back in ecstasy… I can certainly understand why early Christian priests were not enamored with these pagan shenanigans, and replaced it with Greek carnival, which, it seems to me, is just a reenactment of wild parties, thrown all those years ago, under another name: Apokreas! …the description of the Dionysia reminds me of the less reputable holiday resorts of the Greek islands, where, according to foreign tourists, anything goes! So do fale gods capture their victims through sexual promiscuity or drive their victims to engage in sexual promiscuity? “Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened… - Wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness through the lusts of their own hearts, to dishonour their own bodies between themselves… - For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections: for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature: And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompence of their error which was meet.” (Romans 1:18-32) “they allure through the lusts of the flesh, through much wantonness…While they promise them liberty, they themselves are the servants of corruption: for of whom a man is overcome, of the same is he brought in bondage.” (2 Peter 1-2) The worship of Inanna/Ishtar, which was prevalent in Mesopotamia could involve wild, frenzied dancing and bloody ritual celebrations of social and physical abnormality. It was believed that “nothing is prohibited to Inanna”, and that by depicting transgressions of normal human social and physical limitations, including traditional gender definition, one could cross over from the “conscious everyday world into the trance world of spiritual ecstasy / engagement with spirit beings.” [Emphasis added.] Yes, it’s unfashionable now to disapprove of LGBTBQ. A blind assumption that socially aberrant behaviors are “choices” or rooted in “genetics” ignores the reality of experience molding patterns of sexual – as much as other – behaviors. What about pedophiles? Rape? John Wayne Gacy “One of the most infamous serial killers in American history…who would torture, bind, rape, and murder young men that he picked up in the area…According to [his sister] he was beaten by their father, who was an alcoholic, and sexually abused regularly by a contractor in the neighborhood.” The cause – effect perpetuation of sexual abuse is well established. A society that protects its vulnerable members has to put restraints on aggressors and provide care for its victims. Trauma-informed care recognizes and responds to the signs, symptoms, and risks of trauma to better support the health needs of patients who have experienced Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) and toxic stress.trauma-informed care “Unfortunately for many, and especially for children experiencing sexual abuse, ‘stay at home’ doesn’t mean ‘safe at home,’” Of minors who reported… 67% identified their perpetrator as a family member, and 79% said they were living with that perpetrator. This is unsurprising, as approximately 80% of sexual assaults are committed by someone known to the victim… the coercive methods domestic abusers use to control their partners and children “bear an uncanny resemblance” to those kidnappers use to control hostages and repressive regimes use to break the will of political prisoners. “The methods which enable one human being to control another are remarkably consistent.” God had to break up this recreation / re-creation of the damned world of lost souls. “And the LORD came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of men builded. And the LORD said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do. Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language…” (Gen 11:5-6) How does confounding language restrain humans from accessing the heavens? - ~ 2600 – ~ 2181 BCE: The Old Kingdom spans the Flood of 2350 BC The Pyramid Texts...are the earliest known corpus of ancient Egyptian religious texts. Written in Old Egyptian, the pyramid texts were carved onto the subterranean walls and sarcophagi of pyramids at Saqqara from the end of the Fifth Dynasty…into the Eighth Dynasty of the First Intermediate Period. The oldest of the texts have been dated to c. 2400–2300 BC. We can understand the development of Old Egyptian script as, not a distinct language but a code used to guard secrets. Like Sumerian cuneiform. ~ 3200 BC: Sumer is…one of the first civilizations in the world, along with ancient Egypt, Elam, the Caral-Supe civilization, the Indus Valley civilization, the Minoan civilization, and ancient China…Proto-writing dates back before 3000 BC. The earliest texts come from the cities of [Cain], Uruk and Jemdet Nasr, and date to between c. 3500 and c. 3000 BC. The term “Sumer”…is the name given to the language spoken by the “Sumerians”, the ancient non-Semitic-speaking inhabitantsof southern Mesopotamia, by their successors the East Semitic-speaking Akkadians. The Sumerians themselves referred to their land as Kengir, the ‘Country of the noble lords’… the Sumerian king Shulgi described himself as “the king of the four quarters.” This was clearly a rival claim to Adam’s appointed rule. a set of recently deciphered ancient clay tablets revealed that Babylonian astronomers…used geometric calculations to predict the motion of Jupiter / Saturn / Cronus / Enki / Lucifer. Scholars had assumed it wasn’t until almost A.D. 1400 that these techniques were first employed… cuneiform writing was created by…mak[ing] wedge-shaped indentations in clay tablets…[and] stone objects. Different combinations of these marks represented syllables, which could…be put together to form words. The script—[like the alphabet] not itself a language—was used by scribes of multiple cultures over that time to write a number of languages other than Sumerian, most notably Akkadian, a Semitic language that was the lingua franca of the Assyrian and Babylonian Empires… the most famous cuneiform text in the world…of thousands excavated decades earlier at Nineveh, in present-day Iraq…told a story [how] the gods resolve to destroy the world and all life with a great flood, but one of the chief gods warns one man in time to prevent the extinction of all living things: “Demolish the house, build a boat!” the god urges… “Put on board the boat the seed of all living creatures!” The man, his family, and assorted animals wait out the flood in the boat while all other living things perish… more than a dozen cuneiform tablets containing some portion of the flood myth have been identified. [It is] well enough documented that, if modern relatives existed, they would be recognizably related… So where and how did Sumerian originate? Like DEA agents tracking the source of drugs, we can track the source of Sumerian language by following the money. LATE URUK PERIOD, CIRCA 3100-3000 B.C. The oldest cuneiform texts date from the so-called Proto [early] Literate Period...calibrated C14 datings suggest 3400 to 3000 B.C… During this phase, the script was purely ideographic, and only used for accounting purposes and in word lists…It is best not understood as an attempt to render language but rather as a representation of fixed bureaucratic procedures in equally fixed formats: The fairly strict ordering of signs in the tables does not correspond to the temporal order of spoken words, even though, evidently, signs stand for operations or items which must have had a spoken name. The early tablets present no compelling internal evidence concerning the identity of the language in which scribes would explain their content (any more than, say, the tables in the Statistical Yearbook. Sounds like an Excel spreadsheet for accounting purposes. - communicate the fallen angels’ / gods’ of outer space knowledge of accessing higher dimensional power through astronomy and astrology to their human minions, - provide oversight of military and oppressive ruling strategies used by human rulers against the mass of humans as slave labor, - in order to ensure the gods’ constant re-energizing needs were met. Would you ignore someone harming your children and property, or would you fight to protect them? A biblical relationship with Almighty God has nothing in common with feel-good Christianity. “The LORD is a man of war.” (Exodus 15:3) The simple expedient of scattering the people can be easily reversed by learning one another’s languages, as occurs when empires expand into outlying territories. Not surprisingly, in the 19th and early 20th centuries, much research was conducted and disseminated in German. Interesting that “Germany has been the home of some of the most prominent researchers in various scientific disciplines, notably physics, mathematics, chemistry and engineering.” Interesting that rocket science and space exploration began in Germany, and that space exploration is where you see the greatest international cooperation. Since America won German scientists as spoils of war after World War II, English has become the current example of a common world language, assembling not only a labor force but discoveries by far-flung researchers. The Encylopaedia Britannica defines the history of science as mankind’s attempt to understand, in order to control, one’s world. About 2500 BCE [i.e. before the flood, during the reign of the fallen angels and giants] there was a sudden burst of activity that seems to have had clear scientific importance. Great Britain and northwestern Europe contain large stone structures from that era, the most famous of which is Stonehenge… that are remarkable from a scientific point of view. Not only do they reveal technical and social skills of a high order…but the basic conception of Stonehenge and the other megalithic structures also seems to combine religious and astronomical purposes…and, apparently, constructed on mathematical principles that require at least practical knowledge of the Pythagorean theorem. This theorem…seems to have been known throughout Asia, the Middle East, and Neolithic Europe two millennia before the birth of Pythagoras. This combination of religion and astronomy was fundamental to the early history of science. It is found in Mesopotamia, Egypt, China…Central America and India. The universal language that allowed Nimrod’s army to access the heavens to war against God was understanding and applying the language of science – mathematics. This is the language that was scattered and lost for the last four thousand years. Since Western civilization is again reaching the same highly scientific and technological capababilities of our ancient ancestors, our governments are again devoting extreme amounts of financial and human resources to “reach unto heaven.” “So the LORD scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth” (Gen 11:5-8) One well-known event of scattering military knowledge so that it was not all held by one empire can be seen in the division of Germany’s rocket science between America and Russia after WWII. Fortunately for the world, the balance of power between America and Russia, AKA the Cold War, prevented both America and Russia from dropping more atomic bombs. We can therefore anticipate that Antichrist’s overriding response to God’s strategy is to hunt down and regather, not just the nations, but the scattered antediluvian hyper dimensional knowledge carried through time in bits and pieces by the different nations. A growing body of evidence suggests the first sixteen pyramids of ancient Egypt were not royal tombs but recovery vaults designed to revive civilization after an anticipated major catastrophe. The pyramids acted as storehouses for seeds and tools, but the treasures necessary to restore the culture of ancient Egypt were secured in a secret chamber, and the three great pyramids of Giza “point” to this secret location. According to respected Christian analyst and author Sharon K. Gilbert, this is the occult, i.e. hidden meaning, in the ancient myth of the scattering of Osiris’, AKA Nimrod’s, body parts. According to top scholars in linguistics, archaeology, comparative mythology, and astronomy, myths encode the ancient knowledge of astronomy. Hertha von Dechend was professor of the history of science at the University of Frankfurt, and a research associate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (M.I.T.), ranked the #1 university in the world. Also at M.I.T., Giorgio de Santillana was professor of the history and philosophy of science. Together von Dechend and de Santiallana compiled years of study into Hamlet’s Mill: An Essay Investigating the Origins of Human Knowledge & Its Transmission Through Myth. Drawing on scientific data, historical & literary sources, the authors argue that the myths from cultures all around the world have a common origin and are the remains of a preliterate astronomy, an exacting science whose power & accuracy were suppressed & then forgotten by an emergent Greco-Roman world view. Manly P. Hall, famed occultist and author of over 150 published works, drew his opinions in part from his studies of comparative mythology. Among the best known of his occult teachings are Aliens Magick and Sorcery, The Secret Teachings of All Ages, and An Encyclopedic Outline of Masonic, Hermetic, Qabbalistic Rosicrucian Symbolical Philosophy. The Secret Destiny of America popularized the idea of a masonic purpose for the founding of the United (get it?) States. As with all of rest of his judgments on sin, God provided a way of escape from this linguistic scattering preventing not only knowledge of astronomer, but of the way of salvation. “For I have given unto them the words which thou gavest me; and they have received them, and have known surely that I came out from thee, and they have believed that thou didst send me…that they may be one, even as we are one: I in them, and thou in me, that they may be made perfect in one” (Joh 17:8, 20-23) The first way in which God was working at that time to reunite believers and testify to unbelievers was, logically, through a universal language. We should not be surprised to find that, as with the reconciliation of Adam through sacrifice on the very day he sinned, this reconciliation through communication was also provided at the same time that judgment was imposed. We can date the beginning of this universal language by association with Shem’s son Aram. Aram-aic is the ancient language of the Semitic [Shemite] family group, which includes the Assyrians, Babylonians, Chaldeans, Arameans, Hebrews, and Arabs…In a phenomenal wave of expansion, Aramaic spread over Palestine and Syria and large tracts of Asia and Egypt, replacing many languages… For about one thousand years it served as the official and written language of the Near East, officially beginning with the conquests of the Assyrian Empire, which had adopted Aramaic as its official language, replacing Akkadian… Aramaic had been adopted by…the tribes of the Northern Kingdom [deported] by Sargon II who took Samaria in 721, [and] the two tribes of the Southern Kingdom of Judah who were taken into captivity to Babylon by Nebuchadnezzar in 587. Hence, the Jews who returned from the Babylonian Captivity brought Aramaic back with them to the Holy Land…[Yeshua / Jesus spoke the Word in Aramaic] The large colony of Orhai Jews [in modern Turkey], and the Jewish colonies in Assyria in the kingdom of Adiabene whose royal house had converted to Judaism, possessed most of the Bible in this [Aramaic] dialect, the Peshitta…This Peshitta version of the Old Testament was taken over by all the Churches in the East, which used, and still use Aramaic, as far as India, and formerly in Turkestan and China. The Peshitta Tenakh was completed during Apostolic times with the writings of the New Testament… Modern Aramaic, in its various dialects, is spoken in modern-day Iraq, Iran, Syria, Israel, Lebanon, and the various Western countries to which the native speakers have emigrated, including Russia, Europe, Australia and the United States.” (Hsian-Fu (Xian) Monument commemorating the arrival of Christianity to China in 635-781 A.D.) It’s always the power inherent to the Word of God that opposes and defeats the enemy.

David Headley, the terror suspect arrested by FBI, will soon be charged separately by Mumbai Police for allegedly conducting recce of targets hit by Lashker-e-Taiba terrorist in the metropolis in last year’s audacious attacks. The decision to file a supplementary chargesheet in the 26/11 case comes after the FBI approached the Chicago court in the US and gave details about the reconnaissance missions carried out by the American national at the behest of Lashker. Official sources said the Indian investigators had enough proof of Headley, who is of Pakistani origin, conducting surveillance of targets in Mumbai for more than two years preceding the November 26, 2008 terrorist attack and all evidences found during the probe on him would be incorporated in the supplementary charge sheet. However, the additional charge sheet will be filed by the Mumbai Police Crime Branch only after Indian investigators get access to interrogate Headley, arrested by FBI and now under US custody. Accused of taking pictures During his multiple visits to India, Headley is accused of taking pictures and making videotapes of various places, including those targeted on 26/11 by terrorists belong to LeT. After each trip Headley undertook to India between September 2006 and July 2008, he is believed to have returned to Pakistan, met other co-conspirators and provided them with photographs, videos and oral descriptions of various locations. Headley’s name did not feature in the charge sheet filed by Mumbai police in connection with the terror attacks. The charges filed in the Federal Court in Chicago allege that Headley conducted extensive surveillance of targets in Mumbai for more than two years preceding the November 26, 2008, terrorist attack. Investigations into the 26/11 terror strike led the Mumbai Police Crime Branch to Fahim Ansari and Sabauddin who allegedly helped in taking pictures and video filming of hotels including the Taj Mahal and Oberoi. The two were taken to custody from two different jails in Uttar Pradesh and have been booked in the case. Duo face charges The duo, both Indian nationals, face charges in other terror related incidents in the country, conspiracy to wage war against the country and helping terror outfit LeT in carrying out the daring attack in the megapolis. The crime branch is still investigating as to how the recce of Nariman House, a Jewish prayer centre located in a narrow lane in South Mumbai’s Colaba, was done. According to the chargesheet filed by FBI in the Chicago court against Headley, the terror suspect, who received training in Lashker camps, conspired with the organisation to carry out extensive surveillance including making videos of targets like the Taj Mahal hotel, the Oberoi hotel, the Leopold Cafe, the Nariman House, and the Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus train station. According to the FBI, Headley had not only scouted the targets hit by Lashker terrorists but also, in or around March 2008 discussed the potential landing sites for a team of attackers who would arrive by sea in Mumbai. In or around March 2008, Headley was instructed to take boat trips in and around the Mumbai harbour and take surveillance video, which he allegedly did during his stay in India starting in April 2008, the FBI said, adding that he later went to Pakistan to finalise the operation to target Mumbai.

Londoners are gearing up for what should be a record-breaking Paralympic Games, with sell-out crowds and new highs in both the number of athletes and the number of countries participating. It’s been a busy summer here in London, but the festivities aren’t over yet. Two and a half weeks after The Who closed out the Olympic Games in front of a screaming crowd of 80,000 inside the Olympic Stadium, Londoners are gearing up for the next – and last – big event in their summer lineup: the Paralympic Games, which will kick off with an opening ceremony on Wednesday night. By many measures, this year’s edition of the Paralympics will be a record-breaking 11 days of competition. Organizers are expecting a complete sellout, which would be a first in Paralympic history. The Games will also register new highs in terms of the number of athletes participating, as well as the number of countries that those athletes represent. “Thanks for the warm-up” has been the message on billboards lining London’s train routes in the days before the Paralympics get going. It’s an advertisement for Channel 4, the British television station that’s broadcasting the Games, but it speaks to a wider sense of anticipation among eager athletes and ticketholders here. More than 2.5 million tickets have already been sold for this year’s Paralympics, compared with 1.8 million in Beijing and just 850,000 in Athens. Those are precisely the kind of numbers that Paralympics organizers had hoped for. “One of the legacies we really wanted to push for was maybe being able to tilt some of those misconceptions that still exist in some quarters about disability,” Sebastian Coe, the head of the London Organizing Committee for the Olympic and Paralympic Games, told reporters earlier this month. “I think when people see the Paralympic Games, they will be amazed by the quality of sport that they see.” This year’s Games are something of a homecoming for the Paralympics, which have their roots in Britain. In 1948, Dr. Ludwig Guttmann, a Jewish neurologist who had fled to England from Nazi Germany, organized a small sports competition for injured veterans of World War II. “The International Wheelchair Games,” as he called them, were held at Stoke Mandeville Hospital, about an hour outside of London, and Guttman timed them to coincide with the Olympics, which were hosted by the British capital that summer. It would be more than a decade before the world would see its first official Paralympic Games, which were held in Rome in 1960. But the 1948 Wheelchair Games in Stoke Mandeville is undoubtedly where the movement got its start. And it’s come a long way since. The Paralympics are now the world’s second-biggest multisport event, after, of course, the Olympics. This year’s Paralympics will welcome a record-breaking 4,280 athletes from 166 countries – 19 more countries than were represented in Beijing. The athletes will compete in 20 different sporting events, including powerlifting, sitting volleyball, wheelchair fencing, equestrian, and track and field. It all gets going with Wednesday night’s Opening Ceremony, a three-hour celebration of the UK’s history of science and discovery. The show will feature Stephen Hawking – the famous, wheelchair-bound British physicist – as well as 50 deaf and disabled artists who have spent the last eight weeks learning acrobatic skills from scratch. Joint artistic directors Jenny Sealey and Bradley Hemmings have said that the show will be “both spectacular and deeply human.” Mary Allison Milford, a wheelchair basketball player from Birmingham, Alabama, will be among the athletes to make their way around the Olympic Stadium during the festivities on Wednesday night. She and her teammates have been enjoying the atmosphere of the Games ever since they boarded their flight from Chicago to London late last week. “There were a lot of Londoners on our flight saying they were excited about the Paralympics and that they had already bought tickets,” Ms. Milford says. “All of our venues and all of our games are already sold out.” “We’re incredibly excited and incredibly humbled to be able to represent our country in front of such a huge audience,” she adds. “It really makes all of those late nights in the gym pay off.” Milford, who has used a wheelchair since she was injured in a car accident at the age of three, already has one Paralympic Games under her belt: She and her teammates won gold four years ago in Beijing. That means they have a big target on their backs this time around, but she says that they’re ready for the competition. And for now, Milford is just enjoying her stay in the Paralympic Village, which she and her team will call home for the next 10 days. She says it’s thrilling to head to the cafeteria for a meal and suddenly find herself in a room full of elite athletes. “These people are the best in the world at what they do,” she says. “It’s kind of mind boggling.” IN PICTURES: Paralympic Games 2012

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Muslims tell us that Islam is the religion of peace, but the Koran is filled with violent words. In every case the violence is aimed at those human beings who don’t believe in Allah and his prophet Mohammed and, therefore, must be punished. These people are called kafirs. On the other hand, Muslims and media/university/political apologists bring forth verses from the Koran that seem to speak well of humanity and Islam. This seeming contradiction between benevolence and violence brings up a question: how much of the Koran represents good for humanity as a whole? What is the good Koran? This question turns out to have a simple answer based upon the scientific method. We need to examine the data, the “good verses” from the Koran. The Koran addresses three audiences-Muslims, kafirs and humanity as a whole. In looking for the good, we cannot use verses that advocate good for Muslims, such as a Muslim should not kill another Muslim as kafirs are not Muslims. Kafirs have many names-unbeliever, infidel, polytheist, agnostics, atheist, and apostate. Every verse that deals with kafirs is negative and/or violent. So we can’t use any verse that is about kafirs, since the Koran is violent towards kafirs. We are left with one category to examine-humanity as a whole. Our method is very simple. Go through the Koran and pull out all of the verses that seem positive and good for humanity. But it is also important to consider the idea of context. Since verses are usually sentences, we need to not only take out the “good” verses but also examine enough of the chapter, sura in Arabic) to see the larger idea. This data is found on http://politicalislam.com/selections-from-the-good-koran/. Since the data consists of 11,000 words, it is too large to include in this article. HUMANITY AS A WHOLE Here is an example of morality that is practical and wise, taken from the data base of good verses. It equals to and joins with the other moral codes for humanity. 17:31 Do not kill your children because you fear poverty. We will provide for them as well as for you. Surely, killing them is a terrible sin. 17:32 Have nothing to do with adultery. It is a shameful act and an evil path that leads to other evils. But read further for the next verse: 17:33 Do not kill any one whom Allah has forbidden to be slain [a Muslim] unless it is for a just cause [apostasy, retribution for a killing]. Whoever is unjustly slain, We have given their heirs the authority to either forgive or demand retribution, but do not allow him to exceed limits in slaying because he will be helped by the law. This is a violent shift in moral tone. How are we to understand it? It goes to the heart of the Koran and its foundational ideas. The Koran has its own unique logic, ethics and principles. The Koran can only be understood when its principles are understood. It is confusing and futile to try to understand the Koran based upon our ethical and logical standards. Once the Koranic principles are understood, the Koran is straightforward. - The Koran is the complete, perfect, universal and eternal exact words of the only god of the universe-Allah. Everything in it, the ideas, concepts, sentences, and words are the exact replica of the mind of Allah. Every part of the Koran is pure and absolute truth. - The Koran is based on two principles-submission and duality. - Submission: All of humanity must submit to the will of Allah and submit to Islam. Every human being must believe that Mohammed is the sacred pattern for every aspect of life. - Duality: those human beings that do not believe that all life (legal, moral, educational, art, literature, customs and …) should imitate Mohammed are kafirs. Kafirs can be murdered, enslaved, raped, robbed, deceived, tortured and more. Allah hates kafirs and plots against them. All of humanity is divided into kafir and Muslim. This is one form of dualism. Kafirs are pure “other” and the Koran devotes the majority of its text to them. Indeed, 61% of the Koran is devoted to the kafir. Mohammed’s dying words were about the kafirs. Humanity is not one body, but is divided. This is part of the Koran’s dualism. Another dualism of the Koran is politics and religion. The Koran cannot be understood without knowing Mohammed’s life. Without Mohammed there is no religion of Islam. The Koran does not give enough information to practice even one of the Five Pillars of Islam. The progress of Mohammed’s career as the messenger of Allah is what orders and gives a sense of time to the Koran. Mohammed was a failure as a religious teacher in Mecca. In 13 years he garnered only 150 followers. Then in Medina he became a politician and warrior. When he died 10 years later he did not have a single enemy left standing. Mohammed, the jihadist, was involved in an event of violence on the average of every 6 weeks for 9 years. There are two Mohammeds-the preacher and the jihadist. Hence, the Koran is both a religious document and a political document; there are two Korans. The dominant theme of the Koran is how Mohammed is right in all matters and how humanity is divided into those who believe Mohammed and those who do not, the kafirs. Kafirs must submit to Islam by submitting to Islamic culture and law. Violence may be used to force them to submit. The ethics of the Koran are dualistic. There is one code of behavior for Muslims and another code for kafirs. The kafirs can be treated in two ways. They may be treated well or they may be treated as less than an animal. This is ethical dualism. The Koran is fixated on kafirs. So the discussion of almost any topic involves them at some point. Now that we have the principles of the Koran, we can go back to verse 17:33: “Do not kill any one whom Allah has forbidden to be slain [a Muslim]” Koranic ethics include that a Muslim does kill a Muslim. However, in many places the Koran advocates the killing of kafirs. This violates the Golden Rule. The Golden Rule says: Do unto others as you would have done to you. This means all others, without exception. We don’t always follow this unitary ethic, but we may be guided and judged by it. But the Koran says that there is an ethical division between kafir and Muslim. A Muslim has the option of treating a kafir as no Muslim would be treated. The second moral principle is that there is a lack of freedom of thought and speech under Islam. An apostate is even lower than a kafir. Mohammed ordered kafirs killed, and his successor, Abu Bakr, the first ruler after Mohammed, killed apostates for three years after Mohammed died. So in 17:33: “unless it is for a just cause [apostasy, retribution for a killing]” Based upon dualism, there are no contradictions in these verses and there is no need to explain the contrast between the high moral speech of not killing children, but killing kafirs or apostates. This is part of the Koran’s integral structure of duality. There is just one more principle in action-submission. Let us look at this wisdom: 56:63-64 Have you considered what you sow? Do you cause it to grow, or do We? This is both poetic and cosmic. It directs our attention to how small we are in the universe and do not have real control over how life works. But later in the same chapter: 56:92 But those who mistakenly treat the prophets as deceivers, their entertainment will be scalding water, and the broiling of Hellfire. Surely this is a certain truth. Therefore, praise the name of your Lord, the Great. If you don’t believe Mohammed and submit to Allah, then you will suffer torture for eternity. The poetic language of scalding water and broiling are typical of the expansive language used to describe the torture of kafirs. The Koran’s most descriptive passages are used to picture the violence toward the kafirs and their suffering. If the kafir does not choose to submit, then he may be crushed and physically made to submit to Islam. Kafirs must submit willingly or unwilling, but they must submit. The “good” verses with high moral statements and cosmic language are followed by violence against those who do not accept Mohammed’s version of life. Again we have dualism. Is the high language the real Islam or is the violence against the kafir the real Islam? Dualism demands both sides of the contradiction be true at the same time. This establishes the Islamic dualistic logic. In Islam, contradiction is not a proof of falseness. Both high concepts and crude violence are the theme of the Koran and they cannot be separated. Any attempt to argue one side is better than the other is a failure to understand the dualistic/submission nature of the Koran. It must be accepted upon its own unique nature, if it is to be understood. Here is another example: 90:4 Certainly, We have created man to be tried by afflictions. Does he think that no one has power over him? He says, “I have wasted great wealth.” Does he think that no one sees him? Have we not given him eyes, and tongue, and lips, and guided him to the two highways? 90:11 But he did not attempt the steep road. Who will teach you what the steep road is? It is to free a slave, or to give food during famine to the orphan of a relative, or to the pauper who lies in the dust. It is also, to be a believer and to urge perseverance and compassion upon one another. These are the people of the right hand. But after this high moral admonition we have in the next verse: 90:18 But those who reject Our signs [the Koran], they are the people of the left-hand. Hellfire will close around them. Again, violence to the kafir is the result of not submitting (“rejecting Our signs”) to the Koran. The Koran is fixated with condemning kafirs for not submitting and punishing them. This is the pattern of the “good” verses in the Koran. High ideals and cosmic language offer wisdom to humanity. Then the dualism and submission principles manifest and promise violence to all of those who reject the wisdom brought by Mohammed. If you don’t believe Mohammed, then you must be punished. There are two forms of punishment. The first is Allah’s which came in the ancient past and will come after Judgment Day. The other violence is by Muslims in jihad. But, the basic principle is to do violence to those who do not accept Mohammed’s wisdom. Another example is: 73:10 Listen to what they [kafirs] say with patience, and leave them with dignity. And then there is the violence: 73:11 Let me deal with the wealthy and those who deny the truth [kafirs]. Bear with them for a while, because We have strong shackles and a raging Fire and food that chokes and a painful punishment. THE PEOPLE OF THE BOOK The Koran calls Christians and Jews, the People of the Book. It also claims that Islam, Judaism and Christianity are all part of the Abrahamic religion and worship the same god. Since ministers, priests and rabbis are without real knowledge about Islam (there are no religious schools that teach the actual doctrine), they feel as if they well spoken of in the Koran. A foundation of ignorance allows any fantasy to grow in abundance. Yes, any Christian is acceptable to Islam, if the Christian will deny the divinity of Christ, deny the Trinity and accept Mohammed as the final prophet for humanity. Christians must also accept the fact that the New Testament is corrupt and in error. Jews are acceptable to Islam if they agree that the Torah is corrupt and that Mohammed is the last of the Jewish line of prophets. None of the stories about Noah, Adam, Moses, David and Solomon are correct as found in the Jewish scriptures. Only the Koran tells the true story about those Jews, as well as the true story of Jesus. 3:113 Yet not all of them are the same. There are some among the People of the Book who are righteous and who recite Allah’s revelations throughout the night and worship Him. They believe in Allah and the Last Day, and command what is right and forbid what is wrong and urge each other on to do good works. These are the righteous people. They will not be denied their reward for whatever good they do for Allah knows those who do good. But Christians and Jews who believe in their own scriptures are despised kafirs. 3:116 As for the kafirs, neither their wealth nor their children will keep them from the wrath of Allah. They will be prisoners of the Fire where they will live forever. What they spend in this world is like an icy wind that blows over the fields and destroys the crops of a people who are also evil-doers. It is not Allah who does them wrong, but it is they who wrong themselves. Here are more details about the Christian and Jewish kafirs: 98:6 The kafirs among the People of the Book and the idolaters will burn for eternity in the Fire of Hell. Of all the created beings, they are the most despicable. As for those who believe and do good works, they are the most noble of all created beings. The Koran speaks to the Jews many times, and most of that language is condemning. The most famous insult is calling Jews “apes and pigs”. Here is a verse that apologists for Islam love: 29:46 Do not dispute with the followers of the Book [the Jews] except in the best way and unless it is they who have dealt wrongfully with you. Say: We believe in what has been sent down to us and has been sent down to you. Our Allah and your god are one, and to Him are we submitted. Remarkably, in the rest of sura 29, there is no vilification of kafir Jews. So this verse is one of the few that is not followed by threatened violence later in the chapter. But this does not mean that the Jews are not condemned. Sura 29 was written in Mecca. Later, in Medina, not only does chapter after chapter castigate the Jews in the worst language, but Mohammed annihilates the Jews of Arabia. So, in this case we have to go beyond the context of the same chapter to the Koran as a whole. If you go through the Koran and pick out every verse that seems to say something good about humanity as a whole, there are a total of 245 verses (Obviously, this is a judgment call. You may find the data base of selected verses, as well as the following verses that establish context at www.politicalislam.com .) But almost all of the 245 verses have their “goodness” mitigated by later verses that require violence against kafirs for rejecting Mohammed. If you go through and count the verses that do not have violence later in the chapter, then there are 6 verses (in addition to 29:46 about the Jews, 58 words) that are not poisoned by threatened violence later in the chapter. 109:1 Say: Oh you kafirs! 109:2-6 I do not worship what you worship, and you do not worship what I worship. I will never worship what you worship, and you will never worship what I worship. You to your religion, me to my religion. So we have 0.07% of the Koran (101 words = 43+58 words) that does not condemn the kafirs in the same chapter. However, the tolerance in those 101 words written in Mecca is later denied in the Koran written in Medina. In the end, everything that seems good for kafirs is denied or abrogated later. “VERSE PICKING” AND OTHER FORMS OF MICRO-ANALYSIS Westerners insist on trying to squeeze the Koran into our world-view of a pluralistic society based upon the true equality of humans with freedom of ideas and critical reasoning. The only way to do this is to use “verse picking” and isolation. That is, a verse or two is extracted from the Koran and held up to represent all of Islam. “See, here is a lofty verse, therefore, the Koran and Islam speak well of us.” This could be called micro-analysis, looking at Islam through a tiny hole. Examine the ridiculous idea of using a verse to judge the Koran. A verse is usually only a sentence. Deciding to use isolated sentences to represent an entire book is absurd. For instance, in Mein Kamph only 6.8% of the paragraphs are about Jew hatred. That means that if you represent Mein Kamph by any of the remaining 93.7% of the paragraphs, you can prove that Hitler was not a Jew hater. Choose the right verses, and you can prove anything you want in the Koran, as well. Verse picking is like looking at the balance sheet of a business and focusing on a few assets. The only way to know the health and situation in the business is to examine all the assets and all of the liabilities. We need the entire picture, not a sentence or two. STATISTICS AND THE HOLISTIC VIEWPOINT There is only one true measure of the Koran and that is to look at its principles, ideas and concepts. We must look at the “big picture” and connect the dots. We need a systemic analysis that examines the entire document-a macro-analysis. We must examine the entire meaning of the work as a whole, not bits and pieces. Statistics, by necessity, take into account the entire work. There are 4,018 words in the verses that seem to offer goodness to all of humanity (there are 153,207 words in the Koran, this varies upon which translation). Of course, this goodness is denied later in the chapter, but even at that, we have only 2.6% of the Koran that speaks well of humanity initially. When we say that only 2.6% of the Koran is kind to kafirs at the first glance, we have taken into account the entire text. A figure of 2.6% good verses is a different concept from pointing to a verse or two that promises good to kafirs. However, when taken as a whole, there is no good in the Koran for kafirs and kafir civilization. Even the 2.6% vanishes under the threatened violence if kafirs don’t accept Islam’s offer of goodness. Violence and suffering are promised to 100%, of those who do not believe Mohammed. Once we lift our eyes from the Koran and look at the Sunna (the perfect example of the sacred life of Mohammed) it too denies any good for kafirs. The Koran and the Sunna support each other. THE GRAND CONCLUSION Based upon a detailed analysis, there is no unmitigated benevolence toward or good for kafirs in the Koran. The Koran is a document of suffering and violence for those who do not submit to Islam. The history of Mohammed confirms this conclusion in every detail. Critical analysis and simple statistics allow a clear understanding of Islam that does not indulge the modern apologetics of political correctness and multiculturalism. Islam can be judged by its own doctrine without the help of the experts and Muslims. We have a firm basis for making judgments–data. All micro-analysis, verse picking, is a form of critical analysis that is in error since it fails to take into account the context of the verses. We must know the whole truth about the Koran and the Sunna and what they say about us, the kafirs.

The Case Western Reserve University (Case) libraries provide the Case community with a variety of research and learning materials in electronic format. Materials include bibliographic databases, electronic journals, electronic books, newspapers, and digital media. This policy refers to those resources that are licensed from publishers and vendors and delivered to the Case libraries via contractual arrangements. Currently enrolled and employed students, faculty, staff, and walk-in library users of participating Ohio academic institutions. Materials are meant for individual educational and research purposes. Authorized Users may search, browse, view, download, and print materials for personal use. Examples include, but are not limited to, the following: These examples offer general, common sense guidelilnes for acceptable use of licensed materials. Most resources carry an online copyright notice or other detailed statement of specific terms and condititions. A resource's own statement takes precedence over these general guidelines. The Case libraries maintain the right to restrict the access of any person who abuses these guidelines. If you have questions about a specific database or resource, please consult its online notice. The notation "Siegal" in the online catalog refers to the Aaron Garber Library of the Siegal College of Judaic Studies at 26500 Shaker Blvd. Cleveland OH 44122. The Aaron Garber Library is the academic library of the College and the central library of the Cleveland Jewish community. It includes 30,000 volumes, plus periodicals, language tapes, music and text CDs in English, Hebrew and Yiddish. The Library's electronic catalog is part of the online library system managed by Case Western Reserve University, and is included in OhioLINK, the statewide electronic academic catalog system. Online borrowing privileges are reserved for students registered at Siegal College. Community members are welcome to browse the catalog, visit the Garber Library and borrow materials. For further information, contact by email, or call 216-464-4050 x131 or 132.

My name is Joe Boyd. I'm a husband, father, storyteller, pastor, filmmaker, improvisor, actor, author and a post-religious rebel pilgrim embedding myself into the story of an ancient Jewish homeless revolutionary. I've decided to explore photography as a bit of artistic expression and therapy. I had this idea on our first few days here in Ohio and have created a new blog to explore it. You can read about it and see my first few photos at www.stateroute747.blogspot.com.

Trina Robbins's latest project hits closer to home than anything before, as it's those of her departed father that she never knew for 70+ years. A Minyen Yidn (translated from Yiddish as ‘A Bunch of Jews')' is an upcoming graphic novel anthology based on the long out-of-print and long-lost Yiddish book that her father, Max B. Perlson, published in 1938. The stories are a snapshot of New York City in the 1930s, with stories about real people akin to Will Eisner’s A Contract With God or the journalism of Studs Turkel. A Kickstarter campaign is currently underway to fund the book, which can be viewed here: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/hopelnicholson/a-minyan-yidn-a-graphic-novel-by-trina-robbins “A Minyen Yidn was written in Yiddish and thought lost by everyone in my family, but then my daughter found a copy on the internet and I bought it. Since then it’d been put in digital form to be read, but only if you read Yiddish,” said Robbins. “So she found it, I bought it, and had it translated. Once that was done, I realized that these were great stories – snapshots of time long gone – and it should be a graphic novel.” Although Robbins knew of her father’s writing as something discussed within her family, she’d never actually read his published work until happenstance re-connected her with his 1938 book. The book and the ensuing project gave her the opportunity to reconnect with her departed father’s life, and make up for past regrets. “I grew up with a father who was a writer, but only wrote in Yiddish,” said Robbins. “In New York City at the time, there were several Yiddish language newspapers and he wrote small bits for them. As a girl, I was a wretched little ungrateful – I wanted to be American, and was embarrassed to have a father who wrote in Yiddish. I wanted to be like everyone else, and I was always so embarrassed about what he wrote. But now, I realize his stories are great – really well-written. This project is almost an atonement for me overlooking it during my childhood.” After finding a copy of the book online, Robbins hired someone to translate the book and went about transforming it into a comic book script. To make it even more of a personal affair, Robbins recruited from the pool of artists she’d become friends to after her years in the business to bring this unique anthology about Jewish life to life. “So I wrote a script and made a wish list of artists to work on it, and to be perfectly honest, most of them said yes. A couple backed out because they had other projects, but I think by and large we got most everyone,” said Robbins. “I simply wanted people who could tell the stories best: good artists, good storytellers. It also helped that I picked people whom I knew, as they’d be more likely to say yes than a total stranger asking them. Some agreed, and some went ahead before it was a sure thing and drew up sample pages.” Among the artists involved with the project is Michael Netzer, a long-time North American artist who worked on everything from Wonder Woman to Howard The Duck from the 1970s to now. Netzer, who lives in Israel now, said that his story is “very close to my heart.” “Pre-Israel Jewish culture and history, alongside the plight of the diaspora communities, many who became early founders of modern Israel, are very close to my heart,” said Michael Netzer, who illustrates the story “Moyshe Henye’s.” “When Trina first told me about translating her father's written stories from his early 1900's Eastern European community, and that she's adapting them into comics form, I was happy to be included on her wish list of artists for the project. 'Moyshe Henye's' tells a story about the pitfalls of religious piety that I identified with immediately. The appearance of a human manifestation of God as a supporting character, who informs the reader about Moyshe's excessive religious zealotry, clinched it for me as the story to illustrate.” Having professional friends bring her father's stories to comic book form made the project even more personal for Robbins - more than she realized, even. “I never thought of it that way, but yes – it made it even more personal to be working with friends,” Robbins said. “But some are people who have also written about Judaism. For example, Miriam Katin wrote a graphic novel about her mother smuggling her out of Nazi-occupied Hungary. This story is something I thought she could understand. Miriam Libicki also has life experience, and I felt understood what I was doing. This isn’t all Israel, Ashkenazi Jews, type. But it’s a Jewish story.” But to get the book published, Robbins lucked into a meeting with upstart publisher Hope Nicholson of Bedside Press – who has had a number of recent successes utilizing Kickstarter. “I met her at the Toronto Comic & Art Festival (TCAF), but we had e-mailed previously because she did a reprinting of Nelvana of the Northern Lights and knew I liked women superheroes. So we talked about that, I met her in person and really liked her – I hoped she liked me too!” said Robbins. Shortly after that, she put together The Secret Loves of Geek Girls, which was a great little book. So anyway, I told her about A Minyen Yiden and what I wanted to do. I wasn’t even asking her to help, but she said ‘I’d like to publish that.’ Wonderful!” If A Minyan Yidn reaches its Kickstarter funding goal, it will be Bedside Press’ fifth successful fundraising campaign – but for Robbins, it made for some anxious moments. “I’m a nervous wreck,” admitted Robbins. “But I’m convinced it will happen.” A Kickstarter campaign is currently underway to fund the book, which can be viewed here: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/hopelnicholson/a-minyan-yidn-a-graphic-novel-by-trina-robbins

Category: Moon Cycles Views: 4692 A lunar tetrad – four total lunar eclipses in a row – begins on the night of April 14-15, 2014. People are calling it a Blood Moon eclipse. Here’s why. The first Blood Moon eclipse in a series of four is coming up on the night of April 14-15, 2014. This total eclipse of the moon will be visible from the Americas. We in astronomy had not heard the term Blood Moon used in quite this way before this year, but now the term is becoming widespread in the media. The origin of the term is religious, at least according to Christian pastor John Hagee, who wrote a 2013 book about Blood Moons. Meanwhile, both astronomers and some proponents of Christian prophesy are talking about the upcoming lunar tetrad – the series of four total lunar eclipses – beginning on the night of April 14-15. We at EarthSky don’t have any special knowledge about the Blood Moons of Biblical prophesy. But, since they’re moons, and since people are asking us, we wanted to provide some info. What is a lunar tetrad? Both astronomers and followers of certain Christian pastors are talking about the lunar tetrad of 2014-2015. What is a tetrad? It’s four successive total lunar eclipses, with no partial lunar eclipses in between, each of which is separated from the other by six lunar months (six full moons) Blood Moons in Biblical prophecy. We’re not experts on prophecy of any kind. But we’ll tell you what we know about the new definition for Blood Moon that has raised so many questions recently. From what we’ve been able to gather, two Christian pastors, Mark Blitz and John Hagee, use the term Blood Moon to apply to the full moons of the upcoming tetrad – four successive total lunar eclipses, with no partial lunar eclipses in between, each of which is separated from the other by six lunar months (six full moons) – in 2014 and 2015. John Hagee appears to have popularized the term in his 2013 book Four Blood Moons: Something is About to Change. Mark Blitz and John Hagee speak of a lunar tetrad as representing a fulfillment of Biblical prophecy. After all, the moon is supposed to turn blood red before the end times, isn’t it? As described in Joel 2:31 (Common English Bible): The sun will be turned to darkness, and the moon to blood before the great and dreadful day of the LORD comes. That description, by the way, describes both a total solar eclipse and total lunar eclipse. Sun turned to darkness = moon directly between the Earth and sun in a total solar eclipse. Moon turned to blood = Earth directly between the sun and moon, Earth’s shadow falling on the moon in a total lunar eclipse. Dates of Biblical prophecy Blood Moons in 2014 and 2015. These are the dates for the upcoming tetrad – four successive total lunar eclipses – in these years. - Total lunar eclipse: April 4 - Total lunar eclipse: September 28 There are a total of 8 tetrads in the 21st century (2001 to 2100). But proponents of this Biblical prophecy regard the upcoming tetrad as especially significant because it coincides with two important Jewish holidays: Passover and Tabernacles. The April 2014 and April 2015 total lunar eclipses align with the feast of Passover. The October 2014 and September 2015 total lunar eclipses align with the feast of Tabernacles. The Jewish calendar is a lunar calendar. In any year, it’s inevitable that a full moon should fall on or near the feasts of Passover (15 Nissan) and Tabernacles (15 Tishri). Nissan and Tishri are the first and seventh months of the Jewish calendar, respectively. It is somewhat ironic that three of these four lunar eclipses are not visible – even in part – from Israel. The only eclipse that can be seen at all from Israel is the tail end of the September 28, 2015 eclipse, which may be observable for a short while before sunrise. How common is a tetrad of total lunar eclipses? Depending upon the century in which you live, a lunar tetrad (four consecutive total lunar eclipses, spaced at six lunar months apart from one another) may happen fairly frequently – or not at all. For instance, in our 21st century (2001-2100), there are a total 8 tetrads, but in the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries, there were none at all. If we include all the centuries from the 1st century (AD 1-100) through the 21st century (2001-2100), inclusive, there are a total of 62 tetrads. The last one occurred in 2003-2004, and the next one after the 2014-2015 tetrad will happen in 2032-2033. However, if we want to know which tetrads specifically fell on the Jewish feasts of Passover and Tabernacles, there appear to be a total of 8 in these 21 centuries: - 162-163 C.E. (Common Era) - 795-796 C.E. - 842-843 C.E. - 860-861 C.E. - 1493-1494 C.E. - 1949-1950 C.E. - 1967-1968 C.E. - 2014-2015 C.E. Why is the term Blood Moon being used to mean a full moon of a lunar tetrad? We can’t really tell you why more and more people are using the term Blood Moon to describe the four full moons of a lunar tetrad. We don’t know why, exactly. Here’s the definition of a lunar tetrad, again: four successive total lunar eclipses, with no partial eclipses in between, each of which is separated from the other by six lunar months (six full moons). There’s no obvious reason why Blood Moon should be associated with this term. To the best of our knowledge, however, the use of the term Blood Moon to describe a lunar tetrad is of recent origin. It might have originated with John Hagee’s 2013 book. We’re still not sure whether Blood Moon pertains to the full moon of any tetrad, or specifically to a tetrad that coincides with the feasts of Passover and Tabernacles. Either way, I suspect the nouveau definition of Blood Moon will gain traction as we approach the tetrad, the four total lunar eclipses of 2014 and 2015. Other times in astronomy you hear “moon” and “blood” in same sentence. The full moon nearly always appears coppery red during a total lunar eclipse. That’s because the dispersed light from all the Earth’s sunrises and sunsets falls on the face of the moon at mid-eclipse. Thus the term blood moon can be and probably is applied to any and all total lunar eclipses. It’s only in years where volcanic activity is pronounced that the moon’s face during a total lunar eclipse might appear more brownish or gray in color. Usually, the moon looks red. We astronomy writers often say it looks blood red. Why? Because it sounds dramatic, and a lunar eclipse is a dramatic natural event. Read more here: Why does the moon look red during a total lunar eclipse? What’s more, in folklore, all the full moons have names. The names typically coincide with months of the year, or seasons. One of the most famous moon names is the Hunter’s Moon. It is the the full moon immediately following the Harvest Moon, which is the full moon occurring most closely to the autumnal equinox. The Hunter’s Moon, in skylore, is also sometimes called the Blood Moon. Why? Probably because it’s a characteristic of these autumn full moons that they appear nearly full – and rise soon after sunset – for several evenings in a row. Many people see them when they are low in the sky, shortly after they’ve risen, at which time there’s more atmosphere between you and the moon than when the moon is overhead. When you see the moon low in the sky, the extra air between you and the moon makes the moon look reddish. Voila. Blood moon. The second total lunar eclipse of the coming lunar tetrad will take place on October 8, the same night as the Hunter’s Moon. So there will be two reasons to use the term Blood Moon that night. Dates for the Northern Hemisphere’s Harvest and Hunter’s Moons in 2014 and 2015: - Harvest Moon: September 9 - Autumn Equinox: September 23 - Hunter’s (Blood) Moon: October 8 - Autumn Equinox: September 23 - Harvest Moon: September 28 - Hunter’s (Blood) Moon: October 27 Bottom line: The term Blood Moon in Biblical prophecy appears to have been popularized by two Christian pastors, Mark Blitz and John Hagee. They use the term Blood Moon to apply to the full moons of the upcoming tetrad – four successive total lunar eclipses, with no partial lunar eclipses in between, each of which is separated from the other by six lunar months (six full moons) – beginning on the night of April 14-15, 2014. ॐ Namasté - Blessings! © 2008-2019 crystalwind.ca. All rights reserved.

AP — A Jewish New York City judge’s son who stormed the US Capitol wearing a furry “caveman” costume was sentenced on Friday to eight months in prison. US District Judge James Boasberg said Aaron Mostofsky was “literally on the front lines” of the mob’s attack on Jan. 6, 2021. “What you and others did on that day imposed an indelible stain on how our nation is perceived, both at home and abroad, and that can’t be undone,” the judge told Mostofsky, 35. Boasberg also sentenced Mostofsky to one year of supervised release and ordered him to perform 200 hours of community service and pay $2,000 in restitution. Mostofsky had asked the judge for mercy, saying he was ashamed of his “contribution to the chaos of that day.” “I feel sorry for the officers that had to deal with that chaos,” said Mostofsky, who must report to prison in approximately one month. Mostofsky was carrying a walking stick and dressed in a furry costume when he joined the mob that attacked the Capitol. He told a friend that the costume expressed his belief that “even a caveman” would know that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from former US president Donald Trump. In Mostofsky’s case, federal sentencing guidelines recommended a prison sentence ranging from 10 months to 16 months. Prosecutors recommended a sentence of 15 months in prison followed by three years of supervised release. Mostofsky was one of the first rioters to enter the restricted area around the Capitol and among the first to breach the building itself, through the Senate Wing doors, according to prosecutors. He pushed against a police barrier that officers were trying to move and stole a Capitol Police bulletproof vest and riot shield, prosecutors said. “Mostofsky cheered on other rioters as they clashed with police outside the Capitol building, even celebrating with a fist-bump to one of his fellow rioters,” prosecutors wrote in a court filing. Inside the building, Mostofsky followed rioters who chased Capitol Police Officer Eugene Goodman up a staircase toward the Senate chambers. He took the police vest and shield with him when he left the Capitol, about 20 minutes after entering. Mostofsky frequently wears costumes at events, according to his lawyers. “To put the matter with understatement, the New Yorker is quirky even by the standards of his home city,” they wrote. A New York Post reporter interviewed him inside the Capitol during the riot. He told the reporter that he stormed the Capitol because “the election was stolen.” Mostofsky has worked as an assistant architect in New York. Mostofsky is the son of Steven (Shlomo) Mostofsky, a Kings County (Brooklyn) Supreme Court Judge and former president of the National Council of Young Israel, an Orthodox synagogue association. NCYI has been outspokenly pro-Trump in the past. Mostofsky’s brother, Nachman, who serves as executive director of Chovevei Zion, a politically conservative Orthodox Jewish advocacy organization, also attended the protests but he has said he left before the mob entered the Capitol. “The fact that his father is a judge means that he should have been better able than other defendants to understand why the claims of election fraud were false,” said Justice Department prosecutor Michael Romano. Boasberg said none of the supportive letters submitted by Mostofsky’s family and friends explain how he “went down this rabbit hole of election fantasy.” “I hope at this point you understand that your indulgence in that fantasy has led to this tragic situation,” the judge added. Aaron Mostofsky pleaded guilty in February to a felony charge of civil disorder and misdemeanor charges of theft of government property and entering and remaining in a restricted building or grounds. Mostofsky was the first Capitol rioter to be sentenced for a civil disorder conviction. Mostofsky’s lawyers asked for a sentence of home confinement, probation and community service. Defense attorney Nicholas Smith described Mostofsky as a “spectator” who “drifted with the crowd” and didn’t go to the Capitol to interfere with the peaceful transfer of power.” “He did things he should not have done,” Smith said. “But there’s a big difference between an ideologue who is motivated to commit violence and someone who ends up doing bad things when they find” themselves in a crowd. JTA contributed to this report

[Kirksvillans – you have never heard the bad news that jews hate you. But it’s true. Ignorance of a genocidal enemy is no defense. Well now you know. It’s called LOXISM – and it is the defining hatred of our times.–AL] Hideous Jewish Holocaust Monument in the Hague. “Remember what Amelek did to you.” Here, the Jews identify the White race, particularly Germanics, as Amelek, who must be blotted out. In the Book of Exodus, Yahweh demands a generational struggle with Amelek that can only end with our total extermination. The Jews are a relentless enemy. They have warred against us at least since the Hyksos expulsion, about 3,000 years ago… and they won’t stop – by Yahweh’s command – until we are all dead. Yahweh tells them to remember their fictitious mistreatment in Egypt,… even though Genesis and Exodus records the Jews (Joseph and Abraham) inflicting famines on Egypt, using Jewesses as bioweapons to spread STDs in Egypt, and looting the country on several occasions. The Jews were not mistreated in Egypt: the Jews MISTREATED Egypt. Sicut erat in principio et nunc… As it was in prehistory, even now! In that Encycloledia Judaica article, Roma Aeterna is also identified by Rabbis as Amelek.

The adage “truth is stranger than fiction” is proven in “The Lost Wife,” by Alyson Richman. She has succeeded in blending both for an unforgettable reading experience. Richman’s mother was an artist and taught her to look at the world with the eyes of an artist, so it was natural that her first novels’ protagonists were painters (“The Mask Carver’s Son” and “The Last Van Gogh”). Richman was also an art history major in college and wanted her next novel to be about artists who continue to create during the most difficult of circumstances. What circumstance could be more difficult than the Holocaust? In spite of her agent’s discouragement and warning that this would be a difficult sell, Richman pursued her idea, but didn’t know how she was going to frame the story. Fate stepped in at, of all places; a hair salon where she overheard a true story, which she knew immediately would be the opening scene and framework of her book. The improbable story: at a wedding rehearsal dinner the grandmother of the bride and the grandfather of the groom were introduced for the first time. He kept insisting that she looked familiar. Something about the eyes. By the end of the evening he politely asked if she would raise her sheer dress sleeve and let him see her wrist. He was looking for an identifying birthmark, which as he suspected beyond his wildest belief, was there — as well as a tattooed number from Auschwitz. She was indeed the wife who had been separated from him for over 60 years. Through the horrors of war-torn Europe, each believed the other had died. This is not a plot spoiler — it is the opening scene of the book. In fact, it compels you to read on like a reverse mystery. How did they get separated? What choices did they make that caused them to get separated? Who did they eventually marry? How did they both end up in New York in the year 2000? What follows is their individual stories in alternately seamless narration — hers primarily from the concentration camp and his in America. Lenka and Josef first meet in the 1930s in Prague where she is an art student and the daughter of a prominent artisan glassblower. Josef is a medical student and son of a doctor. They fall in love and rush to marry hoping to escape Czechoslovakia before it is attacked by the Germans. Although separated by the tragic circumstances of war, their achingly beautiful love story continues throughout the book and is felt deeply through lyrical writing, such as the description when Lenka first meets Josef: “He laughs. And in his laugh I hear bliss. I hear feet dancing, the rush of skirts twirling. The sound of children. Is that the sign of first love? You hear in the person you’re destined to love the sound of those yet to be born?” “The Lost Wife,” however, is much more than a love story. Richman’s four years of research including interviews with concentration camp survivors is historical fiction at its finest, portraying actual places and including real people alongside the fictional characters. The setting is Terezin, a concentration camp I had not heard of until this book. Terezin (just outside Prague) was less of a death camp and more of an authentic work camp. Many Jewish artists were sent there where their skills were utilized to draw blueprints for the Germans or to copy masterpieces onto postcards, which were then sold. If one Googles Terezin, they will read, Hitler told the world he built a city for the Jews to protect them from the vagaries and stresses of the war. A propaganda film was made of this “showcase” community spruced up for the Red Cross visit. Bakery windows and shelves were suddenly overflowing with baked goods and bon bons the inmates had never seen during their time at Terezin. Inmates were given decent clothing to guide visitors along flowered walkways. Thousands of inmates were deported to Auschwitz to give an impression of space and comfort. Immediately after the film and Red Cross visit, all these embellishments disappeared and life returned to normal. Normal was a ghetto housing a population of 55,000 Jews for a community that comfortably held 5,000. Normal was the death of 97,297 Czech Jews at Terezin, including 1,500 children. Only 132 children were known to have survived. What also survived, however, from Terezin was the artwork that notable Jewish artists of the day buried in the floors and walls, depicting life as it really was. This underground artist movement was done at great risk to their lives. They also smuggled art supplies which they gave to the children, resulting in some 6,000 artworks by Jewish children who were incarcerated at Terezin during the years 1942-44. For these children, drawing opened up the path to memories of the world from which they had been uprooted, transporting them from a harsh reality to a world of fantasy and imagination where good prevailed over evil. Their drawings expressed the constant hope for a safe return home, often featuring highways and crossroads with signposts to Prague. These artworks were hidden and later retrieved, now on display at Prague’s Jewish Museum, in Israel and the U.S. Holocaust Memorial in Washington, D.C. They also resulted in a book entitled, “I Never saw Another Butterfly.” “The Lost Wife” is a story that will immerse you in a time in history that is horrific, yet paradoxically, the writing is beautiful. From the glamorous ease of life in Prague before the Occupation to the horrors of Nazi Europe, “The Lost Wife” explores the lasting power of first love, the strength of family loyalty, and the mystery of memory. In the author’s words, it validates that the human spirit and the artistic spirit cannot be extinguished. Lenka’s and Josef’s story will haunt you long after you read it. • Former bookstore owner Vy Armour has been a resident of Ahwatukee Foothills for more than 20 years. She is an adjunct instructor in communications at the University of Phoenix and reviews books on her blog, http://serendipity-reflections.blogspot.com. Reach her at firstname.lastname@example.org.

Subscribe To our E-Newsletter Letters Week of August 26, 2010 Unhappy With Placement of Story 'Ad' on Cover I am exceedingly disappointed with the Jewish Exponent's decision to run what amounts to an advertisement for an article about a gay couple on the top of last week's front page (City & Suburb: "Israeli Gay Couple's 'Twin Delight,' " Aug. 12). I am shocked and saddened that this is an affirmative article published by the voice of the Jewish community. Where in the Talmud does it say that being gay is an acceptable lifestyle, or that hiring a surrogate for a homosexual couple to become parents is a joy to God's heart? This couple says they're passing on their Jewish traditions to these precious infants, but I beg to differ. Their traditions are not part of anything that the tribe of Judah would have recognized, but maybe the Hittites, Perizzites, Ammonites, Hivites, Canaanites and Jebusites would have thought they were perfectly fine. Is this how we honor God and Israel in 2010? When will we learn from our ancestors that the culture around us has nothing to offer and seeks to destroy the heritage that our ancestors have preserved with their very lives for thousands of years? Jews in Arab Lands: Definitely Not a Good Idea In the article, "Students Explore Mideast, With Arabic on Their Minds" (City & Suburb, Aug. 12), one young man said that the number of American Jews studying in such places is "pretty significant at this point, and I think the number of problems is pretty low. So I think that, more than any of my personal experiences, may change people's minds." Wrong conclusion! No one knew you were Jewish because you hid it, as you explained in the article. There is nothing in your experience to show anything as long as a Jew has to hide his identity while in an Arab country. In fact, this alone is very significant. It is exceedingly dangerous to be a Jew in any Arab country. This is why today most Arab lands are empty of Jews. Many of them were refugees with just their shirts on their back when they escaped Arab lands with their lives. They now are citizens of Israel. In reality, more Jews than Arabs became refugees after 1948. Israel absorbed all the Jewish refugees who reached Israel, while the Arab "refugees" have remained in political limbo. The Arab states refuse to grant them citizenship. It is unconscionable! Sestak: He's a Staunch Supporter of Israel Joe Sestak has been criticized for supporting Israel. Most of this has been unfounded, and has arisen out of two main issues -- his speaking to the Council on American Islamic Relations and his letter to President Barack Obama, along with other congressional representatives, asking that the president pressure Israel to ease the blockade of Gaza on purely humanitarian grounds. With regard to CAIR, one must look at the timing of his appearance. At that time, the FBI had not disengaged from CAIR. President Bush had a policy that we did not talk with those who disagreed with us. Many Democrats, including Congressman Sestak, thought this was wrong. Hence, he spoke with CAIR, during which time, however, he openly criticized their failures to condemn the terrorist groups of Hezbollah and Hamas. It took courage to say this to their faces, but he felt this was a more effective way to deal with them, rather than ignore them. As to easing the blockade, Israel has belatedly seen the wisdom of doing this. Had they listened to Joe Sestak, perhaps the flotilla incident would not have occurred. For me, if a candidate does not strongly support Israel, then they simply do not get my vote. I have been supporting Joe Sestak for more than five years. I have personally discussed with him myriad issues involving Israel. After these discussions, and also having seen what he has done, I find him to be a staunch supporter of Israel. Robert M. Schwartz

WASHINGTON (Dec. 10) FBI Director William Webster said today that the United States government’s main interest in the case of Jonathan Pollard, the Naval civilian counterintelligence expert charged with selling classified information to Israel, is in prosecuting an American citizen who violated the law. “We do not sanction, we do not condone, we do not knowingly permit friendly countries to operate agents in this country,” Webster said in reply to a question following his luncheon address to the National Press Club. “When we find out about it, we stop it.” Webster said the Pollard case was “a little different matter, however, than someone who is trying to destroy this country. It does not excuse the conduct of the American citizen who violates the law and betrays his trust and we will prosecute them.” Noting that the FBI concentrates its limited personnel on Soviet bloc countries, Webster said it would be “a waste of resources” to have agents monitor friendly countries “who occasionally become over zealous. We would rather work in diplomatic channels and get them to pull in … and in many cases this works.” As Webster was speaking, an FBI agent was part of a Justice and State Department team enroute to Israel to interview Israelis implicated in the Pollard case. The group led by the State Department’s legal advisor, Abraham Sofaer, was scheduled to arrive in Israel tomorrow. At the State Department today, Department deputy spokesman Charles Redman said the Sofaer group will look into “all aspects” of the Pollard case. He noted that Secretary of State George Shultz said yesterday that there are no other cases of Israeli espionage in the U.S. “that we know of.” Meanwhile, Webster said that the recent attacks against the offices of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee in Boston, Los Angeles and Washington appeared not to be aimed at Arab-Americans in general but at “enemies of Israel,” including “neo-Nazis.” Nothing that he had to choose his words carefully, Webster said, “I think I can safely say that Arab individuals or those supportive of Arab points of view have come within the zone of danger of targeting by the group, as yet to be fully identified and brought to justice.” Webster noted that “one organization’s name appears in telephone calls and other claims. The organization itself emphatically denies participation although sympathizing with the activity and it has been repudiated by every reputable Jewish organization in the country.” He did not name the group. He said that the FBI was conducting a full-scale national investigation and is “making significant progress.”

The man who allegedly killed three people when he opened fire outside a Jewish community center and nearby retirement community in a Kansas City suburb Sunday is reportedly a 73-year-old Missouri man with a history of racist and anti-Semitic activity, and authorities are investigating the shootings as a hate crime. A Johnson County (Kan.) jail official told the Associated Press that authorities had identified the suspect in the shooting in Overland Park as Frazier Glenn Cross, aka Frazier Glenn Miller. The Kansas City Star reported that Miller was booked into the Johnson County jail on suspicion of premeditated first-degree murder Sunday evening, but had not been formally charged. Authorities say they expect to have more information available on possible charges Tuesday. The paper reported that public records showed that Cross is a resident of Aurora, Mo., a small town southwest of Springfield. A dispatcher with the Lawrence County Sheriff's Department told the Star Sunday that local authorities were working with Johnson County authorities and the FBI. A woman who answered the phone at a number listed for Frazier Glenn Miller told the paper she did not know where he was and then started to cry. The Southern Poverty Law Center reported on its website that it spoke to Miller's wife, Marge, by phone Sunday and she said police told her that her husband had been arrested in Sunday's attacks. According to the law center, Miller has been involved in the white supremacist movement for most of his life. He founded the Carolina Knights of the Ku Klux Klan and was its "grand dragon" in the 1980s before the center sued him for operating an illegal paramilitary organization and using intimidation tactics against blacks. He later founded another white supremacist group, the White Patriot Party. Miller, an Army veteran and retired truck driver, was the subject of a nationwide manhunt in 1987 after he violated the terms of his bond while appealing a North Carolina conviction for operating a paramilitary camp. The search ended after federal agents found Miller and three other men in an Ozark mobile home, which was filled with hand grenades, automatic weapons and thousands of rounds of ammunition. Miller tried running for the U.S. House in 2006 and the U.S. Senate in 2010. At a news conference Monday, Overland Park police chief John Douglass said the shootings are being investigated as a hate crime. Earlier Sunday, Douglass said the suspect was not known to area law enforcement and there was no indication that he knew his victims. "In the last 22 hours, we learned the acts this person committed were the result of beliefs that he had and that he was trying to hurt somebody based on their ethnicity, race, and religion," said Michael Kaste, an FBI Special Agent in Charge. The Justice Department plans to file federal hate crime charges against Miller, Fox News confirms. Attorney General Eric Holder ordered a Justice Department investigation Monday into the shootings. Federal hate crimes are acts of violence committed on the basis of race, religion, ethnicity, nationality, gender, sexual orientation or disability. U.S. law enforcement agencies reported 5,796 hate crime incidents in 2012, according to the latest figure available from the FBI. The family of two of the three people who died in the shooting released a statement Sunday identifying them as Dr. William Lewis Corporon and his 14-year-old grandson, Reat Griffin Underwood. They were both Christian, and the family thanked members of their church congregation, among other people, for their support. "We take comfort knowing they are together in Heaven," the family said. It asked for privacy to mourn. Rebecca Sturtevant, a spokeswoman for Overland Park Regional Medical Center, where Reat was taken and where he died, said family members said Corporon and the boy were at the Jewish Community Center of Greater Kansas City so that the high school freshman could try out for KC SuperStar, a singing competition for students. On Monday, Douglass identified the third victim as Terri Lamanno, 53, of Kansas City. Douglass said Lamanno was a member of a Catholic church in Kansas City and was visiting her mother Sunday at Village Shalom retirement community -- as she usually did -- when she was fatally shot by the gunman. Douglass said the suspect first opened fire in the parking lot behind the Jewish community center. Corporon died at the scene and his grandson later died at the hospital. The chief said the suspect then drove to Village Shalom, where he shot LaManno. The gunman also shot at two other people during the attacks, but missed them, Douglass said. Douglass said a shotgun was used in the attacks, and that investigators are also trying to determine if a handgun and assault-style rifle may also have been used.Police officers were also sent to other Jewish facilities in the area immediately after the shootings, the police chief said. "Immediately when we learned we had an active shooter we dispatched vehicles to secure and surveil all the active Jewish facilities in the city and other religious institutions which are not Jewish," Douglass said. The suspect was taken to the Johnson County Detention Center. Johnson County District Attorney Stephen Howe, who attended the news conference along with Barry Grissom, U.S. Attorney for Kansas, said it was too soon to know when the suspect would appear in court. Corporon, who was a family doctor, leaves behind a wife of 49 years. His grandson, Reat, was an Eagle Scout who loved camping and hunting with his grandfather, father and brother, the family said. President Barack Obama released a statement expressing his grief over the attack, and Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback vowed to bring those responsible to justice. "My heart and prayers are with all those who were affected by today's events," Brownback said in a statement. "We will pursue justice aggressively for these victims and criminal charges against the perpetrator or perpetrators to the full extent of the law." Jacob Schreiber, the CEO of the Jewish Community Center, said Monday that the "entire community stands united" and the “power of love and community prevails over violence.” The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Species Dominance, Artilects, Artilect War, Cosmists, Terrans, Gigadeath, Essays, Media, etc DICTATORSHIPS, EAST AND WEST DICTATORSHIPS, EAST AND WEST I was saddened and embittered to learn recently that Daryl Bradford Smith, who ran a YouTube site interviewing people who were fighting the hated Jewish bankster Frankist Satanists, has decided to close down his site, rather than risk getting a 5 year prison sentence, due to the French government tightening up its anti-terrorism laws. Under the new French law, anyone “disagreeing with the government” could be arrested. Smith has been a favorite of mine since I started getting interested in what the Jewish banksters have been doing to humanity over the past two centuries or more. I had thought of the possibility of living in Paris, if I get my father’s inheritance, but now with France as much a ZOG (Zionist occupied government) as Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Canada, Australia, etc., I have crossed off France as an uncivilized country, and will not live there, for the same reason I will never return to my first country, Australia, where I grew up, because it too has Jewish bankster generated “hate speech laws.” In Australia, a couple of kids made a YouTube video recently of them criticizing some Israeli tourists for living in stolen territory (i.e. the idea that the Jews (actually the Rothschilds and the British Government, with the Balfour Declaration of 1917) had stolen Palestine from the Palestinians and herded a million of them in to the world’s largest concentration camp (i.e. the Gaza strip on the Mediterranean coast). For this, they were sent to prison for 3 years for “anti-semitism.” When the Rothschilds and their agents in the US (Rockefellers, Warburgs, Schiffs, etc) set up the FED (a private Jewish bankster owned bank) in 1913, they also set up the IRS (so that about half of Americans’ federal tax money would be sent directly to the pockets of these Jewish banksters), the FBI and the ADL. The aim of the ADL (anti defamation league) was to suppress criticism by the goy against the Jews, but that was mostly a smoke screen. The main reason was to suppress criticism of the Jewish banksters, so that they could continue to rob and control the people in secrecy. The ADL started pushing for the creation of “hate speech laws” on an international scale and using Jewish bankster control of central banks in the western countries, they could print as much money out of thin air as they liked to bribe the politicians, to pass these hate speech laws (which to any thinking person, are not only a slap in the face to the idea of freedom of speech, but just silly, because all cultures produce rotten apples, and in the case of the Jews, their rotten apples are the rottenest. I’m referring to the Jewish banksters, who combine their evil genius with a Jewish Satanist sect belief system (i.e. Shabbetean Frankist Satanism) which preaches that the more evil these Jewish banksters commit, the more likely the Jewish god will send them the Jewish messiah, to conquer the goy (Jewish word for non Jew = 99.8% of the world population), rule the world, with its capitol in Jerusalem, and then proceed to wipe out the goy, so that the Jews can have the earth to themselves.) This Satanist belief sounds demented, and it is, yet it is what Frankist Jews believe, and the Jewish banksters are Frankist Satanists, moving step by step to fulfil the Talmudic prophecy, outlined above. (The Talmud is the Jews’ main religious document(s) that is full of expressions of (vitriolic) hated against the goy. It is generally thought by people who study these things, that the main reason why Jews are history’s most hated people, is because their religion (Judaism) teaches them to hate everyone but themselves, the (self) chosen people. Jewish anti-goyism generates anti-semitism. When you hate everyone, it’s not surprising, that everyone hates you back. Jewish communities have been thrown out of nearly every country in Europe over 100 times, over the past 1000 years. Over 100 times !!! Now, if these kids got 3 years in prison for what they did, what would I get, an informed university professor who comes out (like Daryl Bradford Smith, and many others) with damning facts and opinions about the massive crimes committed against humanity, by the hated Jewish bankster Frankist Satanists? It is for this reason I will never visit my first country (unless the Jewish bankster control there has been removed, but I don’t see that happening unless there is real bloodshed.) These hated Jewish bankster Frankist Satanists, have indirectly killed over 200 million people in the 20th century (i.e. the two world wars, that they played a major role in engineering, by bribing the key players at key moments; the communist purges – Stalin and Mao; the many continuous recent wars, etc.); they took control of the central banks, and hence the right to issue the money, so could print up as much as they wanted to bribe the politicians, thus destroying democracies (American has not been a democracy for over a century); they have made debt-slaves of us all, with their paper money, debt note Ponzi schemes (lending money to the politicians, that cost the Jewish banksters nothing, that the public have to pay back, PLUS INTEREST, instead of the government issuing money cost free, as Hitler did in the 1930s, which caused an economic boom in Germany, wiping out the 6M unemployment figure in a mere 2 years); inflating the currency, destroying people’s savings; assassinating 6 US presidents (4 successfully, 2 almost) when they threatened or did take control of the issuance of money; the creation of hate speech laws to prosecute critics who expose them; their takeover of the sources of ideas, the news outlets, Reuters, AP, Hollywood, the main media companies, publishing, etc; their lying about the so-called gassing of Jews in the Nazi concentration camps to extract “guilt money” ($4B/yr from the US, $1B/yr from Germany) to prop up a bankrupting Israel in the 1970s; the creation of Israel, by bribing the British government, that the Brits would give the Rothschilds Palestine if the Rothschilds persuaded their Frankist co-religionists in the US who controlled the US media even then, to persuade the Americans to enter WW1, using anti-Hun propaganda; etc. It’s a long list of massive crimes against humanity, so these hated Jewish bankster Frankist Satanists should be sent to the Hague (Int. Criminal Court) and be executed. That is the current state of affairs in the western dictatorships, ruled from behind the scenes by Jewish banksters, with increasingly Jewish politicians (e.g. France’s Sarkozi, Britain’s Cameron). Obama was groomed for his role to be puppetted by the Jewish banksters to sign executive orders to create a police state, when the Jewish banksters decide to crash the dollar, and then bring in martial law. They have been preparing for this for over a decade. But what about the East? I live in China, where things are not much better. The main difference between these two sets of dictatorships (eastern and western) is that in the west, the Jewish dictatorship is (mostly) hidden, so that the voting sheeple are deluded enough to think that they can vote out their leaders if they want, whereas in reality, both parties in the US are controlled and bought by Jewish bribes. In China, the country is run by the CCP, which still has the face of the greatest single tyrant in history on its money, i.e. Mao, who killed about 80 million of his own citizens (about 45 million in the great famine he caused in 1958-1962, about 25 million in the Laogai (concentration camps for political prisoners, of which there are still over 1000 in today’s China, says Harry Wu, founder of the Laogai Museum in Washington DC), plus about 5 million in the cultural revolution, etc). The current Chinese government censors the internet, keeping its population ignorant, and forcing people like me to use a VPN (virtual private network) to get round the censorship –in fact there are now tens of millions of Chinese doing the same). 90% of people who live outside China live in democracies (or at least the appearance of democracies). China is intellectually sterile as a result, with no freedom of speech, 1 science Nobel prize, no world class intellectuals on the world stage pushing their original ideas, because the culture doesn’t generate them, i.e. neither the ideas nor the intellectuals. China is the only country in the world that does not use an alphabet in its writing, showing its suffocating conservatism, by sticking with an archaic, stupidly conceived, writing system, that uses 1000s of scratches, instead of the hugely simpler and far more intelligent system of two dozen letters. So which of these is worse? The eastern dictatorship or the western? In terms of numbers of people killed, the western is by far the worst. Given the dictatorship of the west by the hated Jewish bankster Frankist Satanists, what hope is there for the MGTOWs/masculists to get gender justice? In my view, pretty well zilch. The Jewish banksters have bribed the politicians, getting them to do whatever the Jewish banksters want. (Any politician who opposes them, finds that his opponent in the next election, is heavily funded by these Jewish banksters, so of course, the incumbent politician loses. All US politicians know this, so they don’t oppose their Jewish bankster rulers. When McFadden, a US politician who understood banking, complained bitterly to the US congress about the greatest (Jewish bankster) fraud in history, the Jewish banksters murdered him (along with many others over the years.) Remember that one of the major goals of the Jewish Talmudic prophecy is to wipe out the goy, once the Jewish messiah has conquered them, and made his capitol in Jerusalem. The Jewish banksters have been working towards this goal (as laid out step by step in the “The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion”, an infamous document written (probably) by Weisshaupt, who was funded by Rothschild in the 1700s, to found the Illuminati, and then over the past 200+ years, to take over the world.) Since the Jewish banksters have bribed all the politicians, forcing out any who do not accept their dictatorship, using smear campaigns in the media that the Jewish banksters own, the gender politicians, are just as corrupted as the rest of them. The most effective method to wipe out billions of goy (OMG! let that sink in) is to cause billions of men to refuse to be fathers, to join the MGTOW/masculist movements, by refusing to be financially massacred in a fluffie feminist dominated divorce court system, that the bribed gender politicians set up. Since this method of wiping out billions of goy is so effective, so cheap, the hated Jewish bankster Frankist Satanists are NOT GOING TO STOP IT. They will not allow the gender politicians to menfair the gender laws, because it is such a delightfully effective means to achieve their goals. The Jewish banksters played a major role in the creation of second wave feminism in the US, by having the (crypto) Jewish Rockefeller Foundation fund “Ms. Magazine” and Gloria Steinem. (See one of the most illuminating and persuasive videos on YouTube of an interview of Aaron Russo by Alex Jones, on this. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N3NA17CCboA ) With France now more dictated to by the Jewish banksters than ever, it looks as though the Jewish banksters are ever tightening their grip, doing it slowly so as not to “disturb the frog in the water being heated.” Europe, Japan and the US are about to be destroyed by their massive debts, that the Jewish banksters have imposed on them, by design, by plan, by hate, as part of their Talmudic prophecy. I consider history’s greatest criminal to be Mayer Amschel Bauer, who changed his name to Rothschild. It was he who had the idea that by controlling the issuance of the money of a country, one could control the government of that country, and by controlling the government of a country, one controlled the country, and by controlling one country like this, one could implement the same strategy and hence control all countries, and hence rule them, from Jerusalem, and later wipe them all out, so that the earth is populated only by Jews, i.e. Bauer felt that he had hit upon the recipe to push along the fulfilment of the Talmudic prophecy, with one day, a Rothschild being that Jewish messiah, his greatest motivator. There are lots of people who claim that there are now only 3 countries left whose central banks are not controlled by the Rothschilds and their cronies (Cuba, North Korea, and Iran). Those countries that the Jewish bankster controlled US military invaded recently, who did not have a Rothschild controlled central bank, were – Iraq and Libya. Coincidence?! When LBJ (President Johnson) was flying from Dallas to Washington DC to be the next president after JFK was murdered by the Jewish banksters (for creating a Treasury dollar note system that would have destroyed the Jewish bankster FED issued dollar debt note system, and hence would have cost the Rothschilds and their cronies trillions of dollars) the FIRST thing he did after he was sworn in during the flight was to cancel JFK’s Treasury note executive order (no. 11,110) – the first thing he did!!!!!!! So, the Jewish banksters will continue to try to silence their critics, by imposing more and more hate speech laws, and the like. They will continue the current massively menunfair gender laws against men, because it is working so well. Already, 70% of young men in Japan, and the US refuse marriage, refuse paternity, so that in a mere century, there will be no Japan, no America. We will all have died out, except for the Jews and the Jewish banksters, who have planned this all along. Is it a tragedy that billions of goy die? By die, I don’t mean killed, just die of old age. The earth is overcrowded, so if the world population falls to about half a billion, then that may not be such a bad thing. We can’t keep growing exponentially, otherwise life would be horrible for everyone, so maybe these Jewish banksters might be a blessing in disguise in some ways. It’s debatable. Personally, as a sage (i.e. an intellectual) I value freedom of speech, because it’s my life’s blood, so I have a hatred of Jewish banksters and of Communist parties. The fact that I’m not free to say what I think on either side of the Pacific is depressing. It is truly depressing. Prof. Dr. Hugo de Garis

Instruction for Applications - What will be restituted? - Who may file an application? - Until when may applications be filed? - Which requirements must be fulfilled? - Who will examine my application? - How does the Arbitration Panel reach its decisions? - What evidence do I have to submit? - How do I file an application? - What do heirs eligible to file an application have to do? - Do I need to be represented by an attorney? - May I also file an application with the Arbitration Panel for in rem restitution of property owned by provinces or municipalities? 1. What will be restituted? Applications may be filed with the Arbitration Panel for in rem restitution of real estate (land) and buildings (suberstructures) which on 17 January 2001 were owned by the Federal Government and certain provinces and municipalities, or any legal person under public or private law wholly-owned, directly or indirectly, by the Federal Government. In addition, under the same requirements, Jewish communal organizations may file an application for in rem restitution of tangible movable property, particularly cultural and religious items. 2. Who may file an application? Persons and associations who/which were persecuted by the National Socialist regime on political grounds, on grounds of origin, religion, nationality, sexual orientation, or of physical or mental handicap or of accusations of so-called asociality, or who left the country to escape such persecution, and who suffered losses or damages as a result of or in connection with events having occurred on the territory of the present-day Republic of Austria during the National Socialist era are eligible to file an application. In addition, heirs of such persons, in accordance with the provisions of the Austrian General Code of Civil Law (ABGB), are eligible to file an application. In case of a defunct association, an association which the Arbitration Panel regards as legal successor shall be entitled to file an application as well. 3. Until when may I file an application? The last deadline for filing applications for the restitution of property ended on 31 December 2011! 4. Which requirements must be fulfilled? The following requirements must be fulfilled for the in rem restitution of real estate or buildings (superstructures): The property was taken between 12 March 1938 and 9 May 1945 from the previous owner whether without authorization or on the basis of laws or other orders, on political grounds, on grounds of origin, religion, nationality, sexual orientation, or of physical or mental handicap, or of accusations of so-called asociality, in connection with events having occurred on the territory of the present-day Republic of Austria during the National Socialist era. The property has never been the subject of a claim that was previously decided or settled by agreement (e.g. by a court, an administrative body or by a settlement), and for which the claimant or a relative has never otherwise received compensation or other consideration. Excepted therefrom are only cases where - 1. a prior decision or settlement constituted an extreme injustice, or - 2. the claim was denied by an Austrian court or administrative body because of failure to produce required evidence, where such evidence was inaccessible to you at the time but has since become accessible. 5. Who will examine my application? An independent Arbitration Panel consisting of three members has been established with the General Settlement Fund to examine applications concerning in rem restitution. The US and Austrian Government each appointed a member. The chairperson is appointed by the above two members. The Arbitration Panel is assisted in its examination work by a staff of historians and lawyers. 6. How does the Arbitration Panel reach its decisions? After examination of your application, the Arbitration Panel will either recommend an in rem restitution to the competent Austrian Federal Minister, or dismiss the claim. The Arbitration Panel will make its recommendation on the basis of evidence submitted by you and submissions of the Austrian Government, as well as any relevant findings of the Austrian Historical Commission, which has carried out a research project related to this issue. If you assert that a property is publicly -owned, the Arbitration Panel will verify whether this is the case. Decisions of the Arbitration Panel will be published. 7. What evidence do I have to submit? As a rule, you will have to submit supporting evidence and documents (e.g. birth or marriage certificates, last will and testaments, old passports, certificate of right of residence [Heimatschein], victim card [Opferausweis], contracts, land register records, property declaration, etc.) as well as other evidence (e.g. photographs, letters, affidavits, etc.) in order to prove the fulfilment of the requirements. If, however, no relevant evidence is available, you may also make your claim credible in some other way. Your application will be examined by the Arbitration Panel and its staff. We would like to draw your attention to the fact that in a research project the Austrian Historical Commission has extensiveley checked the land register for real estate as defined above in paragraph 1. The Arbitration Panel has access to he results of this research. 8. How do I file an application? In order to file an application, please fill in the application form as competently as possible to the best of your knowledge and send it to the GENERAL SETTLEMENT FUND, Parlament, Dr. Karl Renner Ring, A-1017 Wien. 9. What do heirs eligible to file an application have to do? As an eligible heir you will have to submit all relevant personal documents or other relevant evidence (e.g. last will and testament), in order to provide conclusive proof of your relationship and your right ot inheritance. 10. Do I need to be represented by an attorney? We expressly draw your attention to the fact that in order to file an application for in rem resitution with the Arbitration Panel you need not to be represented by an attorney. Filing of the application does not involve any expenses or other fees. 11. May I also file an application with the Arbitration Panel for in rem restitution of property owned by provinces or municipalities? Applications may be filed with the Arbitration Panel for in rem restitution of property owned by provinces or municipalities provided that the respective body corporate has declared to accept the recommendation of the Arbitration Panel. In case of any further questions conerning in rem restitution of property owned by other local communities, please contact the General Settlement Fund.

The hermeneutical issues in dispensationalism's understanding of the Abrahamic covenant revolve around what Ryrie has termed "the sine qua non of Dispensationalism" (Ryrie 1965, 43-47). Two of these aspects are (1) the distinction between Israel and the Church and (2) the normal or plain interpretation of Scripture. As will be seen, both of these are inextricably woven together. For some, the second sine qua non provides the basis for determining the first (Ryrie 1965, 97). Vern Poythress recognized that " ... nearly all the problems associated with the dispensationalist-nondispensationalist conflict are buried beneath the question of literal interpretation" (Poythress 1987, 78). However, the question of "literal interpretation" receives conflicting answers from those who employ the term. Consequently, due to the difficulty of conclusively answering the question of "what is meant by literal?", progressive dispensationalists have conceded "... that consistently literal exegesis is inadequate to describe the essential distinctive of Dispensationalism" (Blaising 1988, 272). Saucy would agree saying that "the key distinctive of dispensational theology ... is the recognition of Israel as a nation set apart from other nations by God for the service of universal salvation for all peoples" (Saucy 1993, 221). What dispensationalists traditionally called "literal interpretation" resulted in a bifurcation of the material in the two Testaments and a corollary, continuing discontinuity between Israel and the Church. Daniel Fuller summarizes Oswald T. Allis's objection to Dispensationalism saying that the "... basic hermeneutical error in Dispensationalism was its insistence on dividing and compartmentalizing the Scriptures, with the result that a most important distinction was made between those Scriptures relating to Israel and those relating to the Church" (Fuller 1980, 19). Progessive Dispensationalism has returned to the first sine qua non, i.e. the distinction between Israel and the church, as its "distinguishing factor" (Blaising 1988, 273 and Saucy 1993, 221). This return coincides with Poythress's further recognition that this distinction is more fundamental than a literal hermeneutic. He writes: "Their approaches toward strict literalness seem to be subordinated to the more fundamental principle of dual destinations for Israel and the church" (Poythress 1987, 78). Strikingly, in discussing those dual destinations dispensationalists have moved away from the absolute earthly\heavenly dualism of early dispensationalism. Early dispensationalism, as evidenced in Darby's teaching, provided the groundwork for an absolute distinction. Darby maintained a distinction between Israel and the Church that was both temporal and eschatological. He propounded an earthly\heavenly dichotomy between Israel and the Church (Blaising 1988, 273-275). His views were followed by Lewis Sperry Chafer and others. Nevertheless, Blaising notes that in the 1950s and 1960s dispensational writers had dropped the earthly\heavenly dualism and instead accepted that both Israel and the Church ultimately shared eternal destinies in the same sphere (Blaising 1988, 276). Apparently among many contemporary dispensationalists there is agreement that "... the city of God is the common destiny of all the redeemed" (Blaising 1988, 277). However, the question remains, if ultimately both share a common destiny, then wherein lies the "distinguishing factor," namely, the distinction between Israel and the Church? That distinction appears to lie in the earthly fulfillment of the land promise to national, ethnic Israel whom dispensationalists understand to be the "seed" of Abraham. For the dispensationalists, this is what "literal" hermeneutics demand. Walvoord remarks: The Old Testament saints and prophets expected a special program for the nation of Israel consummating in a kingdom era. This was the normal understanding of the promises (Walvoord 1980, 19). Again, progressive dispensationalists agree: - Thus, while there is in the present salvation in Christ a partial fulfillment of the spiritual blessing promised to all people through Abraham and his seed, many aspects of the promise remain to be fulfilled, especially those dealing with the 'great nation' seed and the 'land...' (Saucy 1993, 58). However, a plaguing issue with dispensational hermeneutics is the lack of consistency in definition and application of "what is literal", resulting in confusion. Vern Poythress highlights this problem of consistency when he asks concerning dispensationalists: - Are they really begging the important questions? Are they really slanting the case in favor of `flat interpretation'? Or are they just being imprecise? Maybe they are just imprecise, but the particular way in which they are imprecise does not help to delineate the issues separating dispensationalist from nondispensationalist hermeneutics. It rather confuses them (Poythress 1987, 94). If literal interpretation is confined to what the human author or recipient of revelation would have understood of "seed" and "land", then its application to the Abrahamic covenant would seem to result in a limitation of its scope to ethnic Israel and the land of Palestine. However, if by literal interpretation one means any meaning inherent in the words of a text even as nuanced by future revelation, then its application to the Abrahamic covenant results in a fuller understanding of "seed" and "land." Walter Kaiser would be right in insisting that the meaning of a text can only be informed by antecedent revelation (Kaiser 1987, 99), if he was referring to meaning as understood by its original recipients. Certainly without the benefit of future revelation they could only understand in terms of what existed. However, to maintain that the recipients of later revelation are confined to the original recipient's sometimes-limited understanding of a text is too narrow. Scalise comments in this regard: - The history of exegesis seems generally to demonstrate that when the sensus literalis of Scripture has been defined in a positive and more than woodenly literal way (cf. especially Augustine and Luther), resulting in a synthesis of grammatical, historical, and theological understandings, a flourishing of the exegetical discipline and a renewal of dynamic biblical theology has recurred (Scalise 1989, 65). Scalise's point requires some amplification. As stated earlier, to limit a text's fullest interpretation to its grammatical-historical meaning is too restrictive. On the other hand to include theological interpretation with the grammatical-historical is to allow progressive revelation to inform the text. Berkhof asserts that grammatical-historical interpretation does not meet "... all the requirements for the proper interpretation of the Bible (Berkhof 1950, 133). In his view grammatical-historical interpretation does not account for the following: - (1) that the Bible is the word of God; (2) that it constitutes an organic whole, of which each individual book is an integral part; (3) that the Old and New Testament are related to each other as type and antitype, prophecy and fulfillment, germ and perfect development; (4) that not only explicit statements of the Bible, but also what may be deduced from it by good and necessary consequences, constitute the Word of God (Berkhof 1950, 133). As noted earlier, Kaiser's view that only antecedent revelation can inform a text is inadequate. Equally inadequate is a view of interpretation that limits itself to grammatical-historical meaning. Though dispensationalists have quoted Bernard Ramm to support their understanding of "literal" (Pentecost 1958, 9-11), they fail to notice that Bernard Ramm aptly affirmed that though literal interpretation "... is the only conceivable method of beginning and commencing to understand literature of all kinds" (Ramm 1970, 123), he also recognized the role of typology: - The program of the literal interpretation of Scripture does not overlook the figures of speech, the symbols, the types, the allegories that as a matter of fact are to be found in Holy Scripture. It is not a blind letterism nor a wooden literalism as is so often the accusation (Ramm 1970, 126). Theological interpretation adds another dimension to understanding the historical-grammatical meaning of Scripture. Vern Poythress defines grammatical-historical interpretation as interpretation that "... deals with what a passage says against the background of its original time and culture, bearing in mind the purpose of the human author" (Poythress 1987, 97). He correctly concludes that what dispensationalists mean by literal is actually the grammatical-historical interpretation of a text (Poythress 1987, 86). Pentecost equates the grammatical-historical method with literal interpretation (Pentecost 1958, 9) as does Ryrie (Ryrie 1965, 92-96) who also charges that nondispensationalists "introduce another hermeneutical principle (the `theological' method) in order to have a hermeneutical basis for the system which he holds" (Ryrie 1965, 94). The grammatical-historical approach to Scripture is necessary and adequate as a starting point. However, it falls short due to the now enlarged context of Scripture. It must be conceded that knowing even what Abraham understood by the words of the covenant cannot be fully arrived at from the Old Testament text itself, as is indicated by the writer of Hebrews commentary on that understanding in Hebrews 11:16: "Instead they were longing for a better country--a heavenly one." No reading of the Old Testament text alone will confirm that Abraham was looking for a heavenly city. Yet, the New Testament declares that he was. The New Testament text introduces a dimension in understanding the heavenly nature of the land that a grammatical-historical approach alone does not yield. A related issue to the grammatical-historical-theological approach to Scripture is that of theological correspondence. Correct interpretation is grounded in the recognition of continuity in the theological purpose of God. The dualism of the earthly and heavenly, of Israel and the Church, and of law vs. grace, and the bifurcation of the testaments on those bases produce a theological discontinuity. In this author's investigation of Old Testament theology, a tentative theological paradigm has been developed through which the rest of Scripture is viewed. This paradigm for the study of Old Testament theology is set within the parameters of God's stated purpose for man as recorded in Genesis 1:26-27. An examination of this purpose discloses a two-fold, yet united, design for humanity. Primarily, God intended for man to have relationship with Himself. The term used to describe this relationship is "Sonship." Secondly, God intended that man should be responsible to Him and responsible for His creation. This responsibility is termed "Stewardship." This "Sonship/Stewardship" motif provides an initial paradigm for the study of Old Testament Biblical Theology. However, the fall of man, which disoriented man from fulfilling God's design, necessitates an additional motif that runs parallel to the first and that, at times, overshadows the first. From the event of the fall, there emerges a "Redemptive\Restoration" motif that continues throughout the Scripture. It is within the parameters of God's original intent of Sonship\Stewardship, parallelled by and at times overshadowed by Redemptive\Restoration, that a paradigm for Old Testament Theology and for understanding the Abrahamic covenant is presented. The function of covenant relates to this overarching motif. The covenant served to insure that there would be a seed to carry forth the Sonship\Stewardship purpose of God. The covenant grows out of the Redemptive\Restoration motif. It is the above theological basis and understanding of the unity of the purpose of God that supply certain normative features for making theological interpretations. When applied to the Abrahamic covenant, a paradigm such as this relates that covenant to the original purpose of God and establishes a unity and continuity in that purpose. As Dumbrell was previously quoted: "The call of that patriarch began a programme of redemption which aimed at full and final restoration of man and his world" (Dumbrell 1982, 50). Theological correspondence relates the concepts of seed, land, and divine\human relationship to the original and ultimate purposes of God and thus yields more than a provincial interpretation. The issue of literal interpretation also involves that of authorial intention. Must interpreters limit the scope of interpretation of the Abrahamic covenant to what Moses understood in recording those words for the nation of Israel? Since Scripture is marked by both divine and human authorship, is it necessary that the intent of the words was shared equally by both authors? Conceivably, due to the dual authorship of the Bible (Divine\human), the answer to the question of intention may be thought of as unattainable because of the absence of the Author\author. However, since God has preserved only the words of these authors, and in those words expects men to understand the message, interpreters must conclude that the intention of the Author\author is that which is based singularly in the words of Scripture as contained in the canon of Scripture. Any other supposed intention is not available and, therefore, not necessary to the interpretation of Scripture. Any contextual interpretation must then be based on the words found in the text. Although having affirmed that intention is based on the textual meaning of the words, dispensationalists must yet realize that both authors did not necessarily share the same scope of intended meaning. Paul D. Feinberg in defending the hermeneutics of dispensationalism rejects any notion that there could be any difference between the human author's intentions and God's (Feinberg 1988, 177). Nevertheless, though the human author's intention would not conflict with the divine author's, there is no necessity for it to have been coordinate with the scope of the Divine author's intention. For instance, there are some who would hold that in Psalm 2 the human author envisioned the human Davidic king as the anointed of God, while the divine author, as is seen in the New Testament usage of Psalm 2, ultimately intended to focus on one particular Davidic king, the Messianic King. Is there contradiction? No! There is merely difference in the intended scope of the words. It is this difference in the depth and scope of intention that helps us to understand some of the New Testament uses of the Old Testament, especially in prophetic and poetic passages. The same can be said of the Abrahamic covenant. Though the human recipient, Abraham, and the human author, Moses, may have had a provincial, limited understanding of the scope of that covenant, the latter prophets and New Testament authors share the expanded scope of the divine author. It is also plausible that an interpreter of Scripture may underestimate what the original recipients understood. Though the Abrahamic covenant furnishes a theological justification for the conquest of Palestine by Israel, is it not possible that the Israelites also maintained an understanding of the covenant that was set against the larger backdrop of God's original and continuing purposes for all creation as recorded in Genesis 1-11? Again, Hebrews 11:16 indicates this. A contextual interpretation of the Abrahamic covenant does not abrogate the human author's grammatical-historical intent of seed, land, and divine\human relationship, but recognizes that those same words allow a fuller and deeper meaning, not always perceived by the human author. Kunjummen, who writes from the context of dispensationalism, agrees saying: "Divine accommodation in the use of human language is not tantamount to divine self-reduction of authorial intent to the understanding of the biblical writer" (Kunjummen 1986, 109). Another issue of hermeneutics that relates to the Abrahamic covenant is that of progressive revelation. John Walvoord in speaking to this issue says: The issue accordingly is not progressive revelation versus nonprogressive revelation, but rather whether in progressive revelation there is contradiction or correction of what was commonly assumed to be the main tenor of Old Testament revelation (Walvoord 1980, 20). The problem with Walvoord's statement is what is meant by "... commonly assumed to be the main tenor of Old Testament revelation." Though this author concurs with Turner that "it appears exceedingly doubtful that the New Testament reinterprets the Old Testament so as to evaporate the plain meaning of its promises" (Turner 1985, 282), the argument persists concerning what is meant by "plain meaning." Daniel Fuller's understanding of progressive revelation is helpful: - Why could not the Old Testament revelation be thought of as the grain of sand, which, after entering the oyster of progressive revelation, has the pearl of additional and deeper concepts added to it without necessarily canceling out the original grain of sand (Fuller 1957, 233)? Any interpretation of the Abrahamic covenant must take into account the seventy-four references to Abraham in the New Testament and how they interpret and inform the Old Testament text. Directly related to the issue of progressive revelation are that of prophecy and fulfillment, the use of the Old in the New, and typology. Each of these issues is obviously influenced by the addition of new revelation that speaks to the prophecies and types of the Old Testament and to the way the New Testament understands and interprets the Old. The limited scope of this paper will allow only a brief discussion of these issues. Though Pentecost notes the problems of interpreting prophecy (Pentecost 1958, 45-59), the rules stated for correct interpretation are once again restricted by limiting any interpretation to a grammatical-historical interpretation (Pentecost 1958, 59). Contrariwise, Joel B. Green argues that those who seek literal and detailed fulfillments of Old Testament prophecy "... must face the reality that fulfillment is often not quite what was anticipated" (Green 1984, 103). He explains: - When fulfillment exceeds promise, three things are underscored: God's freedom and creativity and the historical quality of biblical prophecy. Given in particular, historical circumstances, prophecy uses words and ideas appropriate to its day. A different historical situation at the time of fulfillment, however, may involve a realization in updated terms beyond the literal meaning of the original prediction (Green 1984, 104). Dispensationalists, as represented by Charles L. Feinberg, would disagree with Green and instead affirm that "in the interpretation of prophecy that has not yet been fulfilled, those prophecies that have been fulfilled are to form the pattern" (Feinberg 1985, 41). Contrariwise, Vern Poythress in his critique of dispensational hermeneutics adequately demonstrates that "preeschatological prophetic fulfillments have a hermeneutically different character than do eschatological fulfillments" (Poythress 1987, 105). The often enigmatic nature of prophecy should solicit humility and tentativeness in assertions regarding its fulfillment. For example, Odendaal in his discussion of Isaiah 40-66 notes that those chapters offer an eschatological fulfillment of the Abrahamic covenant (Odendaal 1966, 265). In regard to the fulfillment of that passage he reservedly concludes that "... it is evident that neither a purely spiritual nor a purely literal explanation can fathom the fullness of the prophetic proclamation (Odendaal 1966, 274). Also related to the issue of progressive revelation are the issues of typology and the use of the Old Testament in the New. Again, it is not the scope of this paper to fully develop these issues, but rather to note how they relate to the interpretation of the Abrahamic covenant. Specifically, does the word "land" have any typological significance? Douglas Moo suggests that "typology is best viewed as a specific form of the larger `promise-fulfillment' scheme that provides the essential framework within which the relationship of the testaments must be understood" (Moo 1986, 196). He maintains: - The two Testaments are bound together by their common witness to the unfolding revelation of God's character, purpose, and plan. But the salvation wrought by God through Christ is the fulfillment of `Old Testament' history, law, and prophecy (Moo 1986, 196). For example, Hebrews 3:7-4:8 employs a typological significance of "land." Based on the pattern of Psalm 95, throughout the passage the word "land" is replaced with the word "rest." It is significant that in the patriarchal promises x;Anm' is never used to describe the land. x;Anm' is introduced once positively in Deuteronomy to describe the land as hx'WnM.h (Deut.12:9), and once in a warning passage that disobedience would result in ytix'Wnm.-la,. !Waboy>-~ai (Psalm 95:11). Interestingly, the Psalmist chooses x;Anm' to describe life in the land. The writer of Hebrews picks up on this and takes it a step further. Employing the same word from the Septuagint kata,pausi,n, he refers to the present and ultimate blessing of being in Christ as one of kata,pausi,n. "Rest" in the "land" anticipated "rest" in Jesus Christ. This rest is semi-realized in the believers present experience in Christ (Heb 4:3), yet it awaits a more consummate fulfillment (Heb 4:9). Moo perceptively concludes "that God had so ordered Old Testament history that it prefigures and anticipates His climatic redemptive acts and that the New Testament is the inspired record of those redemptive acts (Moo 1986, 198). One other issue that relates to progressive revelation is the thorny issue of the use of the Old Testament in the New. This author would suggest the "canonical approach" to that issue wherein "any specific biblical text can be interpreted in light of its ultimate literary context--the whole canon, which receives its unity from the single divine author of the whole" (Moo 1986, 205). Moo offers four commendations of the canonical approach: - (1) it builds on the scripturally sound basis of a redemptive-historical framework, in which the Old Testament as a whole points forward to, anticipates, and prefigures Christ and the church; (2) this scheme can be shown to have its antecedents in what the Old Testament itself does with earlier revelation; (3) the questionable division between the intent of the human author and that of the divine author in a given text is decreased; (4) the 'fuller sense' discovered by Jesus and the apostles in Old Testament texts is, at least to some extent, open to verification (Moo 1986, 205-6). When applied to the Abrahamic covenant, the canonical approach enriches and expands the interpretation of it, loosing it from its purely ethnic, national, and geographical bonds. Remember that Jesus Christ is God's Word for these last days. The Old Testament anticipated and foreshadowed Him, while the NT offers us a full revelation of Him. The following texts remind us that the OT is the word of God about Jesus Christ. - Luke 24:25-27 25 He said to them, "How foolish you are, and how slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken! 26 Did not the Christ have to suffer these things and then enter his glory?" 27 And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself. 44 He said to them, "This is what I told you while I was still with you: Everything must be fulfilled that is written about me in the Law of Moses, the Prophets and the Psalms." 45 Then he opened their minds so they could understand the Scriptures. 46 He told them, "This is what is written: The Christ will suffer and rise from the dead on the third day, 47 and repentance and forgiveness of sins will be preached in his name to all nations, beginning at Jerusalem. 39 You diligently study the Scriptures because you think that by them you possess eternal life. These are the Scriptures that testify about me, 40 yet you refuse to come to me to have life. The words of Jesus Christ lead us to conclude that the OT is "progressive, redemptive revelation. It is revelation because in it God makes himself known. It is redemptive because God reveals himself in the act of redeeming us. It is progressive because God makes himself and his purposes known by stages until the full light is revealed in Jesus Christ" (Goldsworthy 1991, 72). This progressive, redemptive revelation of Jesus Christ is given through historical events, people, promises, institutions, Christophanies, etc., all of which in some way anticipate or foreshadow the final and full revelation in Jesus Christ. Goldsworthy sums up the relationship of Jesus Christ to the OT: New Testament emphasizes the historic person of Christ and what he did for us, through faith, to become the friends of God. The emphasis is also on him as the one who sums up and brings to their fitting climax all the promises and expectations raised in the Old Testament. There is a priority of order here, which we must take into account if we are to understand the Bible correctly. It is the gospel event, as that which brings about faith in the people of God, that will motivate, direct, pattern, and empower the life of the Christian community. So we start from the gospel and move to an understanding of Christian living, and the final goal toward which we are moving. Again we start from the gospel and move back into the Old Testament to see what lies behind the person and work of Christ. The Old Testament is not completely superceded by the gospel, for that would make it irrelevant to us. It helps us understand the gospel by showing us the origins and meanings of the various ideas and special words used to describe Christ and his works in the New Testament. Yet we must also recognize that Christ is God's fullest and final Word to mankind. As such he reveals to us the final meaning of the Old Testament (Goldsworthy 1991, 106-107). There are many studies that show the relationship of Christ to the Old Testament. An older two-volume study by E.W. Hengstenberg, Christology of the Old Testament, was written in 1854. This is a scholarly and detailed study (1400 pages) of Old Testament texts showing the prefiguring and prophecy of Jesus Christ in the Old Testament. A more recent study (1991) by Vern Poythress of Westminster Seminary, The Shadow of Christ in the Law of Moses, details how Christ is prefigured in the Pentateuch (5 books of Moses). A look at some of his chapter titles shows how starting with Christ and moving back into the Old Testament gives us insight into a fuller meaning of Christ. - The Tabernacle of Moses: Prefiguring God's Presence through Christ - The Sacrifices: Prefiguring the Final Sacrifice of Christ - The Priests and the People: Prefiguring Christ's Relation to His People - General Principles for God's Dwelling with Human Beings: Prefiguring Union with Christ. - The Land of Palestine, the Promised Land: Prefiguring Christ's Renewal and Dominion over the Earth. - The Law and Its Order: Prefiguring the Righteousness of Christ - The Purpose of the Tabernacle, the Law, and the Promised Land: Pointing Forward to Christ - The Punishments and Penalties of the Law: Prefiguring the Destruction of Sin and Guilt Through Christ - False Worship, Holy War, and Penal Substitution: Prefiguring the Spiritual Warfare of Christ and His Church (Poythress 1991, vii-ix). It should be clear that Jesus Christ is the key to both the Old and New Testaments. We conclude this section with the words of Goldsworthy: - In order to know how any given part of the Bible relates to us, we must answer two prior questions: how does the text in question relate to Christ, and how do we relate to Christ? Since Christ is the truth, God's final and fullest word to mankind, all other words of the Bible are given their final meaning in him. The same Christ gives us our meaning and defines the significance of our existence in terms of our relationship to him (Goldsworthy 1991, 91). The Readers' Context One final issue relating to the understanding of the Abrahamic covenant is the influence of one's own context on his interpretation of the text. Within the reader's own context there are several considerations that influence the interpretation of the text. All interpreters approach the text with an already existing worldview and pre-understanding. A self-consciousness of this pre-existing worldview, along with a willingness to subject it to possible reformation under the authority of the text are essential for relevant and authoritative interpretation. Also, there must be a consciousness of the actuality that the world of the Bible and the world of subsequent readers are changed worlds. The interpreter must look for legitimate correspondences between his world and the world of the Bible and beware of making illegitimate correspondences. The interpreter must also be aware that in his contemporary world there exists a gap, not only between his culture and that of the Bible, but also between cultures within his own world. This self-awareness of cultural gap will serve as a check on undue outside influence being brought to the text. A Summary Critique of Dispensational Interpretation of the Abrahamic Covenant Dispensationalism is presently undergoing modification. The direction in which contemporary dispensationalists are moving is encouraging, as is the similar movement in covenant theology. There appears to be much less fixation to a "system," and much more attention to exegesis, biblical theology, and the issues of hermeneutics. This present willingness to discuss differences with other schools of interpretation (Feinberg 1988; Blaising and Bock 1992; Saucy 1993) indicates an admission that those who, though they adhere to the authority of Scripture, interpret Scripture differently are not enemies of the cross. This summary critique is designed to clarify some of the issues regarding the interpretation of the Abrahamic Covenant that need to be addressed so that Dispensationalism can continue to be transformed into a "system" that is thoroughly and defensibly biblical. The Issue of Biblical Context The failure to explicate the relationship of Genesis 12:1-3 to the first eleven chapters of the Bible is one of the most serious flaws of Dispensationalism. This disassociation of the Abrahamic covenant from God's primal intentions for the world results in a multi-track approach to the Bible. In classic Dispensationalism it appears that God began with a plan for all humanity and then, beginning with Genesis 12, He switched tracks and began a new plan for only a segment of humanity, Israel. And, this new plan is only remotely related to what God intended in the original creation. It is unfortunate that in Eugene Merrill's history of Israel, that connection is not fully developed. He states in regard to the Torah: - [The Torah] ... is a theological treatise whose purpose is to show that God the Creator will, through an elect nation Israel, sovereignly achieve his creative and redemptive purposes for all mankind (Merrill 1987, 25). Though Merrill notes the above purpose in relation to the Torah, he totally neglects to discuss the Abrahamic covenant in the nineteen pages given to the Abrahamic history (Merrill 1987, 25-43). David J. A. Clines in his discussion of the relationship of Gen 1-11 and the patriarchal history shows that the goal of the Shem genealogy (11:10-26) is Abraham, and that the genealogy of Abraham (11:26-30) serves as a link between the primeval history and the patriarchal history (Clines 1982, 78). Perhaps one of the most cogent discussions of the relationship of the Abrahamic covenant to Gen 1-11 is given by William J. Dumbrell (Dumbrell 1984, 47-79). He summarizes that relationship saying: - Gen. 12:1-3 is the rejoinder to the consequences of the fall and aims at the restoration of the purposes of God for the world to which Gen. 1-2 directed our attention. What is being offered in these few verses is a theological blueprint for the redemptive history of the world, now set in train by the call of Abraham (Dumbrell 1984, 66). Observing the connection between Genesis 12:1-2 and Genesis 1-11 yields not only the fruit of observing more unity in the purposes of God, but also a recognition of the universal scope of the terms of the Abrahamic covenant. Based on that connection the Abrahamic covenant is loosed from the bonds of ethnicity and nationality and is liberated to address all believing peoples and the entire creation. More attention needs to given to the placement of the Abrahamic covenant in its biblical context and how that context nuances its understanding. The Actual Terms of the Covenant The Seed of Abraham When viewed against the backdrop of Genesis 1-11 and in light of the New Testament, the features of the Abrahamic covenant are infused with deeper hues that solicit attraction from more than just the physical descendants of Abraham. The inclination of earlier forms of Dispensationalism was to exclude Gentiles from all but the soteriological benefits of this covenant. In so doing, they incited envy for the privileges that Israelites had, yet offered no hope for Gentile participation in those privileges. Classic dispensationalists affirmed discontinuity in the redemptive program of God based upon their distinction of an earthly and a heavenly people. Though allowing for the redemption of Gentiles through their connection with Christ, the seed of Abraham, they maintained that New Testament believers were the seed of Abraham, only in their participation of the gospel. The other features of the Abrahamic covenant were reserved for the physical descendants of Abraham. They retained the distinction of an earthly and heavenly people. In classic Dispensationalism Gentiles are granted status as the seed of Abraham only in the sense that they are blessed in experiencing salvation through Jesus Christ, the seed of Abraham. They are excluded from those promises that are allegedly given to the physical seed (Walvoord 1951, 421). Gentiles are "seed" in one sense, but they are not in another. They are "seed" in redemption but not "seed" in eschatology. Classic Dispensationalism ends up with two seeds of Abraham, even though Galatians 3:16 teaches that the one seed of Abraham is gathered together in Christ. Contrariwise, Progressive Dispensationalists no longer maintain such discontinuity in redemption but see "one people of God, saved by grace through faith in the promises of God based on the atoning death of Christ" (Breshears 1986, 3). The earthly\heavenly dichotomy is erased (Saucy 1988, 241). This admission of "one people of God" in redemption needs to be investigated further. For, if it is conceded that there is but one people of God in redemption, then can there not be one people of God in eschatology? Progressive Dispensationalism more clearly delineates the redemptive continuity that exists between Israel and the church as the seed of Abraham (Breshears 1986, 3), yet it remains reluctant to apply that continuity to it fullest limits in regard to eschatology. Admittedly, Progressive Dispensationalists do recognize that both Israel and the church share a common ultimate destiny in the city of God (Blaising 1988, 277). In this regard there is eschatological continuity; however, maintaining the distinction that Israel is "a nation among nations" and that the church is "formed from all nations" (Saucy 1988, 252; 258), seems not only to contradict passages such as 1 Peter 2:9, but also bifurcates the destinies of Israel and the church. This designation of Israel as "a nation among nations" fails again to recognize the Genesis 1-11 backdrop for the covenant and consequently fails to see that national Israel in its time was the vehicle of God through which the nations were to be reached. Admittedly, the geo-political status of Israel is an issue of the Abrahamic covenant. By use of the term yAg (Gen 12:2), Israel is designated as "a people in terms of its political and territorial affiliation (Clements 1975, 427). However, it is not Israel solely in her ethnic, national status alone that is to expect the kingdom of God on earth, but rather Israel as the people of God, who by faith enter into God's covenant with Abraham, including all subsequent believers who are ingrafted into the olive tree. As noted earlier, Peter used the terms describing Israel's unique position (1 Pet 2:9) to refer to the church. The church is now an e;qnoj. This is the Greek word used to translate yAg in the Septuagint. This is not to say that national Israel is disenfranchised from the promise, but rather that New Testament believers are incorporated into that privileged position with believing Israelites, because God's nation has intentionally expanded its members and its borders. Stephen R. Spencer approximates this position: The recipients of the Abrahamic promises and their sequels in the Old Testament expand after Pentecost, but they do not switch; there is no replacement of ethnic Israel. Likewise there can be no return to the previous, exclusively, ethnic nature of the people of God (Spencer 1986, 4). Once again the backdrop of Genesis 1-11 enhances our understanding of #r,a'h . The very first time #r,a is mentioned in the Scripture is Genesis 1:1 in the syntagm, "heaven and earth," and the next time in Genesis 1:10 with reference to "the dry land." God's primal intentions for man was that he exercise dominion over #r,a'h (Gen 1:26-27). Due to the fall this dominion would entail struggle (Gen 3:17-19); nevertheless, a world-wide responsibility persisted even after the flood (Gen 9:1). In classic Dispensationalism the promise of land to Abraham is nowhere related to the divine primal intentions for the earth. The gift of land to Abraham is viewed in disassociation from those intentions, being consummated in a Jewish kingdom followed by a restoration of all things. Darrell Bock, though bringing criticism from other Progressive Dispensationalists, commendably relates the covenants to the kingdom rule of God and also relates New Testament believers to those covenants. He says that "Blessing comes to the audience, not through descent but through turning to the one who has authority to give blessing" (Bock 1987, 14). In do doing, Bock sees in the church an inauguration of the fulfillment of the covenants of the Old Testament. He says in reference to Acts 3:25-26: With the allusion to the Abrahamic covenant, all three of the major covenants have received mention in either Acts 2 or Acts 3. The career of Jesus represents the opportunity for men to share in the fulfillment of all of God's promises, a fulfillment that is presented as a package. The promises of God and His kingdom program are both `already-not yet', as well as `unity in diversity' (Bock 1987, 14). Bock also sees a consummate fulfillment in a kingdom age "when God brings the program of His rule to completion" (Bock 1987, 14). This author agrees with David Turner's and Stephen Spencer's recognition: - Bock's essay amounts to a helpful synthesis of the best insights of covenant theologians on present eschatology with the dispensationalists view of the future response of national Israel to the gospel (Turner and Spencer 1987, 1). This author recommends viewing the Abrahamic promise of land against the backdrop of Genesis 1-11. From that perspective, believing descendants of Abraham, as well as proselytes, were to enjoy occupation of that land of Palestine and all that entailed spiritually, as a microcosmic participation in the kingdom rule of God. This kingdom rule is presently experienced in the church, as a semi-realized eschatological fulfillment of the covenants, and awaits a future consummate fulfillment in the geo-political kingdom of God that covers the entire earth as well as the eternal kingdom. The classic dispensational view of the purely national nature of the land promise and its fulfillment in a Jewish kingdom must be rejected on the grounds that it fails to take into account the biblical-historical context of the land promise, the theological significance of that promise, and the paucity of New Testament material directly related to that promise. Properly, Progressive Dispensationalists recognize that a millennial kingdom is but transitory to an eternal kingdom. Blaising says: - ... the millennium does not properly bear the full climax of history. The goal of the dispensations is not the millennial kingdom but the eternal kingdom. The millennial kingdom is seen more as a temporary, transitional phase of God's kingdom plan ... (Blaising 1988, 268-9). The moderation within Dispensationalism needs to further examine the promise of land in light of the three aforementioned issues. New Testament Passages An unresolved issue that continues to affect the understanding of the nation of Israel's role in the future as well as the other terms of the Abrahamic covenant is the paucity of New Testament material that speaks with the clarity of the Old Testament to Israel's future land inheritance. For instance, Kaiser, in giving a biblical-historical view of the Promised Land, adequately from an Old Testament basis builds a case for Israel's future possession of Palestine (Kaiser 1981, 302-9). However, when he come to Romans 9-11, which he calls "the most significant passage on this subject in the New Testament" (Kaiser 1981, 310), though establishing this text as a "blunt witness to God's everlasting work on behalf of Israel" (Kaiser 1981, 310), he fails to demonstrate his assertion that "the main lines of Paul's argument in Romans 9-11 are clear and in complete agreement with the promise of the land to the nation of Israel in the Old Testament" (Kaiser 1981, 310). Admittedly, an argument from silence neither affirms nor negates the promise of the Old Testament, but raises the question as to whether or not they are to be understood in a fuller way. As noted earlier, the seventy-four references to Abraham in the New Testament fail to affirm the features of the covenant as "literally" understood in the Old Testament. Rather, the most significant features highlighted in the New Testament concerning Abraham were the faith relationship that he enjoyed with God and the realization that Jesus Christ, as the supreme representative seed of Abraham, is both the guarantor and inheritor of those promises. The conclusion of Bruce Waltke, a former Dispensationalist, concerning the absence in the New Testament of any mention of an earthly reign of Christ before His appearing (Waltke 1988, 273) needs a more convincing response than that given by Walter Kaiser (Kaiser 1988, 289-307). This author would suggest that the historical-grammatical meaning of the "land promise" is not emasculated by the "fuller sense" of the New Testament but rather enriches and expands that sense. Though the New Testament alone will not build a case for nor abrogate the dispensational understanding of the Abrahamic covenant, it does speak to that covenant; therefore, how it speaks to it will continue to be one of the most critical issue in understanding the scope of the Abrahamic covenant. The sine qua non Ryrie's three sine qua non (Ryrie 1965, 43-47) are no longer the basis of Dispensationalism. Two of three that formerly most affected the issue of hermeneutics have been reduced by Progressive dispensationalists to one, i.e. the distinction between Israel and the Church (Bailey 1988, 23). Though the historical and eschatological distinctions between Israel and the Church are perceived differently among dispensationalists, the distinction yet remains. That distinction appears to inhere in the "national" status of Israel (Saucy 1988, 255). Though this author does not necessarily disagree with a form of discontinuity between Israel and the church in history and destiny, he fails to see the reasoning for asserting a soteriological continuity and retaining a strict eschatological discontinuity. To allow that the concept of "nation" has been expanded to include the church (1 Pet 2:9) does not obliterate God's intentions for Israel, it merely enlarges them. Does God have two laoi through which he accomplishes His plan of world redemption? Would the occupation of the whole earth, including Palestine, by the people of God be construed as an abrogation of His promise to Abraham? Would the joint-rule of Jew and Gentile believers over all creation fail to meet the intent of Old Testament promises? In this author's estimation, the distinction between Israel and the Church as the sine qua non of Dispensationalism lacks clarity. The sine qua non of Dispensationalism would more clearly be stated as "a commitment to the earthly fulfillment of the land promise to national, ethnic Israel which is uniquely the `seed' of Abraham with reference to the future fulfillment of the covenants of promise." This commitment is arrived at through their understanding of grammatical-historical interpretation. Classic Dispensationalism has a self-imposed restriction on understanding the text of the Bible. By limiting a text's meaning to its grammatical-historical interpretation they rule out any nuances that may be added by further revelation. David Turner rightly recognizes: - It seems to me that we dispensationalists have the most to lose from a sensus plenior, NT reinterprets OT, hermeneutic. We have the most to gain from an approach to progressive revelation which emphasizes informing antecedent theology (Turner 1986, 2). The issue of grammatical-historical interpretation is integrally related to the issues of authorial intent and progressive revelation, and it ultimately influences how one understands the related issues of typology, prophecy-fulfillment, and the use of the Old Testament in the New Testament. As noted earlier, the grammatical-historical approach to Scripture is necessary and adequate as a starting point. However, it falls short due to the now enlarged context of Scripture. It is precisely because of the dual authorship of Scripture (Divine/Human) that the grammatical-historical meaning of Scripture can be developed and expanded. Progressive revelation enlarges on the divine intent in Scripture without emasculating the human author's intent. At the same time progressive revelation may unfold at times an understanding of the human author's intent that may not have been immediately perceptible from the text itself. A concession that God, the divine author, could have intended more than the physical descendants of Abraham by the term, is one that is confirmed by the New Testament (Gal 3:16, 29). Recognizing that Abraham, the human author, had an understanding of "land" that went beyond the geography of Palestine is likewise confirmed by the New Testament (Heb 11:10, 16, 39, 40). The question is whether these added meanings in any way annul the grammatical-historical meaning. Classic dispensationalists tended to approach the Abrahamic covenant in a "woodenly" literal way. There seemed to be little development of the typological significance of land (Heb 3: 4). However, even accepting Waltke's affirmation that "the striking correspondences between the land and Christ suggest the sworn-land is a type of the kingdom of God embodied in Christ" (Waltke 1988, 277), does not absolutely rule out the possibility of a future earthly kingdom that serves as a final earthly type of the perfect rest to be experienced in Christ in the eternal state. As long as this earthly order exists there may be types that foreshadow the heavenly and eternal original. The interpretation of prophecy is also directly affected by how one handles the issues of authorial intent and progressive revelation. The dispensational approach to prophecy has traditionally been a straight-forward approach that gave little or no attention to the eschatological fulfillment taking place in the church today. However, that is changing. There is much similarity between Bock's inaugural and consummate fulfillment scheme (Bock 1987, 1-16) and Robertson's fuller and consummate realizations (Robertson 1980, 288-9), even though Bock's ends in the millennium and Robertson's ends in the new creation. A recognition of partial fulfillment of Old Testament prophecies in the church today is a giant step for dispensationalism. It is an admission that in the progress of revelation, the New Testament does inform the Old Testament, and elicits an understanding that goes beyond the historical-grammatical interpretation. This author recognizes three possible conclusions concerning the issue of the eschatological fulfillment of the Abrahamic covenant: (1) the nation of Israel awaits a distinct eschatological fulfillment of the promise to Abraham, while the church participates only soteriologically in the promise to Abraham; (2) the church fulfills the promise to Abraham; (3) the church is ingrafted into Israel and enjoys with believing Jews a present semi-realized fulfillment and awaits a future expanded fulfillment of the Abrahamic covenant. The current progress in hermeneutics is bound to bring further modifications to both covenantal and dispensational approaches of interpreting Scripture. As development takes place, may it do so heeding Craig Blaising's answers to his own question: "How can a positive contribution be made toward proper development of doctrine?" He answers: - Expect orthodox doctrine to develop. - Encourage proper theological method, including interaction and integration from various sources. - Encourage the exegetical study of Scripture and the consideration of hermeneutical conclusions that may vary from the existing pattern of doctrine. The tension between doctrine and exegesis may be the catalyst for proper doctrinal development or for further exegetical development which may or may not result in doctrinal development. - Locate the continuity center of tradition in Scripture, God's Word, rather than in some past theological expression, a human word. In this way the priority of Scripture over tradition will be maintained (Blaising 1988, 130-140). The Unity of the Covenants David Turner recommended that "dispensationalists should also rethink the biblical covenants in order to revise the traditional conditional\unconditional scheme" (Turner 1986, 2). This author concurs with Turner and would like to take it a step further. Dispensationalism needs to rethink the purpose of the covenants, the recipients, the interrelationship of the covenants, and their fulfillment. It is unfortunate that most of the dispensational discussion of the covenants themselves is contained in a polemic against covenant theology and fails to explicate how dispensationalists view the covenants. The importance of the Abrahamic covenant is seen largely as "crucial in its evidence regrading God's purposes for Israel" (Walvoord 1945, 27). According to classic dispensationalists, the covenants concern the physical descendants of Abraham only (Rand 1951, 328). The failure to see the Abrahamic covenant in relationship to God's primal intentions and the failure to see covenant as the means by which God binds Himself to both Old Testament and New Testament believers will continue to result in a bifurcation of the purposes of God, the people of God, and of the two testaments. Even though Progressive Dispensationalism has conceded more unity in the people of God and between the testament, a study of the covenants in relationship to God's primal intentions (Dumbrell 1984) would yield more continuity. Though Progressive Dispensationalism accepts a "one people of God" approach in soteriology and accepts a semi-realized eschatological fulfillment of Old Testament prophecy in the Church today, they still have not broken loose completely from bold but unfortunate statements such as this one by Dwight Pentecost: - Finally, these covenants were made with a covenant people, Israel. In Romans 9:4 Paul states that the nation of Israel had received covenants from the Lord. In Ephesians 2:11-12 he states, conversely, that the Gentiles have not received any such covenants and consequently do not enjoy covenant relationships with God (Pentecost 1958, 69). Breshears statement that "the promises and prophecies of redemption come to all who are the single redeemed people of God (Breshears 1986, 3) needs further thought and development to examine whether the theological basis, upon which they have determined that the single redeemed people of God share the same soteriological benefits, can also be used to establish a fully shared eschatological destiny. The continued discussion and development in hermeneutics will bring further modification to Dispensationalism. The areas of discussion that will perhaps yield the greatest benefit are (1) a clearer understanding of how the Old Testament is used in the New Testament; (2) an application of "canonical process" to Old Testament texts; (3) further discussion on the nature of typology and the understanding of prophetic texts; (4) a deeper self-awareness of the "baggage" interpreters bring to Scripture coupled with a willingness to allow exegesis to modify their theological systems; and (5) a greater appreciation for how the final and fullest revelation in Jesus Christ determines our understanding of the Old Testament promises. Berkhof, Louis. 1950. Principles of Biblical Interpretation. Grand Rapids: Baker Book House. Blaising, Craig A. and Bock, Darrell L. 1988a. "Developing Dispensationalism." Bibliothecra Sacra. 145: 133-140; 254-280. _____ 1992. Dispensationalism, Israel, and the Church. Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House. Bock, Darrell L. 1987. "The Reign of the Lord Christ." Evangelical Society Meeting. Breshears, Gerry. 1986. "Response to Craig Blaising, 'Developing Dispensationalism.'" Paper delivered at the ETS Meeting. Clines, David J. A. 1978. The Theme of the Pentateuch. Sheffield: The Journal for the Study of the Old Testament. Dumbrell, W. J. 1984. Covenant and Creation. Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers. ____ 1982. "The Covenant with Abraham." Reformed Theological Review. 41: 42-50. Feinberg, Charles L. 1985 reprint. Millennialism: The Two Major Views. Winona Lake: BMH Books. Feinberg, Paul D. 1988. "The Hermeneutics of Discontinuity." In Continuity and Discontinuity. pp. 109-128. Westchester, Illinois: Crossway Books. Fuller, Daniel P. 1957. "The Hermeneutics of Dispensationalism." Doctoral Dissertation, Northern Baptist Theological Seminary. ______ 1980. Gospel and Law. Contrast or Continuum. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans. Goldsworthy, Graeme. 1991. According to Plan. Leicester: Inter-Varsity Press. Green, Joel B. 1984. How to Read Prophecy. Downers Grove: Inter-Varsity Press. Kaiser, Walter C. 1978. Toward an Old Testament Theology. Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House. ____ 1981. "The Promised Land: A Biblical-Historical View." Bibliotheca Sacra. 138 (Oct-Dec): 302-312. Kunjummen, Raju D. 1988. "The Single Intent of Scripture - Critical Examination of a Theological Construct." Grace Theological Journal. 7 (Spring): 81-110. Merrill, Eugene. 1987. Kingdom of Priests. Grand Rapids: Baker Book House. Moo, Douglas. 1986. "The Problem of Sensus Plenior." In Hermeneutics, Authority, and Canon. pp. 179-211. Edited by D.A. Carson and John D. Woodbridge. Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House. Odendaal, Dirk H. 1966. "The Eschatological Expectation of Isaiah 40-66 with Special Reference to Israel and the Nations." Doctoral Dissertation, Westminster Theological Seminary. Pentecost, J. Dwight. 1958. Things to Come. Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House. Poythress, Vern S. 1991. The Shadow of Christ in the Law of Moses. Brentwood: Wolgemuth and Hyatt Publishers, Inc. ______1987. Understanding Dispensationalists. Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House. Ramm, Bernard. 1970. Protestant Biblical Interpretation. Grand Rapids: Baker Book House. Roberston, O. Palmer. 1980. The Christ of the Covenants. Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company. Ryrie, Charles Caldwell. 1965. Dispensationalism Today. Chicago: Moody Press. Saucy, Robert L. 1988. "Israel and the Church: A Case for Discontinuity." In Continuity and Discontinuity. pp. 239-259. Edited by John S. Feinberg. Westchester, Illinois: Crossway Books. _____ 1993. The Case for Progressive Dispensationalism. Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House. Scalise, Charles J. 1989. "The 'Sensus Literalis': A Hermeneutical Key to Biblical Exegesis." Scottish Journal of Theology. 42: 45-65. Turner, David L. 1985. "The Continuity of Scripture and Eschatology: Key Hermeneutical Issues." Grace Theological Journal. 6 (Fall): 275-287. Turner, David L. and Stephen R. Spencer. 1987. "A Response to Darrell L. Bock's "The Reign of the Lord Christ." A paper presented at the 1987 ETS meeting. Waltke, Bruce. 1988. "Kingdom Promises as Spiritual." In Continuity and Discontinuity. pp. 263-287. Edited by John S. Feinberg. Westchester, Illinois: Crossway Books. Walvoord, John. 1980. "Does the Church Fulfill Israel's Program?" Bibliothecra Sacra. 137 (January-March): 17-31; (April-June): 118-124. Endnote Like slowly turning on the dimmer in your dining room as images move from darkness to outlines of objects, to shadows, to clear sight.

Despite, or perhaps because of the comment by Jewish Home’s chairman Naftali Bennett, his party’s popularity has not suffered among Israeli voters, according to a poll conducted on Sunday for Channel 2 News by Panels Politics. Were the elections held on Sunday, Jewish Home would receive 13 seats in the 19th Knesset. Its sister party, Power to Israel, chaired by Aryeh Eldad and Michael Ben Ari, was boosted to three seats from its current two. That places 16 MKs to the right of Netanyahu’s troubled Likud Beiteinu, which scored only 36 seats (down from its current 42). Labor also retains its power, staying with 18 seats. Shas is the fourth largest party, with 10 (same as what it had in the outgoing Knesset). The poll checked on the public’s reaction to Naftali Bennett’s comment. Out of those identifying themselves as Jewish Home voters, a whopping 92% believe Bennett when he says he did not intend to encourage IDF soldiers to refuse orders. Among the voters at large, 23% said their respect for Bennett went down, 17% said it went up, 50% said it didn’t change, and 10% were not sure. Come January 23, Prime Minister Elect Netanyahu will have these blocks with which to form a coalition. He needs 61 seats, but, obviously, would be shooting for closer to 70. Whichever way he chooses will signal his direction for the next 4 years. The scariest option would be a coalition of Likud and the leftwing parties: Labor, Livni, and Lapid. Despite Tzipi Livni’s loud proclamations of refusing to sit next to the same table with Bibi, she might be tempted to join forces and support a final solution to the conflict with Israel’s neighbors. Bad news for the settlements, but not the likeliest scenario, given Likud’s own move to the right. The other, more likely option, is a coalition of Likud with the Haredim and Labor. It would give Netanyahu industrial peace on the economic front (Labor is notoriously flexible in its partnerships with Likud). It would also make things harder for the settlements, but not as hard as in option one. The third option is more wishful thinking than a possibility: Likud with the historic NRP, plus some Haredim. It isn’t likely because Netanyahu has made up his mind to push for a 2-state solution in a more tangible way, and Bibi really dislikes Naftali Bennett, his former chief of staff. As always, we recommend intense prayer by one and all. About the Author: Yori Yanover has been a working journalist since age 17, before he enlisted and worked for Ba'Machane Nachal. Since then he has worked for Israel Shelanu, the US supplement of Yedioth, JCN18.com, USAJewish.com, Lubavitch News Service, Arutz 7 (as DJ on the high seas), and the Grand Street News. He has published Dancing and Crying, a colorful and intimate portrait of the last two years in the life of the late Lubavitch Rebbe, (in Hebrew), and two fun books in English: The Cabalist's Daughter: A Novel of Practical Messianic Redemption, and How Would God REALLY Vote. If you don't see your comment after publishing it, refresh the page.

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu spoke to the annual American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) policy conference by video Monday night, explaining, “I was hoping to speak to you in person, but unfortunately, I had to stay in Israel to do something a lot more enjoyable – putting together a coalition government. “What fun! “ Before getting down to issues of less fun, such as the Iranian nuclear threat, he advised his listeners not to adopt Israel’s political system. “It’s a lot easier finding common ground between two parties than it is to find common ground among ten parties,” according to the Prime Minister. “You think you have a difficulty working out your politics, believe me, this is harder.” After the pleasantries, Prime Minister Netanyahu said he is looking forward to welcoming President Barack Obama and that the two leaders have agreed to talk on three issues: “Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons; Second, the deteriorating situation in Syria; And third, the need to find a responsible way to advance the peace with the Palestinians.” He clarified Israel’s stand on territorial concessions to the Palestinian Authority without guarantees for security. “Israel withdrew from Lebanon; We withdrew from Gaza; We gave up territory. We got terror. We cannot allow that to happen a third time,” he said. “Israel is prepared for a meaningful compromise. But as Israel’s Prime Minister, I will never compromise on our security.”Jewish Press News Briefs About the Author: JewishPress.com brings you the latest in Jewish news from around the world. Stay up to date by following up on Facebook and Twitter. Do you have something noteworthy to report? Submit your news story to us here. If you don't see your comment after publishing it, refresh the page. Our comments section is intended for meaningful responses and debates in a civilized manner. We ask that you respect the fact that we are a religious Jewish website and avoid inappropriate language at all cost. If you promote any foreign religions, gods or messiahs, lies about Israel, anti-Semitism, or advocate violence (except against terrorists), your permission to comment may be revoked.

Dear Leaders of America, Please see below an urgent call to prayer. Please also prayerfully consider calling your networks to join in prayer and also watch the national webcast. Recently, I sent an E-Blast with Tony Perkins, President of Family Research Council, calling the nation to join an urgent national webcast prayer convocation (that is taking place Thursday, December 16th at 8:30PM EST) to ask God to restrain federally funded abortion in the healthcare system. We will be joined by key leaders, including U.S. Senators Sam Brownback of Kansas, Jim Demint of South Carolina, Michele Bachmann of Minnesota, Randy Forbes of Virginia, Bishop Harry Jackson, Dr. Jim Garlow, and many others. On that E-Blast I wrote: On Friday, December 4th, I was awakened early in the morning with a burden to pray, as I considered the consequences of abortion being mainstreamed into the national healthcare system if the senate healthcare bill is passed as it is right now. I turned to 1 Chronicles 21 where the destroying angel had come to the threshing floor of Ornan. God, in his heart of mercy, restrained the angel of death, saying, “Enough! Restrain your hand.” The angel of death still hovered between heaven and earth with its sword drawn. Even with God’s restraint, the verdict was still in the balance as to whether or not the death march would continue. An earth being, namely David, had to agree with God’s restraint through repentance, paying the full price, and offering up the atoning blood. When David went up to the threshing floor in repentance and erected the altar and offered the sacrifice, God heeded the prayers and the angel of death sheathed its sword. I believe we have come to the high water mark of the pro-abortion movement in America. At the same time, the nation is shifting dramatically pro-life. The angel of abortion and this plague of death has come to the Senate threshing floor and I believe that God is seeking to restrain it now, but intercessors on the earth must agree with him. But, at this critical moment, a last ditch plot has been hatched to forever seal abortion into the life and soul of our nation. Possibly in the next week the Senate will “choose life or death” as Senator Sam Brownback proclaimed on the Senate floor during the abortion debate. If this Bill is passed as is, abortion will proliferate in America because of its availability and low costs. Much of the pro-life efforts since 1973 and many of the legal victories restraining abortion will basically be annulled or turned back. There will be no recovery from this defeat until a major Senate shift takes place and 60 votes are garnered to reverse this legislation. This could take decades or may never take place in our lifetime. In the mean time, bloodguilt is heaped up and the lives of babies and mothers are killed and shattered. Brothers and sisters, I don’t know if we can comprehend the urgency and the implications of this moment. Many of our lives may not be immediately affected and therefore we can carry on as usual and be lulled into a false peace. It is only the oppressed and those about to die that demand a miracle. Maybe it is time we think generationally and not selfishly, and take responsibility for the life and times we have been thrust into. When the angel of death was at the doorstep of the Jews in Persia, Esther was brought to a defining moment in her life. She could choose silence and self-preservation or risk everything to be the hinge of history. The moment was so desperate that she called the whole Jewish nation to a no food and no water three day fast. Only imminent death creates such desperation. I actually feel we are at such a moment now. The last thing that I want to do is to call people to fast again. We get weary of these things. But, as I talked to my wife today I said, “I would hate to have been given a position of influence to call for desperate prayer, and not do it, because its Christmas time and its not expedient.” The spirit of Herod is lurking again at the time of the birth of Jesus. Therefore, we are calling for a three-day fast in whatever small sphere we have. These three days will be prior to the national webcast prayer convocation with FRCAction. To whoever's hearts are stirred, fast these three days Lord leads and dare to believe the God of Esther can give some Senators sleepless nights and shift this public policy of death in such a time as this. Pray that Senator Ben Nelson will stand like a stonewall for life. Pray for a “Democratic coalition for life” to stand firm. Pray for the influence of the Kingdom over Blanche Lincoln, Joe Lieberman, Susan Collins, and Olympia Snow. Lift up the victory of the cross over this whole Senate decision. Let us believe that the angel of death will sheath its sword in this moment in American history. Register for Webcast now at www.frcaction.org/prayercastregistration.

Chicago (Jul. 11) A preview of the pageant, “Epic of a Nation,” to be presented on Jewish day, July 29, at Soldiers’ Field in connection with the Century of Progress Exposition, was given last night in the cameo room of the Morrison Hotel before 2,000 spectators. Among the speakers were Jacob Siegel, chairman of the production Committee. Adolph J. Sabath, Congressman from Illinois, spoke.

The Temple Courts: Shake Us Up, LordMonday, March 30, 2015 "My house will be called a house of prayer for all nations” (Mark 11:17). Jesus would not put up with some things. We have seen over and over again his compassion for the hurting and his outreach to the forgotten. He cares for those the world forgets. But he has little patience with religious people who use religion to hurt others. In this case, Jesus was incensed that the moneychangers were doing it again. By “again” I mean that this is the second time Jesus cleansed the temple, the first time being in John 2, at the beginning of his public ministry. He cleanses the temple as he starts his ministry. He cleanses the temple as he closes his ministry. This is not by chance. He means to reveal the utter sterility of the Israelite system of worship. God always intended that his temple in Jerusalem should be a house of prayer for all nations. Even though it was uniquely the Jewish temple, all nations were invited to pray there. But no prayer could take place because the profiteers had completely taken over the outer courts. They made their money charging exorbitant fees to buy animals for worship and to exchange money into the special temple currency. Business was good, and that made Jesus angry. The fact that he cleansed the temple twice shows how deeply sin is embedded in the human heart. It also helps us see why Jesus had to die. It was not enough to take overturn the tables and drive the money-grubbers out. The very hearts of the people must be changed. For that to happen, Jesus must die. And in his death, he opened a way for every person to come directly to God. No longer will they have to travel to Jerusalem. Now every heart is a temple where Jesus reigns as Lord. Through him the weakest believer enters into the presence of God. From both cleansings we see how much our God yearns for fellowship with us. He loves us so much that he will overturn the tables and shake us up so that once again our hearts belong to him. What a Christ we serve! He loves us too much to leave us as we are. Shake us up, Lord Jesus. Overturn the tables of greed, sloth, pride and lust. Do whatever it takes so our hearts will be fully in tune with you. Amen.

OnStage Chief New York Theatre Critic / Outer Critics Circle In two thirty-five-minute acts, playwright James Inverne attempts to convince the audience that “music helped Israel find its cultural identity during its formative years.” In the first short act that takes place in 1926, Yehuda Sharett (Yuval Boim), a “kibbutznik from the Ukraine” and advocate for a Jewish homeland, takes a walk with Jascha Heifetz (Adam Green) and engages the virtuoso violinist in a conversation about making music and the importance of music to the identity of a people and country. After listening carefully, Heifetz suggests that Yehuda go to Berlin “where [the great composers] eat and drink and breathe music. And it’s full of Jewish musicians. German Jews there are living a great new dream.” During this first act, violinist Mariella Haubs struts across the stage counterpointing the conversation between Yehuda and Jascha. Although it is not clear why the onstage violinist is needed, her presence and playing are more pleasant than Mr. Inverne’s dialogue between the two men. In the second short act that takes place in 1946 in Yehuda’s house at Kibbutz Yagur, Yehuda’s brother Moshe Sharett (Erik Lochtfeld) visits to both console Yehuda and urge him to return to “making music.” Yehuda’s wife Tzivia, his sister Rivka and her daughter died in a car crash and Yehuda has not been able to recover from his overwhelming grief. The conversation quickly turns to thirty-five minutes of political rhetoric about the importance of the formation of the State of Israel. The play is no longer about authentic and realistic characters; rather, underdeveloped characters become conduits for a playwright’s polemic. Even though Moshe urges Yehuda to “find the music to bring you through this. Find once again the harmony that can make life make sense for you,” this compassion dissolves into a logos driven diatribe. Although “A Walk with Mr. Heifetz is more docudrama than drama, Mr. Inverne chooses not to document the complexities of the Jewish migration into Palestine under British rule, complexities which continue to exist in the present. Obviously, this was not the purpose of his play; however, this omission leaves the audience with only a partial understanding of the development of the State of Israel and the continued absence of a Palestinian State. That said, “A Walk with Mr. Heifetz” does not allow the actors or the director (Andrew Leynse) to exercise their craft within the parameters of a satisfying dramatic arc that provides a cathartic resolution. A WALK WITH MR. HEIFETZ The cast of “A Walk with Mr. Heifetz” features Yuval Boim, Adam Green, Mariella Haubs, and Erik Lochtefeld. The creative team for “A Walk with Mr. Heifetz” includes Wilson Chin (scenic design), Jen Caprio (costume design), John Froelich (lighting design), and M. L. Dogg (sound design). Michael V. Mendelson serves as production stage manager. Production photos by James Leynse. “A Walk with Mr. Heifetz” runs at Cherry Lane Theatre (38 Commerce Street) through Sunday March 4, 2018. For further information, including the performance schedule and to purchase tickets, visit http://primarystages.org/. Running time is 1 hour and 25 minutes including one 15-minute intermission. Photo: Yuval Boim, Mariella Haubs, and Adam Green in “A Walk with Mr. Heifetz.” Credit: James Leynse.

Photo credit: Arthur Moeller Tenor Nils Neubert was born and raised in Hamburg, Germany, and maintains active performing and teaching careers in the United States and abroad. Recent engagements include appearances with the American Classical Orchestra, Princeton Pro Musica, Portland Baroque Orchestra, Bach Vespers, TENET, Voices of Ascension, Musica Angelica Baroque Orchestra, Sonoma Bach, Yale Institute of Sacred Music, Academy of Sacred Drama, Sacred Music in a Sacred Space, Music Before 1800, Musical Oratory, Opera Grand Rapids, Polydora Ensemble, Brooklyn Art Song Society, Russian Chamber Art Society, The German Forum, Diderot String Quartet, The Colonials, the Danbury Concert Chorus and Orchestra, The Fairfield County Chorale and Orchestra, Master Singers of Westchester, Hudson Chorale, Choral Society of the Hamptons, Ampersand, Vari Musicisti, Coro Lirico, Barnard-Columbia Chorus, the Brooklyn New Music Collective, Rhymes with Opera, the GC Composers Alliance, and The James Joyce Society. He has also appeared with Trinity Wall Street, Musica Sacra, Sinfonia New York, Berkshire Choral Festival, Berkshire Bach Society, Schubert & Co., New York University Chorus, the Park Slope Singers, the Queens College Choral Society, the Locrian Chamber Players, Musica Reginae, Alfred Schnittke Akademie International, the United Jewish Appeal, and Amnesty International. In addition to having sung more than eighty of Bach’s cantatas, Nils Neubert is also in demand as a soloist in Bach’s large-scale oratorios, most recently as the Evangelist in the St. John Passion (Portland Baroque Orchestra), the St. Matthew Passion (Barnard-Columbia Chorus), and the Christmas Oratorio (Oratorio Society of the Hamptons; Queens College Choral Society), as well as tenor soloist in the St. John Passion (Sonoma Bach), Easter Oratorio (Bach Vespers), Magnificat (Bach Vespers; Fairfield County Chorale; Choral Society of the Hamptons), and the B Minor Mass (Portland Baroque Orechestra; Voices of Ascension; Berkshire Choral Festival; Master Singers of Westchester.) He has also been heard as a soloist in the works of C.P.E Bach (Magnificat), Buxtehude (Membra Jesu Nostri), Handel (The Messiah, Judas Maccabaeus), Haydn (The Creation, The Seasons, Theresienmesse, Cäcilienmesse, Nelsonmesse), Michael Haydn (Requiem), Mendelssohn (Elijah, Magnificat, Psalm 95), Monteverdi (Magnificat), Mozart (Requiem, Grand Mass in C Minor, Solemn Vespers), Orff (Carmina Burana) Puccini (Messa di Gloria), Respighi (Lauda per la natività del Signore) Schütz (St. Matthew Passion (Evangelist), Die Sieben Worte (Jesus)), Scarlatti (La Giuditta), and Stradella (La Susanna). On New Year’s Eve of 2014, he was the tenor soloist in the North American premiere of Heinichen’s Magnificat in F, with Bach Vespers as part of Trinity Wall Street’s Twelfth Night Festival, and he sang the role of the narrator (Testo) in the modern-day world premiere of Domenico Freschi’s 1705 oratorio Giuditta with the Academy of Sacred Drama in 2017. As a recitalist, he has sung nearly all of the major German song cycles, and has performed in a wide range of other languages, including full programs in French, Italian, English, and Russian. He frequently appears in concert together with his wife, pianist Yuri Kim. Nils Neubert has appeared in principal and supporting roles in operas including Cosi fan tutte (Ferrando), Die Zauberflöte (Tamino), Don Giovanni (Don Ottavio), Bastien und Bastienne (Bastien), Don Pasquale (Ernesto), La cenerentola (Ramiro), Pigmalion (Pigmalion), Die Fledermaus (Alfred), The Chocolate Soldier (Alexius), Four Saints in Three Acts (Sts. Chavez and Stephen), Das Rheingold (Mime), Amahl and the Night Visitors (Kaspar), Serse (Arsamene), Der Vampyr (Georg), My Last Duchess (Francesco, world premiere), and Steal A Pencil For Me (Rudi, world premiere), with such companies as Geneva Light Opera, Pocket Opera New York, Liederkranz Opera Theatre, Encompass New Opera Theater, Underworld Productions Opera Ensemble, New Jersey Association of Verismo Opera, Amore Opera, Opera Company of Brooklyn, and Cutting Edge Concerts. In 2014, Nils Neubert gave the world premiere of Lowell Liebermann’s Sentimental Songs, Op. 89, under the auspices of the Brooklyn Art Song Society. He also gave the U.S. premiere of Roger Steptoe’s Five Shakespeare Songs, together with the composer, under the auspices of the American Landmark Festivals in 2012. Other world- and American premieres, as well as collaborations with composers, include works by Jon Andrews, Gavin Bryars, Gerald Cohen, Robert Cuckson, Reiko Füting, Michael Grossmann, Jonathan Howard Katz, Ting-Chun Lin, Chris Malloy, Hiroki Mori, John Musto, Harry Stafylakis, Scott Wheeler, Theodore Wiprud, and Red Wierenga. Nils Neubert is a founding member of New York’s Polydora Ensemble, who specialize in 19th-21st century chamber repertoire for vocal quartet and piano. They have been presented by Opera Grand Rapids, the Brooklyn Art Song Society, at New York’s Consulate General to Germany and CUNY’s Elebash Hall, and gave the inaugural performance for Caritas Concerts, an initiative of Sacred Music in A Sacred Space at the Church of St. Ignatius Loyola. Polydora Ensemble premiered the quartet version of Scott Wheeler’s New Love Song Waltzes in 2015. A frequent guest at international music festivals, Nils Neubert has appeared at the Summit Music Festival, the International Academy of Music in Italy, the Beethoven Institute at Mannes, 4×4 Baroque Music Festival, Early Music Festival: NYC, Cello Plus Chamber Music Festival, and the Puigcerda and Burgos International Music Festivals in Spain. Nils Neubert was a First Prize winner in the 2010 Barry Alexander International Vocal Competition, and a winner in the 2009 Friday Woodmere Competition. He was also a grant recipient in the 2010 Gerda Lissner International Vocal Competition and has been a finalist in the Liederkranz Foundation Vocal Competition, the Oratorio Society of New York’s Lyndon Woodside Solo Competition, and the American Prize. He holds degrees from The Juilliard School (BM, Voice), Teachers College, Columbia University (MA, Music and Music Education), and a doctorate (DMA, Music Performance) from the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, and has been the recipient of numerous scholarships and awards, including a Risë Stevens Foundation Award, and a Lucrezia Bori Grant. Additional studies have included an apprenticeship at Bel Canto at Caramoor, masterclasses at the International Summer Academy at the Mozarteum in Salzburg, and language studies at the Scuola Leonardo Da Vinci in Florence, Italy. He is an alumnus of the Walnut Hill School for the Arts in Massachusetts, and the Boston University Tanglewood Institute. Nils Neubert teaches German diction at The Juilliard School, Manhattan School of Music, and Mannes School of Music, and serves as the resident German diction and repertoire coach at the Music Academy of the West. He also leads the German Vocal Repertoire Institute at the Summit Music Festival, and has presented workshops and masterclasses for Opera Grand Rapids, Boston Conservatory, the Universities of Chicago and Southern Maine, William Paterson University, and the Potomac Vocal Institute in Washington, D.C. He currently serves on the Board of Directors of NATS-NYC and the University Faculty Senate at The New School, and has previously served on the faculties at William Paterson University, Kaufman Music Center, and the Music Conservatory of Westchester. Nils has done German and Latin language preparation for soloists, opera ensembles, choirs, conductors, and record producers. His translations of musicological essays have been published by Henle, Bärenreiter, and the International Concertina Association. He has also been an invited reviewer for Music Education Research, and his own writings have been published in the Ralph Vaughan Williams Society Journal, among others. His dissertation on the song composer Max Kowalski was nominated for the Barry S. Brook Award. He has also created educational sound materials as a singer and speaker for Oxford University Press, the Berkshire Choral Festival, SingersBabel, and Sommer Diction. In addition to maintaining a private coaching studio in Manhattan, he teaches remotely via ToneRow.com Nils Neubert resides in New York City, and studies with Dr. Robert C. White, Jr.

City of Richmond v. J. A. Croson Co., 488 U.S. 469 (1989) The implementation of the Plan prevented J.A. Croson Co. from receiving a contract, since it was the only non-MBE to bid on it. Croson brought an action to have the Plan declared unconstitutional under the Fourteenth Amendment. The lower courts were divided on whether it was constitutional. - Sandra Day O'Connor (Author) - William Hubbs Rehnquist - Byron Raymond White - John Paul Stevens - Anthony M. Kennedy State and local governments can provide remedies for past discrimination only within their own jurisdiction, since the power of redressing nationwide discrimination is reserved to Congress. Strict scrutiny is the appropriate standard for evaluating the Plan because it creates distinctions based on race. The stated interest of providing a remedy for past discrimination in the construction industry is not compelling, based on evidence that shows little previous discrimination in this area. Moreover, the Plan was not a narrowly tailored means to achieve that goal, especially since it favors all minorities rather than only African-Americans. There are alternative ways for a city to accomplish this objective that would be race-neutral. Its rigid pursuit of racial balancing is unconstitutional, especially when there is no specific proof of past discrimination that the local government can identify. - Antonin Scalia (Author) Government discrimination should be inherently invalid, even if it is intended to provide a remedy for a past wrong. The single exception is when it is necessary to undo currently existing discriminatory practices through affirmative action. - Thurgood Marshall (Author) - William Joseph Brennan, Jr. - Harry Andrew Blackmun Courts previously have upheld affirmative action measures based on similar evidence to what the city provided in justifying its Plan. The record does show that the construction industry had been subject to discriminatory practices, and it is unclear how this case differs from Fullilove v. Klutznick (1980). Strict scrutiny should not be applied to review affirmative action measures, but only to measures that are actually racist. The majority seems to misguidedly believe that racial discrimination is no longer a problem that the government needs to address, when plenty of evidence suggests the opposite. - John Paul Stevens (Author) - Anthony M. Kennedy (Author) - Harry Andrew Blackmun (Author) - William Joseph Brennan, Jr. U.S. Supreme CourtCity of Richmond v. J. A. Croson Co., 488 U.S. 469 (1989) City of Richmond v. J. A. Croson Co. Argued October 5, 1988 Decided January 23, 1989 488 U.S. 469 Appellant city adopted a Minority Business Utilization Plan (Plan) requiring prime contractors awarded city construction contracts to subcontract at least 30% of the dollar amount of each contract to one or more "Minority Business Enterprises" (MBE's), which the Plan defined to include a business from anywhere in the country at least 51% of which is owned and controlled by black, Spanish-speaking, Oriental, Indian, Eskimo, or Aleut citizens. Although the Plan declared that it was "remedial" in nature, it was adopted after a public hearing at which no direct evidence was presented that the city had discriminated on the basis of race in letting contracts, or that its prime contractors had discriminated against minority subcontractors. The evidence that was introduced included: a statistical study indicating that, although the city's population was 50% black, only 0.67% of its prime construction contracts had been awarded to minority businesses in recent years; figures establishing that a variety of local contractors' associations had virtually no MBE members; the city's counsel's conclusion that the Plan was constitutional under Fullilove v. Klutznick, 448 U. S. 448; and the statements of Plan proponents indicating that there had been widespread racial discrimination in the local, state, and national construction industries. Pursuant to the Plan, the city adopted rules requiring individualized consideration of each bid or request for a waiver of the 30% set-aside, and providing that a waiver could be granted only upon proof that sufficient qualified MBE's were unavailable or unwilling to participate. After appellee construction company, the sole bidder on a city contract, was denied a waiver and lost its contract, it brought suit under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, alleging that the Plan was unconstitutional under the Fourteenth Amendment's Equal Protection Clause. The Federal District Court upheld the Plan in all respects, and the Court of Appeals affirmed, applying a test derived from the principal opinion in Fullilove, supra, which accorded great deference to Congress' findings of past societal discrimination in holding that a 10% minority set-aside for certain federal construction grants did not violate the equal protection component of the Fifth Amendment. However, on appellee's petition for certiorari in this case, this Court vacated and remanded for further consideration in light of its intervening decision in Wygant v. Jackson Board of Education, 476 U. S. 267, in which the plurality applied a strict scrutiny standard in holding that a race-based layoff program agreed to by a school board and the local teachers' union violated the Fourteenth Amendment's Equal Protection Clause. On remand, the Court of Appeals held that the city's Plan violated both prongs of strict scrutiny, in that (1) the Plan was not justified by a compelling governmental interest, since the record revealed no prior discrimination by the city itself in awarding contracts, and (2) the 30% set-aside was not narrowly tailored to accomplish a remedial purpose. Held: The judgment is affirmed. 822 F.2d 1355, affirmed. JUSTICE O'CONNOR delivered the opinion of the Court with respect to Parts I, III-B, and IV, concluding that: 1. The city has failed to demonstrate a compelling governmental interest justifying the Plan, since the factual predicate supporting the Plan does not establish the type of identified past discrimination in the city's construction industry that would authorize race-based relief under the Fourteenth Amendment's Equal Protection Clause. Pp. 488 U. S. 498-506. (a) A generalized assertion that there has been past discrimination in the entire construction industry cannot justify the use of an unyielding racial quota, since it provides no guidance for the city's legislative body to determine the precise scope of the injury it seeks to remedy, and would allow race-based decisionmaking essentially limitless in scope and duration. The city's argument that it is attempting to remedy various forms of past societal discrimination that are alleged to be responsible for the small number of minority entrepreneurs in the local contracting industry fails, since the city also lists a host of nonracial factors which would seem to face a member of any racial group seeking to establish a new business enterprise, such as deficiencies in working capital, inability to meet bonding requirements, unfamiliarity with bidding procedures, and disability caused by an inadequate track record. Pp. 488 U. S. 498-499. (b) None of the "facts" cited by the city or relied on by the District Court, singly or together, provide a basis for a prima facie case of a constitutional or statutory violation by anyone in the city's construction industry. The fact that the Plan declares itself to be "remedial" is insufficient, since the mere recitation of a "benign" or legitimate purpose for a racial classification is entitled to little or no weight. Similarly, the views of Plan proponents as to past and present discrimination in the industry are highly conclusory, and of little probative value. Reliance on the disparity between the number of prime contracts awarded to minority businesses and the city's minority population is also misplaced, since the proper statistical evaluation would compare the percentage of MBE's in the relevant market that are qualified to undertake city subcontracting work with the percentage of total city construction dollars that are presently awarded to minority subcontractors, neither of which is known to the city. The fact that MBE membership in local contractors' associations was extremely low is also not probative, absent some link to the number of MBE's eligible for membership, since there are numerous explanations for the dearth of minority participation, including past societal discrimination in education and economic opportunities, as well as both black and white career and entrepreneurial choices. Congress' finding in connection with the set-aside approved in Fullilove that there had been nationwide discrimination in the construction industry also has extremely limited probative value, since, by including a waiver procedure in the national program, Congress explicitly recognized that the scope of the problem would vary from market area to market area. In any event, Congress was acting pursuant to its unique enforcement powers under § 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment. Pp. 488 U. S. 499-504. (c) The "evidence" relied upon by JUSTICE MARSHALL's dissent -- the city's history of school desegregation and numerous congressional reports -- does little to define the scope of any injury to minority contractors in the city or the necessary remedy, and could justify a preference of any size or duration. Moreover, JUSTICE MARSHALL's suggestion that discrimination findings may be "shared" from jurisdiction to jurisdiction is unprecedented, and contrary to this Court's decisions. Pp. 488 U. S. 504-506. (d) Since there is absolutely no evidence of past discrimination against Spanish-speaking, Oriental, Indian, Eskimo, or Aleut persons in any aspect of the city's construction industry, the Plan's random inclusion of those groups strongly impugns the city's claim of remedial motivation. Pp. 488 U. S. 506. 2. The Plan is not narrowly tailored to remedy the effects of prior discrimination, since it entitles a black, Hispanic, or Oriental entrepreneur from anywhere in the country to an absolute preference over other citizens based solely on their race. Although many of the barriers to minority participation in the construction industry relied upon by the city to justify the Plan appear to be race neutral, there is no evidence that the city considered using alternative, race-neutral means to increase minority participation in city contracting. Moreover, the Plan's rigid 30% quota rests upon the completely unrealistic assumption that minorities will choose to enter construction in lockstep proportion to their representation in the local population. Unlike the program upheld in Fullilove, the Plan's waiver system focuses upon the availability of MBE's, and does not inquire whether the particular MBE seeking a racial preference has suffered from the effects of past discrimination by the city or prime contractors. Given the fact that the city must already consider bids and waivers on a case-by-case basis, the city's only interest in maintaining a quota system, rather than investigating the need for remedial action in particular cases, would seem to be simply administrative convenience, which, standing alone, cannot justify the use of a suspect classification under equal protection strict scrutiny. Pp. 488 U. S. 507-508. JUSTICE O'CONNOR, joined by THE CHIEF JUSTICE and JUSTICE WHITE, concluded in Part II that, if the city could identify past discrimination in the local construction industry with the particularity required by the Equal Protection Clause, it would have the power to adopt race-based legislation designed to eradicate the effects of that discrimination. The principal opinion in Fullilove cannot be read to relieve the city of the necessity of making the specific findings of discrimination required by the Clause, since the congressional finding of past discrimination relied on in that case was made pursuant to Congress' unique power under § 5 of the Amendment to enforce, and therefore to identify and redress violations of, the Amendment's provisions. Conversely, § 1 of the Amendment, which includes the Equal Protection Clause, is an explicit constraint upon the power of States and political subdivisions, which must undertake any remedial efforts in accordance with the dictates of that section. However, the Court of Appeals erred to the extent that it followed by rote the Wygant plurality's ruling that the Equal Protection Clause requires a showing of prior discrimination by the governmental unit involved, since that ruling was made in the context of a race-based policy that affected the particular public employer's own workforce, whereas this case involves a state entity which has specific state law authority to address discriminatory practices within local commerce under its jurisdiction. Pp. 488 U. S. 486-493. JUSTICE O'CONNOR, joined by THE CHIEF JUSTICE, JUSTICE WHITE, and JUSTICE KENNEDY, concluded in Parts III-A and V that: 1. Since the Plan denies certain citizens the opportunity to compete for a fixed percentage of public contracts based solely on their race, Wygant's strict scrutiny standard of review must be applied, which requires a firm evidentiary basis for concluding that the underrepresentation of minorities is a product of past discrimination. Application of that standard, which is not dependent on the race of those burdened or benefited by the racial classification, assures that the city is pursuing a remedial goal important enough to warrant use of a highly suspect tool, and that the means chosen "fit" this compelling goal so closely that there is little or no possibility that the motive for the classification was illegitimate racial prejudice or stereotype. The relaxed standard of review proposed by JUSTICE MARSHALL's dissent does not provide a means for determining that a racial classification is in fact "designed to further remedial goals," since it accepts the remedial nature of the classification before examination of the factual basis for the classification's enactment and the nexus between its scope and that factual basis. Even if the level of equal protection scrutiny could be said to vary according to the ability of different groups to defend their interests in the representative process, heightened scrutiny would still be appropriate in the circumstances of this case, since blacks comprise approximately 50% of the city's population and hold five of nine seats on the City Council, thereby raising the concern that the political majority may have acted to disadvantage a minority based on unwarranted assumptions or incomplete facts. Pp. 488 U. S. 493-498. 2. Even in the absence of evidence of discrimination in the local construction industry, the city has at its disposal an array of race-neutral devices to increase the accessibility of city contracting opportunities to small entrepreneurs of all races who have suffered the effects of past societal discrimination, including simplification of bidding procedures, relaxation of bonding requirements, training, financial aid, elimination or modification of formal barriers caused by bureaucratic inertia, and the prohibition of discrimination in the provision of credit or bonding by local suppliers and banks. Pp. 488 U. S. 509-511. JUSTICE STEVENS, although agreeing that the Plan cannot be justified as a remedy for past discrimination, concluded that the Fourteenth Amendment does not limit permissible racial classifications to those that remedy past wrongs, but requires that race-based governmental decisions be evaluated primarily by studying their probable impact on the future. Pp. 488 U. S. 511-518. (a) Disregarding the past history of racial injustice, there is not even an arguable basis for suggesting that the race of a subcontractor or contractor on city projects should have any relevance to his or her access to the market. Although race is not always irrelevant to sound governmental decisionmaking, the city makes no claim that the public interest in the efficient performance of its construction contracts will be served by granting a preference to minority business enterprises. Pp. 488 U. S. 512-513. (b) Legislative bodies such as the city council, which are primarily policymaking entities that promulgate rules to govern future conduct, raise valid constitutional concerns when they use the political process to punish or characterize past conduct of private citizens. Courts, on the other hand, are well equipped to identify past wrongdoers and to fashion remedies that will create the conditions that presumably would have existed had no wrong been committed, and should have the same broad discretion in racial discrimination cases that chancellors enjoy in other areas of the law to fashion remedies against persons who have been proved guilty of violations of law. Pp. 488 U. S. 513-514. (c) Rather than engaging in debate over the proper standard of review to apply in affirmative action litigation, it is more constructive to try to identify the characteristics of the advantaged and disadvantaged classes that may justify their disparate treatment. Here, instead of carefully identifying those characteristics, the city has merely engaged in the type of stereotypical analysis that is the hallmark of Equal Protection Clause violations. The class of persons benefited by the Plan is not limited to victims of past discrimination by white contractors in the city, but encompasses persons who have never been in business in the city, minority contractors who may have themselves been guilty of discrimination against other minority group members, and firms that have prospered notwithstanding discriminatory treatment. Similarly, although the Plan unquestionably disadvantages some white contractors who are guilty of past discrimination against blacks, it also punishes some who discriminated only before it was forbidden by law, and some who have never discriminated against anyone. Pp. 488 U. S. 514-517. JUSTICE KENNEDY concluded that the Fourteenth Amendment ought not to be interpreted to reduce a State's power to eradicate racial discrimination and its effects in both the public and private sectors, or its absolute duty to do so where those wrongs were caused intentionally by the State itself, except where there is a conflict with federal law or where, as here, a state remedy itself violates equal protection. Although a rule striking down all racial preferences which are not necessary remedies to victims of unlawful discrimination would serve important structural goals by eliminating the necessity for courts to pass on each such preference that is enacted, that rule would be a significant break with this Court's precedents that require a case-by-case test, and need not be adopted. Rather, it may be assumed that the principle of race neutrality found in the Equal Protection Clause will be vindicated by the less absolute strict scrutiny standard, the application of which demonstrates that the city's Plan is not a remedy, but is itself an unconstitutional preference. Pp. 488 U. S. 518-520. JUSTICE SCALIA, agreeing that strict scrutiny must be applied to all governmental racial classifications, concluded that: 1. The Fourteenth Amendment prohibits state and local governments from discriminating on the basis of race in order to undo the effects of past discrimination, except in one circumstance: where that is necessary to eliminate their own maintenance of a system of unlawful racial classification. Moreover, the State's remedial power in that instance extends no further than the scope of the constitutional violation, and does not encompass the continuing effects of a discriminatory system once the system itself has been eliminated. Pp. 488 U. S. 520-525. 2. The State remains free to undo the effects of past discrimination in permissible ways that do not involve classification by race -- for example, by according a contracting preference to small or new businesses or to actual victims of discrimination who can be identified. In the latter instance, the classification would not be based on race, but on the fact that the victims were wronged. Pp. 488 U. S. 526-528. O'CONNOR, J., announced the judgment of the Court and delivered the opinion of the Court with respect to Parts I, III-B, and IV, in which REHNQUIST, C.J., and WHITE, STEVENS, and KENNEDY, JJ., joined, an opinion with respect to Part II, in which REHNQUIST, C.J., and WHITE, J., joined, and an opinion with respect to Parts III-A and V, in which REHNQUIST, C.J., and WHITE and KENNEDY, JJ., joined. STEVENS, J., post, p. 488 U. S. 511, and KENNEDY, J., post, p. 488 U. S. 518, filed opinions concurring in part and concurring in the judgment. SCALIA, J., filed an opinion concurring in the judgment, post, p. 488 U. S. 520. MARSHALL, J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which BRENNAN and BLACKMUN, JJ., joined, post, p. 488 U. S. 528. BLACKMUN., J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which BRENNAN, J., joined, post, p. 488 U. S. 561. U.S. Supreme CourtCity of Richmond v. J. A. Croson Co., 488 U.S. 469 (1989) City of Richmond v. J. A. Croson Co. Argued October 5, 1988 Decided January 23, 1989 APPEAL FROM THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE FOURTH CIRCUIT Justice O'CONNOR announced the judgment of the Court and delivered the opinion of the Court with respect to Parts I, III-B, and IV, an opinion with respect to Part II, in which THE CHIEF JUSTICE and Justice WHITE join, and an opinion with respect to Parts III-A and V, in which THE CHIEF JUSTICE, Justice WHITE, and Justice KENNEDY join. In this case, we confront once again the tension between the Fourteenth Amendment's guarantee of equal treatment to all citizens, and the use of race-based measures to ameliorate the effects of past discrimination on the opportunities enjoyed by members of minority groups in our society. In Fullilove v. Klutznick, 448 U.S. 448, 100 S. Ct. 2758, 65 L. Ed. 2d 902 (1980), we held that a congressional program requiring that 10% of certain federal construction grants be awarded to minority contractors did not violate the equal protection principles embodied in the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment. Relying largely on our decision in Fullilove, some lower federal courts have applied a similar standard of review in assessing the constitutionality of state and local minority set-aside provisions under the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. See, e.g. South Florida Chapter, Associated General Contractors of America, Inc. v. Metropolitan Dade County, 723 F.2d 846 (CA11), cert. denied, 469 U.S. 871, 105 S. Ct. 220, 83 L. Ed. 2d 150 (1984); Ohio Contractors Assn. v. Keip, 713 F.2d 167 (CA6 1983). Since our decision two Terms ago in Wygant v. Jackson Board of Education, 476 U.S. 267, 106 S. Ct. 1842, 90 L. Ed. 2d 260 (1986), the lower federal courts have attempted to apply its standards in evaluating the constitutionality of state and local programs which allocate a portion of public contracting opportunities exclusively to minority-owned businesses. See, e.g., Michigan Road Builders Assn., Inc. v. Milliken, 834 F.2d 583 (CA6 1987), appeal docketed, No. 87-1860; Associated General Contractors of Cal. v. City and Cty. of San Francisco, 813 F.2d 922 (CA9 1987). We noted probable jurisdiction in this case to consider the applicability of our decision in Wygant to a minority set-aside program adopted by the city of Richmond, Virginia. * On April 11, 1983, the Richmond City Council adopted the Minority Business Utilization Plan (the Plan). The Plan required prime contractors to whom the city awarded construction contracts to subcontract at least 30% of the dollar amount of the contract to one or more Minority Business Enterprises (MBE's). Ordinance No. 83-69-59, codified in Richmond, Va., City Code, § 12-156(a) (1985). The 30% setaside did not apply to city contracts awarded to minority-owned prime contractors. Ibid. The Plan defined an MBE as "[a] business at least fifty-one (51) percent of which is owned and controlled . . . by minority group members." § 12-23, p. 941. "Minority group members" were defined as "[c]itizens of the United States who are Blacks, Spanish-speaking, Orientals, Indians, Eskimos, or Aleuts." Ibid. There was no geographic limit to the Plan; an otherwise qualified MBE from anywhere in the United States could avail itself of the 30% set-aside. The Plan declared that it was "remedial" in nature, and enacted "for the purpose of promoting wider participation by minority business enterprises in the construction of public projects." § 12-158(a). The Plan expired on June 30, 1988, and was in effect for approximately five years. Ibid.1 The Plan authorized the Director of the Department of General Services to promulgate rules which "shall allow waivers in those individual situations where a contractor can prove to the satisfaction of the director that the requirements herein cannot be achieved." § 12-157. To this end, the Director promulgated Contract Clauses, Minority Business Utilization Plan (Contract Clauses). Paragraph D of these rules provided: "No partial or complete waiver of the foregoing [30% set-aside] requirement shall be granted by the city other than in exceptional circumstances. To justify a waiver, it must be shown that every feasible attempt has been made to comply, and it must be demonstrated that sufficient, relevant, qualified Minority Business Enterprises . . . are unavailable or unwilling to participate in the contract to enable meeting the 30% MBE goal." ¶ D, Record, Exh. 24, p. 1; see J.A. Croson Co. v. Richmond, 779 F.2d 181, 197 (CA4 1985) (Croson I). The Director also promulgated "purchasing procedures" to be followed in the letting of city contracts in accordance with the Plan. Id., at 194. Bidders on city construction contracts were provided with a "Minority Business Utilization Plan Commitment Form." Record, Exh. 24, p. 3. Within 10 days of the opening of the bids, the lowest otherwise responsive bidder was required to submit a commitment form naming the MBE's to be used on the contract and the percentage of the total contract price awarded to the minority firm or firms. The prime contractor's commitment form or request for a waiver of the 30% set-aside was then referred to the city Human Relations Commission (HRC). The HRC verified that the MBE's named in the commitment form were in fact minority owned, and then either approved the commitment form or made a recommendation regarding the prime contractor's request for a partial or complete waiver of the 30% set-aside. Croson I, 779 F.2d, at 196. The Director of General Services made the final determination on compliance with the set-aside provisions or the propriety of granting a waiver. Ibid. His discretion in this regard appears to have been plenary. There was no direct administrative appeal from the Director's denial of a waiver. Once a contract had been awarded to another firm a bidder denied an award for failure to comply with the MBE requirements had a general right of protest under Richmond procurement policies. Richmond, Va., City Code, § 12-126(a) (1985). The Plan was adopted by the Richmond City Council after a public hearing. App. 9-50. Seven members of the public spoke to the merits of the ordinance: five were in opposition, two in favor. Proponents of the set-aside provision relied on a study which indicated that, while the general population of Richmond was 50% black, only 0.67% of the city's prime construction contracts had been awarded to minority businesses in the 5-year period from 1978 to 1983. It was also established that a variety of contractors' associations, whose representatives appeared in opposition to the ordinance, had virtually no minority businesses within their membership. See Brief for Appellant 22 (chart listing minority membership of six local construction industry associations). The city's legal counsel indicated his view that the ordinance was constitutional under this Court's decision in Fullilove v. Klutznick, 448 U.S. 448, 100 S. Ct. 2758, 65 L. Ed. 2d 902 (1980). App. 24. Councilperson Marsh, a proponent of the ordinance, made the following statement: "There is some information, however, that I want to make sure that we put in the record. I have been practicing law in this community since 1961, and I am familiar with the practices in the construction industry in this area, in the State, and around the nation. And I can say without equivocation, that the general conduct of the construction industry in this area, and the State, and around the nation, is one in which race discrimination and exclusion on the basis of race is widespread." Id., at 41. There was no direct evidence of race discrimination on the part of the city in letting contracts or any evidence that the city's prime contractors had discriminated against minority-owned subcontractors. See Id., at 42 (statement of Councilperson Kemp) ("[The public witnesses] indicated that the minority contractors were just not available. There wasn't a one that gave any indication that a minority contractor would not have an opportunity, if he were available"). Opponents of the ordinance questioned both its wisdom and its legality. They argued that a disparity between minorities in the population of Richmond and the number of prime contracts awarded to MBE's had little probative value in establishing discrimination in the construction industry. Id., at 30 (statement of Councilperson Wake). Representatives of various contractors' associations questioned whether there were enough MBE's in the Richmond area to satisfy the 30% set-aside requirement. Id., at 32 (statement of Mr. Beck); id., at 33 (statement of Mr. Singer); id., at 35-36 (statement of Mr. Murphy). Mr. Murphy noted that only 4.7% of all construction firms in the United States were minority owned and that 41% of these were located in California, New York, Illinois, Florida, and Hawaii. He predicted that the ordinance would thus lead to a windfall for the few minority firms in Richmond. Ibid. Councilperson Gillespie indicated his concern that many local labor jobs, held by both blacks and whites, would be lost because the ordinance put no geographic limit on the MBE's eligible for the 30% set-aside. Id., at 44. Some of the representatives of the local contractor's organizations indicated that they did not discriminate on the basis of race and were in fact actively seeking out minority members. Id., at 38 (statement of Mr. Shuman) ("The company I work for belonged to all these [contractors'] organizations. Nobody that I know of, black, Puerto Rican or any minority, has ever been turned down. They're actually sought after to join, to become part of us"); see also id., at 20 (statement of Mr. Watts). Councilperson Gillespie expressed his concern about the legality of the Plan, and asked that a vote be delayed pending consultation with outside counsel. His suggestion was rejected, and the ordinance was enacted by a vote of six to two, with Councilperson Gillespie abstaining. Id., at 49. On September 6, 1983, the city of Richmond issued an invitation to bid on a project for the provision and installation of certain plumbing fixtures at the city jail. On September 30, 1983, Eugene Bonn, the regional manager of J.A. Croson Company (Croson), a mechanical plumbing and heating contractor, received the bid forms. The project involved the installation of stainless steel urinals and water closets in the city jail. Products of either of two manufacturers were specified, Acorn Engineering Company (Acorn) or Bradley Manufacturing Company (Bradley). Bonn determined that to meet the 30% set-aside requirement, a minority contractor would have to supply the fixtures. The provision of the fixtures amounted to 75% of the total contract price. On September 30, Bonn contacted five or six MBE's that were potential suppliers of the fixtures, after contacting three local and state agencies that maintained lists of MBE's. No MBE expressed interest in the project or tendered a quote. On October 12, 1983, the day the bids were due, Bonn again telephoned a group of MBE's. This time, Melvin Brown, president of Continental Metal Hose (Continental), a local MBE, indicated that he wished to participate in the project. Brown subsequently contacted two sources of the specified fixtures in order to obtain a price quotation. One supplier, Ferguson Plumbing Supply, which is not an MBE, had already made a quotation directly to Croson, and refused to quote the same fixtures to Continental. Brown also contacted an agent of Bradley, one of the two manufacturers of the specified fixtures. The agent was not familiar with Brown or Continental, and indicated that a credit check was required which would take at least 30 days to complete. On October 13, 1983, the sealed bids were opened. Croson turned out to be the only bidder, with a bid of $126,530. Brown and Bonn met personally at the bid opening, and Brown informed Bonn that his difficulty in obtaining credit approval had hindered his submission of a bid. By October 19, 1983, Croson had still not received a bid from Continental. On that date it submitted a request for a waiver of the 30% set-aside. Croson's waiver request indicated that Continental was "unqualified" and that the other MBE's contacted had been unresponsive or unable to quote. Upon learning of Croson's waiver request, Brown contacted an agent of Acorn, the other fixture manufacturer specified by the city. Based upon his discussions with Acorn, Brown subsequently submitted a bid on the fixtures to Croson. Continental's bid was $6,183.29 higher than the price Croson had included for the fixtures in its bid to the city. This constituted a 7% increase over the market price for the fixtures. With added bonding and insurance, using Continental would have raised the cost of the project by $7,663.16. On the same day that Brown contacted Acorn, he also called city procurement officials and told them that Continental, an MBE, could supply the fixtures specified in the city jail contract. On November 2, 1983, the city denied Croson's waiver request, indicating that Croson had 10 days to submit an MBE Utilization Commitment Form, and warned that failure to do so could result in its bid being considered unresponsive. Croson wrote the city on November 8, 1983. In the letter, Bonn indicated that Continental was not an authorized supplier for either Acorn or Bradley fixtures. He also noted that Acorn's quotation to Brown was subject to credit approval and in any case was substantially higher than any other quotation Croson had received. Finally, Bonn noted that Continental's bid had been submitted some 21 days after the prime bids were due. In a second letter, Croson laid out the additional costs that using Continental to supply the fixtures would entail, and asked that it be allowed to raise the overall contract price accordingly. The city denied both Croson's request for a waiver and its suggestion that the contract price be raised. The city informed Croson that it had decided to rebid the project. On December 9, 1983, counsel for Croson wrote the city asking for a review of the waiver denial. The city's attorney responded that the city had elected to rebid the project, and that there is no appeal of such a decision. Shortly thereafter Croson brought this action under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 in the Federal District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, arguing that the Richmond ordinance was unconstitutional on its face and as applied in this case. The District Court upheld the Plan in all respects. See Supplemental App. to Juris.Statement 112-232 (Supp.App.). In its original opinion, a divided panel of the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed. Croson I, 779 F.2d 181 (1985). Both courts applied a test derived from "the common concerns articulated by the various Supreme Court opinions" in Fullilove v. Klutznick, 448 U.S. 448, 100 S. Ct. 2758, 65 L. Ed. 2d 902 (1980), and University of California Regents v. Bakke, 438 U.S. 265, 98 S. Ct. 2733, 57 L. Ed. 2d 750 (1978). See Croson I, supra, at 188. Relying on the great deference which this Court accorded Congress' findings of past discrimination in Fullilove, the panel majority indicated its view that the same standard should be applied to the Richmond City Council, stating: "Unlike the review we make of a lower court decision, our task is not to determine if there was sufficient evidence to sustain the council majority's position in any traditional sense of weighing the evidence. Rather, it is to determine whether 'the legislative history . . . demonstrates that [the council] reasonably concluded that . . . private and governmental discrimination had contributed to the negligible percentage of public contracts awarded minority contractors.'" 779 F.2d, at 190 (quoting Fullilove, supra, 448 U.S., at 503, 100 S.Ct., at 2787 (Powell, J., concurring)). The majority found that national findings of discrimination in the construction industry, when considered in conjunction with the statistical study concerning the awarding of prime contracts in Richmond, rendered the city council's conclusion that low minority participation in city contracts was due to past discrimination "reasonable." Croson I, 779 F.2d, at 190, and n. 12. The panel opinion then turned to the second part of its "synthesized Fullilove" test, examining whether the racial quota was "narrowly tailored to the legislative goals of the Plan." Id., at 190. First, the court upheld the 30% set-aside figure, by comparing it not to the number of MBE's in Richmond, but rather to the percentage of minority persons in the city's population. Id., at 191. The panel held that to remedy the effects of past discrimination, "a set-aside program for a period of five years obviously must require more than a 0.67% set-aside to encourage minorities to enter the contracting industry and to allow existing minority contractors to grow." Ibid. Thus, in the court's view the 30% figure was "reasonable in light of the undisputed fact that minorities constitute 50% of the population of Richmond." Ibid. Croson sought certiorari from this Court. We granted the writ, vacated the opinion of the Court of Appeals, and remanded the case for further consideration in light of our intervening decision in Wygant v. Jackson Board of Education, 476 U.S. 267, 106 S. Ct. 1842, 90 L. Ed. 2d 260 (1986). See 478 U.S. 1016, 106 S. Ct. 3327, 92 L. Ed. 2d 733 (1986). On remand, a divided panel of the Court of Appeals struck down the Richmond set-aside program as violating both prongs of strict scrutiny under the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. J.A. Croson Co. v. Richmond, 822 F.2d 1355 (CA4 1987) (Croson II). The majority found that the "core" of this Court's holding in Wygant was that, "[t]o show that a plan is justified by a compelling governmental interest, a municipality that wishes to employ a racial preference cannot rest on broad-brush assumptions of historical discrimination." 822 F.2d, at 1357. As the court read this requirement, "[f]indings of societal discrimination will not suffice; the findings must concern 'prior discrimination by the government unit involved.' " Id., at 1358 (quoting Wygant, supra, 476 U.S., at 274, 106 S.Ct., at 1847) (emphasis in original). In this case, the debate at the city council meeting "revealed no record of prior discrimination by the city in awarding public contracts. . . ." Croson II, supra, at 1358. Moreover, the statistics comparing the minority population of Richmond to the percentage of prime contracts awarded to minority firms had little or no probative value in establishing prior discrimination in the relevant market, and actually suggested "more of a political than a remedial basis for the racial preference." 822 F.2d, at 1359. The court concluded that, "[i]f this plan is supported by a compelling governmental interest, so is every other plan that has been enacted in the past or that will be enacted in the future." Id., at 1360. The Court of Appeals went on to hold that even if the city had demonstrated a compelling interest in the use of a race-based quota, the 30% set-aside was not narrowly tailored to accomplish a remedial purpose. The court found that the 30% figure was "chosen arbitrarily" and was not tied to the number of minority subcontractors in Richmond or to any other relevant number. Ibid. The dissenting judge argued that the majority had "misconstrue[d] and misapplie[d]" our decision in Wygant. 822 F.2d, at 1362. We noted probable jurisdiction of the city's appeal, 484 U.S. 1058, 108 S. Ct. 1010, 98 L. Ed. 2d 976 (1988), and we now affirm the judgment. The parties and their supporting amici fight an initial battle over the scope of the city's power to adopt legislation designed to address the effects of past discrimination. Relying on our decision in Wygant, appellee argues that the city must limit any race-based remedial efforts to eradicating the effects of its own prior discrimination. This is essentially the position taken by the Court of Appeals below. Appellant argues that our decision in Fullilove is controlling, and that as a result the city of Richmond enjoys sweeping legislative power to define and attack the effects of prior discrimination in its local construction industry. We find that neither of these two rather stark alternatives can withstand analysis. In Fullilove, we upheld the minority set-aside contained in § 103(f)(2) of the Public Works Employment Act of 1977, Pub.L. 95-28, 91 Stat. 116, 42 U.S.C. § 6701 et seq. (Act) against a challenge based on the equal protection component of the Due Process Clause. The Act authorized a $4 billion appropriation for federal grants to state and local governments for use in public works projects. The primary purpose of the Act was to give the national economy a quick boost in a recessionary period; funds had to be committed to state or local grantees by September 30, 1977. The Act also contained the following requirement: " 'Except to the extent the Secretary determines otherwise, no grant shall be made under this Act . . . unless the applicant gives satisfactory assurance to the Secretary that at least 10 per centum of the amount of each grant shall be expended for minority business enterprises.' " Fullilove, 448 U.S., at 454, 100 S.Ct., at 2762 (quoting 91 Stat. 116, 42 U.S.C. § 6705(f)(2)). MBE's were defined as businesses effectively controlled by "citizens of the United States who are Negroes, Spanish-speaking, Orientals, Indians, Eskimos, and Aleuts." Ibid. The principal opinion in Fullilove, written by Chief Justice Burger, did not employ "strict scrutiny" or any other traditional standard of equal protection review. The Chief Justice noted at the outset that although racial classifications call for close examination, the Court was at the same time "bound to approach [its] task with appropriate deference to the Congress, a co-equal branch charged by the Constitution with the power to 'provide for the . . . general Welfare of the United States' and 'to enforce by appropriate legislation,' the equal protection guarantees of the Fourteenth Amendment." 448 U.S., at 472, 100 S.Ct., at 2771. The principal opinion asked two questions: first, were the objectives of the legislation within the power of Congress? Second, was the limited use of racial and ethnic criteria a permissible means for Congress to carry out its objectives within the constraints of the Due Process Clause? Id., at 473, 100 S.Ct., at 2772. On the issue of congressional power, the Chief Justice found that Congress' commerce power was sufficiently broad to allow it to reach the practices of prime contractors on federally funded local construction projects. Id., at 475-476, 100 S.Ct., at 2773-2774. Congress could mandate state and local government compliance with the set-aside program under its § 5 power to enforce the Fourteenth Amendment. Id., at 476 100 S.Ct., at 2773 (citing Katzenbach v. Morgan, 384 U.S. 641, 651, 86 S. Ct. 1717, 1723, 16 L. Ed. 2d 828 (1966)). The Chief Justice next turned to the constraints on Congress' power to employ race-conscious remedial relief. His opinion stressed two factors in upholding the MBE set-aside. First was the unique remedial powers of Congress under § 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment: "Here we deal . . . not with the limited remedial powers of a federal court, for example, but with the broad remedial powers of Congress. It is fundamental that in no organ of government, state or federal, does there repose a more comprehensive remedial power than in the Congress, expressly charged by the Constitution with competence and authority to enforce equal protection guarantees." 448 U.S., at 483, 100 S.Ct., at 2777 (principal opinion) (emphasis added). Because of these unique powers, the Chief Justice concluded that "Congress not only may induce voluntary action to assure compliance with existing federal statutory or constitutional antidiscrimination provisions, but also, where Congress has authority to declare certain conduct unlawful, it may, as here, authorize and induce state action to avoid such conduct." Id., at 483-484, 100 S.Ct., at 2777 (emphasis added). In reviewing the legislative history behind the Act, the principal opinion focused on the evidence before Congress that a nationwide history of past discrimination had reduced minority participation in federal construction grants. Id., at 458-467, 100 S.Ct., at 2764-2769. The Chief Justice also noted that Congress drew on its experience under § 8(a) of the Small Business Act of 1953, which had extended aid to minority businesses. Id., at 463-467, 100 S.Ct., at 2767-2769. The Chief Justice concluded that "Congress had abundant historical basis from which it could conclude that traditional procurement practices, when applied to minority businesses, could perpetuate the effects of prior discrimination." Id., at 478, 100 S.Ct., at 2775. The second factor emphasized by the principal opinion in Fullilove was the flexible nature of the 10% set-aside. Two "congressional assumptions" underlay the MBE program: first, that the effects of past discrimination had impaired the competitive position of minority businesses, and second, that "adjustment for the effects of past discrimination" would assure that at least 10% of the funds from the federal grant program would flow to minority businesses. The Chief Justice noted that both of these "assumptions" could be "rebutted" by a grantee seeking a waiver of the 10% requirement. Id., at 487-488, 100 S.Ct., at 2779-2780. Thus a waiver could be sought where minority businesses were not available to fill the 10% requirement or, more importantly, where an MBE attempted "to exploit the remedial aspects of the program by charging an unreasonable price, i.e., a price not attributable to the present effects of prior discrimination." Id., at 488, 100 S.Ct., at 2780. The Chief Justice indicated that without this fine tuning to remedial purpose, the statute would not have "pass[ed] muster." Id., at 487, 100 S.Ct., at 2779. In his concurring opinion, Justice Powell relied on the legislative history adduced by the principal opinion in finding that "Congress reasonably concluded that private and governmental discrimination had contributed to the negligible percentage of public contracts awarded minority contractors." Id., at 503, 100 S.Ct., at 2787. Justice Powell also found that the means chosen by Congress, particularly in light of the flexible waiver provisions, were "reasonably necessary" to address the problem identified. Id., at 514-515, 100 S.Ct., at 2793-2794. Justice Powell made it clear that other governmental entities might have to show more than Congress before undertaking race-conscious measures: "The degree of specificity required in the findings of discrimination and the breadth of discretion in the choice of remedies may vary with the nature and authority of the governmental body." Id., at 515-516, n. 14, 100 S.Ct., at 2794, n. 14. Appellant and its supporting amici rely heavily on Fullilove for the proposition that a city council, like Congress, need not make specific findings of discrimination to engage in race-conscious relief. Thus, appellant argues "[i]t would be a perversion of federalism to hold that the federal government has a compelling interest in remedying the effects of racial discrimination in its own public works program, but a city government does not." Brief for Appellant 32 (footnote omitted). What appellant ignores is that Congress, unlike any State or political subdivision, has a specific constitutional mandate to enforce the dictates of the Fourteenth Amendment. The power to "enforce" may at times also include the power to define situations which Congress determines threaten principles of equality and to adopt prophylactic rules to deal with those situations. See Katzenbach v. Morgan, 384 U.S., at 651, 86 S.Ct., at 1723 ("Correctly viewed, § 5 is a positive grant of legislative power authorizing Congress to exercise its discretion in determining whether and what legislation is needed to secure the guarantees of the Fourteenth Amendment"). See also South Carolina v. Katzenbach, 383 U.S. 301, 326, 86 S. Ct. 803, 817, 15 L. Ed. 2d 769 (1966) (similar interpretation of congressional power under § 2 of the Fifteenth Amendment). The Civil War Amendments themselves worked a dramatic change in the balance between congressional and state power over matters of race. Speaking of the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments in Ex parte Virginia, 100 U.S. 339, 345, 25 L. Ed. 676 (1880), the Court stated: "They were intended to be, what they really are, limitations of the powers of the States and enlargements of the power of Congress." That Congress may identify and redress the effects of society-wide discrimination does not mean that, a fortiori, the States and their political subdivisions are free to decide that such remedies are appropriate. Section 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment is an explicit constraint on state power, and the States must undertake any remedial efforts in accordance with that provision. To hold otherwise would be to cede control over the content of the Equal Protection Clause to the 50 state legislatures and their myriad political subdivisions. The mere recitation of a benign or compensatory purpose for the use of a racial classification would essentially entitle the States to exercise the full power of Congress under § 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment and insulate any racial classification from judicial scrutiny under § 1. We believe that such a result would be contrary to the intentions of the Framers of the Fourteenth Amendment, who desired to place clear limits on the States' use of race as a criterion for legislative action, and to have the federal courts enforce those limitations. See Associated General Contractors of Cal. v. City and Cty. of San Francisco, 813 F.2d, at 929 (Kozinski, J.) ("The city is not just like the federal government with regard to the findings it must make to justify race-conscious remedial action"); see also Days, Fullilove, 96 Yale L.J. 453, 474 (1987) (hereinafter Days) ("Fullilove clearly focused on the constitutionality of a congressionally mandated set-aside program") (emphasis in original); Bohrer, Bakke, Weber, and Fullilove: Benign Discrimination and Congressional Power to Enforce the Fourteenth Amendment, 56 Ind. L.J. 473, 512-513 (1981) ("Congress may authorize, pursuant to section 5, state action that would be foreclosed to the states acting alone"). We do not, as Justice MARSHALL's dissent suggests, see post, at 557-560, find in § 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment some form of federal pre-emption in matters of race. We simply note what should be apparent to all—§ 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment stemmed from a distrust of state legislative enactments based on race; § 5 is, as the dissent notes, " 'a positive grant of legislative power' " to Congress. Post, at 560, quoting Katzenbach v. Morgan, supra, 384 U.S., at 651, 86 S.Ct., at 1723 (emphasis in dissent). Thus, our treatment of an exercise of congressional power in Fullilove cannot be dispositive here. In the Slaughter-House Cases, 16 Wall. 36, 21 L. Ed. 394 (1873), cited by the dissent, post, at 560, the Court noted that the Civil War Amendments granted "additional powers to the Federal government," and laid "additional restraints upon those of the States." 16 Wall., at 68. It would seem equally clear, however, that a state or local subdivision (if delegated the authority from the State) has the authority to eradicate the effects of private discrimination within its own legislative jurisdiction.2 This authority must, of course, be exercised within the constraints of § 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment. Our decision in Wygant is not to the contrary. Wygant addressed the constitutionality of the use of racial quotas by local school authorities pursuant to an agreement reached with the local teachers' union. It was in the context of addressing the school board's power to adopt a race-based layoff program affecting its own work force that the Wygant plurality indicated that the Equal Protection Clause required "some showing of prior discrimination by the governmental unit involved." Wygant, 476 U.S., at 274, 106 S.Ct., at 1847. As a matter of state law, the city of Richmond has legislative authority over its procurement policies, and can use its spending powers to remedy private discrimination, if it identifies that discrimination with the particularity required by the Fourteenth Amendment. To this extent, on the question of the city's competence, the Court of Appeals erred in following Wygant by rote in a case involving a state entity which has state-law authority to address discriminatory practices within local commerce under its jurisdiction. Thus, if the city could show that it had essentially become a "passive participant" in a system of racial exclusion practiced by elements of the local construction industry, we think it clear that the city could take affirmative steps to dismantle such a system. It is beyond dispute that any public entity, state or federal, has a compelling interest in assuring that public dollars, drawn from the tax contributions of all citizens, do not serve to finance the evil of private prejudice. Cf. Norwood v. Harrison, 413 U.S. 455, 465, 93 S. Ct. 2804, 2810, 37 L. Ed. 2d 723 (1973) ("Racial discrimination in state-operated schools is barred by the Constitution and [i]t is also axiomatic that a state may not induce, encourage or promote private persons to accomplish what it is constitutionally forbidden to accomplish") (citation and internal quotations omitted). The Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment provides that "[n]o State shall . . . deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws." (Emphasis added.) As this Court has noted in the past, the "rights created by the first section of the Fourteenth Amendment are, by its terms, guaranteed to the individual. The rights established are personal rights." Shelley v. Kraemer, 334 U.S. 1, 22, 68 S. Ct. 836, 846, 92 L. Ed. 1161 (1948). The Richmond Plan denies certain citizens the opportunity to compete for a fixed percentage of public contracts based solely upon their race. To whatever racial group these citizens belong, their "personal rights" to be treated with equal dignity and respect are implicated by a rigid rule erecting race as the sole criterion in an aspect of public decisionmaking. Absent searching judicial inquiry into the justification for such race-based measures, there is simply no way of determining what classifications are "benign" or "remedial" and what classifications are in fact motivated by illegitimate notions of racial inferiority or simple racial politics. Indeed, the purpose of strict scrutiny is to "smoke out" illegitimate uses of race by assuring that the legislative body is pursuing a goal important enough to warrant use of a highly suspect tool. The test also ensures that the means chosen "fit" this compelling goal so closely that there is little or no possibility that the motive for the classification was illegitimate racial prejudice or stereotype. Classifications based on race carry a danger of stigmatic harm. Unless they are strictly reserved for remedial settings, they may in fact promote notions of racial inferiority and lead to a politics of racial hostility. See University of California Regents v. Bakke, 438 U.S., at 298, 98 S.Ct., at 2752 (opinion of Powell, J.) ("[P]referential programs may only reinforce common stereotypes holding that certain groups are unable to achieve success without special protection based on a factor having no relation to individual worth"). We thus reaffirm the view expressed by the plurality in Wygant that the standard of review under the Equal Protection Clause is not dependent on the race of those burdened or benefited by a particular classification. Wygant, 476 U.S., at 279-280, 106 S.Ct., at 1849-1850; id., at 285-286, 106 S.Ct., at 1852-1853 (O'CONNOR, J., concurring in part and concurring in judgment). See also San Antonio Independent School Dist. v. Rodriguez, 411 U.S. 1, 105, 93 S. Ct. 1278, 1333, 36 L. Ed. 2d 16 (1973) (MARSHALL, J., dissenting) ("The highly suspect nature of classifications based on race, nationality, or alienage is well established") (footnotes omitted). Our continued adherence to the standard of review employed in Wygant does not, as Justice MARSHALL's dissent suggests, see post, at 552, indicate that we view "racial discrimination as largely a phenomenon of the past" or that "government bodies need no longer preoccupy themselves with rectifying racial injustice." As we indicate, see infra, at 509-510, States and their local subdivisions have many legislative weapons at their disposal both to punish and prevent present discrimination and to remove arbitrary barriers to minority advancement. Rather, our interpretation of § 1 stems from our agreement with the view expressed by Justice Powell in Bakke that "[t]he guarantee of equal protection cannot mean one thing when applied to one individual and something else when applied to a person of another color." Bakke, supra, 438 U.S., at 289-290, 98 S.Ct., at 2748. Under the standard proposed by Justice MARSHALL's dissent, "race-conscious classifications designed to further remedial goals," post, at 552, are forthwith subject to a relaxed standard of review. How the dissent arrives at the legal conclusion that a racial classification is "designed to further remedial goals," without first engaging in an examination of the factual basis for its enactment and the nexus between its scope and that factual basis, we are not told. However, once the "remedial" conclusion is reached, the dissent's standard is singularly deferential, and bears little resemblance to the close examination of legislative purpose we have engaged in when reviewing classifications based either on race or gender. See Weinberger v. Wiesenfeld, 420 U.S. 636, 648, 95 S. Ct. 1225, 1233, 43 L. Ed. 2d 514 (1975) ("[T]he mere recitation of a benign, compensatory purpose is not an automatic shield which protects against any inquiry into the actual purposes underlying a statutory scheme"). The dissent's watered-down version of equal protection review effectively assures that race will always be relevant in American life, and that the "ultimate goal" of "eliminat[ing] entirely from governmental decisionmaking such irrelevant factors as a human being's race," Wygant, supra, 476 U.S., at 320, 106 S.Ct., at 1871 (STEVENS, J., dissenting) (footnote omitted), will never be achieved. Even were we to accept a reading of the guarantee of equal protection under which the level of scrutiny varies according to the ability of different groups to defend their interests in the representative process, heightened scrutiny would still be appropriate in the circumstances of this case. One of the central arguments for applying a less exacting standard to "benign" racial classifications is that such measures essentially involve a choice made by dominant racial groups to disadvantage themselves. If one aspect of the judiciary's role under the Equal Protection Clause is to protect "discrete and insular minorities" from majoritarian prejudice or indifference, see United States v. Carolene Products Co., 304 U.S. 144, 153, n. 4, 58 S. Ct. 778, 784, n. 4, 82 L. Ed. 1234 (1938), some maintain that these concerns are not implicated when the "white majority" places burdens upon itself. See J. Ely, Democracy and Distrust 170 (1980). In this case, blacks constitute approximately 50% of the population of the city of Richmond. Five of the nine seats on the city council are held by blacks. The concern that a political majority will more easily act to the disadvantage of a minority based on unwarranted assumptions or incomplete facts would seem to militate for, not against, the application of heightened judicial scrutiny in this case. See Ely, The Constitutionality of Reverse Racial Discrimination, 41 U.Chi.L.Rev. 723, 739, n. 58 (1974) ("Of course it works both ways: a law that favors Blacks over Whites would be suspect if it were enacted by a predominantly Black legislature"). In Bakke, supra, the Court confronted a racial quota employed by the University of California at Davis Medical School. Under the plan, 16 out of 100 seats in each entering class at the school were reserved exclusively for certain minority groups. Id., 438 U.S., at 288-289, 98 S.Ct., at 2747-2748. Among the justifications offered in support of the plan were the desire to "reduc[e] the historic deficit of traditionally disfavored minorities in medical school and the medical profession" and the need to "counte[r] the effects of societal discrimination." Id., at 306, 98 S.Ct., at 2756 (citations omitted). Five Members of the Court determined that none of these interests could justify a plan that completely eliminated nonminorities from consideration for a specified percentage of opportunities. Id., at 271-272, 98 S.Ct., at 2738 (Powell, J.) (addressing constitutionality of Davis plan); id., at 408, 98 S.Ct., at 2808 (STEVENS, J., joined by Burger, C.J. and Stewart and REHNQUIST, JJ. concurring in judgment in part and dissenting in part) (addressing only legality of Davis admissions plan under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964). Justice Powell's opinion applied heightened scrutiny under the Equal Protection Clause to the racial classification at issue. His opinion decisively rejected the first justification for the racially segregated admissions plan. The desire to have more black medical students or doctors, standing alone, was not merely insufficiently compelling to justify a racial classification, it was "discrimination for its own sake," forbidden by the Constitution. Id., at 307, 98 S.Ct., at 2757. Nor could the second concern, the history of discrimination in society at large, justify a racial quota in medical school admissions. Justice Powell contrasted the "focused" goal of remedying "wrongs worked by specific instances of racial discrimination" with "the remedying of the effects of 'societal discrimination,' an amorphous concept of injury that may be ageless in its reach into the past." Ibid. He indicated that for the governmental interest in remedying past discrimination to be triggered "judicial, legislative, or administrative findings of constitutional or statutory violations" must be made. Ibid. Only then does the government have a compelling interest in favoring one race over another. Id., at 308-309, 98 S.Ct., at 2757-2758. In Wygant, 476 U.S. 267, 106 S. Ct. 1842, 90 L. Ed. 2d 260 (1986), four Members of the Court applied heightened scrutiny to a race-based system of employee layoffs. Justice Powell, writing for the plurality, again drew the distinction between "societal discrimination" which is an inadequate basis for race-conscious classifications, and the type of identified discrimination that can support and define the scope of race-based relief. The challenged classification in that case tied the layoff of minority teachers to the percentage of minority students enrolled in the school district. The lower courts had upheld the scheme, based on the theory that minority students were in need of "role models" to alleviate the effects of prior discrimination in society. This Court reversed, with a plurality of four Justices reiterating the view expressed by Justice Powell in Bakke that "[s]ocietal discrimination, without more, is too amorphous a basis for imposing a racially classified remedy." Wygant, supra, at 276, 106 S.Ct., at 1848. The role model theory employed by the lower courts failed for two reasons. First, the statistical disparity between students and teachers had no probative value in demonstrating the kind of prior discrimination in hiring or promotion that would justify race-based relief. 476 U.S., at 276, 106 S.Ct., at 1848; see also id., at 294, 106 S.Ct., at 1857 (O'CONNOR, J., concurring in part and concurring in judgment) ("The disparity between the percentage of minorities on the teaching staff and the percentage of minorities in the student body is not probative of employment discrimination"). Second, because the role model theory had no relation to some basis for believing a constitutional or statutory violation had occurred, it could be used to "justify" race-based decisionmaking essentially limitless in scope and duration. Id., at 276, 106 S.Ct., at 1848 (plurality opinion) ("In the absence of particularized findings, a court could uphold remedies that are ageless in their reach into the past, and timeless in their ability to affect the future"). We think it clear that the factual predicate offered in support of the Richmond Plan suffers from the same two defects identified as fatal in Wygant. The District Court found the city council's "findings sufficient to ensure that, in adopting the Plan, it was remedying the present effects of past discrimination in the construction industry." Supp.App. 163 (emphasis added). Like the "role model" theory employed in Wygant, a generalized assertion that there has been past discrimination in an entire industry provides no guidance for a legislative body to determine the precise scope of the injury it seeks to remedy. It "has no logical stopping point." Wygant, supra, at 275, 106 S.Ct., at 1847 (plurality opinion). "Relief" for such an ill-defined wrong could extend until the percentage of public contracts awarded to MBE's in Richmond mirrored the percentage of minorities in the population as a whole. Appellant argues that it is attempting to remedy various forms of past discrimination that are alleged to be responsible for the small number of minority businesses in the local contracting industry. Among these the city cites the exclusion of blacks from skilled construction trade unions and training programs. This past discrimination has prevented them "from following the traditional path from laborer to entrepreneur." Brief for Appellant 23-24. The city also lists a host of nonracial factors which would seem to face a member of any racial group attempting to establish a new business enterprise, such as deficiencies in working capital, inability to meet bonding requirements, unfamiliarity with bidding procedures, and disability caused by an inadequate track record. Id., at 25-26, and n. 41. While there is no doubt that the sorry history of both private and public discrimination in this country has contributed to a lack of opportunities for black entrepreneurs, this observation, standing alone, cannot justify a rigid racial quota in the awarding of public contracts in Richmond, Virginia. Like the claim that discrimination in primary and secondary schooling justifies a rigid racial preference in medical school admissions, an amorphous claim that there has been past discrimination in a particular industry cannot justify the use of an unyielding racial quota. It is sheer speculation how many minority firms there would be in Richmond absent past societal discrimination, just as it was sheer speculation how many minority medical students would have been admitted to the medical school at Davis absent past discrimination in educational opportunities. Defining these sorts of injuries as "identified discrimination" would give local governments license to create a patchwork of racial preferences based on statistical generalizations about any particular field of endeavor. These defects are readily apparent in this case. The 30% quota cannot in any realistic sense be tied to any injury suffered by anyone. The District Court relied upon five predicate "facts" in reaching its conclusion that there was an adequate basis for the 30% quota: (1) the ordinance declares itself to be remedial; (2) several proponents of the measure stated their views that there had been past discrimination in the construction industry; (3) minority businesses received 0.67% of prime contracts from the city while minorities constituted 50% of the city's population; (4) there were very few minority contractors in local and state contractors' associations; and (5) in 1977, Congress made a determination that the effects of past discrimination had stifled minority participation in the construction industry nationally. Supp.App. 163-167. None of these "findings," singly or together, provide the city of Richmond with a "strong basis in evidence for its conclusion that remedial action was necessary." Wygant, 476 U.S., at 277, 106 S.Ct., at 1849 (plurality opinion). There is nothing approaching a prima facie case of a constitutional or statutory violation by anyone in the Richmond construction industry. Id., at 274-275, 106 S.Ct., at 1846-1847; see also id., at 293, 106 S.Ct., at 1856 (O'CONNOR, J., concurring). The District Court accorded great weight to the fact that the city council designated the Plan as "remedial." But the mere recitation of a "benign" or legitimate purpose for a racial classification is entitled to little or no weight. See Weinberger v. Wiesenfeld, 420 U.S., at 648, n. 16, 95 S.Ct., at 1233, n. 16 ("This Court need not in equal protection cases accept at face value assertions of legislative purposes, when an examination of the legislative scheme and its history demonstrates that the asserted purpose could not have been a goal of the legislation"). Racial classifications are suspect, and that means that simple legislative assurances of good intention cannot suffice. The District Court also relied on the highly conclusionary statement of a proponent of the Plan that there was racial discrimination in the construction industry "in this area, and the State, and around the nation." App. 41 (statement of Councilperson Marsh). It also noted that the city manager had related his view that racial discrimination still plagued the construction industry in his home city of Pittsburgh. Id., at 42 (statement of Mr. Deese). These statements are of little probative value in establishing identified discrimination in the Richmond construction industry. The factfinding process of legislative bodies is generally entitled to a presumption of regularity and deferential review by the judiciary. See Williamson v. Lee Optical of Oklahoma, Inc., 348 U.S. 483, 488-489, 75 S. Ct. 461, 464-465, 99 L. Ed. 563 (1955). But when a legislative body chooses to employ a suspect classification, it cannot rest upon a generalized assertion as to the classification's relevance to its goals. See McLaughlin v. Florida, 379 U.S. 184, 190-192, 85 S. Ct. 283, 287-289, 13 L. Ed. 2d 222 (1964). A governmental actor cannot render race a legitimate proxy for a particular condition merely by declaring that the condition exists. See id., at 193, 85 S.Ct., at 289; Wygant, supra, 476 U.S., at 277, 106 S.Ct., at 1848. The history of racial classifications in this country suggests that blind judicial deference to legislative or executive pronouncements of necessity has no place in equal protection analysis. See Korematsu v. United States, 323 U.S. 214, 235-240, 65 S. Ct. 193, 202-205, 89 L. Ed. 194 (1944) (Murphy, J., dissenting). Reliance on the disparity between the number of prime contracts awarded to minority firms and the minority population of the city of Richmond is similarly misplaced. There is no doubt that "[w]here gross statistical disparities can be shown, they alone in a proper case may constitute prima facie proof of a pattern or practice of discrimination" under Title VII. Hazelwood School Dist. v. United States, 433 U.S. 299, 307-308, 97 S. Ct. 2736, 2741, 53 L. Ed. 2d 768 (1977). But it is equally clear that "[w]hen special qualifications are required to fill particular jobs, comparisons to the general population (rather than to the smaller group of individuals who possess the necessary qualifications) may have little probative value." Id., at 308, n. 13, 97 S.Ct., at 2742, n. 13. See also Mayor of Philadelphia v. Educational Equality League, 415 U.S. 605, 620, 94 S. Ct. 1323, 1333, 39 L. Ed. 2d 630 (1974) ("[T]his is not a case in which it can be assumed that all citizens are fungible for purposes of determining whether members of a particular class have been unlawfully excluded"). In the employment context, we have recognized that for certain entry level positions or positions requiring minimal training, statistical comparisons of the racial composition of an employer's work force to the racial composition of the relevant population may be probative of a pattern of discrimination. See Teamsters v. United States, 431 U.S. 324, 337-338, 97 S. Ct. 1843, 1855-1856, 52 L. Ed. 2d 396 (1977) (statistical comparison between minority truck-drivers and relevant population probative of discriminatory exclusion). But where special qualifications are necessary, the relevant statistical pool for purposes of demonstrating discriminatory exclusion must be the number of minorities qualified to undertake the particular task. See Hazelwood, supra, 433 U.S., at 308, 97 S.Ct., at 2741; Johnson v. Transportation Agency, Santa Clara County, 480 U.S. 616, 651-652, 107 S. Ct. 1442, 1462, 94 L. Ed. 2d 615 (1987) (O'CONNOR, J., concurring in judgment). In this case, the city does not even know how many MBE's in the relevant market are qualified to undertake prime or subcontracting work in public construction projects. Cf. Ohio Contractors Assn. v. Keip, 713 F.2d, at 171 (relying on percentage of minority businesses in the State compared to percentage of state purchasing contracts awarded to minority firms in upholding set-aside). Nor does the city know what percentage of total city construction dollars minority firms now receive as subcontractors on prime contracts let by the city. To a large extent, the set-aside of subcontracting dollars seems to rest on the unsupported assumption that white prime contractors simply will not hire minority firms. See Associated General Contractors of Cal. v. City and Cty. of San Francisco, 813 F.2d, at 933 ("There is no finding—and we decline to assume—that male caucasian contractors will award contracts only to other male caucasians").3 Indeed, there is evidence in this record that overall minority participation in city contracts in Richmond is 7 to 8%, and that minority contractor participation in Community Block Development Grant construction projects is 17 to 22%. App. 16 (statement of Mr. Deese, City Manager). Without any information on minority participation in subcontracting, it is quite simply impossible to evaluate overall minority representation in the city's construction expenditures. The city and the District Court also relied on evidence that MBE membership in local contractors' associations was extremely low. Again, standing alone this evidence is not probative of any discrimination in the local construction industry. There are numerous explanations for this dearth of minority participation, including past societal discrimination in education and economic opportunities as well as both black and white career and entrepreneurial choices. Blacks may be disproportionately attracted to industries other than construction. See The State of Small Business: A Report of the President 201 (1986) ("Relative to the distribution of all businesses, black-owned businesses are more than proportionally represented in the transportation industry, but considerably less than proportionally represented in the wholesale trade, manufacturing, and finance industries"). The mere fact that black membership in these trade organizations is low, standing alone, cannot establish a prima facie case of discrimination. Cf. Bazemore v. Friday, 478 U.S. 385, 407-408, 106 S. Ct. 3000, 3013, 92 L. Ed. 2d 315 (1986) (mere existence of single race clubs in absence of evidence of exclusion by race cannot create a duty to integrate). For low minority membership in these associations to be relevant, the city would have to link it to the number of local MBE's eligible for membership. If the statistical disparity between eligible MBE's and MBE membership were great enough, an inference of discriminatory exclusion could arise. In such a case, the city would have a compelling interest in preventing its tax dollars from assisting these organizations in maintaining a racially segregated construction market. See Norwood, 413 U.S., at 465, 93 S.Ct., at 2804; Ohio Contractors, supra, at 171 (upholding minority set-aside based in part on earlier District Court finding that "the state had become 'a joint participant' with private industry and certain craft unions in a pattern of racially discriminatory conduct which excluded black laborers from work on public construction contracts"). Finally, the city and the District Court relied on Congress' finding in connection with the set-aside approved in Fullilove that there had been nationwide discrimination in the construction industry. The probative value of these findings for demonstrating the existence of discrimination in Richmond is extremely limited. By its inclusion of a waiver procedure in the national program addressed in Fullilove, Congress explicitly recognized that the scope of the problem would vary from market area to market area. See Fullilove, 448 U.S., at 487, 100 S.Ct., at 2779 (noting that the presumption that minority firms are disadvantaged by past discrimination may be rebutted by grantees in individual situations). Moreover, as noted above, Congress was exercising its powers under § 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment in making a finding that past discrimination would cause federal funds to be distributed in a manner which reinforced prior patterns of discrimination. While the States and their subdivisions may take remedial action when they possess evidence that their own spending practices are exacerbating a pattern of prior discrimination, they must identify that discrimination, public or private, with some specificity before they may use race-conscious relief. Congress has made national findings that there has been societal discrimination in a host of fields. If all a state or local government need do is find a congressional report on the subject to enact a set-aside program, the constraints of the Equal Protection Clause will, in effect, have been rendered a nullity. See Days 480-481 ("[I]t is essential that state and local agencies also establish the presence of discrimination in their own bailiwicks, based either upon their own fact-finding processes or upon determinations made by other competent institutions"). Justice MARSHALL apparently views the requirement that Richmond identify the discrimination it seeks to remedy in its own jurisdiction as a mere administrative headache, an "onerous documentary obligatio[n]." Post, at 548. We cannot agree. In this regard, we are in accord with Justice STEVENS' observation in Fullilove, that "[b]ecause racial characteristics so seldom provide a relevant basis for disparate treatment, and because classifications based on race are potentially so harmful to the entire body politic, it is especially important that the reasons for any such classification be clearly identified and unquestionably legitimate." Fullilove, supra, at 533-535, 100 S.Ct., at 2803-2804 (dissenting opinion) (footnotes omitted). The "evidence" relied upon by the dissent, the history of school desegregation in Richmond and numerous congressional reports, does little to define the scope of any injury to minority contractors in Richmond or the necessary remedy. The factors relied upon by the dissent could justify a preference of any size or duration. Moreover, Justice MARSHALL's suggestion that findings of discrimination may be "shared" from jurisdiction to jurisdiction in the same manner as information concerning zoning and property values is unprecedented. See post, at 547, quoting Renton v. Playtime Theatres, Inc., 475 U.S. 41, 51-52, 106 S. Ct. 925, 931, 89 L. Ed. 2d 29 (1986). We have never approved the extrapolation of discrimination in one jurisdiction from the experience of another. See Milliken v. Bradley, 418 U.S. 717, 746, 94 S. Ct. 3112, 3128, 41 L. Ed. 2d 1069 (1974) ("Disparate treatment of white and Negro students occurred within the Detroit school system, and not elsewhere, and on this record the remedy must be limited to that system"). In sum, none of the evidence presented by the city points to any identified discrimination in the Richmond construction industry. We, therefore, hold that the city has failed to demonstrate a compelling interest in apportioning public contracting opportunities on the basis of race. To accept Richmond's claim that past societal discrimination alone can serve as the basis for rigid racial preferences would be to open the door to competing claims for "remedial relief" for every disadvantaged group. The dream of a Nation of equal citizens in a society where race is irrelevant to personal opportunity and achievement would be lost in a mosaic of shifting preferences based on inherently unmeasurable claims of past wrongs. "Courts would be asked to evaluate the extent of the prejudice and consequent harm suffered by various minority groups. Those whose societal injury is thought to exceed some arbitrary level of tolerability then would be entitled to preferential classifications. . . ." Bakke, 438 U.S., at 296-297, 98 S.Ct., at 2751 (Powell, J.). We think such a result would be contrary to both the letter and spirit of a constitutional provision whose central command is equality. The foregoing analysis applies only to the inclusion of blacks within the Richmond set-aside program. There is absolutely no evidence of past discrimination against Spanish-speaking, Oriental, Indian, Eskimo, or Aleut persons in any aspect of the Richmond construction industry. The District Court took judicial notice of the fact that the vast majority of "minority" persons in Richmond were black. Supp.App. 207. It may well be that Richmond has never had an Aleut or Eskimo citizen. The random inclusion of racial groups that, as a practical matter, may never have suffered from discrimination in the construction industry in Richmond suggests that perhaps the city's purpose was not in fact to remedy past discrimination. If a 30% set-aside was "narrowly tailored" to compensate black contractors for past discrimination, one may legitimately ask why they are forced to share this "remedial relief" with an Aleut citizen who moves to Richmond tomorrow? The gross overinclusiveness of Richmond's racial preference strongly impugns the city's claim of remedial motivation. See Wygant, 476 U.S., at 284, n. 13, 106 S.Ct., at 1852, n. 13 (haphazard inclusion of racial groups "further illustrates the undifferentiated nature of the plan"); see also Days 482 ("Such programs leave one with the sense that the racial and ethnic groups favored by the set-aside were added without attention to whether their inclusion was justified by evidence of past discrimination"). As noted by the court below, it is almost impossible to assess whether the Richmond Plan is narrowly tailored to remedy prior discrimination since it is not linked to identified discrimination in any way. We limit ourselves to two observations in this regard. First, there does not appear to have been any consideration of the use of race-neutral means to increase minority business participation in city contracting. See United States v. Paradise, 480 U.S. 149, 171, 107 S. Ct. 1053, 1066, 94 L. Ed. 2d 203 (1987) ("In determining whether race-conscious remedies are appropriate, we look to several factors, including the efficacy of alternative remedies"). Many of the barriers to minority participation in the construction industry relied upon by the city to justify a racial classification appear to be race neutral. If MBE's disproportionately lack capital or cannot meet bonding requirements, a race-neutral program of city financing for small firms would, a fortiori, lead to greater minority participation. The principal opinion in Fullilove found that Congress had carefully examined and rejected race-neutral alternatives before enacting the MBE set-aside. See Fullilove, 448 U.S., at 463-467, 100 S.Ct., at 2767-2769; see also id., at 511, 100 S.Ct., at 2792 (Powell, J., concurring) ("[B]y the time Congress enacted [the MBE set-aside] in 1977, it knew that other remedies had failed to ameliorate the effects of racial discrimination in the construction industry"). There is no evidence in this record that the Richmond City Council has considered any alternatives to a race-based quota. Second, the 30% quota cannot be said to be narrowly tailored to any goal, except perhaps outright racial balancing. It rests upon the "completely unrealistic" assumption that minorities will choose a particular trade in lockstep proportion to their representation in the local population. See Sheet Metal Workers v. EEOC, 478 U.S. 421, 494, 106 S. Ct. 3019, 3059, 92 L. Ed. 2d 344 (1986) (O'CONNOR, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part) ("[I]t is completely unrealistic to assume that individuals of one race will gravitate with mathematical exactitude to each employer or union absent unlawful discrimination"). Since the city must already consider bids and waivers on a case-by-case basis, it is difficult to see the need for a rigid numerical quota. As noted above, the congressional scheme upheld in Fullilove allowed for a waiver of the set-aside provision where an MBE's higher price was not attributable to the effects of past discrimination. Based upon proper findings, such programs are less problematic from an equal protection standpoint because they treat all candidates individually, rather than making the color of an applicant's skin the sole relevant consideration. Unlike the program upheld in Fullilove, the Richmond Plan's waiver system focuses solely on the availability of MBE's; there is no inquiry into whether or not the particular MBE seeking a racial preference has suffered from the effects of past discrimination by the city or prime contractors. Given the existence of an individualized procedure, the city's only interest in maintaining a quota system rather than investigating the need for remedial action in particular cases would seem to be simple administrative convenience. But the interest in avoiding the bureaucratic effort necessary to tailor remedial relief to those who truly have suffered the effects of prior discrimination cannot justify a rigid line drawn on the basis of a suspect classification. See Frontiero v. Richardson, 411 U.S. 677, 690, 93 S. Ct. 1764, 1772, 36 L. Ed. 2d 583 (1973) (plurality opinion) ("[W]hen we enter the realm of 'strict judicial scrutiny,' there can be no doubt that 'administrative convenience' is not a shibboleth, the mere recitation of which dictates constitutionality"). Under Richmond's scheme, a successful black, Hispanic, or Oriental entrepreneur from anywhere in the country enjoys an absolute preference over other citizens based solely on their race. We think it obvious that such a program is not narrowly tailored to remedy the effects of prior discrimination. Nothing we say today precludes a state or local entity from taking action to rectify the effects of identified discrimination within its jurisdiction. If the city of Richmond had evidence before it that nonminority contractors were systematically excluding minority businesses from subcontracting opportunities it could take action to end the discriminatory exclusion. Where there is a significant statistical disparity between the number of qualified minority contractors willing and able to perform a particular service and the number of such contractors actually engaged by the locality or the locality's prime contractors, an inference of discriminatory exclusion could arise. See Bazemore v. Friday, 478 U.S., at 398, 106 S.Ct., at 3008; Teamsters v. United States, 431 U.S., at 337-339, 97 S.Ct., at 1856. Under such circumstances, the city could act to dismantle the closed business system by taking appropriate measures against those who discriminate on the basis of race or other illegitimate criteria. See, e.g., New York State Club Assn. v. New York City, 487 U.S. 1, 10-11, 13-14, 108 S. Ct. 2225, 2232-2233, 2234-2235, 101 L. Ed. 2d 1 (1988). In the extreme case, some form of narrowly tailored racial preference might be necessary to break down patterns of deliberate exclusion. Nor is local government powerless to deal with individual instances of racially motivated refusals to employ minority contractors. Where such discrimination occurs, a city would be justified in penalizing the discriminator and providing appropriate relief to the victim of such discrimination. See generally McDonnell Douglas Corp. v. Green, 411 U.S. 792, 802-803, 93 S. Ct. 1817, 1824-1825, 36 L. Ed. 2d 668 (1973). Moreover, evidence of a pattern of individual discriminatory acts can, if supported by appropriate statistical proof, lend support to a local government's determination that broader remedial relief is justified. See Teamsters, supra, 431 U.S., at 338, 97 S.Ct., at 1856. Even in the absence of evidence of discrimination, the city has at its disposal a whole array of race-neutral devices to increase the accessibility of city contracting opportunities to small entrepreneurs of all races. Simplification of bidding procedures, relaxation of bonding requirements, and training and financial aid for disadvantaged entrepreneurs of all races would open the public contracting market to all those who have suffered the effects of past societal discrimination or neglect. Many of the formal barriers to new entrants may be the product of bureaucratic inertia more than actual necessity, and may have a disproportionate effect on the opportunities open to new minority firms. Their elimination or modification would have little detrimental effect on the city's interests and would serve to increase the opportunities available to minority business without classifying individuals on the basis of race. The city may also act to prohibit discrimination in the provision of credit or bonding by local suppliers and banks. Business as usual should not mean business pursuant to the unthinking exclusion of certain members of our society from its rewards. In the case at hand, the city has not ascertained how many minority enterprises are present in the local construction market nor the level of their participation in city construction projects. The city points to no evidence that qualified minority contractors have been passed over for city contracts or subcontracts, either as a group or in any individual case. Under such circumstances, it is simply impossible to say that the city has demonstrated "a strong basis in evidence for its conclusion that remedial action was necessary." Wygant, 476 U.S., at 277, 106 S.Ct., at 1849. Proper findings in this regard are necessary to define both the scope of the injury and the extent of the remedy necessary to cure its effects. Such findings also serve to assure all citizens that the deviation from the norm of equal treatment of all racial and ethnic groups is a temporary matter, a measure taken in the service of the goal of equality itself. Absent such findings, there is a danger that a racial classification is merely the product of unthinking stereotypes or a form of racial politics. "[I]f there is no duty to attempt either to measure the recovery by the wrong or to distribute that recovery within the injured class in an evenhanded way, our history will adequately support a legislative preference for almost any ethnic, religious, or racial group with the political strength to negotiate 'a piece of the action' for its members." Fullilove, 448 U.S., at 539, 100 S.Ct., at 2806 (STEVENS, J., dissenting). Because the city of Richmond has failed to identify the need for remedial action in the awarding of its public construction contracts, its treatment of its citizens on a racial basis violates the dictates of the Equal Protection Clause. Accordingly, the judgment of the Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit is Justice STEVENS, concurring in part and concurring in the judgment. A central purpose of the Fourteenth Amendment is to further the national goal of equal opportunity for all our citizens. In order to achieve that goal we must learn from our past mistakes, but I believe the Constitution requires us to evaluate our policy decisions—including those that govern the relationships among different racial and ethnic groups—primarily by studying their probable impact on the future. I therefore do not agree with the premise that seems to underlie today's decision, as well as the decision in Wygant v. Jackson Board of Education, 476 U.S. 267, 106 S. Ct. 1842, 90 L. Ed. 2d 260 (1986), that a governmental decision that rests on a racial classification is never permissible except as a remedy for a past wrong. See ante, at 493-494.1 I do, however, agree with the Court's explanation of why the Richmond ordinance cannot be justified as a remedy for past discrimination, and therefore join Parts I, III-B, and IV of its opinion. I write separately to emphasize three aspects of the case that are of special importance to me. First, the city makes no claim that the public interest in the efficient performance of its construction contracts will be served by granting a preference to minority-business enterprises. This case is therefore completely unlike Wygant, in which I thought it quite obvious that the school board had reasonably concluded that an integrated faculty could provide educational benefits to the entire student body that could not be provided by an all-white, or nearly all-white, faculty. As I pointed out in my dissent in that case, even if we completely disregard our history of racial injustice, race is not always irrelevant to sound governmental decisionmaking.2 In the case of public contracting, however, if we disregard the past, there is not even an arguable basis for suggesting that the race of a subcontractor or general contractor should have any relevance to his or her access to the market. Second, this litigation involves an attempt by a legislative body, rather than a court, to fashion a remedy for a past wrong. Legislatures are primarily policymaking bodies that promulgate rules to govern future conduct. The constitutional prohibitions against the enactment of ex post facto laws and bills of attainder reflect a valid concern about the use of the political process to punish or characterize past conduct of private citizens.3 It is the judicial system, rather than the legislative process, that is best equipped to identify past wrongdoers and to fashion remedies that will create the conditions that presumably would have existed had no wrong been committed. Thus, in cases involving the review of judicial remedies imposed against persons who have been proved guilty of violations of law, I would allow the courts in racial discrimination cases the same broad discretion that chancellors enjoy in other areas of the law. See Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education, 402 U.S. 1, 15-16, 91 S. Ct. 1267, 1275-1276, 28 L. Ed. 2d 554 (1971).4 Third, instead of engaging in a debate over the proper standard of review to apply in affirmative-action litigation,5 I believe it is more constructive to try to identify the characteristics of the advantaged and disadvantaged classes that may justify their disparate treatment. See Cleburne v. Cleburne Living Center, Inc., 473 U.S. 432, 452-453, 105 S. Ct. 3249, 3261, 87 L. Ed. 2d 313 (1985) (STEVENS, J., concurring).6 In this case that approach convinces me that, instead of carefully identifying the characteristics of the two classes of contractors that are respectively favored and disfavored by its ordinance, the Richmond City Council has merely engaged in the type of stereotypical analysis that is a hallmark of violations of the Equal Protection Clause. Whether we look at the class of persons benefited by the ordinance or at the disadvantaged class, the same conclusion emerges. The justification for the ordinance is the fact that in the past white contractors—and presumably other white citizens in Richmond—have discriminated against black contractors. The class of persons benefited by the ordinance is not, however, limited to victims of such discrimination—it encompasses persons who have never been in business in Richmond as well as minority contractors who may have been guilty of discriminating against members of other minority groups. Indeed, for all the record shows, all of the minority-business enterprises that have benefited from the ordinance may be firms that have prospered notwithstanding the discriminatory conduct that may have harmed other minority firms years ago. Ironically, minority firms that have survived in the competitive struggle, rather than those that have perished, are most likely to benefit from an ordinance of this kind. The ordinance is equally vulnerable because of its failure to identify the characteristics of the disadvantaged class of white contractors that justify the disparate treatment. That class unquestionably includes some white contractors who are guilty of past discrimination against blacks, but it is only habit, rather than evidence or analysis, that makes it seem acceptable to assume that every white contractor covered by the ordinance shares in that guilt. Indeed, even among those who have discriminated in the past, it must be assumed that at least some of them have complied with the city ordinance that has made such discrimination unlawful since 1975.7 Thus, the composition of the disadvantaged class of white contractors presumably includes some who have been guilty of unlawful discrimination, some who practiced discrimination before it was forbidden by law,8 and some who have never discriminated against anyone on the basis of race. Imposing a common burden on such a disparate class merely because each member of the class is of the same race stems from reliance on a stereotype rather than fact or reason.9 There is a special irony in the stereotypical thinking that prompts legislation of this kind. Although it stigmatizes the disadvantaged class with the unproven charge of past racial discrimination, it actually imposes a greater stigma on its supposed beneficiaries. For, as I explained in my opinion in Fullilove v. Klutznick, 448 U.S. 448, 100 S. Ct. 2758, 65 L. Ed. 2d 902 (1980): "[E]ven though it is not the actual predicate for this legislation, a statute of this kind inevitably is perceived by many as resting on an assumption that those who are granted this special preference are less qualified in some respect that is identified purely by their race." Id., at 545, 100 S.Ct., at 2809. "The risk that habitual attitudes toward classes of persons, rather than analysis of the relevant characteristics of the class, will serve as a basis for a legislative classification is present when benefits are distributed as well as when burdens are imposed. In the past, traditional attitudes too often provided the only explanation for discrimination against women, aliens, illegitimates, and black citizens. Today there is a danger that awareness of past injustice will lead to automatic acceptance of new classifications that are not in fact justified by attributes characteristic of the class as a whole. "When [government] creates a special preference, or a special disability, for a class of persons, it should identify the characteristic that justifies the special treatment. When the classification is defined in racial terms, I believe that such particular identification is imperative. "In this case, only two conceivable bases for differentiating the preferred classes from society as a whole have occurred to me: (1) that they were the victims of unfair treatment in the past and (2) that they are less able to compete in the future. Although the first of these factors would justify an appropriate remedy for past wrongs, for reasons that I have already stated, this statute is not such a remedial measure. The second factor is simply not true. Nothing in the record of this case, the legislative history of the Act, or experience that we may notice judicially provides any support for such a proposition." Id., at 552-554, 100 S.Ct., at 2813-2814 (footnote omitted). Accordingly, I concur in Parts I, III-B, and IV of the Court's opinion, and in the judgment. Justice KENNEDY, concurring in part and concurring in the judgment. I join all but Part II of Justice O'CONNOR's opinion and give this further explanation. Part II examines our case law upholding congressional power to grant preferences based on overt and explicit classification by race. See Fullilove v. Klutznick, 448 U.S. 448, 100 S. Ct. 2758, 65 L. Ed. 2d 902 (1980). With the acknowledgment that the summary in Part II is both precise and fair, I must decline to join it. The process by which a law that is an equal protection violation when enacted by a State becomes transformed to an equal protection guarantee when enacted by Congress poses a difficult proposition for me; but as it is not before us, any reconsideration of that issue must await some further case. For purposes of the ordinance challenged here, it suffices to say that the State has the power to eradicate racial discrimination and its effects in both the public and private sectors, and the absolute duty to do so where those wrongs were caused intentionally by the State itself. The Fourteenth Amendment ought not to be interpreted to reduce a State's authority in this regard, unless, of course, there is a conflict with federal law or a state remedy is itself a violation of equal protection. The latter is the case presented here. The moral imperative of racial neutrality is the driving force of the Equal Protection Clause. Justice SCALIA's opinion underscores that proposition, quite properly in my view. The rule suggested in his opinion, which would strike down all preferences which are not necessary remedies to victims of unlawful discrimination, would serve important structural goals, as it would eliminate the necessity for courts to pass upon each racial preference that is enacted. Structural protections may be necessities if moral imperatives are to be obeyed. His opinion would make it crystal clear to the political branches, at least those of the States, that legislation must be based on criteria other than race. Nevertheless, given that a rule of automatic invalidity for racial preferences in almost every case would be a significant break with our precedents that require a case-by-case test, I am not convinced we need adopt it at this point. On the assumption that it will vindicate the principle of race neutrality found in the Equal Protection Clause, I accept the less absolute rule contained in Justice O'CONNOR's opinion, a rule based on the proposition that any racial preference must face the most rigorous scrutiny by the courts. My reasons for doing so are as follows. First, I am confident that, in application, the strict scrutiny standard will operate in a manner generally consistent with the imperative of race neutrality, because it forbids the use even of narrowly drawn racial classifications except as a last resort. Second, the rule against race-conscious remedies is already less than an absolute one, for that relief may be the only adequate remedy after a judicial determination that a State or its instrumentality has violated the Equal Protection Clause. I note, in this connection, that evidence which would support a judicial finding of intentional discrimination may suffice also to justify remedial legislative action, for it diminishes the constitutional responsibilities of the political branches to say they must wait to act until ordered to do so by a court. Third, the strict scrutiny rule is consistent with our precedents, as Justice O'CONNOR's opinion demonstrates. The ordinance before us falls far short of the standard we adopt. The nature and scope of the injury that existed; its historical or antecedent causes; the extent to which the city contributed to it, either by intentional acts or by passive complicity in acts of discrimination by the private sector; the necessity for the response adopted, its duration in relation to the wrong, and the precision with which it otherwise bore on whatever injury in fact was addressed, were all matters unmeasured, unexplored, and unexplained by the city council. We are left with an ordinance and a legislative record open to the fair charge that it is not a remedy but is itself a preference which will cause the same corrosive animosities that the Constitution forbids in the whole sphere of government and that our national policy condemns in the rest of society as well. This ordinance is invalid under the Fourteenth Amendment. Justice SCALIA, concurring in the judgment. I agree with much of the Court's opinion, and, in particular, with Justice O'CONNOR's conclusion that strict scrutiny must be applied to all governmental classification by race, whether or not its asserted purpose is "remedial" or "benign." Ante, at 493, 495. I do not agree, however, with Justice O'CONNOR's dictum suggesting that, despite the Fourteenth Amendment, state and local governments may in some circumstances discriminate on the basis of race in order (in a broad sense) "to ameliorate the effects of past discrimination." Ante, at 476—477. The benign purpose of compensating for social disadvantages, whether they have been acquired by reason of prior discrimination or otherwise, can no more be pursued by the illegitimate means of racial discrimination than can other assertedly benign purposes we have repeatedly rejected. See, e.g., Wygant v. Jackson Board of Education, 476 U.S. 267, 274-276, 106 S. Ct. 1842, 1847-1848, 90 L. Ed. 2d 260 (1986) (plurality opinion) (discrimination in teacher assignments to provide "role models" for minority students); Palmore v. Sidoti, 466 U.S. 429, 433, 104 S. Ct. 1879, 1882, 80 L. Ed. 2d 421 (1984) (awarding custody of child to father, after divorced mother entered an interracial remarriage, in order to spare child social "pressures and stresses"); Lee v. Washington, 390 U.S. 333, 88 S. Ct. 994, 19 L. Ed. 2d 1212 (1968) (per curiam) (permanent racial segregation of all prison inmates, presumably to reduce possibility of racial conflict). The difficulty of overcoming the effects of past discrimination is as nothing compared with the difficulty of eradicating from our society the source of those effects, which is the tendency—fatal to a Nation such as ours—to classify and judge men and women on the basis of their country of origin or the color of their skin. A solution to the first problem that aggravates the second is no solution at all. I share the view expressed by Alexander Bickel that "[t]he lesson of the great decisions of the Supreme Court and the lesson of contemporary history have been the same for at least a generation: discrimination on the basis of race is illegal, immoral, unconstitutional, inherently wrong, and destructive of democratic society." A. Bickel, The Morality of Consent 133 (1975). At least where state or local action is at issue, only a social emergency rising to the level of imminent danger to life and limb—for example, a prison race riot, requiring temporary segregation of inmates, cf. Lee v. Washington, supra—can justify an exception to the principle embodied in the Fourteenth Amendment that "[o]ur Constitution is color-blind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens," Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537, 559, 16 S. Ct. 1138, 1146, 41 L. Ed. 256 (1896) (Harlan, J., dissenting); accord, Ex parte Virginia, 100 U.S. 339, 345, 25 L. Ed. 676 (1880); 2 J. Story, Commentaries on the Constitution § 1961, p. 677 (T. Cooley ed. 1873); T. Cooley, Constitutional Limitations 439 (2d ed. 1871). We have in some contexts approved the use of racial classifications by the Federal Government to remedy the effects of past discrimination. I do not believe that we must or should extend those holdings to the States. In Fullilove v. Klutznick, 448 U.S. 448, 100 S. Ct. 2758, 65 L. Ed. 2d 902 (1980), we upheld legislative action by Congress similar in its asserted purpose to that at issue here. And we have permitted federal courts to prescribe quite severe, race-conscious remedies when confronted with egregious and persistent unlawful discrimination, see, e.g., United States v. Paradise, 480 U.S. 149, 107 S. Ct. 1053, 94 L. Ed. 2d 203 (1987); Sheet Metal Workers v. EEOC, 478 U.S. 421, 106 S. Ct. 3019, 92 L. Ed. 2d 344 (1986). As Justice O'CONNOR acknowledges, however, ante, at 486-491, it is one thing to permit racially based conduct by the Federal Government—whose legislative powers concerning matters of race were explicitly enhanced by the Fourteenth Amendment, see U.S. Const., Amdt. 14, § 5—and quite another to permit it by the precise entities against whose conduct in matters of race that Amendment was specifically directed, see Amdt. 14, § 1. As we said in Ex parte Virginia, supra, 100 U.S., at 345, the Civil War Amendments were designed to "take away all possibility of oppression by law because of race or color" and "to be . . . limitations on the power of the States and enlargements of the power of Congress." Thus, without revisiting what we held in Fullilove (or trying to derive a rationale from the three separate opinions supporting the judgment, none of which commanded more than three votes, compare 448 U.S., at 453-495, 100 S.Ct., at 2762-2783 (opinion of Burger, C.J., joined by WHITE and Powell, JJ.), with id., at 495-517, 100 S.Ct., at 2783-2794 (opinion of Powell, J.), and id., at 517-522, 100 S.Ct., at 2794-2797 (opinion of MARSHALL, J., joined by BRENNAN and BLACKMUN, JJ.)), I do not believe our decision in that case controls the one before us here. A sound distinction between federal and state (or local) action based on race rests not only upon the substance of the Civil War Amendments, but upon social reality and governmental theory. It is a simple fact that what Justice Stewart described in Fullilove as "the dispassionate objectivity [and] the flexibility that are needed to mold a race-conscious remedy around the single objective of eliminating the effects of past or present discrimination"—political qualities already to be doubted in a national legislature, Fullilove, supra, at 527, 100 S.Ct., at 2800 (Stewart, J., with whom REHNQUIST, J., joined, dissenting)—are substantially less likely to exist at the state or local level. The struggle for racial justice has historically been a struggle by the national society against oppression in the individual States. See, e.g., Ex parte Virginia, supra (denying writ of habeas corpus to a state judge in custody under federal indictment for excluding jurors on the basis of race); H. Hyman & W. Wiecek, Equal Justice Under Law, 1835-1875, pp. 312-334 (1982); Logan, Judicial Federalism in the Court of History, 66 Ore.L.Rev. 454, 494-515 (1988). And the struggle retains that character in modern times. See, e.g., Brown v. Board of Education, 349 U.S. 294, 75 S. Ct. 753, 99 L. Ed. 1083 (1955) (Brown II ); United States v. Montgomery Board of Educa- tion, 395 U.S. 225, 89 S. Ct. 1670, 23 L. Ed. 2d 263 (1969); Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education, 402 U.S. 1, 91 S. Ct. 1267, 28 L. Ed. 2d 554 (1971); Griffin v. Prince Edward County School Board, 377 U.S. 218, 84 S. Ct. 1226, 12 L. Ed. 2d 256 (1964); Cooper v. Aaron, 358 U.S. 1, 78 S. Ct. 1401, 3 L. Ed. 2d 5 (1958). Not all of that struggle has involved discrimination against blacks, see, e.g., Yick Wo v. Hopkins, 118 U.S. 356, 6 S. Ct. 1064, 30 L. Ed. 220 (1886) (Chinese); Hernandez v. Texas, 347 U.S. 475, 74 S. Ct. 667, 98 L. Ed. 866 (1954) (Hispanics), and not all of it has been in the Old South, see, e.g., Columbus Board of Education v. Penick, 443 U.S. 449, 99 S. Ct. 2941, 61 L. Ed. 2d 666 (1979); Keyes v. School Dist. No. 1, Denver, Colorado, 413 U.S. 189, 93 S. Ct. 2686, 37 L. Ed. 2d 548 (1973). What the record shows, in other words, is that racial discrimination against any group finds a more ready expression at the state and local than at the federal level. To the children of the Founding Fathers, this should come as no surprise. An acute awareness of the heightened danger of oppression from political factions in small, rather than large, political units dates to the very beginning of our national history. See G. Wood, The Creation of the American Republic, 1776-1787, pp. 499-506 (1969). As James Madison observed in support of the proposed Constitution's enhancement of national powers: "The smaller the society, the fewer probably will be the distinct parties and interests composing it; the fewer the distinct parties and interests, the more frequently will a majority be found of the same party; and the smaller the number of individuals composing a majority, and the smaller the compass within which they are placed, the more easily will they concert and execute their plan of oppression. Extend the sphere and you take in a greater variety of parties and interests; you make it less probable that a majority of the whole will have a common motive to invade the rights of other citizens; or if such a common motive exists, it will be more difficult for all who feel it to discover their own strength and to act in unison with each other." The Federalist No. 10, pp. 82-84 (C. Rossiter ed. 1961). The prophesy of these words came to fruition in Richmond in the enactment of a set-aside clearly and directly beneficial to the dominant political group, which happens also to be the dominant racial group. The same thing has no doubt happened before in other cities (though the racial basis of the preference has rarely been made textually explicit)—and blacks have often been on the receiving end of the injustice. Where injustice is the game, however, turnabout is not fair play. In my view there is only one circumstance in which the States may act by race to "undo the effects of past discrimination": where that is necessary to eliminate their own maintenance of a system of unlawful racial classification. If, for example, a state agency has a discriminatory pay scale compensating black employees in all positions at 20% less than their nonblack counterparts, it may assuredly promulgate an order raising the salaries of "all black employees" to eliminate the differential. Cf. Bazemore v. Friday, 478 U.S. 385, 395-396, 106 S. Ct. 3000, 3006, 92 L. Ed. 2d 315 (1986). This distinction explains our school desegregation cases, in which we have made plain that States and localities sometimes have an obligation to adopt race-conscious remedies. While there is no doubt that those cases have taken into account the continuing "effects" of previously mandated racial school assignment, we have held those effects to justify a race-conscious remedy only because we have concluded, in that context, that they perpetuate a "dual school system." We have stressed each school district's constitutional "duty to dismantle its dual system," and have found that "[e]ach instance of a failure or refusal to fulfill this affirmative duty continues the violation of the Fourteenth Amendment." Columbus Board of Education v. Penick, supra, 443 U.S., at 458-459, 99 S. Ct. at 2946-2947 (emphasis added). Concluding in this context that race-neutral efforts at "dismantling the state-imposed dual system" were so ineffective that they might "indicate a lack of good faith," Green v. New Kent County School Board, 391 U.S. 430, 439, 88 S. Ct. 1689, 1695, 20 L. Ed. 2d 716 (1968); see also Raney v. Board of Education of Gould School Dist., 391 U.S. 443, 88 S. Ct. 1697, 20 L. Ed. 2d 727 (1968), we have permitted, as part of the local authorities' "affirmative duty to disestablish the dual school system[s]," such voluntary (that is, noncourt-ordered) measures as attendance zones drawn to achieve greater racial balance, and out-of-zone assignment by race for the same purpose. McDaniel v. Barresi, 402 U.S. 39, 40-41, 91 S. Ct. 1287, 1288, 28 L. Ed. 2d 582 (1971). While thus permitting the use of race to de classify racially classified students, teachers, and educational resources, however, we have also made it clear that the remedial power extends no further than the scope of the continuing constitutional violation. See, e.g., Columbus Board of Education v. Penick, supra, 443 U.S., at 465, 99 S.Ct., at 2950; Dayton Board of Education v. Brinkman, 433 U.S. 406, 420, 97 S. Ct. 2766, 2775, 53 L. Ed. 2d 851 (1977); Milliken v. Bradley, 418 U.S. 717, 744, 94 S. Ct. 3112, 3127, 41 L. Ed. 2d 1069 (1974); Keyes v. School Dist. No. 1, Denver, Colorado, supra, 413 U.S., at 213, 93 S.Ct., at 2699. And it is implicit in our cases that after the dual school system has been completely disestablished, the States may no longer assign students by race. Cf. Pasadena City Board of Education v. Spangler, 427 U.S. 424, 96 S. Ct. 2697, 49 L. Ed. 2d 599 (1976) (federal court may not require racial assignment in such circumstances). Our analysis in Bazemore v. Friday, supra, reflected our unwillingness to conclude, outside the context of school assignment, that the continuing effects of prior discrimination can be equated with state maintenance of a discriminatory system. There we found both that the government's adoption of "wholly neutral admissions" policies for 4-H and Homemaker Clubs sufficed to remedy its prior constitutional violation of maintaining segregated admissions, and that there was no further obligation to use racial reassignments to eliminate continuing effects—that is, any remaining all-black and all-white clubs. 478 U.S., at 407-408, 106 S.Ct., at 3012-3013. "[H]owever sound Green [v. New Kent County School Board, supra ] may have been in the context of the public schools," we said, "it has no application to this wholly different milieu." Id., at 408, 106 S.Ct., at 3013. The same is so here. A State can, of course, act "to undo the effects of past discrimination" in many permissible ways that do not involve classification by race. In the particular field of state contracting, for example, it may adopt a preference for small businesses, or even for new businesses—which would make it easier for those previously excluded by discrimination to enter the field. Such programs may well have racially disproportionate impact, but they are not based on race. And, of course, a State may "undo the effects of past discrimination" in the sense of giving the identified victim of state discrimination that which it wrongfully denied him—for example, giving to a previously rejected black applicant the job that, by reason of discrimination, had been awarded to a white applicant, even if this means terminating the latter's employment. In such a context, the white job-holder is not being selected for disadvantageous treatment because of his race, but because he was wrongfully awarded a job to which another is entitled. That is worlds apart from the system here, in which those to be disadvantaged are identified solely by race. I agree with the Court's dictum that a fundamental distinction must be drawn between the effects of "societal" discrimination and the effects of "identified" discrimination, and that the situation would be different if Richmond's plan were "tailored" to identify those particular bidders who "suffered from the effects of past discrimination by the city or prime contractors." Ante, at 507—508. In my view, however, the reason that would make a difference is not, as the Court states, that it would justify race-conscious action—see, e.g., ante, at 504—506, 507-508—but rather that it would enable race-neutral remediation. Nothing prevents Richmond from according a contracting preference to identified victims of discrimination. While most of the beneficiaries might be black, neither the beneficiaries nor those disadvantaged by the preference would be identified on the basis of their race. In other words, far from justifying racial classification, identification of actual victims of discrimination makes it less supportable than ever, because more obviously unneeded. In his final book, Professor Bickel wrote: "[A] racial quota derogates the human dignity and individuality of all to whom it is applied; it is invidious in principle as well as in practice. Moreover, it can easily be turned against those it purports to help. The history of the racial quota is a history of subjugation, not beneficence. Its evil lies not in its name, but in its effects: a quota is a divider of society, a creator of castes, and it is all the worse for its racial base, especially in a society desperately striving for an equality that will make race irrelevant." Bickel, The Morality of Consent, at 133. Those statements are true and increasingly prophetic. Apart from their societal effects, however, which are "in the aggregate disastrous," id., at 134, it is important not to lose sight of the fact that even "benign" racial quotas have individual victims, whose very real injustice we ignore whenever we deny them enforcement of their right not to be disadvantaged on the basis of race. Johnson v. Transportation Agency, Santa Clara County, 480 U.S. 616, 677, 107 S. Ct. 1442, 1475, 94 L. Ed. 2d 615 (1987) (SCALIA, J., dissenting). As Justice Douglas observed: "A. DeFunis who is white is entitled to no advantage by virtue of that fact; nor is he subject to any disability, no matter what his race or color. Whatever his race, he had a constitutional right to have his application considered on its individual merits in a racially neutral manner." DeFunis v. Odegaard, 416 U.S. 312, 337, 94 S. Ct. 1704, 1716, 40 L. Ed. 2d 164 (1974) (dissenting opinion). When we depart from this American principle we play with fire, and much more than an occasional DeFunis, Johnson, or Croson burns. It is plainly true that in our society blacks have suffered discrimination immeasurably greater than any directed at other racial groups. But those who believe that racial preferences can help to "even the score" display, and reinforce, a manner of thinking by race that was the source of the injustice and that will, if it endures within our society, be the source of more injustice still. The relevant proposition is not that it was blacks, or Jews, or Irish who were discriminated against, but that it was individual men and women, "created equal," who were discriminated against. And the relevant resolve is that that should never happen again. Racial preferences appear to "even the score" (in some small degree) only if one embraces the proposition that our society is appropriately viewed as divided into races, making it right that an injustice rendered in the past to a black man should be compensated for by discriminating against a white. Nothing is worth that embrace. Since blacks have been disproportionately disadvantaged by racial discrimination, any race-neutral remedial program aimed at the disadvantaged as such will have a disproportionately beneficial impact on blacks. Only such a program, and not one that operates on the basis of race, is in accord with the letter and the spirit of our Constitution. Since I believe that the appellee here had a constitutional right to have its bid succeed or fail under a decisionmaking process uninfected with racial bias, I concur in the judgment of the Court. Justice MARSHALL, with whom Justice BRENNAN and Justice BLACKMUN join, dissenting. It is a welcome symbol of racial progress when the former capital of the Confederacy acts forthrightly to confront the effects of racial discrimination in its midst. In my view, nothing in the Constitution can be construed to prevent Richmond, Virginia, from allocating a portion of its contracting dollars for businesses owned or controlled by members of minority groups. Indeed, Richmond's set-aside program is indistinguishable in all meaningful respects from—and in fact was patterned upon—the federal set-aside plan which this Court upheld in Fullilove v. Klutznick, 448 U.S. 448, 100 S. Ct. 2758, 65 L. Ed. 2d 902 (1980). A majority of this Court holds today, however, that the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment blocks Richmond's initiative. The essence of the majority's position1 is that Richmond has failed to catalog adequate findings to prove that past discrimination has impeded minorities from joining or participating fully in Richmond's construction contracting industry. I find deep irony in second-guessing Richmond's judgment on this point. As much as any municipality in the United States, Richmond knows what racial discrimination is; a century of decisions by this and other federal courts has richly documented the city's disgraceful history of public and private racial discrimination. In any event, the Richmond City Council has supported its determination that minorities have been wrongly excluded from local construction contracting. Its proof includes statistics showing that minority-owned businesses have received virtually no city contracting dollars and rarely if ever belonged to area trade associations; testimony by municipal officials that discrimination has been widespread in the local construction industry; and the same exhaustive and widely publicized federal studies relied on in Fullilove, studies which showed that pervasive discrimination in the Nation's tight-knit construction industry had operated to exclude minorities from public contracting. These are precisely the types of statistical and testimonial evidence which, until today, this Court had credited in cases approving of race-conscious measures designed to remedy past discrimination. More fundamentally, today's decision marks a deliberate and giant step backward in this Court's affirmative-action jurisprudence. Cynical of one municipality's attempt to redress the effects of past racial discrimination in a particular industry, the majority launches a grapeshot attack on race-conscious remedies in general. The majority's unnecessary pronouncements will inevitably discourage or prevent governmental entities, particularly States and localities, from acting to rectify the scourge of past discrimination. This is the harsh reality of the majority's decision, but it is not the Constitution's command. * As an initial matter, the majority takes an exceedingly myopic view of the factual predicate on which the Richmond City Council relied when it passed the Minority Business Utilization Plan. The majority analyzes Richmond's initiative as if it were based solely upon the facts about local construction and contracting practices adduced during the city council session at which the measure was enacted. Ante, at 479-481. In so doing, the majority downplays the fact that the city council had before it a rich trove of evidence that discrimination in the Nation's construction industry had seriously impaired the competitive position of businesses owned or controlled by members of minority groups. It is only against this backdrop of documented national discrimination, however, that the local evidence adduced by Richmond can be properly understood. The majority's refusal to recognize that Richmond has proved itself no exception to the dismaying pattern of national exclusion which Congress so painstakingly identified infects its entire analysis of this case. Six years before Richmond acted, Congress passed, and the President signed, the Public Works Employment Act of 1977, Pub.L. 95-28, 91 Stat. 116, 42 U.S.C. § 6701 et seq. (Act), a measure which appropriated $4 billion in federal grants to state and local governments for use in public works projects. Section 103(f)(2) of the Act was a minority business set-aside provision. It required state or local grantees to use 10% of their federal grants to procure services or supplies from businesses owned or controlled by members of statutorily identified minority groups, absent an administrative waiver. In 1980, in Fullilove, supra, this Court upheld the validity of this federal set-aside. Chief Justice Burger's principal opinion noted the importance of overcoming those "criteria, methods, or practices thought by Congress to have the effect of defeating, or substantially impairing, access by the minority business community to public funds made available by congressional appropriations." Fullilove, 448 U.S., at 480, 100 S.Ct., at 2775. Finding the set-aside provision properly tailored to this goal, the Chief Justice concluded that the program was valid under either strict or intermediate scrutiny. Id., at 492, 100 S.Ct., at 2781. The congressional program upheld in Fullilove was based upon an array of congressional and agency studies which documented the powerful influence of racially exclusionary practices in the business world. A 1975 Report by the House Committee on Small Business concluded: "The effects of past inequities stemming from racial prejudice have not remained in the past. The Congress has recognized the reality that past discriminatory practices have, to some degree, adversely affected our present economic system. "While minority persons comprise about 16 percent of the Nation's population, of the 13 million businesses in the United States, only 382,000, or approximately 3.0 percent, are owned by minority individuals. The most recent data from the Department of Commerce also indicates that the gross receipts of all businesses in this country totals about $2,540.8 billion, and of this amount only $16.6 billion, or about 0.65 percent was realized by minority business concerns. "These statistics are not the result of random chance. The presumption must be made that past discriminatory systems have resulted in present economic inequities." H.R.Rep. No. 94-468, pp. 1-2 (1975) (quoted in Fullilove, supra, at 465, 100 S.Ct., at 2768) (opinion of Burger, C.J.) (emphasis deleted and added). A 1977 Report by the same Committee concluded: "[O]ver the years, there has developed a business system which has traditionally excluded measurable minority participation. In the past more than the present, this system of conducting business transactions overtly precluded minority input. Currently, we more often encounter a business system which is racially neutral on its face, but because of past overt social and economic discrimination is presently operating, in effect, to perpetuate these past inequities. Minorities, until recently, have not participated to any measurable extent, in our total business system generally, or in the construction industry in particular." H.R.Rep. No. 94-1791, p. 182 (1977), summarizing H.R.Rep. No. 94-468, p. 17 (1976) (quoted inFullilove, supra, at 466, n. 48, 100 S.Ct., at 2768, n. 48). Congress further found that minorities seeking initial public contracting assignments often faced immense entry barriers which did not confront experienced nonminority contractors. A report submitted to Congress in 1975 by the United States Commission on Civil Rights, for example, described the way in which fledgling minority-owned businesses were hampered by "deficiencies in working capital, inability to meet bonding requirements, disabilities caused by an inadequate 'track record,' lack of awareness of bidding opportunities, unfamiliarity with bidding procedures, preselection before the formal advertising process, and the exercise of discretion by government procurement officers to disfavor minority businesses." Fullilove, supra, at 467, 100 S.Ct., at 2769 (summarizing United States Comm'n on Civil Rights, Minorities and Women as Government Contractors (May 1975)). Thus, as of 1977, there was "abundant evidence" in the public domain "that minority businesses ha[d] been denied effective participation in public contracting opportunities by procurement practices that perpetuated the effects of prior discrimination." Fullilove, supra, at 477-478, 100 S.Ct., at 2774.2 Significantly, this evidence demonstrated that discrimination had prevented existing or nascent minority-owned businesses from obtaining not only federal contracting assignments, but state and local ones as well. See Fullilove, supra, at 478, 100 S.Ct., at 2774.3 The members of the Richmond City Council were well aware of these exhaustive congressional findings, a point the majority, tellingly, elides. The transcript of the session at which the council enacted the local set-aside initiative contains numerous references to the 6-year-old congressional set-aside program, to the evidence of nationwide discrimination barriers described above, and to the Fullilove decision itself. See, e.g., App. 14-16, 24 (remarks of City Attorney William H. Hefty); id., at 14-15 (remarks of Councilmember William J. Leidinger); id., at 18 (remarks of minority community task force president Freddie Ray); id., at 25, 41 (remarks of Councilmember Henry L. Marsh III); id., at 42 (remarks of City Manager Manuel Deese). The city council's members also heard testimony that, although minority groups made up half of the city's population, only 0.67% of the $24.6 million which Richmond had dispensed in construction contracts during the five years ending in March 1983 had gone to minority-owned prime contractors. Id., at 43 (remarks of Councilmember Henry W. Richardson). They heard testimony that the major Richmond area construction trade associations had virtually no minorities among their hundreds of members.4 Finally, they heard testimony from city officials as to the exclusionary history of the local construction industry.5 As the District Court noted, not a single person who testified before the city council denied that discrimination in Richmond's construction industry had been widespread. Civ.Action No. 84-0021 (ED Va., Dec. 3, 1984) (reprinted in Supp.App. to Juris.Statement 164-165).6 So long as one views Richmond's local evidence of discrimination against the backdrop of systematic nationwide racial discrimination which Congress had so painstakingly identified in this very industry, this case is readily resolved. "Agreement upon a means for applying the Equal Protection Clause to an affirmative-action program has eluded this Court every time the issue has come before us." Wygant v. Jackson Bd. of Education, 476 U.S. 267, 301, 106 S. Ct. 1842, 1861, 90 L. Ed. 2d 260 (1986) (MARSHALL, J., dissenting). My view has long been that race-conscious classifications designed to further remedial goals "must serve important governmental objectives and must be substantially related to achievement of those objectives" in order to withstand constitutional scrutiny. University of California Regents v. Bakke, 438 U.S. 265, 359, 98 S. Ct. 2733, 2783, 57 L. Ed. 2d 750 (1978) (joint opinion of BRENNAN, WHITE, MARSHALL, and BLACKMUN, JJ.) (citations omitted); see also Wygant, supra, 476 U.S., at 301-302, 106 S.Ct., at 1861 (MARSHALL, J., dissenting); Fullilove, 448 U.S., at 517-519, 100 S.Ct., at 2794-2795 (MARSHALL, J., concurring in judgment). Analyzed in terms of this two-pronged standard, Richmond's set-aside, like the federal program on which it was modeled, is "plainly constitutional." Fullilove, supra, at 519, 100 S.Ct., at 2795-2796 (MARSHALL, J., concurring in judgment). Turning first to the governmental interest inquiry, Richmond has two powerful interests in setting aside a portion of public contracting funds for minority-owned enterprises. The first is the city's interest in eradicating the effects of past racial discrimination. It is far too late in the day to doubt that remedying such discrimination is a compelling, let alone an important, interest. In Fullilove, six Members of this Court deemed this interest sufficient to support a race-conscious set-aside program governing federal contract procurement. The decision, in holding that the federal set-aside provision satisfied the equal protection principles under any level of scrutiny, recognized that the measure sought to remove "barriers to competitive access which had their roots in racial and ethnic discrimination, and which continue today, even absent any intentional discrimination or unlawful conduct." 448 U.S., at 478, 100 S.Ct., at 2774; see also id., at 502-506, 100 S.Ct., at 2787-2789 (Powell, J., concurring); id., at 520, 100 S.Ct., at 2796 (MARSHALL, J., concurring in judgment). Indeed, we have repeatedly reaffirmed the government's interest in breaking down barriers erected by past racial discrimination in cases involving access to public education, McDaniel v. Barresi, 402 U.S. 39, 41, 91 S. Ct. 1287, 1288, 28 L. Ed. 2d 582 (1971); University of California Regents v. Bakke, 438 U.S., at 320, 98 S.Ct., at 2763 (opinion of Powell, J.); id., at 362-364, 98 S.Ct., at 2784-2785 (joint opinion of BRENNAN, WHITE, MARSHALL, and BLACKMUN, JJ.), employment, United States v. Paradise, 480 U.S. 149, 167, 107 S. Ct. 1053, 1064, 94 L. Ed. 2d 203 (1987) (plurality opinion); id., at 186-189, 107 S.Ct., at 1074-1076 (Powell, J., concurring), and valuable government contracts, Fullilove, 448 U.S., at 481-484, 100 S.Ct., at 2776-2777 (opinion of Burger, C.J.); id., at 496-497, 100 S.Ct., at 2783-2784 (Powell, J., concurring); id., at 521, 100 S.Ct., at 2797 (MARSHALL, J., concurring in judgment). Richmond has a second compelling interest in setting aside, where possible, a portion of its contracting dollars. That interest is the prospective one of preventing the city's own spending decisions from reinforcing and perpetuating the exclusionary effects of past discrimination. See Fullilove, 448 U.S., at 475, 100 S.Ct., at 2773 (noting Congress' conclusion that "the subcontracting practices of prime contractors could perpetuate the prevailing impaired access by minority businesses to public contracting opportunities"); id., at 503, 100 S.Ct., at 2787 (Powell, J., concurring). The majority pays only lipservice to this additional governmental interest. See ante, at 491-493, 503-504. But our decisions have often emphasized the danger of the government tacitly adopting, encouraging, or furthering racial discrimination even by its own routine operations. In Shelley v. Kraemer, 334 U.S. 1, 68 S. Ct. 836, 92 L. Ed. 1161 (1948), this Court recognized this interest as a constitutional command, holding unanimously that the Equal Protection Clause forbids courts to enforce racially restrictive covenants even where such covenants satisfied all requirements of state law and where the State harbored no discriminatory intent. Similarly, in Norwood v. Harrison, 413 U.S. 455, 93 S. Ct. 2804, 37 L. Ed. 2d 723 (1973), we invalidated a program in which a State purchased textbooks and loaned them to students in public and private schools, including private schools with racially discriminatory policies. We stated that the Constitution requires a State "to steer clear, not only of operating the old dual system of racially segregated schools, but also of giving significant aid to institutions that practice racial or other invidious discrimination." Id., at 467, 93 S.Ct., at 2811-2812; see also Gilmore v. City of Montgomery, 417 U.S. 556, 94 S. Ct. 2416, 41 L. Ed. 2d 304 (1974) (upholding federal-court order forbidding city to allow private segregated schools which allegedly discriminated on the basis of race to use public parks). The majority is wrong to trivialize the continuing impact of government acceptance or use of private institutions or structures once wrought by discrimination. When government channels all its contracting funds to a white-dominated community of established contractors whose racial homogeneity is the product of private discrimination, it does more than place its imprimatur on the practices which forged and which continue to define that community. It also provides a measurable boost to those economic entities that have thrived within it, while denying important economic benefits to those entities which, but for prior discrimination, might well be better qualified to receive valuable government contracts. In my view, the interest in ensuring that the government does not reflect and reinforce prior private discrimination in dispensing public contracts is every bit as strong as the interest in eliminating private discrimination—an interest which this Court has repeatedly deemed compelling. See, e.g., New York State Club Assn. v. New York City, 487 U.S. 1, 14, n. 5, 108 S. Ct. 2225, 2235, n. 5, 101 L. Ed. 2d 1 (1988); Board of Directors of Rotary Int'l v. Rotary Club of Duarte, 481 U.S. 537, 549, 107 S. Ct. 1940, 1948, 95 L. Ed. 2d 474 (1987); Roberts v. United States Jaycees, 468 U.S. 609, 623, 104 S. Ct. 3244, 3252, 82 L. Ed. 2d 462 (1984); Bob Jones University v. United States, 461 U.S. 574, 604, 103 S. Ct. 2017, 2035, 76 L. Ed. 2d 157 (1983); Runyon v. McCrary, 427 U.S. 160, 179, 96 S. Ct. 2586, 2598, 49 L. Ed. 2d 415 (1976). The more government bestows its rewards on those persons or businesses that were positioned to thrive during a period of private racial discrimination, the tighter the deadhand grip of prior discrimination becomes on the present and future. Cities like Richmond may not be constitutionally required to adopt set-aside plans. But see North Carolina Bd. of Education v. Swann, 402 U.S. 43, 46, 91 S. Ct. 1284, 1286, 28 L. Ed. 2d 586 (1971) (Constitution may require consideration of race in remedying state-sponsored school segregation); McDaniel, supra, 402 U.S., at 41, 91 S.Ct., at 1288 (same, and stating that "[a]ny other approach would freeze the status quo that is the very target of all desegregation processes"). But there can be no doubt that when Richmond acted affirmatively to stem the perpetuation of patterns of discrimination through its own decisionmaking, it served an interest of the highest order. The remaining question with respect to the "governmental interest" prong of equal protection analysis is whether Richmond has proffered satisfactory proof of past racial discrimination to support its twin interests in remediation and in governmental nonperpetuation. Although the Members of this Court have differed on the appropriate standard of review for race-conscious remedial measures, see United States v. Paradise, 480 U.S., at 166, and 166-167, n. 17, 107 S.Ct., at 1064, and 1064, n. 17 (plurality opinion); Sheet Metal Workers v. EEOC, 478 U.S. 421, 480, 106 S. Ct. 3019, 3052, 92 L. Ed. 2d 344 (1986) (plurality opinion), we have always regarded this factual inquiry as a practical one. Thus, the Court has eschewed rigid tests which require the provision of particular species of evidence, statistical or otherwise. At the same time we have required that government adduce evidence that, taken as a whole, is sufficient to support its claimed interest and to dispel the natural concern that it acted out of mere "paternalistic stereotyping, not on a careful consideration of modern social conditions." Fullilove v. Klutznick, supra, 448 U.S., at 519, 100 S.Ct., at 2795 (MARSHALL, J., concurring in judgment). The separate opinions issued in Wygant v. Jackson Bd. of Education, a case involving a school board's race-conscious layoff provision, reflect this shared understanding. Justice Powell's opinion for a plurality of four Justices stated that "the trial court must make a factual determination that the employer had a strong basis in evidence for its conclusion that remedial action was necessary." 476 U.S., at 277, 106 S.Ct., at 1849. Justice O'CONNOR's separate concurrence required "a firm basis for concluding that remedial action was appropriate." Id., at 293, 106 S.Ct., at 1857. The dissenting opinion I authored, joined by Justices BRENNAN and BLACKMUN, required a government body to present a "legitimate factual predicate" and a reviewing court to "genuinely consider the circumstances of the provision at issue." Id., at 297, 303, 106 S.Ct., at 1859, 1862. Finally, Justice STEVENS' separate dissent sought and found "a rational and unquestionably legitimate basis" for the school board's action. Id., at 315-316, 106 S.Ct., at 1868-1869. Our unwillingness to go beyond these generalized standards to require specific types of proof in all circumstances reflects, in my view, an understanding that discrimination takes a myriad of "ingenious and pervasive forms." University of California Regents v. Bakke, 438 U.S., at 387, 98 S.Ct., at 2797 (separate opinion of MARSHALL, J.). The varied body of evidence on which Richmond relied provides a "strong," "firm," and "unquestionably legitimate" basis upon which the city council could determine that the effects of past racial discrimination warranted a remedial and prophylactic governmental response. As I have noted, supra, at 530-543 Richmond acted against a backdrop of congressional and Executive Branch studies which demonstrated with such force the nationwide pervasiveness of prior discrimination that Congress presumed that " 'present economic inequities' " in construction contracting resulted from " 'past discriminatory systems.' " Supra, at 531 (quoting H.R.Rep. No. 94-468, pp. 1-2 (1975)). The city's local evidence confirmed that Richmond's construction industry did not deviate from this pernicious national pattern. The fact that just 0.67% of public construction expenditures over the previous five years had gone to minority-owned prime contractors, despite the city's racially mixed population, strongly suggests that construction contracting in the area was rife with "present economic inequities." To the extent this enormous disparity did not itself demonstrate that discrimination had occurred, the descriptive testimony of Richmond's elected and appointed leaders drew the necessary link between the pitifully small presence of minorities in construction contracting and past exclusionary practices. That no one who testified challenged this depiction of widespread racial discrimination in area construction contracting lent significant weight to these accounts. The fact that area trade associations had virtually no minority members dramatized the extent of present inequities and suggested the lasting power of past discriminatory systems. In sum, to suggest that the facts on which Richmond has relied do not provide a sound basis for its finding of past racial discrimination simply blinks credibility. Richmond's reliance on localized, industry-specific findings is a far cry from the reliance on generalized "societal discrimination" which the majority decries as a basis for remedial action. Ante, at 496, 499, 505. But characterizing the plight of Richmond's minority contractors as mere "societal discrimination" is not the only respect in which the majority's critique shows an unwillingness to come to grips with why construction-contracting in Richmond is essentially a whites-only enterprise. The majority also takes the disingenuous approach of disaggregating Richmond's local evidence, attacking it piecemeal, and thereby concluding that no single piece of evidence adduced by the city, "standing alone," see, e.g., ante, at 503, suffices to prove past discrimination. But items of evidence do not, of course, "stan[d] alone" or exist in alien juxtaposition; they necessarily work together, reinforcing or contradicting each other. In any event, the majority's criticisms of individual items of Richmond's evidence rest on flimsy foundations. The majority states, for example, that reliance on the disparity between the share of city contracts awarded to minority firms (0.67%) and the minority population of Richmond (approximately 50%) is "misplaced." Ante, at 501. It is true that, when the factual predicate needed to be proved is one of present discrimination, we have generally credited statistical contrasts between the racial composition of a work force and the general population as proving discrimination only where this contrast revealed "gross statistical disparities." Hazelwood School Dist. v. United States, 433 U.S. 299, 307-308, 97 S. Ct. 2736, 2741-2742, 53 L. Ed. 2d 768 (1977) (Title VII case); see also Teamsters v. United States, 431 U.S. 324, 339, 97 S. Ct. 1843, 1856, 52 L. Ed. 2d 396 (1977) (same). But this principle does not impugn Richmond's statistical contrast, for two reasons. First, considering how miniscule the share of Richmond public construction contracting dollars received by minority-owned businesses is, it is hardly unreasonable to conclude that this case involves a "gross statistical disparit[y]." Hazelwood School Dist., supra, 433 U.S., at 307, 97 S.Ct., at 2741. There are roughly equal numbers of minorities and nonminorities in Richmond yet minority-owned businesses receive one-seventy-fifth of the public contracting funds that other businesses receive. See Teamsters, supra, 431 U.S., at 342, n. 23, 97 S.Ct., at 1858, n. 23 ("[F]ine tuning of the statistics could not have obscured the glaring absence of minority [bus] drivers. . . . [T]he company's inability to rebut the inference of discrimination came not from a misuse of statistics but from 'the inexorable zero' ") (citation omitted) (quoted in Johnson v. Transportation Agency, Santa Clara County, 480 U.S. 616, 656-657, 107 S. Ct. 1442, 1465, 94 L. Ed. 2d 615 (1987) (O'CONNOR, J., concurring in judgment)). Second, and more fundamentally, where the issue is not present discrimination but rather whether past discrimination has resulted in the continuing exclusion of minorities from a historically tight-knit industry, a contrast between population and work force is entirely appropriate to help gauge the degree of the exclusion. In Johnson v. Transportation Agency, Santa Clara County, supra, Justice O'CONNOR specifically observed that, when it is alleged that discrimination has prevented blacks from "obtaining th[e] experience" needed to qualify for a position, the "relevant comparison" is not to the percentage of blacks in the pool of qualified candidates, but to "the total percentage of blacks in the labor force." Id., at 651, 107 S.Ct., at 1462; see also Steelworkers v. Weber, 443 U.S. 193, 198-199, and n. 1, 99 S. Ct. 2721, 2724-2725, and n. 1, 61 L. Ed. 2d 480 (1979); Teamsters, supra, 431 U.S., at 339, n. 20, 97 S.Ct., at 1856, n. 20. This contrast is especially illuminating in cases like this, where a main avenue of introduction into the work force—here, membership in the trade associations whose members presumably train apprentices and help them procure subcontracting assignments is itself grossly dominated by nonminorities. The majority's assertion that the city "does not even know how many MBE's in the relevant market are qualified," ante, at 502, is thus entirely beside the point. If Richmond indeed has a monochromatic contracting community—a conclusion reached by the District Court, see Civ. Action No. 84-0021 (ED Va.1984) (reprinted in Supp.App. to Juris. Statement 164)—this most likely reflects the lingering power of past exclusionary practices. Certainly this is the explanation Congress has found persuasive at the national level. See Fullilove, 448 U.S., at 465, 100 S.Ct., at 2768. The city's requirement that prime public contractors set aside 30% of their subcontracting assignments for minority-owned enterprises, subject to the ordinance's provision for waivers where minority-owned enterprises are unavailable or unwilling to participate, is designed precisely to ease minority contractors into the industry. The majority's perfunctory dismissal of the testimony of Richmond's appointed and elected leaders is also deeply disturbing. These officials—including councilmembers, a former mayor, and the present city manager—asserted that race discrimination in area contracting had been widespread, and that the set-aside ordinance was a sincere and necessary attempt to eradicate the effects of this discrimination. The majority, however, states that where racial classifications are concerned, "simple legislative assurances of good intention cannot suffice." Ante, at 500. It similarly discounts as minimally probative the city council's designation of its set-aside plan as remedial. "[B]lind judicial deference to legislative or executive pronouncements," the majority explains, "has no place in equal protection analysis." Ibid. No one, of course, advocates "blind judicial deference" to the findings of the city council or the testimony of city leaders. The majority's suggestion that wholesale deference is what Richmond seeks is a classic straw-man argument. But the majority's trivialization of the testimony of Richmond's leaders is dismaying in a far more serious respect. By disregarding the testimony of local leaders and the judgment of local government, the majority does violence to the very principles of comity within our federal system which this Court has long championed. Local officials, by virtue of their proximity to, and their expertise with, local affairs, are exceptionally well qualified to make determinations of public good "within their respective spheres of authority." Hawaii Housing Authority v. Midkiff, 467 U.S. 229, 244, 104 S. Ct. 2321, 2331, 81 L. Ed. 2d 186 (1984); see also FERC v. Mississippi, 456 U.S. 742, 777-778, 102 S. Ct. 2126, 2147, 72 L. Ed. 2d 532 (1982) (O'CONNOR, J., concurring in judgment in part and dissenting in part). The majority, however, leaves any traces of comity behind in its headlong rush to strike down Richmond's race-conscious measure. Had the majority paused for a moment on the facts of the Richmond experience, it would have discovered that the city's leadership is deeply familiar with what racial discrimination is. The members of the Richmond City Council have spent long years witnessing multifarious acts of discrimination, including, but not limited to, the deliberate diminution of black residents' voting rights, resistance to school desegregation, and publicly sanctioned housing discrimination. Numerous decisions of federal courts chronicle this disgraceful recent history. In Richmond v. United States, 422 U.S. 358, 95 S. Ct. 2296, 45 L. Ed. 2d 245 (1975), for example, this Court denounced Richmond's decision to annex part of an adjacent county at a time when the city's black population was nearing 50% because it was "infected by the impermissible purpose of denying the right to vote based on race through perpetuating white majority power to exclude Negroes from office." Id., at 373, 95 S.Ct., at 2305; see also id., at 382, 95 S.Ct., at 2309 (BRENNAN, J., dissenting) (describing Richmond's "flagrantly discriminatory purpose . . . to avert a transfer of political control to what was fast becoming a black-population majority") (citation omitted).7 In Bradley v. School Board of Richmond, 462 F.2d 1058, 1060, n. 1 (CA4 1972), aff'd by an equally divided Court, 412 U.S. 92, 93 S. Ct. 1952, 36 L. Ed. 2d 771 (1973), the Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, sitting en banc, reviewed in the context of a school desegregation case Richmond's long history of inadequate compliance with Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483, 74 S. Ct. 686, 98 L. Ed. 873 (1954), and the cases implementing its holding. The dissenting judge elaborated: "The sordid history of Virginia's, and Richmond's attempts to circumvent, defeat, and nullify the holding of Brown I has been recorded in the opinions of this and other courts, and need not be repeated in detail here. It suffices to say that there was massive resistance and every state resource, including the services of the legal officers of the state, the services of private counsel (costing the State hundreds of thousands of dollars), the State police, and the power and prestige of the Governor, was employed to defeat Brown I. In Richmond, as has been mentioned, not even freedom of choice became actually effective until 1966, twelve years after the decision of Brown I." 462 F.2d, at 1075 (Winter, J.) (emphasis in original) (footnotes and citations omitted). The Court of Appeals majority in Bradley used equally pungent words in describing public and private housing discrimination in Richmond. Though rejecting the black plaintiffs' request that it consolidate Richmond's school district with those of two neighboring counties, the majority nonetheless agreed with the plaintiffs' assertion that "within the City of Richmond there has been state (also federal) action tending to perpetuate apartheid of the races in ghetto patterns throughout the city." Id., at 1065 (citing numerous public and private acts of discrimination).8 When the legislatures and leaders of cities with histories of pervasive discrimination testify that past discrimination has infected one of their industries, armchair cynicism like that exercised by the majority has no place. It may well be that "the autonomy of a State is an essential component of federalism," Garcia v. San Antonio Metropolitan Transit Authority, 469 U.S. 528, 588, 105 S. Ct. 1005, 1037, 83 L. Ed. 2d 1016 (1985) (O'CONNOR, J., dissenting), and that "each State is sovereign within its own domain, governing its citizens and providing for their general welfare," FERC v. Mississippi, supra, 456 U.S., at 777, 102 S.Ct., at 2147 (O'CONNOR, J., dissenting), but apparently this is not the case when federal judges, with nothing but their impressions to go on, choose to disbelieve the explanations of these local governments and officials. Disbelief is particularly inappropriate here in light of the fact that appellee Croson, which had the burden of proving unconstitutionality at trial, Wygant, 476 U.S., at 277-278, 106 S.Ct., at 1848-1849 (plurality opinion), has at no point come forward with any direct evidence that the city council's motives were anything other than sincere.9 Finally, I vehemently disagree with the majority's dismissal of the congressional and Executive Branch findings noted in Fullilove as having "extremely limited" probative value in this case. Ante, at 504. The majority concedes that Congress established nothing less than a "presumption" that minority contracting firms have been disadvantaged by prior discrimination. Ibid. The majority, inexplicably, would forbid Richmond to "share" in this information, and permit only Congress to take note of these ample findings. Ante, at 504—505. In thus requiring that Richmond's local evidence be severed from the context in which it was prepared, the majority would require cities seeking to eradicate the effects of past discrimination within their borders to reinvent the evidentiary wheel and engage in unnecessarily duplicative, costly, and time-consuming factfinding. No principle of federalism or of federal power, however, forbids a state or local government to draw upon a nationally relevant historical record prepared by the Federal Government. See Renton v. Playtime Theatres, Inc., 475 U.S. 41, 51-52, 106 S. Ct. 925, 931, 89 L. Ed. 2d 29 (1986) (city is "entitled to rely on the experiences of Seattle and other cities" in enacting an adult theater ordinance, as the First Amendment "does not require a city . . . to conduct new studies or produce evidence independent of that already generated by other cities, so long as whatever evidence the cities relies upon is reasonably believed to be relevant to the problem that the city addresses"); see also Steelworkers v. Weber, 443 U.S., at 198, n. 1, 99 S.Ct., at 2724, n. 1 ("Judicial findings of exclusion from crafts on racial grounds are so numerous as to make such exclusion a proper subject for judicial notice"); cf. Wygant, supra, 476 U.S., at 296, 106 S.Ct., at 1858 (MARSHALL, J., dissenting) ("No race-conscious provision that purports to serve a remedial purpose can be fairly assessed in a vacuum").10 Of course, Richmond could have built an even more compendious record of past discrimination, one including additional stark statistics and additional individual accounts of past discrimination. But nothing in the Fourteenth Amendment imposes such onerous documentary obligations upon States and localities once the reality of past discrimination is apparent. See infra, at 555-561. In my judgment, Richmond's set-aside plan also comports with the second prong of the equal protection inquiry, for it is substantially related to the interests it seeks to serve in remedying past discrimination and in ensuring that municipal contract procurement does not perpetuate that discrimination. The most striking aspect of the city's ordinance is the similarity it bears to the "appropriately limited" federal set-aside provision upheld in Fullilove. 448 U.S., at 489, 100 S.Ct., at 2780. Like the federal provision, Richmond's is limited to five years in duration, ibid., and was not renewed when it came up for reconsideration in 1988. Like the federal provision, Richmond's contains a waiver provision freeing from its subcontracting requirements those nonminority firms that demonstrate that they cannot comply with its provisions. Id., at 483-484, 100 S.Ct., at 2777. Like the federal provision, Richmond's has a minimal impact on innocent third parties. While the measure affects 30% of public contracting dollars, that translates to only 3% of overall Richmond area contracting. Brief for Appellant 44, n. 73 (recounting federal census figures on construction in Richmond); see Fullilove, supra, at 484, 100 S.Ct., at 2778 (burden shouldered by nonminority firms is "relatively light" compared to "overall construction contracting opportunities"). Finally, like the federal provision, Richmond's does not interfere with any vested right of a contractor to a particular contract; instead it operates entirely prospectively. 448 U.S., at 484, 100 S.Ct., at 2777-2778. Richmond's initiative affects only future economic arrangements and imposes only a diffuse burden on nonminority competitors—here, businesses owned or controlled by nonminorities which seek subcontracting work on public construction projects. The plurality in Wygant emphasized the importance of not disrupting the settled and legitimate expectations of innocent parties. "While hiring goals impose a diffuse burden, often foreclosing only one of several opportunities, layoffs impose the entire burden of achieving racial equality on particular individuals, often resulting in serious disruption of their lives. That burden is too intrusive." Wygant, 476 U.S., at 283, 106 S.Ct., at 1852; see Steelworkers v. Weber, supra, 443 U.S., at 208, 99 S.Ct., at 2730. These factors, far from "justify[ing] a preference of any size or duration," ante, at 505, are precisely the factors to which this Court looked in Fullilove. The majority takes issue, however, with two aspects of Richmond's tailoring: the city's refusal to explore the use of race-neutral measures to increase minority business participation in contracting, ante, at 507, and the selection of a 30% set-aside figure. Ante, at 729. The majority's first criticism is flawed in two respects. First, the majority overlooks the fact that since 1975, Richmond has barred both discrimination by the city in awarding public contracts and discrimination by public contractors. See Richmond, Va., City Code § 17.1 et seq. (1985). The virtual absence of minority businesses from the city's contracting rolls, indicated by the fact that such businesses have received less than 1% of public contracting dollars, strongly suggests that this ban has not succeeded in redressing the impact of past discrimination or in preventing city contract procurement from reinforcing racial homogeneity. Second, the majority's suggestion that Richmond should have first undertaken such race-neutral measures as a program of city financing for small firms, ante, at 507, ignores the fact that such measures, while theoretically appealing, have been discredited by Congress as ineffectual in eradicating the effects of past discrimination in this very industry. For this reason, this Court in Fullilove refused to fault Congress for not undertaking race-neutral measures as precursors to its race-conscious set-aside. See Fullilove, 448 U.S., at 463-467, 100 S.Ct., at 2767-2769 (noting inadequacy of previous measures designed to give experience to minority businesses); see also id., at 511, 100 S.Ct., at 2792 (Powell, J., concurring) ("By the time Congress enacted [the federal set-aside] in 1977, it knew that other remedies had failed to ameliorate the effects of racial discrimination in the construction industry"). The Equal Protection Clause does not require Richmond to retrace Congress' steps when Congress has found that those steps lead nowhere. Given the well-exposed limitations of race-neutral measures, it was thus appropriate for a municipality like Richmond to conclude that, in the words of Justice BLACKMUN, "[i]n order to get beyond racism, we must first take account of race. There is no other way." University of California Regents v. Bakke, 438 U.S., at 407, 98 S.Ct., at 2807-2808 (separate opinion).11 As for Richmond's 30% target, the majority states that this figure "cannot be said to be narrowly tailored to any goal, except perhaps outright racial balancing." Ante, at 507. The majority ignores two important facts. First, the set-aside measure affects only 3% of overall city contracting; thus, any imprecision in tailoring has far less impact than the majority suggests. But more important, the majority ignores the fact that Richmond's 30% figure was patterned directly on the Fullilove precedent. Congress' 10% figure fell "roughly halfway between the present percentage of minority contractors and the percentage of minority group members in the Nation." Fullilove, supra, 448 U.S., at 513-514, 100 S.Ct., at 2792-2793 (Powell, J., concurring). The Richmond City Council's 30% figure similarly falls roughly halfway between the present percentage of Richmond-based minority contractors (almost zero) and the percentage of minorities in Richmond (50%). In faulting Richmond for not presenting a different explanation for its choice of a set-aside figure, the majority honors Fullilove only in the breach. I would ordinarily end my analysis at this point and conclude that Richmond's ordinance satisfies both the governmental interest and substantial relationship prongs of our Equal Protection Clause analysis. However, I am compelled to add more, for the majority has gone beyond the facts of this case to announce a set of principles which unnecessarily restricts the power of governmental entities to take race-conscious measures to redress the effects of prior discrimination. Today, for the first time, a majority of this Court has adopted strict scrutiny as its standard of Equal Protection Clause review of race-conscious remedial measures. Ante, at 493-494; ante, at 520 (SCALIA, J., concurring in judgment). This is an unwelcome development. A profound difference separates governmental actions that themselves are racist, and governmental actions that seek to remedy the effects of prior racism or to prevent neutral governmental activity from perpetuating the effects of such racism. See, e.g., Wygant v. Jackson Bd. of Education, 476 U.S., at 301-302, 106 S.Ct., at 1861 (MARSHALL, J., dissenting); Fullilove, supra, 448 U.S., at 517-519, 100 S.Ct., at 2794-2795 (MARSHALL, J., concurring in judgment); University of California Regents v. Bakke, 438 U.S., at 355-362, 98 S.Ct., at 2781-2784 (joint opinion of BRENNAN, WHITE, MARSHALL, and BLACKMUN, JJ.). Racial classifications "drawn on the presumption that one race is inferior to another or because they put the weight of government behind racial hatred and separatism" warrant the strictest judicial scrutiny because of the very irrelevance of these rationales. Id., at 357-358, 98 S.Ct., at 2782. By contrast, racial classifications drawn for the purpose of remedying the effects of discrimination that itself was race based have a highly pertinent basis: the tragic and indelible fact that discrimination against blacks and other racial minorities in this Nation has pervaded our Nation's history and continues to scar our society. As I stated in Fullilove: "Because the consideration of race is relevant to remedying the continuing effects of past racial discrimination, and because governmental programs employing racial classifications for remedial purposes can be crafted to avoid stigmatization, . . . such programs should not be subjected to conventional 'strict scrutiny'—scrutiny that is strict in theory, but fatal in fact." Fullilove, supra, 448 U.S., at 518-519, 100 S.Ct., at 2795 (citation omitted). In concluding that remedial classifications warrant no different standard of review under the Constitution than the most brutal and repugnant forms of state-sponsored racism, a majority of this Court signals that it regards racial discrimination as largely a phenomenon of the past, and that government bodies need no longer preoccupy themselves with rectifying racial injustice. I, however, do not believe this Nation is anywhere close to eradicating racial discrimination or its vestiges. In constitutionalizing its wishful thinking, the majority today does a grave disservice not only to those victims of past and present racial discrimination in this Nation whom government has sought to assist, but also to this Court's long tradition of approaching issues of race with the utmost sensitivity. I am also troubled by the majority's assertion that, even if it did not believe generally in strict scrutiny of race-based remedial measures, "the circumstances of this case" require this Court to look upon the Richmond City Council's measure with the strictest scrutiny. Ante, at 495. The sole such circumstance which the majority cites, however, is the fact that blacks in Richmond are a "dominant racial grou[p]" in the city. Ibid. In support of this characterization of dominance, the majority observes that "blacks constitute approximately 50% of the population of the city of Richmond" and that "[f]ive of the nine seats on the City Council are held by blacks." Ibid While I agree that the numerical and political supremacy of a given racial group is a factor bearing upon the level of scrutiny to be applied, this Court has never held that numerical inferiority, standing alone, makes a racial group "suspect" and thus entitled to strict scrutiny review. Rather, we have identified other "traditional indicia of suspectness": whether a group has been "saddled with such disabilities, or subjected to such a history of purposeful unequal treatment, or relegated to such a position of political powerlessness as to command extraordinary protection from the majoritarian political process." San Antonio Independent School Dist. v. Rodriguez, 411 U.S. 1, 28, 93 S. Ct. 1278, 1294, 36 L. Ed. 2d 16 (1973). It cannot seriously be suggested that nonminorities in Richmond have any "history of purposeful unequal treatment." Ibid. Nor is there any indication that they have any of the disabilities that have characteristically afflicted those groups this Court has deemed suspect. Indeed, the numerical and political dominance of nonminorities within the State of Virginia and the Nation as a whole provides an enormous political check against the "simple racial politics" at the municipal level which the majority fears. Ante, at 493. If the majority really believes that groups like Richmond's nonminorities, which constitute approximately half the population but which are outnumbered even marginally in political fora, are deserving of suspect class status for these reasons alone, this Court's decisions denying suspect status to women, see Craig v. Boren, 429 U.S. 190, 197, 97 S. Ct. 451, 456, 50 L. Ed. 2d 397 (1976), and to persons with below-average incomes, see San Antonio Independent School Dist., supra, 411 U.S., at 28, 93 S.Ct., at 1294, stand on extremely shaky ground. See Castaneda v. Partida, 430 U.S. 482, 504, 97 S. Ct. 1272, 1285, 51 L. Ed. 2d 498 (1977) (MARSHALL, J., concurring). In my view, the "circumstances of this case," ante, at 495, underscore the importance of not subjecting to a strict scrutiny straitjacket the increasing number of cities which have recently come under minority leadership and are eager to rectify, or at least prevent the perpetuation of, past racial discrimination. In many cases, these cities will be the ones with the most in the way of prior discrimination to rectify. Richmond's leaders had just witnessed decades of publicly sanctioned racial discrimination in virtually all walks of life—discrimination amply documented in the decisions of the federal judiciary. See supra, at 544-567. This history of "purposefully unequal treatment" forced upon minorities, not imposed by them, should raise an inference that minorities in Richmond had much to remedy—and that the 1983 set-aside was undertaken with sincere remedial goals in mind, not "simple racial politics." Ante, at 493. Richmond's own recent political history underscores the facile nature of the majority's assumption that elected officials' voting decisions are based on the color of their skins. In recent years, white and black councilmembers in Richmond have increasingly joined hands on controversial matters. When the Richmond City Council elected a black man mayor in 1982, for example, his victory was won with the support of the city council's four white members. Richmond Times-Dispatch, July 2, 1982, p. 1, col. 1. The vote on the set-aside plan a year later also was not purely along racial lines. Of the four white councilmembers, one voted for the measure and another abstained. App. 49. The majority's view that remedial measures undertaken by municipalities with black leadership must face a stiffer test of Equal Protection Clause scrutiny than remedial measures undertaken by municipalities with white leadership implies a lack of political maturity on the part of this Nation's elected minority officials that is totally unwarranted. Such insulting judgments have no place in constitutional jurisprudence. Today's decision, finally, is particularly noteworthy for the daunting standard it imposes upon States and localities contemplating the use of race-conscious measures to eradicate the present effects of prior discrimination and prevent its perpetuation. The majority restricts the use of such measures to situations in which a State or locality can put forth "a prima facie case of a constitutional or statutory violation." Ante, at 500. In so doing, the majority calls into question the validity of the business set-asides which dozens of municipalities across this Nation have adopted on the authority of Fullilove. Nothing in the Constitution or in the prior decisions of this Court supports limiting state authority to confront the effects of past discrimination to those situations in which a prima facie case of a constitutional or statutory violation can be made out. By its very terms, the majority's standard effectively cedes control of a large component of the content of that constitutional provision to Congress and to state legislatures. If an antecedent Virginia or Richmond law had defined as unlawful the award to nonminorities of an overwhelming share of a city's contracting dollars, for example, Richmond's subsequent set-aside initiative would then satisfy the majority's standard. But without such a law, the initiative might not withstand constitutional scrutiny. The meaning of "equal protection of the laws" thus turns on the happenstance of whether a state or local body has previously defined illegal discrimination. Indeed, given that racially discriminatory cities may be the ones least likely to have tough antidiscrimination laws on their books, the majority's constitutional incorporation of state and local statutes has the perverse effect of inhibiting those States or localities with the worst records of official racism from taking remedial action. Similar flaws would inhere in the majority's standard even if it incorporated only federal antidiscrimination statutes. If Congress tomorrow dramatically expanded Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 78 Stat. 253, as amended, 42 U.S.C. § 2000e et seq.—or alternatively, if it repealed that legislation altogether the meaning of equal protection would change precipitately along with it. Whatever the Framers of the Fourteenth Amendment had in mind in 1868, it certainly was not that the content of their Amendment would turn on the amendments to or the evolving interpretations of a federal statute passed nearly a century later.12 To the degree that this parsimonious standard is grounded on a view that either § 1 or § 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment substantially disempowered States and localities from remedying past racial discrimination, ante, at 490—491, 504, the majority is seriously mistaken. With respect, first, to § 5, our precedents have never suggested that this provision—or, for that matter, its companion federal-empowerment provisions in the Thirteenth and Fifteenth Amendments—was meant to pre-empt or limit state police power to undertake race-conscious remedial measures. To the contrary, in Katzenbach v. Morgan, 384 U.S. 641, 86 S. Ct. 1717, 16 L. Ed. 2d 828 (1966), we held that § 5 "is a positive grant of legislative power authorizing Congress to exercise its discretion in determining whether and what legislation is needed to secure the guarantees of the Fourteenth Amendment." Id., at 651, 86 S.Ct., at 651 (emphasis added); see id., at 653-656, 86 S.Ct., at 653-656; South Carolina v. Katzenbach, 383 U.S. 301, 326-327, 86 S. Ct. 803, 817-818, 15 L. Ed. 2d 769 (1966) (interpreting similar provision of the Fifteenth Amendment to empower Congress to "implemen[t] the rights created" by its passage); see also City of Rome v. United States, 446 U.S. 156, 173, 100 S. Ct. 1548, 1559, 64 L. Ed. 2d 119 (1980) (same). Indeed, we have held that Congress has this authority even where no constitutional violation has been found. See Katzenbach v. Morgan, supra (upholding Voting Rights Act provision nullifying state English literacy requirement we had previously upheld against Equal Protection Clause challenge). Certainly Fullilove did not view § 5 either as limiting the traditionally broad police powers of the States to fight discrimination, or as mandating a zero-sum game in which state power wanes as federal power waxes. On the contrary, the Fullilove plurality invoked § 5 only because it provided specific and certain authorization for the Federal Government's attempt to impose a race-conscious condition on the dispensation of federal funds by state and local grantees. See Fullilove, 448 U.S., at 476, 100 S.Ct., at 2774 (basing decision on § 5 because "[i]n certain contexts, there are limitations on the reach of the Commerce Power"). As for § 1, it is too late in the day to assert seriously that the Equal Protection Clause prohibits States—or for that matter, the Federal Government, to whom the equal protection guarantee has largely been applied, see Bolling v. Sharpe, 347 U.S. 497, 74 S. Ct. 693, 98 L. Ed. 884 (1954)—from enacting race-conscious remedies. Our cases in the areas of school desegregation, voting rights, and affirmative action have demonstrated time and again that race is constitutionally germane, precisely because race remains dismayingly relevant in American life. In adopting its prima facie standard for States and localities, the majority closes its eyes to this constitutional history and social reality. So, too, does Justice SCALIA. He would further limit consideration of race to those cases in which States find it "necessary to eliminate their own maintenance of a system of unlawful racial classification"—a "distinction" which, he states, "explains our school desegregation cases." Ante, at 524 (SCALIA, J., concurring in judgment). But this Court's remedy-stage school desegregation decisions cannot so conveniently be cordoned off. These decisions (like those involving voting rights and affirmative action) stand for the same broad principles of equal protection which Richmond seeks to vindicate in this case: all persons have equal worth, and it is permissible, given a sufficient factual predicate and appropriate tailoring, for government to take account of race to eradicate the present effects of race-based subjugation denying that basic equality. Justice SCALIA's artful distinction allows him to avoid having to repudiate "our school desegregation cases," ibid., but, like the arbitrary limitation on race-conscious relief adopted by the majority, his approach "would freeze the status quo that is the very target" of the remedial actions of States and localities. McDaniel v. Barresi, 402 U.S., at 41, 91 S.Ct., at 1288; see also North Carolina Bd. of Education v. Swann, 402 U.S., at 46, 91 S.Ct., at 1286 (striking down State's flat prohibition on assignment of pupils on basis of race as impeding an "effective remedy"); United Jewish Organizations v. Carey, 430 U.S. 144, 159-162, 97 S. Ct. 996, 1006-1008, 51 L. Ed. 2d 229 (1977) (upholding New York's use of racial criteria in drawing district lines so as to comply with § 5 of the Voting Rights Act). The fact is that Congress' concern in passing the Reconstruction Amendments, and particularly their congressional authorization provisions, was that States would not adequately respond to racial violence or discrimination against newly freed slaves. To interpret any aspect of these Amendments as proscribing state remedial responses to these very problems turns the Amendments on their heads. As four Justices, of whom I was one, stated in University of California Regents v. Bakke: "[There is] no reason to conclude that the States cannot voluntarily accomplish under § 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment what Congress under § 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment validly may authorize or compel either the States or private persons to do. A contrary position would conflict with the traditional understanding recognizing the competence of the States to initiate measures consistent with federal policy in the absence of congressional pre-emption of the subject matter. Nothing whatever in the legislative history of either the Fourteenth Amendment or the Civil Rights Acts even remotely suggests that the States are foreclosed from furthering the fundamental purpose of equal opportunity to which the Amendment and those Acts are addressed. Indeed, voluntary initiatives by the States to achieve the national goal of equal opportunity have been recognized to be essential to its attainment. 'To use the Fourteenth Amendment as a sword against such State power would stultify that Amendment.' Railway Mail Assn. v. Corsi, 326 U.S. 88, 98, 65 S. Ct. 1483, 1489, 89 L. Ed. 2072 (Frankfurter, J., concurring)." 438 U.S., at 368, 98 S.Ct., at 2788 (footnote omitted; emphasis added). In short, there is simply no credible evidence that the Framers of the Fourteenth Amendment sought "to transfer the security and protection of all the civil rights . . . from the States to the Federal government." The Slaughter-House Cases, 16 Wall. 36, 77-78, 21 L. Ed. 394 (1873).13 The three Reconstruction Amendments undeniably "worked a dramatic change in the balance between congressional and state power," ante, at 490: they forbade state-sanctioned slavery, forbade the state-sanctioned denial of the right to vote, and (until the content of the Equal Protection Clause was substantially applied to the Federal Government through the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment) uniquely forbade States to deny equal protection. The Amendments also specifically empowered the Federal Government to combat discrimination at a time when the breadth of federal power under the Constitution was less apparent than it is today. But nothing in the Amendments themselves, or in our long history of interpreting or applying those momentous charters, suggests that States, exercising their police power, are in any way constitutionally inhibited from working alongside the Federal Government in the fight against discrimination and its effects. The majority today sounds a full-scale retreat from the Court's longstanding solicitude to race-conscious remedial efforts "directed toward deliverance of the century-old promise of equality of economic opportunity." Fullilove, 448 U.S., at 463, 100 S.Ct., at 2767. The new and restrictive tests it applies scuttle one city's effort to surmount its discriminatory past, and imperil those of dozens more localities. I, however, profoundly disagree with the cramped vision of the Equal Protection Clause which the majority offers today and with its application of that vision to Richmond, Virginia's, laudable set-aside plan. The battle against pernicious racial discrimination or its effects is nowhere near won. I must dissent. Justice BLACKMUN, with whom Justice BRENNAN joins, dissenting. I join Justice MARSHALL's perceptive and incisive opinion revealing great sensitivity toward those who have suffered the pains of economic discrimination in the construction trades for so long. I never thought that I would live to see the day when the city of Richmond, Virginia, the cradle of the Old Confederacy, sought on its own, within a narrow confine, to lessen the stark impact of persistent discrimination. But Richmond, to its great credit, acted. Yet this Court, the supposed bastion of equality, strikes down Richmond's efforts as though discrimination had never existed or was not demonstrated in this particular litigation. Justice MARSHALL convincingly discloses the fallacy and the shallowness of that approach. History is irrefutable, even though one might sympathize with those who—though possibly innocent in themselves—benefit from the wrongs of past decades. So the Court today regresses. I am confident, however, that, given time, it one day again will do its best to fulfill the great promises of the Constitution's Preamble and of the guarantees embodied in the Bill of Rights—a fulfillment that would make this Nation very special. The expiration of the ordinance has not rendered the controversy between the city and appellee moot. There remains a live controversy between the parties over whether Richmond's refusal to award appellee a contract pursuant to the ordinance was unlawful and thus entitles appellee to damages. See Memphis Light, Gas & Water Div. v. Craft, 436 U.S. 1, 8-9, 98 S. Ct. 1554, 1559-1560, 56 L. Ed. 2d 30 (1978). In its original panel opinion, the Court of Appeals held that under Virginia law the city had the legal authority to enact the set-aside program. Croson I, 779 F.2d 181, 184-186 (CA4 1985). That determination was not disturbed by the court's subsequent holding that the Plan violated the Equal Protection Clause. Since 1975 the city of Richmond has had an ordinance on the books prohibiting both discrimination in the award of public contracts and employment discrimination by public contractors. See Reply Brief for Appellant 18, n. 42 (citing Richmond, Va., City Code, § 17.2 et seq. (1985)). The city points to no evidence that its prime contractors have been violating the ordinance in either their employment or subcontracting practices. The complete silence of the record concerning enforcement of the city's own antidiscrimination ordinance flies in the face of the dissent's vision of a "tight-knit industry" which has prevented blacks from obtaining the experience necessary to participate in construction contracting. See post, at 542-543. In my view the Court's approach to this case gives unwarranted deference to race-based legislative action that purports to serve a purely remedial goal, and overlooks the potential value of race-based determinations that may serve other valid purposes. With regard to the former point—as I explained at some length in Fullilove v. Klutznick, 448 U.S. 448, 532-554, 100 S. Ct. 2758, 2802-2814, 65 L. Ed. 2d 902 (1980) (dissenting opinion) I am not prepared to assume that even a more narrowly tailored set-aside program supported by stronger findings would be constitutionally justified. Unless the legislature can identify both the particular victims and the particular perpetrators of past discrimination, which is precisely what a court does when it makes findings of fact and conclusions of law, a remedial justification for race-based legislation will almost certainly sweep too broadly. With regard to the latter point: I think it unfortunate that the Court in neither Wygant nor this case seems prepared to acknowledge that some race-based policy decisions may serve a legitimate public purpose. I agree, of course, that race is so seldom relevant to legislative decisions on how best to foster the public good that legitimate justifications for race-based legislation will usually not be available. But unlike the Court, I would not totally discount the legitimacy of race-based decisions that may produce tangible and fully justified future benefits. See n. 2, infra; see also Justice Powell's discussion in University of California Regents v. Bakke, 438 U.S. 265, 311-319, 98 S. Ct. 2733, 2759-2763, 57 L. Ed. 2d 750 (1978). "Rather than analyzing a case of this kind by asking whether minority teachers have some sort of special entitlement to jobs as a remedy for sins that were committed in the past, I believe that we should first ask whether the Board's action advances the public interest in educating children for the future. "[I]n our present society, race is not always irrelevant to sound governmental decisionmaking. To take the most obvious example, in law enforcement, if an undercover agent is needed to infiltrate a group suspected of ongoing criminal behavior—and if the members of the group are all of the same race—it would seem perfectly rational to employ an agent of that race rather than a member of a different racial class. Similarly, in a city with a recent history of racial unrest, the superintendent of police might reasonably conclude that an integrated police force could develop a better relationship with the community and thereby do a more effective job of maintaining law and order than a force composed only of white officers. "In the context of public education, it is quite obvious that a school board may reasonably conclude that an integrated faculty will be able to provide benefits to the student body that could not be provided by an all-white, or nearly all-white, faculty. For one of the most important lessons that the American public schools teach is that the diverse ethnic, cultural, and national backgrounds that have been brought together in our famous 'melting pot' do not identify essential differences among the human beings that inhabit our land. It is one thing for a white child to be taught by a white teacher that color, like beauty, is only 'skin deep'; it is far more convincing to experience that truth on a day-to-day basis during the routine, ongoing learning process." Wygant v. Jackson Board of Education, 476 U.S., at 313-315, 106 S.Ct., at 1867-1869 (footnotes omitted). See U.S. Const., Art. I, § 9, cl. 3, § 10, cl. 1. Of course, legislatures frequently appropriate funds to compensate victims of past governmental misconduct for which there is no judicial remedy. See, e.g., Pub.L. 100-383, 102 Stat. 903 (provision of restitution to interned Japanese-Americans during World War II). Thus, it would have been consistent with normal practice for the city of Richmond to provide direct monetary compensation to any minority-business enterprise that the city might have injured in the past. Such a voluntary decision by a public body is, however, quite different from a decision to require one private party to compensate another for an unproven injury. As I pointed out in my separate opinion concurring in the judgment in United States v. Paradise, 480 U.S. 149, 193-194, 107 S. Ct. 1053, 1078-1079, 94 L. Ed. 2d 203 (1987): "A party who has been found guilty of repeated and persistent violations of the law bears the burden of demonstrating that the chancellor's efforts to fashion effective relief exceed the bounds of 'reasonableness.' The burden of proof in a case like this is precisely the opposite of that in cases such as Wygant v. Jackson Board of Education, 476 U.S. 267, 106 S. Ct. 1842, 90 L. Ed. 2d 260 (1986), and Fullilove v. Klutznick, 448 U.S. 448, 100 S. Ct. 2758, 65 L. Ed. 2d 902 (1980), which did not involve any proven violations of law. In such cases the governmental decisionmaker who would make race-conscious decisions must overcome a strong presumption against them. No such burden rests on a federal district judge who has found that the governmental unit before him is guilty of racially discriminatory conduct that violates the Constitution." "There is only one Equal Protection Clause. It requires every State to govern impartially. It does not direct the courts to apply one standard of review in some cases and a different standard in other cases." Craig v. Boren, 429 U.S. 190, 211-212, 97 S. Ct. 451, 464, 50 L. Ed. 2d 397 (1976) (STEVENS, J., concurring). "I have always asked myself whether I could find a 'rational basis' for the classification at issue. The term 'rational,' of course, includes a requirement that an impartial lawmaker could logically believe that the classification would serve a legitimate public purpose that transcends the harm to the members of the disadvantaged class. Thus, the word 'rational'—for me at least—includes elements of legitimacy and neutrality that must always characterize the performance of the sovereign's duty to govern impartially. "In every equal protection case, we have to ask certain basic questions. What class is harmed by the legislation, and has it been subjected to a 'tradition of disfavor' by our laws? What is the public purpose that is being served by the law? What is the characteristic of the disadvantaged class that justifies the disparate treatment? In most cases the answer to these questions will tell us whether the statute has a 'rational basis.' " Cleburne v. Cleburne Living Center, Inc., 473 U.S., at 452-453, 105 S.Ct., at 3261 (STEVENS, J., concurring). See ante, at 502, n. 3. There is surely some question about the power of a legislature to impose a statutory burden on private citizens for engaging in discriminatory practices at a time when such practices were not unlawful. Cf. Teamsters v. United States, 431 U.S. 324, 356-357, 360, 97 S. Ct. 1843, 1865, 1867, 52 L. Ed. 2d 396 (1977). There is, of course, another possibility that should not be overlooked. The ordinance might be nothing more than a form of patronage. But racial patronage, like a racial gerrymander, is no more defensible than political patronage or a political gerrymander. Cf. Karcher v. Daggett, 462 U.S. 725, 744-765, 103 S. Ct. 2653, 2665-2668, 77 L. Ed. 2d 133 (1983) (STEVENS, J., concurring); Rogers v. Lodge, 458 U.S. 613, 631-653, 102 S. Ct. 3272, 3283-3294, 73 L. Ed. 2d 1012 (1982) (STEVENS, J., dissenting); Mobile v. Bolden, 446 U.S. 55, 83-94, 100 S. Ct. 1490, 1508-1513, 64 L. Ed. 2d 47 (1980) (STEVENS, J., concurring in judgment); Cousins v. City Council of Chicago, 466 F.2d 830, 848-853 (CA7) (STEVENS, J., dissenting), cert. denied, 409 U.S. 893, 93 S. Ct. 85, 34 L. Ed. 2d 151 (1972). A southern State with a long history of discrimination against Republicans in the awarding of public contracts could not rely on such past discrimination as a basis for granting a legislative preference to Republican contractors in the future. In the interest of convenience, I refer to the opinion in this case authored by Justice O'CONNOR as "the majority," recognizing that certain portions of that opinion have been joined by only a plurality of the Court. Other Reports indicating the dearth of minority-owned businesses include H.R.Rep. No. 92-1615, p. 3 (1972) (Report of the Subcommittee on Minority Small Business Enterprise, finding that the "long history of racial bias" has created "major problems" for minority businessmen); H.R.Doc. No. 92-194, p. 1 (1972) (text of message from President Nixon to Congress, describing federal efforts "to press open new doors of opportunity for millions of Americans to whom those doors had previously been barred, or only half-open"); H.R.Doc. No. 92-169, p. 1 (1971) (text of message from President Nixon to Congress, describing paucity of minority business ownership and federal efforts to give "every man an equal chance at the starting line"). Numerous congressional studies undertaken after 1977 and issued before the Richmond City Council convened in April 1983 found that the exclusion of minorities had continued virtually unabated—and that, because of this legacy of discrimination, minority businesses across the Nation had still failed, as of 1983, to gain a real toehold in the business world. See, e.g., H.R.Rep. No. 95-949, pp. 2, 8 (1978) (Report of House Committee on Small Business, finding that minority businesses "are severely undercapitalized" and that many minorities are disadvantaged "because they are identified as members of certain racial categories"); S.Rep. No. 95-1070, pp. 14-15 (1978), U.S.Code Cong. & Admin.News 1978, pp. 3835, 3848, 3849; (Report of Senate Select Committee on Small Business, finding that the federal effort "has fallen far short of its goal to develop strong and growing disadvantaged small businesses," and "recogniz[ing] the pattern of social and economic discrimination that continues to deprive racial and ethnic minorities, and others, of the opportunity to participate fully in the free enterprise system"); S.Rep. No. 96-31, pp. IX, 107 (1979) (Report of Senate Select Committee on Small Business, finding that many minorities have "suffered the effects of discriminatory practices or similar invidious circumstances over which they have no control"); S.Rep. No. 96-974, p. 3 (1980), U.S.Code Cong. & Admin.News 1980, pp. 4953, 4954 (Report of Senate Select Committee on Small Business, finding that government aid must be "significantly increased" if minority-owned businesses are to "have the maximum practical opportunity to develop into viable small businesses"); H.R.Rep. No. 97-956, p. 35 (1982) (Report of House Committee on Small Business, finding that federal programs to aid minority businesses have had "limited success" to date, but concluding that success could be "greatly expanded" with "appropriate corrective actions"); H.R.Rep. No. 98-3, p. 1 (1983) (Report of House Committee on Small Business, finding that "the small business share of Federal contracts continues to be inadequate"). According to testimony by trade association representatives, the Associated General Contractors of Virginia had no blacks among its 130 Richmond-area members, App. 27-28 (remarks of Stephen Watts); the American Subcontractors Association had no blacks among its 80 Richmond members, id., at 36 (remarks of Patrick Murphy); the Professional Contractors Estimators Association had 1 black member among its 60 Richmond members, id., at 39 (remarks of Al Shuman); the Central Virginia Electrical Contractors Association had 1 black member among its 45 members, id., at 40 (remarks of Al Shuman); and the National Electrical Contractors Association had 2 black members among its 81 Virginia members. Id., at 34 (remarks of Mark Singer). Among those testifying to the discriminatory practices of Richmond's construction industry was Councilmember Henry Marsh, who had served as mayor of Richmond from 1977 to 1982. Marsh stated: "I have been practicing law in this community since 1961, and I am familiar with the practices in the construction industry in this area, in the State, and around the nation. And I can say without equivocation, that the general conduct in the construction industry in this area, and the State and around the nation, is one in which race discrimination and exclusion on the basis of race is widespread. "I think the situation involved in the City of Richmond is the same. . . . I think the question of whether or not remedial action is required is not open to question." Id., at 41. Manuel Deese, who in his capacity as City Manager had oversight responsibility for city procurement matters, stated that he fully agreed with Marsh's analysis. Id., at 42. The representatives of several trade associations did, however, deny that their particular organizations engaged in discrimination. See, e.g., id., at 38 (remarks of Al Shuman, on behalf of the Central Virginia Electrical Contractors Association). For a disturbing description of the lengths to which some Richmond white officials went during recent decades to hold in check growing black political power, see J. Moeser & R. Dennis, The Politics of Annexation—Oligarchic Power in a Southern City 50-188 (1982). Again the dissenting judge—who would have consolidated the school districts—elaborated: "[M]any other instances of state and private action contribut[ed] to the concentration of black citizens within Richmond and white citizens without. These were principally in the area of residential development. Racially restrictive convenants were freely employed. Racially discriminatory practices in the prospective purchase of county property by black purchasers were followed. Urban renewal, subsidized public housing and government-sponsored home mortgage insurance had been undertaken on a racially discriminatory basis. [The neighboring counties] provided schools, roads, zoning and development approval for the rapid growth of the white population in each county at the expense of the city, without making any attempt to assure that the development that they made possible was integrated. Superimposed on the pattern of government-aided residential segregation . . . had been a discriminatory policy of school construction, i.e., the selection of school construction sites in the center of racially identifiable neighborhoods manifestly to serve the educational needs of students of a single race. "The majority does not question the accuracy of these facts." 462 F.2d, at 1075-1076 (Winter, J.) (emphasis in original) (footnote omitted). Cf. Fullilove v. Klutznick, 448 U.S. 448, 541, 100 S. Ct. 2758, 2807, 65 L. Ed. 2d 902 (1980) (STEVENS, J., dissenting) (noting statements of sponsors of federal set-aside that measure was designed to give their constituents "a piece of the action"). Although the majority sharply criticizes Richmond for using data which it did not itself develop, it is noteworthy that the federal set-aside program upheld in Fullilove was adopted as a floor amendment "without any congressional hearings or investigation whatsoever." L. Tribe, American Constitutional Law 345 (2d ed. 1988). The principal opinion in Fullilove justified the set-aside by relying heavily on the aforementioned studies by agencies like the Small Business Administration and on legislative reports prepared in connection with prior, failed legislation. See Fullilove v. Klutznick, 448 U.S., at 478, 100 S.Ct., at 2774 (opinion of Burger, C.J.) ("Although the Act recites no preambulary 'findings' on the subject, we are satisfied that Congress had abundant historical basis from which it could conclude that traditional procurement practices, when applied to minority businesses, could perpetuate the effects of prior discrimination"); see also id., at 549-550, and n. 25, 100 S.Ct., at 2811-2812, and n. 25 (STEVENS, J., dissenting) (noting "perfunctory" consideration accorded the set-aside provision); Days, Fullilove, 96 Yale L.J. 453, 465 (1987) ("One can only marvel at the fact that the minority set-aside provision was enacted into law without hearings or committee reports, and with only token opposition") (citation and footnote omitted). The majority also faults Richmond's ordinance for including within its definition of "minority group members" not only black citizens, but also citizens who are "Spanish-speaking, Oriental, Indian, Eskimo, or Aleut persons." Ante, at 506. This is, of course, precisely the same definition Congress adopted in its set-aside legislation. Fullilove, supra, 448 U.S., at 454, 100 S.Ct., at 2762. Even accepting the majority's view that Richmond's ordinance is overbroad because it includes groups, such as Eskimos or Aleuts, about whom no evidence of local discrimination has been proffered, it does not necessarily follow that the balance of Richmond's ordinance should be invalidated. Although the majority purports to "adher[e] to the standard of review employed in Wygant," ante, at 494, the "prima facie case" standard it adopts marks an implicit rejection of the more generally framed "strong basis in evidence" test endorsed by the Wygant v. Jackson Bd. of Education, 476 U.S. 267, 106 S. Ct. 1842, 90 L. Ed. 2d 260 (1986) plurality, and the similar "firm basis" test endorsed by Justice O'CONNOR in her separate concurrence in that case. See id., at 289, 106 S.Ct., at 1855; id., at 286, 106 S.Ct., at 1853. Under those tests, proving a prima facie violation of Title VII would appear to have been but one means of adducing sufficient proof to satisfy Equal Protection Clause analysis. See Johnson v. Transportation Agency, Santa Clara County, 480 U.S. 616, 632, 107 S. Ct. 1442, 1452, 94 L. Ed. 2d 615 (1987) (plurality opinion) (criticizing suggestion that race-conscious relief be conditioned on showing of a prima facie Title VII violation). The rhetoric of today's majority opinion departs from Wygant in another significant respect. In Wygant, a majority of this Court rejected as unduly inhibiting and constitutionally unsupported a requirement that a municipality demonstrate that its remedial plan is designed only to benefit specific victims of discrimination. See 476 U.S., at 277-278, 106 S.Ct., at 1849; id., at 286, 106 S.Ct., at 1853 (O'CONNOR, J., concurring in part and concurring in judgment); id., at 305, 106 S.Ct., at 1863 (MARSHALL, J., dissenting). Justice O'CONNOR noted the Court's general agreement that a "remedial purpose need not be accompanied by contemporaneous findings of actual discrimination to be accepted as legitimate as long as the public actor has a firm basis for believing that remedial action is required. . . . [A] plan need not be limited to the remedying of specific instances of identified discrimination for it to be deemed sufficiently 'narrowly tailored,' or 'substantially related,' to the correction of prior discrimination by the state actor." Id., at 286-287, 106 S.Ct., at 1853-1854. The majority's opinion today, however, hints that a "specific victims" proof requirement might be appropriate in equal protection cases. See, e.g., ante, at 504 (States and localities "must identify that discrimination . . . with some specificity"). Given that just three Terms ago this Court rejected the "specific victims" idea as untenable, I believe these references—and the majority's cryptic "identified discrimination" requirement—cannot be read to require States and localities to make such highly particularized showings. Rather, I take the majority's standard of "identified discrimination" merely to require some quantum of proof of discrimination within a given jurisdiction that exceeds the proof which Richmond has put forth here. Tellingly, the sole support the majority offers for its view that the Framers of the Fourteenth Amendment intended such a result are two law review articles analyzing this Court's recent affirmative-action decisions, and a Court of Appeals decision which relies upon statements by James Madison. Ante, at 491. Madison, of course, had been dead for 32 years when the Fourteenth Amendment was enacted. 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Molly Ephraim Bio | Everything We Know About The Multitalented Actress Molly Ephraim is a quintessential example of what the phrase, “catch the young” means. The beautiful and multitalented American television and film actress started her career at a very young age and has continued to grace our screens with top-notch appearances in television movies and series. The American actress, who was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on May 22, 1966, to a Jewish family, has featured in Broadway, Off-Broadway and regional theatre productions. Who is Molly Ephraim Born and raised along with her brother, Max, by William Ephraim and Nina Zebooker, Molly developed a flair for acting at a very early age. She began working professionally at the age of thirteen at Philadelphia’s Prince Music Theater in a production of “The Snow Queen. She was also actively involved in choreography and performed at her university’s theatre while in college. At 15, she starred as Little Red Riding Hood on Broadway, for which she bagged a nomination for a Drama League Award. In 2008, Molly earned a degree in Religious Studies, from Princeton University after which she began acting in local productions. After graduating, Molly went ahead to perform in several Off-Broadway plays including “End Days” at Ensemble Studio Theater, and was involved in some television work such as an HBO Pilot, “The Wonderful Maladys” and “Royal Pains”. Molly Ephraim – Career She came into the spotlight after her role as Mandy Baxter, daughter of Mike Baxter on The Last Man Standing, a sitcom that captured the public’s interest for its controversy and comedy. She has also had appearances in television series such as Halt and Catch Fire, The Act, Casual, and Brockmire. Two notable movies she has featured in are; The Front Runner and Gravy. Also, her phenomenal acting in the Broadway play, The Diary of Anne Frank, will forever be in the hearts of movie lovers and her fans. Her role in the 2010 movie “Paranormal Activity 2” in which she plays Ali, a teenage daughter, was also well received with by movie critics. Molly Ephraim Bio – Personal life The 5 feet 1-inch actress, who was nominated for a Barrymore Award has kept a low profile regarding her relationship status as no records are currently available about her previous relationships. It has however been rumoured that she is dating, or once dated, Christoph Sanders, her co-stars from The Last Man Standing, which has no substantial confirmation. Currently focused on her career, the fine-looking and hardworking actress is estimated to be enjoying a gross net worth of about 1 million dollars. She is noted to be a liberal who lends her voice in support of the rights of the LGBTQ. She remains a perfect example and an inspiration to many upcoming actresses across the globe. It is also interesting to note that the talented actress has been an encouragement to movie producers, directors and viewers and has garnered over 60 thousand followers on social media, also likes drawing and enjoys watching the TV shows, 30 Rock and Breaking Bad.

When contemplating my privileges within the current state of the world, I usually examine myself with the lives of BIPOC in this nation somewhat than the lives of European or other white folks in the U.S. While I don’t assist this baseless division of individuals, I do understand that we stay in a world where race not solely exists, but actively shapes and controls our lives. It is a staggering truth that an idea invented in the 1600s has such a good grip on the world right now. Unlike other protest actions in Yerevan, Batoian’s concept was not supported by a social media campaign. Furthermore, a wave of revelations by Armenian women about their experience of sexual assault was met by sexist remarks and extra jokes. Arthur Danielyan spoke about women fantasising about rape and getting pleasure from it. Narek Samsonyan argued that the last word objective of those that share stories about violence is ratification of the Istanbul Convention, while additionally ridiculing a feminist activist. As for English, it’s taught at schools, within the universities, and courses. If you ask your bride about them and respect them, you’ll make an excellent impression on her. And hot Armenian girls in the golf equipment are often involved solely in flirting. So, there are no probabilities to find Armenian women for marriage there. The wife of this nationality can pamper you with delicious soups, barbeque, and different meat dishes. - The Shaveshyans are one of many 62 Yazidi families in the village of Rya Taza. - The conventional rites of nuptials as celebrated nowadays formulated from all of these very early methods. - The information has been confirmed by the tweet made by the authority on 18th December 2021. - The solely data they obtained prematurely was that a session on conventional Armenian weddings would happen. Lithuania has been sharing expertise and offering consultations to the Armenian Defense Ministry in the area of democratic control of armed forces, army and protection ideas and public relations since 2002. Since 2004, Armenian officers have been invited to study on the Lithuanian War Academy and the Baltic Defence College in Tartu, Estonia. In early 2007, two Armenian officers for the primary time took half in a Baltic lead international exercise, Amber Hope, which was held in Lithuania. The Russian 102nd Military Base, the previous 127th Motor Rifle Division, is stationed in Gyumri. The navy alliance of the 2 nations and, in particular, the presence of Russian troops on Armenian soil has been a key component of Armenia’s nationwide security doctrine since Armenia gained independence in 1991. Russia stations an estimated 5,000 troopers of every kind in Armenia, including 3,000 officially reported to be based mostly at the 102nd Military Base. Bouquet Kinds For Each Bride Clearly critical of present scholarship, the article nonetheless received third prize in a Turkish scholar history competition. Ekmekcioglu has found that the pressures of the Turkish state created a divide between private and non-private identification, and that girls performed a big role in defining the non-public realm. «Inside the family, the family became the place the place might maintain their mother tongue . Mothers, the guts of the home, had been positioned to preserve what the regime wanted to stamp out,» she says. Just as I known as on the Armenian group to stand in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement, I am now pleading with everybody who takes the time to learn this to fight on your Armenian friends whereas we are nonetheless right here. Notable Cinematic Portrayals Of The Armenian Genocide Yes, women’s issues are universal, however you can’t universalize women’s points. Still, it’s a area that heavily depends upon the informal steering of girls. Just as Australian women show agency by protesting institutional wrongdoings exterior Parliament, the company of Armenian women resides in the state’s broader historic https://aeon.co/essays/to-swipe-to-dream-or-to-settle-how-to-find-your-one-true-love and political circumstances. Following the Genocide, Armenian women have been pledged with the unique role to sustain cultural memory and collective motion. They had been to move down the id markers that preserved nationhood. High Human Rights Information Of 2021 Congress, which Voskanian says offers a foundation for conducting congressional hearings into Azerbaijan’s violations of human rights. It additionally urges Congress to sanction and withhold aid from Azerbaijan till they launch all Armenian hostages. The U.S. House of Representatives on September 23, handed the Cardenas-Schiff-Sherman amendment demanding Azerbaijan “immediately and unconditionally return all Armenian” POWs and captive civilians. They Focused On Family First Stories of Armenian women are rarely accounted for even within the footnotes of this history, nor are they discussed when contemplating recent clashes. Yet, they provide the most meaningful half in safeguarding survival. Outside Parliament House, women clenched their banners near their chests like shields as they rallied in opposition to the violence inflicted upon their sisters. Armenian ladies boast a classy mixture of genes from Caucasian and Asian descent, making for an correct https://asiansbrides.com/armenian-brides/ stability of company morality and passionate magnificence. The positioning has undoubtedly been a bonus for Armenian wives as a end results of they turned out to be gleaming with love, respect, and intelligence. Nonetheless, they generally as if to be particular and dealt with withrespect for that they’re truly. At the tip of the marriage, Kumar penniless a champagne glass, the basic ending of a Jewish marriage service ceremony. Mrs. Captanian chronicled these events in her 1919 guide, Memoires D’une Deportee. Armenia is the one nation amongst its Council of Europe neighbors with out laws criminalizing domestic violence. Armenia’s authorities has been arguing that it’ll pass comprehensive laws as soon as the Council of Europe finalizes its conference on the issue. It’s been almost a 12 months for the rationale that Council of Europe conference on stopping and combating violence towards women and domestic violence opened for signatures, but Armenia hasn’t ratified it . The 1915 genocide eviscerated the male inhabitants of Turkish Armenians, leaving huge numbers of ladies and children with out protectors in a strictly patriarchal society. The coverage the Ottomans took towards them was to have them adopted into Muslim households. “As a matter of reality, women in Armenia have a good indicator in regard with education and intellectual improvement, but they can’t defend their right to live in wholesome setting and to enhance their very own well being circumstances,” Karine Danielyan stated. Illuminating The History And International Story Of Antibiotics Even although Mher follows traditions and calls them a half of their culture, he finds schooling to be essential. Not solely did he go to college himself, but he also thinks his spouse should have the chance to pursue a degree. Mher favored what he saw and advised his family to make the proposal. Shortly thereafter they were engaged, and in just a few quick months they had been married. Mher and his household visited Zhenik’s home 13 times ‘to ask for her hand’; all 13 instances, they had been rejected by the woman’s father. The report revealed two generally recurring attitudes, “I am happy now; I’ve accepted my fate”, mixed with a hopeless feeling that the tactic of getting married is irrelevant. The different feeling is just a negative and unhappy feeling in direction of kidnapping generally. The Hayuhiner who’ve damaged barriers earlier than, those who proceed to interrupt barriers now and the Mayrig who raised me all encourage me to maintain breaking obstacles. Mrs. Shelengian was a proficient prepare dinner, and she delighted in whipping up Armenian specialties, like choreg, a sweet bread. Family came first, and her grandson remembers that his first word was “Tide” because she all the time stored him shut as she tended to the laundry. Mrs. Shelengian later became involved in Rosie the Riveter recognition packages, and in 2017 was honored by Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney for her work each throughout and after the war. She was additionally proud to have had her story shared on a radio podcast that aired on Memorial Day 2019. She graduated from West Philadelphia High School in 1942, and, when the United States entered World War II, took a job at a defense plant in Westinghouse’s turbine division. She became one of the women — memorialized via the iconic Rosie the Riveter marketing campaign — who crammed jobs in factories and shipyards during the struggle whereas men served within the navy. The lawsuit arose from supplies posted on the university’s Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies website, together with a list of web sites CHGS thought-about “unreliable” for purposes of conducting scholarly analysis. The Turkish Coalition claimed the university violated its constitutional rights, and committed defamation, by together with the Turkish Coalition website on the “unreliable” websites list. It could be troublesome to pinpoint an actual date when the Armenian Genocide begins as a end result of it was the end result of a collection of policies concentrating on the Ottoman Empire’s Armenian population.

While most folks are focused on next week’s Cannes Film Festival, that’s not stopping the Venice Film Festival from churning out the announcements. Last week, the fest said it would honor William Friedkin with a Lifetime Achievement Golden Lion and today it’s set Bernardo Bertolucci as jury president for the 70th anniversary run. This is the second time Bertolucci will head the panel; his first was back in 1983. Bertolucci has been to Venice several times with his own movies including 1962′s The Grim Reaper, 1968′s Partner, 1970′s The Spider’s Strategum, 1979′s Luna and 2003′s The Dreamers. His 2012 film, Me And You, screened out of competition in Cannes. Following some controversy on awards night in Venice last year, the festival today outlined the rules for competition prizes. Last year Philip Seymour Hoffman and Joaquin Phoenix shared an acting Volpi Cup for The Master, which also took the directing Silver Lion, making for an unprecedented three prizes. At the time, it was understood that the jury originally wanted to give the top prize Golden Lion to The Master, but the panel was hampered READ MORE » Veteran French Connection and Exorcist helmer William Friedkin will receive the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement at the Venice Film Festival later this year. Friedkin has a history with the festival where his 1995 thriller … Read More » Brian Brooks is a Deadline contributor. Only a handful of new specialty movies opened during the early part of 2013, but spring has brought an onslaught of indies and foreign titles. The Weinstein Company opens the Cannes debut The Sapphires this weekend, while two titles from last year’s SXSW, Hunky Dory starring Minnie Driver and Gimme The Loot from Sundance Selects, bow in select locations. Thriller Come Out And Play makes its way to theaters after a very unconventional production. Paladin’s My Brother The Devil enjoyed the support of Sundance but faced riots during its filming in London. Entertainment One brings a French-Canadian comedy that has already landed an English-language remake deal, and Well Go USA will launch New World, hoping once again to capitalize on past successes with Korean thrillers. Director: Wayne Blair Writers: Tony Briggs, Keith Thompson Cast: Chris O’Dowd, Deborah Mailman, Jessica Mauboy, Shari Sebbens, Miranda Tapsell Distributor: The Weinstein Company TWC picked up the biographical comedy/drama ahead of its Cannes Film Festival premiere in the Official Selection last year, picking up U.S. rights and other territories for low seven figures. “It’s a really, really strong film with great performances,” said TWC president of theatrical distribution & home entertainment Erik Lomis. “Chris O Dowd is terrific”, said Lomis. Set against a backdrop of racial strife in Australia in the late ’60s, the film centers on four Australian Aboriginal girls who form a group and head out to entertain U.S. troops in Vietnam, escaping the tensions and limitations of their rural community. “It plays well to an audience and hopefully will crack the formula,” said Lomis. “It’s not a four-quadrant movie, but it’s has appeal across the spectrum. It’s an audience pleaser and it has scored through the roof.” TWC tested the feature in New York and in the Midwest where Lomis said audiences in both regions responded well. “The trick is getting them in,” he noted. “We’re hoping word-of-mouth will propel its theatrical run.” The Sapphires will have a traditional first weekend opening in New York and LA, playing at two locations in each city before expanding. Read More » To celebrate its 40th anniversary, the Telluride Film Festival will extend its usual four-day run to five days, it was announced today. The 2013 edition will run August 29 to September … Read More » Brian Brooks is Managing Editor of MovieLine. Quartet crooned atop the specialty newcomers for its opening in two theaters. Tribeca Film’s Struck By Lightning starring Glee‘s Chris Colfer and Phase Four Films’ The Baytown Outlaws with Billy Bob Thornton and Eva Longoria have yet to report their numbers, but if/when they do, they’ll have stiff competition from Quartet which also happens to be Dustin Hoffman’s official feature directing debut. In a pair of runs in NYC and LA, the film averaged a solid $25,017. Zeitgeist had a tougher time with its foreign-language release Let My People Go! The boutique distributor opened the film about a French-born Jewish man who ends up back with his zany family in Paris after a quarrel with his Finnish boyfriend at a single NYC venue that took in an estimated $2,299 for the weekend weekend. Quartet had a short awards-qualifying run last month, but came into its theatrical own in the second weekend of the New Year at the Paris Theater in New York and the Landmark in Los Angeles. Quartet star Maggie Smith gave a little jab to the film establishment last year in the wake of one of her last big screen success, The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, saying Hollywood treats cinema-goers like “5-year-olds.” TWC said its core audience would be “mature” for Quartet and the film had a good rollout. Downton Abbey‘s Dowager Countess knows best. Quartet‘s next expansion will be to 75 markets and about 350 locations January 25. Sony Pictures Classics widened its Oscar Best Picture and Best Foreign-Langue Film nominee Amour to 15 theaters after three weeks with hefty runs in only three locations. The film, which was honored last night at the LA Film Crtitics Association event in Century City, held strong with an $18,038 average vs last weekend’s $21,199. Lionsgate moved The Impossible into 236 additional runs in its 4th weekend for a PTA of $3,156 across 808 cinemas. In 572 theaters last weekend the film averaged $4,852. Read More » Director Gus Van Sant has lent his support as executive producer to Xavier Dolan’s third movie Laurence Anyways. The film debuted in the Un Certain Regard sidebar at the Cannes Film Festival where Suzanne Clement garnered a best actress … Read More » This vision of San Francisco under seige in Pacific Rim uses a string of TV news reports to reveal brief glimpses of giant Kaiju aliens. Charlie Hunnam, Idris Elba, Ron Perlman, Rinko Kikuchi and Charlie Day head the cast. Warner Bros opens Guillermo Del Toro‘s latest movie on July … Read More » Brian Brooks is Managing Editor of MovieLine. Anthony Hopkins and Helen Mirren’s potential Oscar candidate Hitchcock hits theaters this weekend in limited release. The AFI Fest opener will launch a platform release before expanding nationally. A possible non-fiction awards contender, The Central Park Five, made news recently as New York City attorneys sought footage in connection with pending litigation. And previous Best Actress Oscar-winner Marion Cotillard won acclaim along the festival circuit for Rust And Bone which debuted last May in Cannes and Thanksgiving weekend. The Central Park Five Directors – Writers: Ken Burns, Sarah Burns, David McMahon Subjects: Anton McCray, Kevin Richardson, Kharey Wise, Angela Black, Calvin O. Butts III, David Dinkins Jim Dwyer, Ronald Gold Distributor: IFC Films CP5 received a flurry of news coverage recently when New York City lawyers subpoenaed outtakes for their defense of a civil suit filed by five men who were wrongly convicted of raping a woman in Central Park in 1989. “From the minute we saw the film we felt moved and inspired, and we’ve been consistently gratified as we’ve introduced it at festivals that audiences have been too,” said IFC Films’ Ryan Werner. “It was also the opportunity to work with one of the world’s great filmmakers Ken Burns on his first theatrical documentary in 25 years along with his daughter Sarah Burns and her husband David McMahon.” Central Park Five opens Friday in New York at Lincoln Plaza, IFC Center and the Maysles Cinema in Harlem. The NuArt will open the film in Los Angeles the following weekend with additional select markets on tap for December. It is also available via VOD. Werner said “Media attention will hopefully raise the profile with segments on CBS Morning News, The View, David Letterman, Colbert and Charlie Rose to name a few”. Read More » Larry Clark’s Marfa Girl took the award for Best Film today at the Rome Film Festival. The audience nod went to Gabriel Polsky and Alan Polsky’s The Motel Life, which also won best screenplay for Noah Harpster and Micah Fitzerman-Blue. Best directer was Paolo Franchi for E La Chiamano Estate (And They Call For Summer). Best Actor was Jérémie Elkaïm in Main Dans La Main (Hand In Hand), and the Best Actress award went to Isabella Ferrari for E La Chiamano Estate. Marfa Girl features Adam Mediano, Drake Burnette, Jeremy St. James, Mary Farley, Mercedes Maxwell and Indigo Rael. E La Chiamano Estate stars Isabella Ferrari, Jean-Marc Barr, Luca Argentero, Filippo Nigro, Eva Riccobono and Anita Kravos. The Motel Life stars Stephen Dorff, Emile Hirsch, Dakota Fanning and Kris Kristofferson. Complete list of honorees follows: Read More » Brian Brooks is Managing Editor of MovieLine. More Oscar contenders are lined up at the specialty gate this weekend, most notably The Weinstein Company’s The Silver Linings Playbook, whose strategy has evolved in the run-up to Friday’s launch. The title will start with a handful of bookings before expanding gradually into wide release. Focus Features’ hopeful Anna Karenina will also hit the same number of cinemas in its initial outing, targeting women and the art-house crowd. Oscar-winning documentarian Alex Gibney’s Mea Culpa Maxima: Silence In The House Of God will open in NYC and LA before HBO takes it to the network. Also opening is IFC Films’ Parker Posey starrer Price Check which IFC picked up last spring, and Rialto is spearheading a relaunch of the digitally restored 1951 classic, The Man In The White Suit. Director: Joe Wright Writers: Tom Stoppard (screenplay), Leo Tolstoy (novel) Cast: Keira Knightley, Jude Law, Aaron Taylor-Johnson Distributor: Focus Features A dozen remakes have tackled Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy’s classic novel of the same title. This one is distinguished with large portions of the action taking place as if on a stage. Director Joe Wright said that he came up with the idea only weeks before the shoot was set to begin. He admitted the decision threw the production into a frenzy but he decided it would be the best course creatively and for the bottom line. “A lot of the budget was being spent on hotels and travel and all this stuff that the audience is never going to get to see … And I thought, if I could set this film in one place, where would it be? I was reminded of Orlando Figes’ book Natasha’s Dance: A Cultural History of Russia, in which he talks about Russian society as if they lived upon a stage.” Read More » Magnolia has acquired North American rights from TrustNordisk on the Tobias Lindholm-directed A Hijacking. The film premiered at Venice and Toronto. The deal was negotiated between Susan Wendt, Head of Sales at TrustNordisk and Magnolia’s SVP of Acquisitions, Dori Begley. The … Read More » The Hamptons International Film Festival will be on the lookout for a new chief as five-year vet Karen Arikian leaves the scene. Her replacement has their work cut out for them. It has been hard for the Hamptons fest to stamp itself as important or singular. Hatched as a way to extend the tourist season for Long Island’s East End when the socialite set shutter their summer homes and head back to Manhattan, the event unfortunately falls between the Toronto and New York film festivals. Those are unbeatable showcases for Oscar-season films and they get all the top films. But the Hamptons is a pleasant festival, and maybe it’s sufficient as just one more stop along the trail for award-season wannabe films. Especially the art house fare that can use all the promotional opportunities they can get. Here’s the release: Read More » Christy Grosz is editor of AwardsLine When the production team behind Summit’s The Impossible met with 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami survivor Maria Belon at a quiet coffee shop in Barcelona in the spring of 2008, they weren’t certain that she would agree to have her family’s harrowing story told in a feature film. Producer Belen Atienza knew they were in for an emotional afternoon—she was the one who first heard Belon’s story on the radio, a drama so profound that it left Atienza in tears after it concluded. But Atienza, director Juan Antonio Bayona, screenwriter Sergio Sanchez—who have a shorthand from working together on Bayona’s Spanish-language horror hit The Orphanage—gained Belon’s trust in a simple way: They listened. “We were all really nervous,” Atienza recalls about the initial meeting. “She talked for three and a half hours. It was exhausting for her and for us. We didn’t open our mouths—we were just listening—and she was extremely thorough.” Read More » Michael Haneke’s Amour took the Palme d’Or this year at Cannes and went on to screen at Toronto, New York and Telluride. Jean-Louis Trintignant and Emmanuelle Riva play an elderly couple still very much in love who confront their declining health — particularly the wife’s. The European Film … Read More » AFI Fest 2012 continued Sunday with the World Premiere of DreamWorks Animation’s holiday biggie and Oscar hopeful, Rise Of The Guardians, and if the buzz generated by this screening is any indication DWA should have a hit on … Read More » “Good Evening,” AFI president and CEO Bob Gazzale said as he welcomed guests to AFI Fest 2012 with the famous salutation of Alfred Hitchcock. And it did indeed turn out to be a very good evening for both AFI and their opening-night film, Hitchcock. The last of the major fall film festivals, AFI Fest can boast just like other recent fests (Venice, Telluride, Toronto, New York) that it has put another major Oscar contender into play in the ever-increasing list of potential nominees. With the world premiere of Hitchcock at the Chinese theatre Fox Searchlight has a solid contender in several acting categories along with some below-the-line contests and, depending how things pan out, even Best Picture. Time will tell on that: It’s never easy for showbiz stories to make the Best Picture cut because industry voters don’t always take movies about their own as seriously as loftier subjects, but on the heels of last year’s Best Pic, The Artist maybe that’s changing. And what Hitchcock really is at its core is a remarkable love story. ”Just wait until you see this one,” a smiling and confident 20th Century Fox chairman Jim Gianopulos told me as he grabbed some popcorn before the film rolled. He had reason to be happy. Read More »

Our Bible Study Tools are here to help you with your Biblical studies and to improve your knowledge of Classical Hebrew and the Scriptures. These useful learning aids have been written by top-notch Biblical Hebrew teachers especially for you. Last but not least, these tools are available to one and all for free, courtesy of eTeacher. Free Biblical Hebrew Lessons Here you will find short Biblical Hebrew lessons, allowing you to receive a fascinating glimpse into the world of Biblical studies. Enter Free Biblical Hebrew Lessons Free Biblical Hebrew Webinar Join our weekly Biblical Hebrew Webinar – a live online discussion revolving around the most interesting biblical stories, led by a certified instructor from the Holy Land. Have a question? Join the webinar and ask our experts for answers! Sign up Free Biblical Hebrew Webinar Download your FREE eHaggadah! eTeacherBiblical is proud to present our eHaggadah – our Passover GIFT to you! The Haggadah provides the full text with translation, transliteration and explanation of seder customs and practices. Celebrate Passover with a full understanding of the Exodus story and commentaries with the ability to pronounce every single word! Biblical Hebrew question of the week Did you ever encounter a biblical question that you just couldn't answer? Did you know that some words have multiple connotations, so that the answer can differ according to the particular interpretation? Discover the answers to the most frequently asked biblical questions. Enter Question Of The Week Bible Study with Biblical Hebrew Newsletters Expand your Biblical horizons with this free periodical Biblical Hebrew newsletter. Read about the rich and fascinating world of the Bible, learn a little bit more every month about the history, archeology and other fascinating topics related to Biblical times. Jewish Studies for Christians Blog This blog is designed as an academic and an educational resource in Jewish Studies for Christians studying or contemplating to study the Ancient Biblical Languages in a joined program of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and eTeacher Online Language Academy. The purpose of this blog, therefore, is to educate Christians about the Jewish context of their faith and in such a way to contribute to the ongoing Jewish-Christian dialogue. The blog has an enthusiastic endorsement of top Jewish and Christian scholars and have been warmly received by the Christian community across the denominational lines. Biblical Hebrew Blog Improve your knowledge of the Scriptures with our Biblical Hebrew Blog. This publication covers a wide array of Biblical issues, such as history, literature, archaeology, geography, folklore, and scores of wonderful stories from Biblical times. So log in now to extend your Biblical reach! Hebrew Baby Names Guide Find out the origin and meaning of Hebrew names—your own and others—with eTeacher’s Hebrew Name Guide. This reservoir provides a historical synopsis for over 300 common Hebrew names. Intoned during Sabbath prayer services and discussed throughout the preceding week, the Torah portion is an age-old Jewish tradition. Learn why we read each weekly installment and the origins of this beautiful custom. Bible Study & Biblical Hebrew Videos eTeacher’s new YouTube channel covers the fascinating world of Biblical studies. Here you will find new weekly portions every week and short Biblical Hebrew lessons. By subscribing to our channel, you’ll be the first to know when a video comes out. Biblical Hebrew Toolbar Everything you need to know about the Bible is now at the palm of your hand! Download the free Biblical Hebrew Toolbar to instantly access the entire Old Testament online and study the weekly Torah portions. The toolbar will also ensure that you are among the first to hear the latest news from eTeacherBiblical. Study Biblical Names Leaf through a large, user-friendly database of Biblical Hebrew names. Find Biblical names for boys and girls as well as a synopsis of their meaning and historical background. Learn Biblical Hebrew on Facebook Join our Biblical Hebrew Facebook page today to receive regular updates and articles. The network will also allow you to connect with your fellow classmates. Lastly, all our Facebook fans will receive a new Biblical word each and every day. Biblical Hebrew on Twitter The Biblical Hebrew Twitter is the tweet to follow! Keep informed of every blog post, our newsletter, the Weekly Torah Portion, and all the news from eTeacherBiblical by subscribing to our Twitter account.

Goodreads helps you keep track of books you want to read. Start by marking “A Separate Reality: A Novel” as Want to Read: A Separate Reality: A Novel Set in the early 1970s, A Separate Reality is the story of Mark Grosfeld, a twelve-year-old growing up in Phoenix with politically active liberal Jewish parents. Mark, who is lonely and unhappy, meets Anna Voigt, a teacher who becomes his mentor. Anna, an ex-hippie poet, encourages Mark to write, and he becomes part of a circle of teenagers who meet at Anna's house to smok ...more Paperback, 448 pages Published October 10th 2006 by Carroll & Graf (first published October 9th 2006) To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up. (showing 1-22 of 22) This book was really good; It was really motivating towards me because this boy is only in the 8th grade and he is in search of finding himself. Being a person who is in the same position, I've read things that helped me cope with my own life and how to find the center of myself; which I search for often, all from a little boy who has been exposed to many things as a child. His life is completely relatable and anyone who is uncertain about the world around them, or just needs simple motivation w ...more

The Revd. J. Michael Povey, at All Angels by the Sea. Longboat Key, FL It’s always good to be at All Angels by the Sea. There is a lovely warmth and joy here. I have been preaching each Sunday in August, at St. Hilary’s in Fort Myers, at St. Margaret of Scotland in Sarasota, and here today. So the themes of the Epistles and Gospels have been very present in my thinking. A brief word about Jeremiah. He is the prophet who has been called by G-d to speak the unspeakable. He’s had to tell his nation that it faces military defeat in the face of an expansionist Babylonian Empire, and that there is nothing they can do about it. It would be an unpopular message to any peoples today, as indeed it was in Jeremiah’s time. “Give up”. “Surrender” This is what Jeremiah had to say. He received no thanks for this message. In the face of violent criticism, Jeremiah gets on the pity pot, and complains to G-d. G-d, be believes has deceived him. “Truly” he says “Truly, you are to me like a deceitful brook, like waters that fail”. If we take nothing else from Jeremiah we might take this. It’s perfectly acceptable, and indeed desirable to whine and complain to Go-d. G-d is not very interested in polite piety. G-d longs to hear our truthful prayers. In the Gospels, the disciples and Jesus have been on a steep learning curve. Jesus has fed the multitudes when the disciples would have sent them home. He’s encouraged Peter to take a risk and get out of the boat. He has, like Jeremiah, courted controversy by condemning some of the religious leaders of his day. He’s learned a thing or two from the Canaanite woman who took him on. This is the woman in the district of Tyre and Sidon who refused to take no for an answer. Last week Jesus heard the briefest nominating speech ever. It’s delivered by Peter. “You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God”. The campaigning begins in this week’s Gospel. The balloon of success is quickly burst by Jesus. “My campaign will lead to the cross”. Peter responds to this news as if it were a lead balloon. “God forbid it, Lord! This must never happen to you.” Jesus, as realistic in his time as Jeremiah had been centuries before, knows one certain thing. It is that when truth confronts power, power will always win. Power loves power. Power loves secrets. Power will do all that it can to keep power. Power will do all it can to save its secrets. Jesus has taken on the ruling powers of his day: Rome and the religious oligarchy. He knows that there will be a price to pay. With this abrupt change in tone, Jesus tells the disciples that there is a cross for them as well as for him. We sometimes say when stricken with, for example, illness; or the loss of a job; or the loss of a partner by death or infidelity: “well, I suppose this is the cross I am called to bear”. I do not minimise the sadness and confusion which overtakes us in the face of such events. They leave us reeling. But they are not the cross. For the cross is something we “take up”, not something which is imposed upon us. To take up the cross is to follow the way of Jesus. And it is a hard way. I give you an example from my own life. Back in 1990 and something I went to bat for the Jewish population in Pittsfield, MA in the face of some stupid anti-Semitism. And I paid a price. I was pilloried in the press, and I received a death threat. I cannot say that I was filled with courage; the truth is that I was sh-t scared. But I did so, and would do so again, because I claim to be a follower of a Jewish man, Jesus of Nazareth. Taking up a cross is foolhardy. Taking up a cross is a crazy way to live. It is to adopt Jesus’ manner of life - as St. Paul puts it, it is to: 13Contribute to the needs of the saints; extend hospitality to strangers. 14Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them. 15Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep. 16Live in harmony with one another; do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly; do not claim to be wiser than you are.17Do not repay anyone evil for evil, but take thought for what is noble in the sight of all. Paul’s words point to the Jesus way of life, in which we take up the Cross. It’s not a way which comes naturally. We do not naturally bless those who persecute us. At least in our minds we repay evil with evil. Taking up a cross is foolhardy. Taking up a cross is a crazy way to live. Paul does say one strange thing: “if your enemies are hungry, feed them; if they are thirsty, give them something to drink; for by doing this you will heap burning coals on their heads”. About this I quote the renowned theologian of an older generation, Charles Hodge. He wrote, “To heap fires of coal on anyone is a punishment which no one can bear; he must yield to it. Kindness is no less effectual; the most malignant enemy cannot always withstand it.” In other words, our enemies, if we should dare to treat them with kindness and not with revenge, will be overcome by the relentless nature of kindness. That’s the example of our Lord, given as he spoke to the thief on the Cross. It is indeed always very hard. I have a neighbour who formerly lived in a suburb of Hades. She is one of the most difficult people I have ever known. And I must admit that my heart is rarely filled with kindness towards her. I fail in the mission of overwhelming her with kindness. Oft times my heart is filled with anger, and with thoughts of revenge. Then I remember that “vengeance is mine” says the Lord. I am not able to kill her with kindness. The best that I can do is to “keep my lips zipped”, and not to lash out at her. But it is all very hard. In the face of the difficulties we face when we decide to follow Jesus, it is right and proper for us to lament as Jeremiah did. When we have made this lament we shall be ready to prepare ourselves to be: “Rejoicing with those who rejoice. Weeping with those who weep. Living in harmony with one another. Not being haughty. Associating with the lowly. Not claiming to be wiser than we are.” All this goes against the grain. But to do so is to discover, as the Holy Week Collect puts it: “That the way of the Cross is the way of life and peace”. 15O LORD, you know; remember me and visit me, and bring down retribution for me on my persecutors. In your forbearance do not take me away; know that on your account I suffer insult. 16Your words were found, and I ate them, and your words became to me a joy and the delight of my heart; for I am called by your name, O LORD, God of hosts. 17I did not sit in the company of merrymakers, nor did I rejoice; under the weight of your hand I sat alone, for you had filled me with indignation. 18Why is my pain unceasing, my wound incurable, refusing to be healed? Truly, you are to me like a deceitful brook, like waters that fail. 19Therefore thus says the LORD: If you turn back, I will take you back, and you shall stand before me. If you utter what is precious, and not what is worthless, you shall serve as my mouth. It is they who will turn to you, not you who will turn to them. 20And I will make you to this people a fortified wall of bronze; they will fight against you, but they shall not prevail over you, for I am with you to save you and deliver you, qsays the LORD. 21I will deliver you out of the hand of the wicked, and redeem you from the grasp of the ruthless. 9Let love be genuine; hate what is evil, hold fast to what is good; 10love one another with mutual affection; outdo one another in showing honor. 11Do not lag in zeal, be ardent in spirit, serve the Lord. 12Rejoice in hope, be patient in suffering, persevere in prayer. 13Contribute to the needs of the saints; extend hospitality to strangers. 14Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them. 15Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep. 16Live in harmony with one another; do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly; do not claim to be wiser than you are. 17Do not repay anyone evil for evil, but take thought for what is noble in the sight of all. 18If it is possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. 19Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave room for the wrath of God; for it is written, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.” 20No, “if your enemies are hungry, feed them; if they are thirsty, give them something to drink; for by doing this you will heap burning coals on their heads.” 21Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. 21From that time on, Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and undergo great suffering at the hands of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised. 22And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him, saying, “God forbid it, Lord! This must never happen to you.” 23But he turned and said to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; for you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.” 24Then Jesus told his disciples, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. 25For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it. 26For what will it profit them if they gain the whole world but forfeit their life? Or what will they give in return for their life? 27“For the Son of Man is to come with his angels in the glory of his Father, and then he will repay everyone for what has been done. 28Truly I tell you, there are some standing here who will not taste death before they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom.”

When: Tuesday, July 19, 4:30 – 6 PM Where: TIAA-CREF headquarters 730 Third Ave (at 45th St) What: Street protest for divestment from Israel's occupation, with creative chants and songs New Flashmob Video: http://bit.ly/flashTC Why: July 19th is the day of TIAA-CREF's annual shareholders' meeting, held this year in. As part of a national campaign, human rights activists in cities across the US will protest to ask retirement-fund giant TIAA-CREF to divest from the Israeli occupation. TIAA-CREF's motto is "For the Greater Good," but this year, TIAA-CREF leadership refused to allow a shareholder resolution for divestment from Israeli occupation to be placed on the ballot at the annual shareholder meeting. Tell TIAA-CREF they can't escape the call for divestment! Organized by Adalah-NY: TheCampaign for the Boycott of , Code Pink-NYC, and Jewish Voice for Peace (list in formation) For more information, visit www.wedivest.org.

PLANO, Texas — Chris Wyatt is on a mission. Walking hastily through his cavernous fourth-floor headquarters in suburban Dallas, the founder of the Christian version of YouTube is searching for an available conference room. He quickly passes reminders of his success: a group of customer service representatives on the phone, animated meetings in progress and extra office space that GodTube.com is preparing to move into. Finally settled, the nattily dressed former TV producer insists he is as surprised as anyone that the site was identified earlier this year by comScore as the fastest growing on the Web. “I thought I was going to be a seminary student and then work maybe a couple hours a week,” he said. “Now I’m taking online courses because I can’t get over to the seminary, I’m so busy.” 4 million users GodTube.com, a video-sharing site with Christian content, drew more than 4 million unique visitors during October. It maintains more than 150,000 registered users with active profiles. Plans for the future include producing entertainment programs at the site’s headquarters north of Dallas. GodTube is among religion-based Web sites that closely copy popular secular models. MyChurch.org is similar to the social networking site MySpace, and Conservapedia.com is the religious right’s response to the online encyclopedia Wikipedia. Similar sites target Muslim and Jewish audiences. Wyatt, GodTube’s CEO, is reaching more people than he could hope for in a lifetime of pulpit appearances. He points out that GodTube.com users on Sunday mornings outnumber megachurch pastor Joel Osteen’s congregation in Houston. Wyatt, 38, said the GodTube venture, supported by financial partners in business and ministry, has yet to make a profit. He said the site earns money through banner advertising, the sale of premium services and providing data to media ministries about viewers. The site never sells personal information, he said, adding that operating the site is enormously expensive. ‘Baby Got Book’ GodTube videos include music, comedy and heated theological debates. Two of the most viewed include a corny rap remix called “Baby Got Book” and a 4-year-old girl reciting Psalm 23 from memory. “Basically, whenever I realized she could recite it, I pulled out my digital camcorder and I put it on my blog,” said the girl’s father, Brian Mosley of Allen, Texas. A co-worker put it on GodTube, where it has been viewed more than 4 million times. The nonprofit ministry where Mosley works, Bluefish TV, offers downloads of the video and other religious materials for sale to church leaders. “It’s neat to see our ministry get more exposure because of one clip on GodTube,” Mosley said. “I think for people who are looking for Web sites with Christian-specific content, it’s meeting that need in a great way.” Sid Emory, a staff member at Lake Robinson Community Church in Taylors, S.C., said he looks for ideas on GodTube that can be used in his church. “I watch videos from all over. Most of the time I’m watching either pastors, or skits that people have done,” he said. “There’s just a huge resource of stuff like that. I’m starting to post my own stuff.” GodTube reviews every video uploaded and rejects those with objectionable content. Members of other religions are invited to participate on the Web site, but they cannot proselytize. Atheists are welcome, too, and they may share their point of view, “as long as it’s done respectfully.” Wyatt, a member of First Baptist Church of Dallas, describes the site as a neutral “Switzerland” open to various theological viewpoints. That doesn’t mean shots aren’t being fired. Videos being viewed recently include “Why Pentecostalism is not of God,” “Mormonism exposed,” and “The papacy is NOT biblical.” With more than 25,000 videos on the site and 300 to 500 arriving each day, some question how Wyatt can continue monitoring them all. He maintains that the job is not as difficult as it might seem. About 10 people are monitoring content at any one time, said Wyatt, who hires seminary students for the task. “It’s not really as intensive a process as you might think it is,” Wyatt said. Still, many videos have yet to be posted on the site. “We are current on all our approvals,” Wyatt said. “However, we only support five languages and there are several hundred that have not approved because we are looking for the appropriate translators to hire part-time.” GodTube also is expanding. The Web site announced the launch of a new social network this month along with Internet tools like “Video Police,” in which parents report concerns by clicking a button that brings up an interactive window to talk with a staff member. Wyatt moved to Dallas last year to attend the nondenominational Dallas Theological Seminary. He created GodTube as a resource for churches and put a test site up early this year. The official launch was in August, when it was rated the fastest growing site. He said he still intends to become an ordained minister, but his seminary studies have moved to the back burner. “It was a major surprise and with a great amount of joy that I have the skill set to do this,” he said.

Herod died shortly after the Holy Family fled to Egypt. We’re not sure precisely how long after, just that his death coincided with a collision of stars in the sky. Which means there were two significant lights in the nativity sky: one to herald the birth of Christ, and one to herald the death of Herod. Herod knew he wasn’t loved and would not be mourned. He wanted to ensure the Jewish people would grieve his passing, so he ordered that one hundred of the most respected Jewish elders be put to death at the moment he breathed his last. That way, even if the people weren’t mourning for him, they would at least be mourning at the right time. Fortunately, Herod’s orders weren’t carried out. From the moment he died, his influence waned and his legacy of terror began to wane. It’s ironic, and sad, that Herod thought he was in control right up until the moment he died. He died thinking his will mattered, thinking his legacy mattered, and thinking that he would bend the world to his whims. He died under a cloud of deception. The world didn’t rely on Herod for direction any more than you or me. As soon as he was gone, the world moved on for the better. I wonder if any of us share Herod’s blindness. Have we convinced ourselves we’re in control? Have we bought into the lie that we actually control what others will do in our absence? What will it take for us to realize that you can only force people to behave the way you want while you’re there to actually force them? How long will it take before we realize that we have no real power over others? The only change you can guarantee is the change you make to yourself. The only changes that last are those energized by the Spirit of God. The only change that matters is that which re-orients your life away from yourself and, instead, re-centers it on God. You might think more highly of yourself, now, than you should. But, like Herod, there will come a time when all your self-deceptions are exposed. Better to have that happen now while you can still make changes.

When I first heard that a rally was planned for Haredi (ultra-Orthodox) Jews to protest the Internet, I didn't think it would attract much attention. After all, the Internet has long been under attack in Haredi communities and their rabbinic leaders have forbidden it in the past. The event on May 20 at Citi Field in New York (home of the Mets) drew a massive audience of more than 40,000 men, with an overflow crowd tuning in to a live video feed at the neighboring Arthur Ashe tennis stadium. Women were not allowed entry to the event, but many viewed it, ironically enough, on the Internet through a live stream broadcast. The speeches, mostly made in Yiddish with English subtitles on the stadium's large video screen, condemned the Internet and warned that its impure content poses a serious threat to the Haredi lifestyle and the modesty that the Torah demands. The day after the rally I was contacted by Ben Sales, a reporter for JTA. He wanted my opinion of the event and a quote about how I understand the role of the Internet in Jewish life. My sense is that he presumed I would criticize the rally's organizing group for not realizing the gift of the Internet or how it has improved our lives. Rather than disapproving of the rally or criticizing the speakers for a shortsighted understanding of technology, I explained that these Haredi leaders are correct. And they are. The Internet most certainly jeopardizes their way of life. The Internet will cause Haredi Jews to sin and will tear away at the fabric of their modest lives. The way the Haredi communities have maintained such strict adherence to their understanding of religious life is by erecting borders to protect themselves from outside influences. Within a controlled, ghettoized environment self-control is not required as much as it is in a free and open society. The Internet virtually removes the ghetto walls and nullifies the borders of the Haredi neighborhoods void. Thus, the perils of the Internet are real to this community. Many assume that when Haredi leaders speak of the threat of the Internet to their adherents they are referring to pornographic content. I don't believe this is the case. The Haredi community is well versed on the availability of content filters that will sift out such immodest material. In fact, most of the speakers at the rally forbid their followers from browsing the Web without a filter for inappropriate sites. Filters take care of removing indecent photos of a sexual nature and images of immodestly dressed women. What an Internet filter will not remove for the Haredi Web surfers however is other material their leaders consider to be explicit. Content that challenges their core beliefs and structured way of life are of most concern to the rally's organizers. If Haredi Jews cannot exert the self-control needed to avoid content of an immodest nature, they can rely on the filters. However, they will still be subjected to "intellectual porn" -- the thoughts and opinions of Jewish scholars that will challenge their thinking. Scantily clad women can be seen by Haredi Jewish men on their way to Queens when they look at billboards on the side of the highway or magazine covers on sidewalk newsstands. However, Torah commentary written by modern Orthodox, Conservative and Reform rabbis is only accessible to them through an unfiltered and unmonitored Internet. Blog posts, op-eds and doctoral theses are the pernicious enemies that scare Haredi leaders most about the Internet. Viewing pornographic imagery may lead Haredi disciples to sin, but unfiltered use of the Internet leads them to virtually leave their isolated community and could cause them to go off the path, venturing outside of their real life community as well. Most of the Haredi critics of the Internet recognize that the Internet is necessary in today's world and cannot be banned entirely. The speakers at the Citi Field rally readily admitted that both men and women in their communities rely on the Internet and other forms of modern technology for business as well as for personal use (banking, shopping and as a medical resource). The real threat of the Internet to the insular Haredi communities is that the Internet quashes the walls to the outside world that they have so steadfastly erected over the generations. The free flow of information that could undermine the Haredi way of life is the real concern. In that sense, the Internet certainly poses an ever present danger. It will be interesting to see the effects of the Internet on this community in the coming years.

The Great American Melting Pot contains a wealth of holiday traditions which can be traced to countries across the globe: - Christmas trees were first used in Germany. Long before the advent of Christianity, plants and trees that remained green all year had a special meaning for people in the winter. Just as people today decorate their homes during the festive season with pine, spruce, and fir trees, ancient peoples hung evergreen boughs over their doors and windows. In many countries it was believed that evergreens would keep away witches, ghosts, evil spirits, and illness. Germany is credited with starting the Christmas tree tradition as we now know it in the 16th century when devout Christians brought decorated trees into their homes. - Santa Claus (aka St. Nick) is said to have first shown up bearing gifts in Scandinavian homes. Most kids learn that Santa Claus comes from the North Pole, but children in Scandinavia are taught he lives a bit farther south. Where exactly is a matter of much debate, with businesses in Finland, Sweden and Norway competing to cash in on the cachet that comes with claiming Santa’s hometown. - Letters to Santa. According to Smithsonian Magazine, the earliest Santa letters are similarly didactic, usually coming from St. Nicholas, rather than written to him. When postal workers began hand-delivering mail to urban centers during the Civil War, the shift made Americans view the mail as a pleasant surprise rather than a burdensome errand. As the postal system became more formalized and efficient, the cost of postage began dropping in the mid-1860s. The price drop made parents more comfortable with paying for stamps, and children began to view the postman as an actual conduit to the Jolly Old St. Nick. - St. Nicklaus’ arrival down chimneys to fill stockings hails from the Netherlands. In 1823, this tradition went mainstream with publication of what has now become a children’s classic, The Night Before Christmas. - The idea of Santa’s sleigh being drawn by reindeer was first made popular in Switzerland. - The first documented Christmas parade was reportedly held in Peoria, Illinois in 1888. Decorated with garland and red ribbons and pulled by a team of horses, a covered wagon rolls along Main Street in Peoria, Ill each November heralding Santa Claus’ arrival. For nearly 125 years, the parade has kicked off the start of the Christmas season, persevering through the 1929 stock market crash, blizzards and rainstorms. Even during World War II, when New York City’s famous Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade was sidelined for three years, Peoria’s Thanksgiving weekend spectacle continued to bring holiday cheer. - Elf on a Shelf began as a book penned by a mother/daughter team over a cup of tea. The pair decided to write a book about their personal tradition of writing notes to an elf sent by Santa, who came to watch over them at Christmas time. A companion toy was created in 2005 and has already found his way into 17 percent of all American homes over the past 10 Christmas seasons. - Often called the Festival of Lights, the holiday is celebrated with the lighting of the menorah, traditional foods, games and gifts. While most Jewish feasts and festivals can be traced to the New Testament, relatively new retail takes on Jewish holiday traditions are owed entirely to entrepreneurial ingenuity. - Mensch on a Bench was the brainchild of a rabbi who recently appeared on Shark Tank. During its first year in production in broad 2014, the product caught on with Jewish families, with $900,000 in sales. - Dreidels are traditional, but one company has is re-introduced them as spinning tops. Based on what they refer to as an “American vintage game,” the tops boast all new spinners made from “the finest quality aircraft grade stainless steel which is machined using state of the art CNC turning centers and precision balanced for a piece that will spin perfectly and last forever.” - Food Network has reinvented potato latkes to take them mainstream. Thanks to the popular network, people of all faiths and ethnicities are enjoying potato-pancake based recipes all year long. A seven-day festival that celebrates African and African American culture and history, Kwanzaa is celebrated from 26 December to January 1. - Seven days of candles point to the principles of the holiday, which was created in 1966 by Dr. Maulana Karenga. - At the first Kwanzaa Holiday Expo, held in 1993, ice cream magnates Ben and Jerry introduced sweet potato ice cream, while other exhibitors showcased dark-complexioned dolls, African art, Jamaican root tonic, Kente cloth neckties, handcrafted African roses and an odd contraption that gives a passable back massage. - Today, Kwanzaa is observed with African-centered books, cards and art objects and coloring contests for children. Make the most of holiday traditions in 2016 by ordering promotional products for your clients, prospects, vendors and employees. 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