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15 December 2014 The Desperate Need for Theological Study The recent media controversies over a church which scattered money all over the stage and a church leader calling for gay people to commit suicide or be killed by the state shows how important it is that Christians study theology. In the first instance, while the motives may or may not be genuine, the scattering of money over the front of a church is a manifestation of the syncretism of the gospel to money and a misunderstanding of a Christian theology of money – what is termed “the prosperity gospel.” The prosperity gospel comes from an imbalanced reading of Scripture whereby one appropriates a whole range of Scriptures, mostly in the OT, to support the view that if one is faithful to God and tithes appropriately, one will necessarily be blessed materially. This view neglects a whole range of texts which indicate that the righteous suffer while the wicked often prosper (e.g. Job), Jesus who was righteous yet poor, even dying naked and with nothing (not even a robe), and Paul’s teaching which speaks of times of plenty and want in the Christian life (e.g. Phil 4:10-14). It neglects the now-not yet tension of Scripture whereby in our ultimate final resurrection state we will experience the fullness of complete material blessing and freedom from poverty and suffering, in the present this may or may not be the case. There are indeed many wonderful Christians around the world who are in deep material deprivation and even who die of hunger. Unlike the ancient religious perspective that material deprivation indicates the disfavour of the gods or God, the Christian perspective is that material state is no indicator of obedience. The good and bad suffer alike in a fallen world, but the good news is that God is with us in our struggles and in the world to come such suffering will end. Prosperity teaching represents a false over-realised eschatology whereby we expect the blessings of heaven now failing to recognise that this is not necessarily the case, even for the righteous. This is the very sort of thing Paul was trying to sort out with the Corinthians. In the second instance, we have a totally vile misinterpretation of Scripture whereby a church leader believes – no doubt on the basis of passages like Lev 18:22 and 20:13 which advocates the death penalty of homosexual relationships – that gay people should commit suicide and even be put to death by the state. This ignores the fact that while Christian ethics grows out of a whole biblical narrative, Jesus is the one who sets our ethical agenda. It elevates ancient Jewish case law over the gospel of Jesus who specifically challenged many aspects of the Levitical code. Indeed, this reading of Scripture ignores the explicit teaching of Jesus, who, while condemning sexual immorality as “evil”, repudiated the death penalty (Matt 5:38-48) and advocated indiscriminate love for all. Jesus also advocated warm inclusion of all, whether sinful or not. Case in point, his table fellowship with sinners (e.g. Mark 2). Jesus’ confrontation in John 7 over a woman caught in adultery calls for us all to repent and go and sin not more, but to stop casting judgment over others. We who name Christ as Lord are to love all people as God demonstrated his love for us in Christ. One who truly understands the gospel would never wish a person commit suicide, but treat them with love and encourage them to come and encounter Jesus who loves them whoever and whatever they are and have done. Both situations cause me to think how important it is that people who want to be leaders of God’s people study theology. It is as you study theology, delving deeply into the Scriptures and considering the different ways it can be understood and read. You realise how important it is to read the Scriptures through the lens of Jesus who came and showed us what it means to be truly human. We need to gain the tools of how to go deeper into Scripture and put the story together with the empharsis on the right syllarble (to quote Austin Powers). My encouragement to everyone who has not yet done so and is in ministry to enrol in a good theological college near you and go deeper. I set out on that journey 25 years ago and aside from becoming a Christian and marrying my wonderful wife, it was the best thing I ever did. I dare you to.

During a TV Interview with Israel’s Channel 1, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas stated that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told him that he cannot extend the freeze on settlement activities in the occupied territories. Abbas said that Netanyahu explained his stance by stating that he fears his government coalition would collapse. Commenting on the statements of Netanyahu, Abbas said, ‘The government is not more important than peace and the future of the two peoples”. Responding to a question regarding the option of dissolving the Palestinian Authority should peace talks fail, Abbas said that this is not an option, and was never discussed. He also stated that Israel is occupying the territories but is avoiding its responsibilities. Furthermore, the Palestinian president reiterated the Palestinian position of not resuming peace talks with Israel while it continues its settlement activities in the occupied territories. Abbas added, ‘When Obama became president, he said that settlement activities must be halted, and now Europe and the whole world are saying that too, so my stance is the same”. As for the Israeli demand that the Palestinians must recognize Israel as a Jewish State, Abbas stated that the Palestinians already recognize Israel, and added that Israel cannot demand that the Palestinians, the Arabs and the rest of the world recognize it as a Jewish State.

A friend recently posted this from the devotional book that she’s using: Streams in the Desert. When a Roman soldier was told by his guide that if he insisted on taking a certain journey it would probably be fatal, he answered, “It is necessary for me to go; it is not necessary for me to live.” Wow! What an amazing story of commitment to duty and responsibility. Isn’t that the kind of commitment we should have as Christians? This Roman soldier had the commitment because of his oath of allegiance to Rome. If his commander ordered something, he would do it, even if the probable outcome was death. We serve the King of Kings, as Christians. How often does our level of commitment fall short of these Roman soldiers? Job put it this way (13:15) “Though he slay me, yet will I trust him.” These were dangerous times for Jesus and His disciples. A couple of times, Jesus had escaped from the Pharisees as they sought to stone Him. There was a price on his head. (Figuratively at this point, literally later.) Then, Jesus found out His friend Lazarus was dying. Rather than go immediately, Jesus waited a couple of days. Then, with an announcement that could be considered “vague booking”, He noted that Lazarus was asleep and it was time to go. His disciples didn’t realize what Jesus meant until He noted that Lazarus was dead. They must have wondered why they needed to go into the face of arrest and death, then, but in a supreme act of faith, Thomas, yep, that one, spoke up. “Then Thomas (also known as Didymus) said to the rest of the disciples, ‘Let us also go, that we may die with him.’” (John 11:16) Thomas is one of my favorite disciples. He gets a bad rap because he was away from the upper room the first time Jesus appeared there and so didn’t have the faith to believe in the resurrection of a dead man based on the words of the other disciples, but we see the level of his faith here. He wasn’t going with the certainty that if he died with Jesus he would be resurrected, he was willing to follow Jesus with the certainty that he would die with Jesus. So, ok, he and the rest of the disciples ran away at the crucifixion, but, he was willing to walk into a city loaded for bear, and for Jesus and anyone who would follow Him. Jesus went to Bethany with the purpose of showing the people, and the Pharisees, His power over life and death. By the time they got there, Lazarus had been dead four days, which in Jewish belief meant that not only was he really dead, he really was sincerely dead. Martha and Mary had no hope, although they kept a brave face. When Jesus asked them about Lazarus, the deflected and talked about resurrection in general terms. Yet, we’ll see that Jesus had something more miraculous in store. Jesus had some amazing words about Himself as He called Himself the Resurrection and the Life. Maybe He had mentioned that in His teaching with the disciples. Whatever the case, they didn’t believe it was a literal truth, as noted by their behavior after the crucifixion of Jesus. Still, Thomas was ready to die for his belief in Jesus. What does that say to me, when I don’t like being inconvenienced to follow my faith? I know about the resurrection, and yet I shrink from following Jesus when He leads me into more difficult areas of my faith. How often do I hesitate to talk to people about Jesus because it might make them mad, or not like me? These may be dangerous times for Christians, but we must still be willing to go with Jesus that we may die with Him so that we can minister to others in His name. There are still people that are hungry and thirsty we need to minister to. There are still people who need clothing. There are still people who need to be cared for, who are sick, or who are in prison. In short, people who need the love of Jesus shown to them by meeting every day needs. Lord, help me to be willing to face whatever problems may come my way as I minister to You.

The apostolic administrator spoke about the festive atmosphere during Palm Sunday. Large number of people experienced an ambiance of sharing, boosted by the proximity of Orthodox celebrations. After years of crisis, pilgrims are back in large numbers. Christians pray for the end of emigration and conflicts. Jerusalem (AsiaNews) – "Tens of thousands of believers" celebrated Palm Sunday yesterday, "not only pilgrims, but also many locals coming from the different areas that make up the diocese," said Mgr Pierbattista Pizzaballa, apostolic administrator of the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem. Speaking to AsiaNews, he noted that this is perhaps "the only moment when Christians meet”, a time of “celebrations that start the rites and services of the Week “with huge numbers”, partly because of “the proximity of Orthodox festivities, which fall only a week after Catholic ones". The atmosphere of sharing and celebration "felt in all the parish communities" was boosted by the “number of pilgrims that keeps growing compared to the past" when a worrying drop was recorded. It is important not only to be close to the heart of Christianity, but also to fuel one of the main economic activities of the local community whose earnings depend for 30 per cent on religious tourism. "In 2017, the number of stays was double over the previous year,” Mgr Pizzaballa said. “For the first months of 2018, the number of pilgrims is even higher. So, from this point of view, we can say that the situation is much improved and this is an element of relief "after a critical period. Some of the reasons for the higher numbers include "the liberalisation of air travel by Israel, which has allowed many low-cost companies to fly in from all over the world, especially Asia. What is more, the Holy Land has not any bad stories lately, and this has contributed to allaying fears about the pilgrimages." On 24 June 2016, the former Custos of the Holy Land was appointed Apostolic Administrator of the Patriarchate of Jerusalem of the Latins, which had been vacant since the resignation due to age limit of Patriarch Fouad Twal. The 52-year-old archbishop (53 on 21 April) received his episcopal consecration on 10 September 2016 in the cathedral of Bergamo (Italy), his diocese of origin. The prelate has been in the Holy Land since 1999 where, in May 2004, he was elected custodian. On 22 March 2010, he was chosen a second time. In 2013 he got another three years. His posting ended in April 2016. A fine expert of Jewish culture, he also taught Biblical Hebrew at the Franciscan Faculty of Biblical and Archaeological Sciences in Jerusalem and has ties with prominent Israeli Jewish figures. This year "there are no particular situations that cause concern," Mgr Pizzaballa noted. "We hope to experienced the holy days in a more serene and shared atmosphere." Political and social problems remain, the Israeli-Palestinian question "is always topical" and the clash with Israeli authorities over taxes that led to the closure of the Holy Sepulcher is only "on hold". However, for now the goal is "to celebrate Easter rites". For Christians*, the greatest desire “is that this situation of conflict and waiting be over.” People pray and make invocations for "a more peaceful life, like the other citizens who make up the country.” “In this sense, the participation, even this year, of a certain number of Christians from the Gaza Strip is something positive,” but to come to Jerusalem they must be authorised by Israeli authorities. Still, "The Christian presence is at risk,” Mgr Pizzaballa noted. “It is necessary to ensure a future by encouraging social and economic initiatives, by strengthening training and education, and by supporting Christian schools as a privileged place to meet and exchange." "On the occasion of Easter,” he said, “I renew the invitation to Christians from all over the world, especially in the West, to come to the Holy Land and experience a humanity reconciled by the death and resurrection of Christ.” "There is nothing in the human experience that cannot be touched by His love. For this reason too, it is necessary to continue to pray and work for peace, even if there are no results in the short term because of the lack of political action.” (DS) * Christians represent just over 1 per cent of the population in the Holy Land, and their presence here as elsewhere in the Middle East is at risk due to large-scale emigration.

A group of more than thirty Episcopalians from Connecticut (as well as a few family members from other states) were on pilgrimage in Israel-Palestine during the middle of June. With their pilgrimage over, here are a few more stories and impressions from the trip. A Lamb Himself Sitting on a stone in the desert watching the sunrise was amazing! The vastness of open land was spectacular. Sitting in silence, the sounds and sights of nature prevailed. Birds above, the donkey grazing on the hillside crossing right in front of me and the sheep voices in the distance. Late that same day we saw two young boys, one with a lamb around his neck. As I asked to take a picture, one of them put the lamb around my shoulders. Many times the vision of Jesus as a lamb himself (the Lamb of God) and as the Good Shepherd. Jesus asks his disciples to be the keepers of his sheep. It reminds me that we too as followers of Christ are invited to be shepherds to others. (Joanne Halstead) Places of the Spirit We left Jerusalem before dawn to get to the Wadi Qelt in the Judean desert, before sunrise. We began with prayer at a small outdoor gathering place, and said together Psalm 23. Bishop Laura invited us to go off by ourselves and then re-gather for Eucharist in 40 minutes; one of the possibilities she mentioned as a point of meditation was the psalm. So I walked to the top of the hill (just at sun-up) about half a mile away, and prayed the psalm. Iyad our guide had pointed out Mt. Temptation on the horizon a few miles away where the tradition has that Jesus was tempted by the devil. As I thought about the psalm in that light, I thought that the still waters and the green pastures that God leads us to aren’t literal; they’re places of the spirit. Obviously this isn’t an original thought. But in the context of Jesus’ suffering and temptation, it was in my mind that peace we find in God infinitely surpasses anything this world can throw at us. Again, not an original thought, but I don’t care. This experience will stay with me. (Jack Gilpin) Walls and Doors As we drive through the West Bank, viewing the litter and junked cars, I hear a constant buzz of conversation about things that could be done: a recycling program for all the single use plastic, sheet metal recovery, etc. Based on wha I have seen, if I were a Palestinian I wouldn’t give any material effort to make things appear better. They are essentially prisoners in their own land. Israelis are taking over all the prime property in the occupied territories under the premise that God said that this was their place in the world. As I think about this I am reminded of lyrics from a Jackson Browne song, “Walls and Doors”: Ever since the world existed There is one thing that is certain There are those that build walls And those who open doors. That’s how it’s always been And I know you know it There can be freedom only When nobody owns it. I feel that the risk of other countries being perceived as anti-Semitic is being used very cleverly by the State of Israel. If we speak out against the injustices being done to Palestinians by Israel’s government, we would be against the Jewish faith and people. Can it be that the Holocaust suffering is being indirectly used as a political tool? I hope not… (John Pearson) A Fourth Journey On each of my trips to our Holy Land, I have experienced something new and special beyond understanding. This is my fourth time! Our walk from the Mount of Beatitudes may have been a way Jesus walked – dusty, dirty, and steep. An early morning day brought us to the desert as the sun rose. We celebrated the Holy Eucharist as the sun brought light into the desert, joined by a Bedouin family. In Nazareth every Saturday evening there is a candle procession as the Angelus is being said in multiple languages. We joined locals and people from all around the world singing and praying. Such moments as these have blessed me as well as the joy of sharing of sharing this time with an awesome group of pilgrims. (Linda Spiers) The Anointing Stone Our pilgrimage to the Holy Land began with a walk around the Church of the Holy Sepulcher and what really struck me was the ‘Anointing Stone’ of marble! I watched other pilgrims lay their hands on the slab and kiss it even. Then it was my turn and as I lay downward, I felt tears spring forth, and was deeply moved. I needed to pray for all the souls whose lives had touched the anointing slab. How blessed to be amongst our group and how thankful for this journey of discovery. May peace yet come to this so troubled part of God’s creation. (Kay D. Claiborne) Sadness and Hope So many thoughts and emotions as we have pilgrimed together these past days. Joy, sadness, elation, depression – all of the aforementioned and more. I am grateful for my fellow pilgrims with whom I now have an unbreakable bond, having walked theses sites and paths together. I have been awed by so many sites and sounds, and wept. And depressed and angered at the treatment of the Palestinians. Walls which separated, excluded, marginalized people in their own land. Settlements in Palestine’s land. Unequal use/distribution of water. And much more. At the same time we met people of hope. Princess Basma Hospital. Brewers in Taybeh. Jerusalem Peace Builders. Archbishop Duwani. May their hope be rewarded. Pray for the peace of Jerusalem. (Louise Kalemkarian) Here I Am, Lord So many “thin places” – experiences where the veil between heaven and earth is so thin, that the power and feel of Divine Presence breaks my heart open. In the Church of the Agony, the Garden of Gethsemane, reflecting on Jesus’ plaintiff prayer, “Not mine that will be done” a group of pilgrims from the Philippines began a worship service around the altar. Their offering song (in English!): “I the Lord of Sea and Sky.” Tears sprang up in my eyes. That song, “I have heard your people cry,” that “yes” to God’s invitation, “Here I am Lord, is it I Lord, I have heard you calling in the night” …that beckoning into an unknown life … “I will go Lord if you lead me, I will hold your people in my heart” … coming from Jesus’ own agony and Jesus’ own trust, into my own heart once again … and so much more deeply than ever before. (Lisa Hahneman) Photo credit: Erin Flinn, Wadi Qelt at Sunrise Stories compiled by Sharon Pearson and edited by Adam Thomas

Respect in Islam for Followers of the Abrahamic Faiths by Dr. Robert D. Crane I. The Origin and Fruits of Respect Islam as a religion, like all religions, is not always well understood or represented even by its own followers. Two approaches can be followed in pursuing the truth about Islam. The first is the negative and confrontational refutation of misunderstandings in order to clear the deck for constructive dialogue. This is putting the cart before the horse. The second is to go to the source of all the understanding and misunderstanding, namely, the scriptures and tradition as understood by most Muslims throughout history. The most egregious denial of human rights is to deny the right of others to define and interpret their own religion, because this is a denial of human dignity and human freedom. The base case should be Islam as a religion not Muslims as they sometimes understand and practice it in pursuit of political agendas. This is the basis of respect both by and for Muslims within the community of Abrahamic faiths. This should be the basis for long-range planning especially for Muslims and Jews, who throughout most of their history during the past thousand years have been each other’s most reliable friends. Governments, of course, must base policy prudentially on practical threat analysis, not on theory, but equal emphasis should be placed on “opportunity analysis” in the pursuit of compassionate justice as an end goal in both domestic and foreign policy. The base case for all followers of the Abrahamic faiths who share an opportunity mentality, as distinct from an exclusively threat mentality, should be not the extremes but the balanced middle as understood by the great jurisprudents, philosophers, and spiritual leaders over the course of more than a thousand years in interpreting the Islamic scriptures. These include the Qur’an, the hadith or traditions about the sayings and practice of the Prophet Muhammad and his early followers, and the scholarly writings of the great intellectual leaders, most of whom admittedly have been imprisoned or executed for trying to maintain the purity of Islam as a religion. Two paradigms of scriptural interpretation have been debated among Muslims since the very beginning. These are whether the messages of God in the various religions should be interpreted as exclusive or inclusive. Historically, the exclusive approach, often condemning to hell all who disagree with the particular interpreter, has gained influence and even dominance in the presence of existential fears in the face of perceived mortal threats from the “other”. Such existential fears fuel the challengers within each religion who would hijack it in their worship of themselves as false gods infused with hatred for everyone who refuses to bow down to their claims to exclusive possession of ultimate truth. The inclusive approach, on the other hand, welcomes the followers of other paths to God as part of the divine design for all of humanity. This paradigm of thought, which has been the most pervasive in the spread of Islam throughout the world, has been advanced especially by the Sufis. The majority of Muslims in the world follow one of the Sufi paths. They believe that the purpose of divine revelation is to unify in common purpose all persons and communities not at the level of politics but at the level of worship and morality. The common purpose is love of God, which is every person’s reason for existence, but the paths to this end have always been found in the externals of religious diversity. As persons converge from the externals on the circumference of a circle toward the Oneness of God at the center, they themselves can become unified in action. The spiritual leaders believe that this unity in purpose through diversity in means is the only way to turn justice from merely a utopian word into a practical reality. They believe that this unity in diversity is the only way to turn justice from merely a utopian word into a practical reality. The governing paradigm of thought among those who follow the inner meaning of their religion is loving submission to God, known by Muslims as taqwa, which gives meaning to everything else. This is the root of the opportunity mentality and is the best basis for dialogue and mutual cooperation in addressing the practical issues of conscience in both domestic and foreign policy in the world today, because it is based on mutual respect among the followers of all the world religions. The challenge thereby becomes not a clash of civilizations based on a chasm of purpose between irreconcilable cultures. The major challenge is not even a chasm of meaning within each civilization. Rather, it is the growing chasm between humanity and God. II. Tolerance or Pluralism We may accept the basic thesis that civilizations as the highest form of human self-identity will be increasingly important in the ‘global village’ during the century ahead. The challenge is whether we can shift to the opportunity mentality in order to transcend the Cold War psychosis and make possible a century of peaceful engagement designed to promote the interests of all civilizations, nations, and persons. Two underlying questions are whether we can respect each other and whether tolerance is sufficient for this purpose. Is tolerance compatible with peaceful engagement? Is tolerance even a human right? Scholars of interfaith understanding and cooperation are now advancing the view that tolerance is a bankrupt paradigm of thought that must be replaced by a better paradigm if civilization of any kind is to survive the present century. The generic word “respect” reflects three different levels of a new paradigm of thought. They range from tolerance at the bottom as the least inclusive level, and diversity at an intermediate level, all the way to pluralism as the most inclusive level and in this sense as the opposite of tolerance. Basic tolerance means merely, “I hate you, but I won’t kill you yet.” Diversity means, “I can’t stand you, but you are here so I can’t do much about it.” Pluralism means, “We welcome you. We have so much to learn from each other because we each have to much to offer.” Pluralism means that we shift from the mindset that calls at best for both individual and group suicide through assimilation, and that instead we pursue integration whereby the individuals of each group in society proactively bring the wisdom of their tradition to enrich the overall society by sharing responsibility in forming and implementing the society’s agenda. Mutual respect must emerge from recognition that all the revealed religions contain a universal paradigm of thought. Muslims call this Islam. It is based on affirmation that there is an ultimate reality of which man and the entire universe are merely an expression, that therefore every person is created with some innate awareness of absolute truth and love, and that persons in community can and should develop from the various sources of divine revelation a framework of moral law to secure peace through compassionate justice. Recognition of this wisdom is the essence of classical thought in both America and Islam. Most Muslim radicals deny that this has ever been the mission of American exceptionalism as a unique phenomenon in human history. At best they claim that this vision has been bawdrylized or prostituted to pursue the false gods of power, prestige, privilege, and plutocracy. Even if the original American mission was to be a moral model for the world, these radicals say that the hubris of American self-worship has come to justify and mandate cultural imperialism as a tool to ensconce American power as the epicenter of the political cosmos. The only options presented to its victims are cultural retreat or military defeat. This confrontational view of the world, shared by so many on both sides of what they see as a growing civilizational divide, raises two questions. First, for Muslims, is America inherently a fraud? If so, can Muslims continue to live in the same world with Americans? Second, for Americans, is Islam a fraud? If so, can Americans or anyone else continue to live in the same world with Muslims, especially those with weapons of mass destruction, or is the world too small for both of them? This is the dilemma that sustains the threat mentality on both sides of the global confrontation between the hawks in America and their only perceived rivals on the global scene, namely, the Muslim hawks on the other side. This is a false dilemma. The real threat is the threat mentality itself, because it leads to its own self-fulfilling prophecy. Those who predict chaos and oppression unless they can impose their own power on the world are precisely the ones who are turning their fears of chaos into reality. Part of the problem is the universal temptation to define another person’s religion by defaming it in defense of one’s own. This is the substance of classical apologetics, but in the current environment it can turn into a lethal boomerang. This is so because to interpret another religion as inherently extremist plays into the hands of extremists in this religion by legitimizing their own perversions. Far better as a global strategy would be to support those in every religion who are trying to marginalize the hi-jackers in their own religion by preserving the enlightened understanding that is mutually shared by the traditionalists in all of them. This is the origin of respect and also its fruit. III. The Principles of Respect The role of respect in the Islamic scriptures for followers of the Abrahamic religions, including Muslims as well as Jews and Christians, can be brought out by citing three basic principles emphasized throughout the Qur’an. The three principles, which are pervasive throughout the Qur’an, are: 1) Freedom of religion, which includes equality in human dignity, unity in diversity, universal conditions for salvation, and equality of the prophets; 2) Love, which includes the personal relationship with God, forgiveness, and peaceful reconciliation; and 3) Compassionate justice, which includes personal righteousness and normative law. Together these three lead to respect for Jews and Christians and to acceptance of them as fellow peoples of the book. A. Freedom of Religion 1. Equality in Human Dignity Immediately following the “throne verse,” which is the most beautiful verse describing the attributes of God, in the second surah, Surah al Baqara, is verse 257. It states simply, “Let there be no compulsion in religion (la ikraha fi al din).” This is axiomatic because absolute truth does exist and it is human instinct to seek it, but no person or community can know more than a portion of this truth. Certainly no one should claim to possess it to the exclusion of others, because this would be the same as claiming to be God. This is clear from scholarly interpretation of the statement in the throne verse, “He knows all that lies open before men and all that is hidden from them, whereas they cannot attain to any of his knowledge except what He wills [them to attain].” Some scholars consider that this refers to earth and heaven, but the meaning is essentially the same. The word din used here for religion is the broadest of several related terms and refers to the unchanging spiritual truths that have been preached by every one of God’s prophets. Twice the Qur’an refers to the shar’, which refers to the normative jurisprudential principles common to Judaism, Christianity, and all human communities. The term din in reference to freedom of religion includes also the more restrictive terms minhaj, which refers to an entire way of life based on one’s own conscience and the wisdom of one’s community, and shar’ah, which refers to the governing laws of the particular community. The still more restrictive term, shari’ah, is reserved for the normative principles and specific regulations that are binding only on those who profess to be Muslims. The Prophet was specifically ordered to treat all people equally regardless of their religion. Shortly after the throne verse we find Verse 2:272, which reads, “It is not for you, O Prophet, to bring people to the path of right guidance, since it is God [alone] who guides whom He will.” The circumstance of this revelation was the Prophet’s advice to his companions to give charity only to his own followers in Medina who were poor. The above revelation came immediately, whereupon the Prophet enjoined his followers to disburse charity based on personal need without regard to religion. Freedom of religion means freedom for all persons to be treated equally in dignity as human beings. The reason for this requirement of equal treatment is the requirement of respect for every person’s free will. Surah Yunus 10:99-100 reads: “If God had willed, everyone would have believed. Will you then compel humankind to believe against their will? No soul will ever attain to faith except by the Will of God.” As a moral being, every person is free to discriminate and choose between right and wrong and to use one’s reason in conforming to one’s God-willed nature, but this is possible only through the grace of God. No one knows what graces have been bestowed upon another human being or why a particular person was created to choose a path to God within a particular religious community 2. Unity in Diversity Throughout the Qur’an, we are asked to see the coherence of the universe in the diversity that points to its Creator. If uniformity were the norm, there would be only one standard tree, one standard cloud, and one uniform sunset all over the world. Furthermore, we are directed to see that all beings are created to form pairs and with a nature that seeks community. This communal nature applies also to religion. Sur’ah al Ma’ida 5:48 reads thus: “To you have we given the scriptures, just as we have given scriptures to people before you. We have protected your scripture [the Qur’an] in its entirety. So, judge among people from what knowledge has come to you, and do not be carried over by your vain desires. Unto every one of you We have appointed a [different] governing system of law (shir’ah) and a [different] way of life (minhaj). If God had so willed, all humanity would have been a single community. God’s plan is to test you in what each one of you has received [in both scriptures and inspiration]. So strive as in a race in all virtues. The goal of all people is to God. God [alone] will tell you the truth about matters over which you dispute.” This is why the immediately preceding verse, 5:47, states: “Let, then, the followers of the Gospel judge in accordance with what God has revealed in it, for those who do not judge in the light of what God has bestowed from on high are truly the iniquitous.” In other words unity in diversity can come only when the diverse paths are respected as legitimate in the plan of God, even though the most comprehensive expression of truth may be found in the Qur’an, after which no further revelation is necessary. 3. Universal Conditions for Salvation One of the clearest and most insistent messages throughout the Qur’an and in the teachings and practice of the Prophet Muhammad was the universality of salvation within the various religions that have developed in various times and places. Only three conditions are given as the requirements for salvation. These are: 1) belief in One God; 2) belief in the justice of God both in this world and the next; and 3) the practice of good works. Near the beginning of the Qur’an in the second surah, Baqarah 2:62, we have the standard formulation: “Those who believe (in the Qur’an), those who follow the Jewish Scriptures, the Christians (those who follow the teachings of the Gospel), and the Sabians – all who believe in God and the Last Day and do righteous deeds – shall have their reward from their Lord, and they need have no fear, nor shall they grieve.” The Sabians may refer to a specific people, but, like much of the Qur’an, probably is more generic in referring to all monotheistic peoples, as well as to every individual who follows his own human nature and recognizes the essence of what all the prophets have taught. Muslims in the East, from Persia to the Pacific, have always included the Lord Buddha in this category. One of the early revelations in the Qur’an, Surah al Tin, refers symbolically to four religions. According to many commentators, this surah takes its title from the first symbol, namely, the Bo Tree (Tin) under which The Buddha received enlightenment. In Surah al Baqara 2:112 an even more generic formulation is given: “Everyone who surrenders his whole being unto God, and is a doer of good, shall have his reward with his Sustainer; and all such need have no fear, and neither shall they grieve.” The literal translation is “everyone who surrenders his face unto God,” which is classical Arabic for one’s whole being. Whoever does so is a Muslim and it is in this sense that the terms islam (the religion) and muslim (the person who surrenders to God) are used throughout the Qur’an. The worst heresy among Muslims is evidenced by the official Saudi translations of the Qur’an which assert that the above two verses and all like them have been abrogated by verses that say only Muslims can enter heaven. This, of course, is arguing in the classical vicious circle (circulum viciosum), because the allegedly abrogated verses clearly define the terms Islam and Muslim. This doctrine of abrogation has functioned like a computer virus and has multiplied into the abrogation of hundreds of verses. Those who justify their new, hate-filled religion by asserting that God changed his mind through abrogation are playing God. This process of selective interpretation and deletion eventually would gut the entire Qur’an of all meaning. Needless to say, certain perversions of the Yusuf Ali translation of the Qur’an, which has been distributed free in millions of copies all over the world, deleted Yusuf Ali’s footnote about the title of Surah al Tin, as well as all references to everything that the literalist Wahhabis could attack as esoteric “Sufi” or “Shi’a” symbolism pointing to the universality of salvation. 4. Equality of Prophets A central teaching in Islam is that God has provided a prophet for every people, beginning with the cavemen millions of years ago, and probably has done so for all the sentient beings on the perhaps millions of other inhabitable planets in the universe. The Qur’an states that no community has been left without a prophet. The hadith suggest that the number of prophets is 124,000, which means numerous beyond count. Since all prophets taught essentially the same thing, the Qur’an specifically says that they are all equal, even though they may have had different emphases depending on their audiences. This equality of prophets mirrors the Qur’anic emphasis on the equality of believers in the different religious traditions. The standard formulation is first found in Surah al Baqara 2:136: “Say: ‘We believe in God, and in what has been bestowed upon us from on high, and that which has been bestowed upon Abraham and Ishmael and Isaac and Jacob and their descendents, and that which has been vouchsafed to Moses and Jesus, and that which has been vouchsafed to all the [other] prophets by their Sustainer: we make no distinction among any of them. And it is unto Him that we [all of us] surrender ourselves (literally “unto Him we are Muslims)’.” This is repeated verbatim in the next surah, Surah Ali Imran 3:84, and is preceded by the rhetorical question in 3:83, “Do they seek perchance a faith other than in God, although it is unto Him that whatever is in the heavens and on earth surrenders itself, willingly or unwillingly, since unto Him all must return.” The standard formulation is followed in 3:85 by the warning, “For, if one goes in search of a religion other than self-surrender unto God (literally “other than the din of Islam”), it will never be accepted from Him, and in the life to come he shall be among the lost.” This emphasis on the equality of prophets as representatives of God is why a Muslim is not a Muslim unless he believes in the holy scriptures given to the Jews and Christians. The Qur’an is merely a continuation and restorer of the same message that came to the Jews and Christians in earlier eras. Every prophet has this same task in continuing the eternal message of a merciful God to his creatures, who are free to reject this message but with divine help can not only accept it but rise higher than the angels. 1. The Personal Relationship with God The most pervasive teaching in the Islamic religion is the centrality of love. Oddly, this is precisely the concept that its detractors insist does not and cannot exist. Unfortunately, Islam has more than its share of professed adherents who share the conclusions of its detractors and accordingly exhibit arrogance toward God and exude hatred rather than love for Jews and Christians. Such hatred is the origin both of terrorism and of terroristic counter-terrorism. The word islam means submission to God but implies both love as the means to submission and peace as the result. The Qur’an often uses the term taqwa, which means loving awareness of God. The common word for love, hubb, as the basis for the reciprocal relationship of love intended between God and the human person first appears near the beginning of the Qur’an in the second chapter, Surah al Baqara 2: 165: “Those who have attained to faith love Allah more than all else.” The combination of God’s love and mercy first appears in the next chapter, Surah Ali Imran 3:31, which introduces the Virgin Mary and the “Word from God,” Jesus, whose message is renewed by Muhammad. The Prophet Muhammad is instructed to say, “If you love God (in tuhibbuna Allaha), follow me, and God will love you (yuhbibkum Allahu) and forgive you your sins, for God is much forgiving, a dispenser of grace.” The term hubb is first used in conjunction with taqwa in 3:76, fa ina Allaha yuhibu al mutaqin “for God loves those who live in awe of God’s love.” The first complete listing in English of all terms in the Qur’an referring to love may be found in the Concordance of the Qur’an in English by H. E. Kassis, University of California Press. In addition to hubb it also lists the related terms radiya, shaghata, and wadud (waada and wadda). The favorite prayer of the Prophet Muhammad, and of millions of Muslims after him, is Allahumma, asaluka hubbaka wa hubba man yuhibuka wa hubba kuli ‘amali yuqaribuni ila hubbka, “Oh Allah, I ask you for Your love, and for the love of those who love You, and for the love of everything that will bring me closer to your love.” Compassion and mercy are the essence of Allah in his name Al Rahman and are manifested in his attribute of action Al Rahim. Almost every surah in the Qur’an begins with the invocation “Bi ismi Allah, al Rahman al Rahim,” as does every prayer by practicing Muslims. Surah Fatir 35:45 concludes with the statement that if it were not for the mercy of Allah not a single living creature would enter heaven. This is why kindness and forgiveness are encouraged throughout the Qur’an, which states about those who forgive transgressors, “Their reward is with God, for God loves those who exercise restraint and forgive.” Forgiveness is also an essential part of Islamic law. The well-known punishments of retribution are covered in Surah al Ma’ida 5:45, “We ordained in the Torah a life for a life, an eye for an eye, a nose for a nose, and an ear for a ear, and a tooth for a tooth, and a similar retribution for wounds, but he who shall forego it out of charity will atone thereby for some of his past sins.” The same applies to the prescribed punishment for theft, which is cutting off the thief’s hand. This is waived in times and in societies where poverty reduces the freedom of the individual to maintain a moral life based on truth. This reflects the Prophet Muhammad’s warning, “Poverty may well turn into a denial of the truth.” This means that those who must exert all their energy merely to survive have no dignity, no freedom, and no spiritual progress. This can drive whole communities into materialism and away from love of God. This is why the second caliph, ‘Umar ibn al Khattab, gave a blanket waiver and eliminated the particular hadd of cutting off hands during a time of hunger. This aspect of Islamic law reflects the basic Islamic teaching that the economic well-being of the individual is essential. If the functioning of societal institutions does not provide adequate material well-being through the community’s duty to protect its members, it has no right to apply the full punishment for theft. In a fully functioning Islamic society, however, theft by one person from another is considered to be an attack on all of society and deserves full hudud. In this case, the thief may be pardoned only if he repents and returns the stolen goods before apprehension, because at least from the standpoint of society he does not otherwise merit mercy and forgiveness. The fact that the exhortation to forgiveness is not in the Pentateuch has prompted Muslim scholars to conclude either that the full revelation of the Qur’an was not given to the ancient Jews or that they had subsequently left it out of their scriptures, so that it needed to be restored because mercy is an essential part of compassionate justice. 3. Reconciliation and Peace The opposite of love and forgiveness is the ascription of collective guilt to another community because of the sins of some of its members. This leads to war. The Qur’an specifically condemns collective guilt as the origin of politically inspired hiraba, which is the closest Arabic equivalent to “terrorism.” Collective guilt is used as the justification for blowing up Jewish babies and “driving the Jews into the sea.” Of course, extremists among Jews would like to do the same to all Palestinians in response to the perceived collective guilt of the entire world for the shoah or holocaust. And extremist Christians would like to nuke Mecca now rather than later as retaliation against the incineration of thousands of innocent people in the towers of the World Trade Center. But one crime of collective guilt does not justify another in an unending chain of destruction. In the universal principles of Islamic jurisprudence the right to life is next in importance to freedom of religion, so much so that both the Jewish and Islamic scriptures compare slaying another human being to killing all of humanity. As in the holocaust, quantity becomes somewhat irrelevant compared to the evil of the crime, which in the shoah was unprecedented in human history. Near the beginning of Surah al Ma’ida, 5:32, we read, “If anyone slays a human being – unless it be [in punishment] for murder or for spreading corruption on earth (fasad fi al ‘ardi) – it shall be as though he had slain all mankind; whereas, if anyone saves a life, it shall be as though he had saved the lives of all mankind.” Centuries before the beginning of international law in Europe, Islamic scholars developed a sophisticated set of criteria for the just war very similar to that now universally accepted at least in theory throughout the world. Islam does not preach pacifism because the Qur’an warns that under certain conditions one must oppose aggressors with force, because otherwise not a single synagogue, church, or mosque would remain standing. On the other hand, a permanent state of war, as advocated by many Muslim extremists today, is both unnecessary and forbidden. Self-defense is the first requirement for resort to physical force. This is limited to extreme provocation, in which case refusal to fight is forbidden, but even then the time may come when one should seek reconciliation and peace even at the risk of defeat. Thus Surah Mumtahinah states: “God only forbids you to turn in friendship towards such as fight against you because of your faith, and drive you forth from your homelands, or aid others in driving you forth” (60:9), “but it may well be that God will bring about mutual affection between you and some of those whom you now face as enemies, for God is infinite in His power – and God is much-forgiving and a dispenser of grace” (60:7). “As for such [of the unbelievers] who neither fight against you on account of your faith nor drive you forth from your homelands, God does not forbid you to show them kindness and to behave towards them with full equity (qist), for verily God loves those who act equitably” (60:8). The laws of just war were revealed principle by principle in real-time, which is why the illa or circumstances of the particular revelation are important. The first such rules of just war followed the Battle of Badr. This was the first battle between the Qurayshites from Mecca and the Muslims who two years earlier had emigrated from Mecca to Medina in order to avoid being massacred. A state of open war had developed, so the Muslims lured the Meccan army to fight on neutral turf of their choosing by announcing well in advance that they were going to attack a Meccan caravan of a thousand camels returning from Syria. The Muslim victory resulted in the capture of several dozen Qurayshites, which precipitated several revelations, recorded in Surah al Anfal. The first such was the command that booty captured from the enemy should not be an object of individual greed, as was common at the time in Arabia (Surah al Anfal 8:41). For this reason the sole authority on disposing of the booty was to be the Prophet Muhammad, who was directed to distribute a fifth for the common good as determined by the government, “for the near of kin, and the orphans, and the needy, and the wayfarer.” The second revelation, in 8:67, forbid the taking of captives in peacetime, that is, except after a legitimate defensive jihad on behalf of justice and freedom. This was designed to forbid the taking of slaves as an object of warfare and, in effect, at the time was designed eventually to eliminate slavery altogether. And even those POWs taken in legitimate warfare, according to the previous surah (47:4), must be freed after the war is over. The ahadith describe a dispute between the men who became the first two political successors of the Prophet Muhammad, Abu Bakr and Umar, over what to do with the prisoners taken at the Battle of Badr. ‘Umar ibn al Khattab argued that they should all be killed in revenge. Abu Bakr, on the other hand, argued that they should be released in return for ransom, because such an act of mercy might induce them to appreciate the truth of Islam. This dispute was settled by another revelation, Surah al Anfal 8:68, which has been interpreted by most of the classical scholars as a warning that the taking of booty is legitimate but the proposed execution of the prisoners would have constituted an awesome sin and warranted a “tremendous chastisement.” In Surah al Anfal 8:58, the Muslims are warned against treachery, whether committed by themselves or by others: “If you have reason to fear treachery from people [with whom you have a covenant], cast it back at them in an equitable manner (sawaa’)”. The classical scholars interpret this to mean that one should not attack without warning, but announce beforehand that the treaty is no longer binding. In Surah al Anfal 8:61-62, God reveals in the Qur’an that, “If your enemy inclines toward peace, then you should seek peace and trust in God. He is all-hearing and all-knowing. And should they seek only to deceive you [by their show of peace] – behold, God is enough for you.” The implication is that even a deceptive peace must be accepted, since all judgment of their intentions must be based on outward evidence alone. In other words, mere suspicion cannot be made an excuse for rejecting an offer of peace. “But if they do not stay their hands, seize them and slay them whenever you come upon them, for it is against these that We have clearly empowered you [to make war]” Surah al Nisaa 4:91. Unfortunately, those who have a self-serving agenda other the pursuit of truth and the legitimate defense of human rights have reversed the above Qur’anic teachings on peace to justify terrorism. This reversal of truth and error, by both Muslims and others, is the fundamental source, nature, and result of evil as taught in the ahadith about the Anti-Christ (the Messiah al Dajjal). The limits of just war are the same as the limits for the jihad al asghar or Lesser Jihad. The aims must be approved by legitimate authority and must be limited to the defense of human rights for oneself and others. The amount of force must be held to the minimum required for victory in order to avoid harm to non-combatants and property. “Fight in the cause of God [to defend justice] against those who fight you, but do not transgress limits, for God does not love transgressors” Surah Baqara 2:190. Furthermore the expected benefit from war must be greater than its inevitable harm. And all measures short of war must have been exhausted in the search for justice. Among the measures short of war are the other two forms of jihad. These are the jihad al akbar or Greatest Jihad and the jihad al kabir or Great Jihad. The greatest jihad is the purification of the self spiritually so that one will always seek peace. The greatest and lesser jihads are found in the hadith or sayings of the Prophet Muhammad. The great jihad, which is the only one mentioned in the Qur’an (Surah al Furqan 25:52) reads, wa jahidhim bihi jihadan kabiran, “strive with it (divine revelation) in a great jihad.” This is the intellectual jihad needed especially during times when one’s soul and body are relatively secure. This is the struggle of tajdid or societal renewal in order to promote greater justice at all levels of human community, since injustice is the major cause of war. According to the Grand Mufti of Syria, Shaykh Ahmad Kuftaro, who headed one of the Naqshbandi Sufi orders until his death at an advanced age, “The Great Jihad is to acquaint ourselves and others with our Lord, with His greatness, wisdom, justice, mercy, and love. It is to reflect all of His attributes, as we can conceive of them, in our own lives so that we become instruments of His purpose. And the Great Jihad is to acquaint ourselves and others with the models of Allah’s attributes to be found in the Prophets and Messengers of Allah and in their common message in all its purity and fullness in the life of the Prophet Muhammad.” The Great Jihad and the Greatest Jihad also call for countering the many distortions of truth that professional polemicists have been popularizing in their war against the religion of Islam by reviving the leftovers from the time of the crusades. These distortions are based largely on ahadith and revisions of sirah or histories of the Prophet’s teachings and actions that are of questionable reliability at best. These have been further misinterpreted and distorted by political prostitutes among the Muslims who were either bought, as in the past, by one Muslim tyrant or another in the march of imperial Islamdom or, as in the present, are ensnared in an ideology of hopeless alienation, hatred, and violence. Such self-serving, radical Muslims provide more than enough grist for the mills of the modern Muslim bashers. These distortions include allegations of pedophilia based on the age of A’isha when she married the Prophet Muhammad, which modern scholarship now has concluded is about 17; allegations that the Muslim heaven is a whorehouse, based on absurd anthropomorphizing of the heavenly huries; detailed stories about the massacre of all the male members of the treasonous Jewish Qurayzah tribe in Medina, about which the first report originated more than 150 years after the alleged event; the accusation of banditry in explaining the early efforts of the Muslim emigrants from Mecca to recover their goods confiscated by the Meccans for sale after the Muslims were forced to flee for their lives to Medina; the accusation that the Qur’an calls for stoning adulterers, when, in fact, this is nowhere to be found in the Qur’an, which in Surah al Nur 24:2 limits the punishment to whipping; and the claim that the phrase “smite above their necks” in Surah al Anfal 8: 12-13 provides the basis for the practice of beheading hostages and prisoners, when in fact this phrase in classical Arabic calls for unconditional surrender. Such allegations and perversions do not have to be invented by Muslim bashers, because for various self-serving reasons over the centuries they have been either invented or exaggerated by Muslim revisionists themselves seemingly determined to generate an artificial clash of civilizations. Muslim scholars are taking the lead now to critique the sources, especially the hearsay hadith, based on whether these reports further explain the basic message of the Qur’an or contradict it, and on whether specific Qur’anic revelations were of general import or were directed toward immediate events at a time when the Muslim community was on the verge of annihilation. Muslim women scholars are researching the secondary sources and interpretations in order to undo more than a thousand years of patriarchal bias. Until recently, for example, few questioned the absurd daraba verse, which allegedly calls for beating one’s wife. Modern scholarship reveals that the term daraba has at least a dozen different meanings in the Qur’an, the obvious one in this verse meaning not to beat, but “to separate.” This, in turn, must be limited by the Prophet’s warning that “divorce is the worst of all things permitted by God.” Only Muslim women can free themselves from bondage, and they are now rising in a global chorus to explain the true meaning of reconciliation and peace. Good translations and annotations of the Qur’an are now becoming available free, such as that by Muhammad Asad from The Book Foundation. Perhaps the best tafsir or commentary on the Qur’an is now nearing completion by The Traditionalist Foundation under the direction of Syed Hossein Nasr, who has long been University Professor in Islamic Studies at George Washington University and over the past half century has published a score of excellent books on Islam for both scholars and inquisitive teenagers. Recently he has augmented the wealth of good books on Islam by his introductory volume, The Heart of Islam: Enduring Values for Humanity. C. Compassionate Justice The third of the principles that lead to respect for Jews and Christians, other than freedom of religion and love, is compassionate justice. This includes both individual righteousness, known as qist, and social justice, known as’adl. Islamic teaching and practice distinguish between righteousness and justice. This is shown by the use of both terms in Surah al Nisaa 4:135: “Be ever steadfast in upholding equity (qist). … Do not follow your own desires lest you swerve from justice (‘adl).” What is translated as equity refers to a set of responsibilities in the practice of individual virtue, because virtue at the individual level is the essential foundation of justice at the level of the community. This is why the portion of Surah al Nisaa leading up to verse 135 deals with one’s personal spiritual life (verses 105 to 126) followed by responsibilities and rights in social behavior (verses 127 to 130), including a strong moral but not legal restriction on plural marriage in verse 129 as part of the rights of women. Equity or qist, though usually not differentiated from justice, includes the five pillars of Islam, which are submission to God and divine revelation, prayer, charity, fasting, and the pilgrimage to Mecca in the hajj. These are essential means to go beyond the level of islam, which may be defined as belief in the Islamic creed or ‘aqida (belief in the infinite power of God, ultimate justice, angels, divine revelation, and prophets) to the higher level of iman or faith so that one can become fully human. God’s supreme gift to every person is one’s endowment with a conscious soul, referred to in the Qur’an as the ruh or spirit, which God breathes into every person as a “breath of His own spirit.” Every person’s identity is the person God intends him to be, so the pursuit of iman is to become that person. At the highest level, known as ihsan, which is the goal of Sufis, one’s subjective impression, though not the absolute reality, is that only God exists, because everything else is relatively irrelevant. This is a foretaste of heaven. Justice is the most universal value in all civilizations. Justice assumes the existence of a truth higher than man-made or positivist law. In fact, justice is merely an expression of this truth. Thus God reveals in Surah al An’am 6:115 of the Qur’an, wa tamaat kalimatu rabika sidqan wa ‘adlan, “The word of your Lord is fulfilled and perfected in truth and in justice.” The purpose of all religion is to empower the truth. Justice is important for Muslims because they consider that it is the translation of truth into practice and that therefore justice is nothing more than the Will of God. Its nature and substance, however, must be sought out through deduction from divine revelation, natural law (known by Muslims as the sunnatu Allahi), and human intellectual processing of the first two sources. In other words, justice is heuristic in the sense that it constantly seeks knowledge about the sources, nature and practice of justice, with the challenges lying more in the present as a means to build on the best of the past in search of a better future. Justice requires us to recognize that there is such a thing as the furqan or difference between right and wrong at an absolute level of truth and that we are not the ultimate arbiters of it. The major purpose of prophets as intermediaries between God and humankind is to raise our natural awareness of the multi-dimensional nature of reality. Jesus, whom Muslims call the Prophet of Love and a Word from God through the Holy Spirit (Ruh al Quddus), taught that as a manifestation of the divine he was an essential link. “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” This statement of ultimate reality and of the means to access it is just as true today as it was when Jesus spoke it 2,000 years ago and is perhaps even more needed, now that we have entered the most militantly polytheistic period of human history. Justice is a normative phenomenon in that its applications must derive from higher norms or purposes. Rules and regulations applied without guidance from their higher purposes can produce injustice. In Islamic jurisprudence the guiding norms are known as the maqasid or universal purposes of the shari’ah. We may identify at least seven irreducibly highest principles. In highest priority, these start with haqq al din, which for six hundred years until the present third millennium was ossified in the Sunni portion of the Muslim world to mean “protection of true belief.” In recent decades, this maqsud has been expanded and reinterpreted by some of the greatest modern scholars in the Sunni world, following the lead of Shaykh al Islam Mufti Ibn Ashur in the first half of the twentieth century to mean “freedom of religion.” Next come three sets of pairs. The first pair consists of haqq al nafs and haqq al nasl, which mean the duties, respectively, to respect the human person and life itself and to respect the nuclear family and communities at every level that derive from the sacredness of the human person. The first one, at its secondary level of haqq al haya includes the elaborate set of principles that define the limitations of just war. The second one, haqq al nasl, includes the principle of subsidiarity, which recognizes that legitimacy expands upwards from the human person to the human community or nation to the state, and not the reverse. The second set consists of responsibilities that deal with institutionalizing economic and political justice. It must be said that, more often than not, this second pair of responsibilities throughout much of Islamdom has been observed only in the breech. And even when the principles are acknowledged, the derivative lower levels of institutionalized implementation have been ignored. The third pair of maqasid consists of haqq al karama, which is the duty to respect human dignity, especially in gender equity in order to remove the barriers that are based on nurture rather than on nature, and haqq al ‘ilm, which is the duty to respect knowledge, including the secondary level of implementation known as freedom of thought, publication, and assembly. This spiritual perspective on human responsibilities and rights, which raises human rights to the sacred level as ultimate ends of existence, necessarily implies also the opposite. Any perspective that raises an ideology of power to the practical level of an ultimate end and rejects justice as a concept in foreign policy, inevitably will lead from cosmos to chaos. God revealed in Deuteronomy 16:20, “Justice, justice, thou shalt pursue.” Pope Paul VI wrote that, “If you want peace, work for justice.” God revealed in the Qur’an, “The word of your Lord is fulfilled in truth and in justice.” This has been the common teaching of all the Abrahamic peoples, both the Muslims and the so-called People of the Book, meaning the Jews and Christians, since the very beginning. Thus the Qur’an states in Surah Ali Imran 3:199: “And among the People of the Book are those who believe in God, in the revelations given to you, and in the revelation given to them. They bow in humility to God. They will not sell the Signs of God for a miserably gain. For them is a reward from their Lord, and God is swift in taking account (of all good deeds).” Further, in Surah Ali Imran 3:113-115: “Not all are alike among the People of the Book. There are those who stand for the right, they rehearse the signs of God all night long and they submit to God in adoration. They believe in God and the Last Day. They enjoin what is right and forbid what is wrong. They hasten with emulation in all good works. They are in the ranks of the righteous. Of the good that they do, nothing will be rejected for God knows best those who do right.” Of course, those radical Muslims who have invented their own religion and dare to call it Islam insist that the above verses of the Qur’an have been abrogated and no longer apply and that those Muslims who disagree with them are kafirs who have abandoned Islam and no longer represent it. This radical rejection of traditionalist thought in all three of the Abrahamic religions in favor of modernist pseudo-religion poses the real threat to global civilization because it is a universal phenomenon. Perhaps the greatest spiritual leader in the world during the twentieth century, Rebbe Abraham Isaac Kook, taught that every religion contains the seed of its own perversion, because humans are free to divert their worship from God to themselves. The greatest evil is always the perversion of the good, and the surest salvation from evil is always the return to prophetic origins. Though his modern followers have reversed much of his teachings, the entire life of Rebbe Kook, who was the chief Rabbi of Palestine from 1919 to 1935, spoke his message that only in the Holy Land of Israel can the genius of Hebraic prophecy be revived and the Jewish people bring the creative power of God’s love in the form of justice and unity to every person and to all mankind. “For the basic disposition of the Israelite nation,” he announced, “is the aspiration that the highest measure of justice, the justice of God, shall prevail in the world. … The Jewish people’s commitment to the Oneness of God is a commitment to the vision of universality in all its far-reaching implications … whose vocation is to help make the world more receptive to the divine light … bearing witness to the Torah in the world.” This, he taught, is the whole purpose of Israel, which stands for shir el, the “song of God.” It is schlomo, which means peace or wholeness, Solomon’s Song of Songs. The great spiritual leaders of the world have long perceived that justice in the Holy Land is the pivotal issue in the modern world. Any solution that can guarantee the permanent legitimacy and security of Jews in the Holy Land must proceed from dialogue between equal peoples, which means that if one party is sovereign so must be the other. Each must recognize the other as existing in international law but with a vision to transcend the exclusiveness of legal sovereignties in order to build over time a federation of equal peoples, united economically and in their role as facilitators of civilizational enrichment. They must recover their lost identities in which the historical role of the many peoples that enriched the population of Palestine was to serve as a bridge among cultures. Only in this way can the Jews and Muslims in the world overcome the role that the Holy Land played occasionally in the past not as a civilizational conduit but as a block against civilizational interchange and as a source of rivalry and warfare between hostile empires. Rebbe Kook, like all great spiritual leaders, was a warner. “By transgressing the limits,” he prophesied, the leaders of Israel may bring on a holocaust. But this will merely precede a revival. “As smoke fades away, so will fade away all the destructive winds that have filled the land, the language, the history, and the literature.” Always following his warning was the reminder of God’s covenant. “In all of this is hiding the presence of the living God. … It is a fundamental error for us to retreat from our distinctive excellence, to cease recognizing ourselves as chosen for a divine vocation. … We are a great people and we have blundered greatly, and, therefore, we suffered great tribulation; but great also is our consolation. … Our people will be rebuilt and established … through the divine dimension of its life. All the builders of the people will come to recognize this profound truth. Then they will call out with a mighty voice to themselves and to their people: ‘Let us go and return to the Lord! And this return will be a true return’.” At this time, prophesied Rebbe Kook, who always sharply defended the validity of both Christianity and Islam as religions in the Plan of God, “The brotherly love of Esau and Jacob [Christians and Jews], of Isaac and Ishmael [Jews and Muslims], will assert itself above all the confusion … [and turn] the darkness to light.” 1. This position paper was prepared at the request of Iftekhar Hai, president of the United Muslims of America Interfaith Alliance, for condensation into a presentation. It also serves as the latest of Dr. Crane’s responses to a request in June, 2006, by Isma’il Haniya, the Prime Minister of Palestine, for a series of advisories on the Palestinian proposal for a permanent hudna in the Holy Land. Most of these earlier advisories on hudna have been published over the past nine months in http://www.theamericanmuslim.org This. 18th advisory also is to serve as Dr. Crane’s contribution to an Islamist summit conference scheduled for Doha, Qatar, on May 4-5th, 2007, as a possible conclusion to a series of inconclusive regional gatherings. These have been orchestrated by Isma’il Haniya’s principal foreign policy adviser, Ahmed Yousef, who was recently disfigured by a botched assassination attempt. Dr. Crane was Richard Nixon’s principal foreign policy advisor from 1963 to 1967. On January 20, 1969, he appointed Crane to the position of Deputy Director for Planning in the National Security Council. In September, 1981, President Reagan appointed him U.S. Ambassador to the United Arab Emirates with dual-track responsibility to provide liaison with the Islamist movements of the Middle East and North Africa.

June 18, 2013 - The Food and Nutrition Information Center - Office of Dietary Supplements, National Institutes of Health - Nutrient Data Laboratory - Food and Drug Administration - The American Dietetic Association - American Council on Science and Health - American Institute for Cancer Research - Information on vitamins and nutrients in foods - Independent testing of nutritional supplements' contents and quality - US Pharmacopeia - Herb Research Foundation News & Features The Supreme Court ruled Monday in a closely watched international price-fixing case that federal antitrust law does not apply to transactions that take place overseas and that cause harm there unless a company's actions in the United States can be shown to have contributed to the harm. The decision, 8 to 0, overturned a ruling last year by the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit that had caused considerable alarm among multinational corporations and foreign governments by significantly expanding the reach of American antitrust law and the jurisdiction of the federal courts to hear such cases. Parents may worry about teenagers who spend the summer hanging out on street corners, but at least they are building up plenty of Vitamin D. A surprising number of adolescents do not have adequate levels of Vitamin D in their blood, according to a study released yesterday. Debra and Patrick Doyle of Aspen, Colo., go skiing every weekend in the winter and, in summer, take long mountain bike rides in the hilly terrain where they live. What helps this 36-year-old couple feel so energetic? A prominent Canadian researcher is facing claims that data in his widely reported study of a nutritional supplement's effects on thinking and memory in the elderly are so flawed as to have no real value. The scientist, Dr. Ranjit Kumar Chandra, is internationally known for his many contributions to the field of nutrition, and his work has been widely cited in professional and lay publications alike, including The New York Times. Most women experience morning sickness early in their pregnancies. But it does not necessarily strike only in the morning, nor does it always end after the first trimester. I, for one, felt sick at various times of the day, especially when I smelled something off-putting, like garbage or meat being cooked, and every day on the subway on my way home, until I realized that it helped to eat something before I left the office. 1. Symptoms The patient sat quietly in the tiny emergency-room cubicle, his muscular arms and chest barely covered by the thin cotton hospital gown. He looked far too robust to be in the hospital, but it was his fourth visit in two months. ''I'm losing my strength,'' he explained quietly to yet another doctor -- Dr. Christine Twining, a physician in training in her late 20's. ''I'm so weak, I'm worried there's something really wrong.'' One of about two dozen vitamin manufacturers that are fighting accusations of price fixing made in a lawsuit by foreign purchasers has reached a settlement and is cooperating with the plaintiffs, a lawyer in the case said yesterday. The company, Merck KGaA of Germany, has agreed to pay an undisclosed sum, said Michael D. Hausfeld, a Washington lawyer who represents more than a dozen foreign purchasers in the case, which the United States Supreme Court has agreed to review. Merck will provide documents and witnesses to bolster the plaintiffs' case, Mr. Hausfeld said. A spokeswoman for Merck, which is not related to Merck & Company of the United States, could not be reached for comment. The Supreme Court, accepting a closely watched international price-fixing case for review, agreed on Monday to decide how United States antitrust law applies to transactions that take place entirely overseas. Although the issue has only lately gained prominence in the lower courts, recent rulings opening federal courts to antitrust claims by foreign plaintiffs with only remote connections to domestic commerce have engendered enormous interest and concern among companies fearful of newly defined antitrust liability for their overseas operations. UNLIKE their diet-crazed owners, America's pets don't care a whit about rock-hard abs. Most dogs and cats have yet to meet a buttery table scrap they didn't like, no matter how much kibble they have consumed. That apparent lack of willpower is not only ruining Fido's or Fluffy's figure. According to the latest feeding guidelines from the National Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences, pets are chowing their way toward diabetes, heart disease and other ailments. ''Obesity,'' the document states, ''is estimated to occur in 25 percent of dogs and cats in westernized societies.'' After the deaths of two Israeli children because of a severe vitamin deficiency, the German manufacturer of infant formula admitted Tuesday that a kosher, soy-based product it sells in Israel was missing an ingredient necessary to sustain infant life. The company, Humana Milchunion, which is based in Everswinkel, Germany, said that because of human error its Remedia Super Soya 1 product, which is popular in Israel and Jewish communities elsewhere because of its strict kosher certification, contained only a fraction of the Vitamin B-1, also known as thiamine, that is needed to prevent diseases like beri-beri, which can be fatal in infants. City health officials warned New Yorkers yesterday that an Israeli baby formula called Remedia could harm infants because it lacked a crucial vitamin. They said that Americans might have bought it on trips to Israel, or had it shipped to them by relatives there. They also cited unconfirmed reports that one or two stores in Brooklyn might have stocked Remedia. Israeli officials have said that since last spring, vitamin B1 has been left out of the kosher version of Remedia, causing the deaths of three children and brain damage in others. The Israeli government has also begun a criminal investigation into the possibility that the formula was sabotaged. The formula is made by a German company, Humana Milchunion, and marketed by Heinz Remedia, an Israeli company mostly owned by the American conglomerate H. J. Heinz. Richard Pérez-Peña (NYT) HE has sold millions of books and tapes exhorting people to ''Unleash the Power Within,'' ''Get the Edge'' and ''Live With Passion!'' He claims that his infomercials have been running every 30 minutes nonstop in North America since April 1989. And every year, legions of people pay thousands of dollars each for the privilege of declaring, along with him and stadiums full of like-minded followers: ''I will lead, not follow! I will believe, not doubt! I will create, not destroy!'' If it seems the world can't get enough of Anthony Robbins, the high priest of human potential, the feeling is mutual. Although he has built an empowerment empire estimated to be worth at least $80 million by selling nothing but himself, Mr. Robbins is no longer content just to influence the emotional and financial lives of his devotees. Can sunshine, now shunned by so many who fear skin cancer and wrinkles, save many more lives than it harms? Most definitely, says a leading expert in the field, Dr. Michael F. Holick, a professor of medicine, dermatology, physiology and biophysics at the Boston University School of Medicine. Dr. Holick, who discovered the active form of vitamin D, has pulled together an impressive body of evidence in support of his advice that no one should be, as he puts it, a ''sunphobe'' or, for that matter, a sun worshiper. A growing number of medical experts are concerned that Americans are overdoing their vitamin consumption. As many as 70 percent of the population is taking supplements, mostly vitamins, convinced that the pills will make them healthier. But researchers say that vitamin supplements cannot correct for a poor diet, that multivitamins have not been shown to prevent any disease and that it is easy to reach high enough doses of certain vitamins and minerals to actually increase the risk of disease. People with diabetes who take daily vitamin and mineral supplements may be less susceptible to infections like colds and the absenteeism they cause, researchers reported yesterday Still, the report, in Annals of Internal Medicine, seems unlikely to resolve whether the 40 percent of Americans who take vitamins and minerals are doing themselves any good. An accompanying editorial noted the small size of the study sample, and both the report and an accompanying editorial said broader study was needed. Most people can obtain 90 to 100 percent of the vitamin D they need from a little sun. But if you are reading this in the northern two-thirds of the country, don't bother heading outside for a quick dose. (Not that we discourage a brisk daily constitutional.) Winter sunlight is inadequate for vitamin D production. You are living off what you built up from warm-weather sun and the relatively small amounts in a few foods. A visit to the office of Dr. Michael F. Holick in the Boston University Medical Center quickly conveys his enthusiasm for his favorite hormone, vitamin D. On the office walls are letters from sixth graders responding to a talk he gave. Q. I have been told that the vitamin D added to skim milk (because removing fat removes the D) remains entirely on the side of the container, so that it is effectively not available. Is this true? A. ''The amount of vitamin D3 in the milk, and the amount that one gets from its consumption, is the amount that's stated on the label,'' said Dr. Sheldon S. Hendler, co-editor of the PDR for Nutritional Supplements. When the Moon Was Cozy Any tea-time host knows that to keep the Lapsang souchong hot, you have to slip a cozy over the teapot. Forget to put the cozy back on after pouring and the pot quickly becomes cold. Fish, vitamin C and a drug used to treat gout all helped to improve arterial function, according to two studies released yesterday by the journal Circulation. The studies, conducted separately, involved smokers, not because the researchers were looking to make smoking safer, but because smokers show very clear reductions in the ability of blood vessels to change their size in response to changes in blood pressure, a measure of cardiac health called endothelial function. Dr. Ron Livesey was fat, tired and out of shape. At 49, he felt that his best years were behind him. So one day seven years ago, on his way to a medical meeting, he stopped at a doctor's office in Palm Springs, Calif., for his first hormone injections. Some people can eat slabs of steak and butter without gaining weight or raising their cholesterol levels. Others assiduously shun fats and still have a high risk of heart disease. The different response to diet is determined in part by one's genes. Now scientists are beginning to apply genetics to diet, a new field known as nutritional genomics, or nutrigenomics. In the near term, the study is expected to reveal how particular diet ingredients affect health. The ultimate goal will be to tailor one's diet to genetic makeup. Recently, I entered a store specializing in dietary supplements, curious about the information I would receive when I explained to the teenage clerk that I was particularly interested in preventing a heart attack. I did not mention that I was a physician specializing in the prevention of heart disease, or that there were relatively few measures proven to reduce heart disease risk. But so many patients had brought in bags of supplements and ''vitamins,'' convinced of their cardiovascular benefits, that I wanted to see how these products were being marketed. In the eight weeks since the fed eral government announced that it had halted a study of a popular hormone therapy used by postmenopausal women, doctors say they have been deluged by an ever-growing tide of promotional material for anything and everything that could substitute for Prempro, the drug used in the study. The alternatives run the gamut: prescription drugs that consist of slightly different hormone formulations, nutritional supplements made of herbs and vitamins, soy products said to be natural sources of estrogen, and even what might be termed menopause accessories, such as one company's ''cooling comfort towelettes'' to wipe the sweat from hot flashes. AS Labor Day flickers on the horizon, many Americans are doubtless patting themselves on their sunscreen-slathered backs for avoiding excessive sun exposure. But this month, several scientists trotted out a theory that people who don't get enough sunlight and have diets low in vitamin D may be at higher risk of developing colon, prostate, rectal, ovarian and breast cancer. Scientists have known for decades that vitamin D is essential to healthy bones and normal growth. But over the past 20 years or so, some laboratory evidence has suggested that vitamin D may block the growth of malignant tumors. The rub is that the vitamin D we ingest in milk and other foods is chemically activated in our bodies only when our skin is exposed to natural sunlight. 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Moses ibn Ezra Poems Poems by Moses ibn Ezra. This PoetrySoup page contains a list of poems and links to Moses ibn Ezra poetry. Comment of this poet below. | Poems (0) Rabbi Moses ben Jacob ibn Ezra, known as Ha'Sallah ("writer of penitential prayers") (Arabic : , Abu Harun Musa bin Ya'acub ibn Ezra, Hebrew : ,) was a Jewish, Spanish philosopher, linguist, and poet. He was born at Granada about 1055 – 1060, and died after 1138. Ezra is Jewish by religion but is also considered a great influence in the Arabic world in regards to his works. He is considered one of the greatest poets to originate from Spain and was thought of as ahead of his time in terms of theories surrounding the nature of poetry. One of the more revolutionary aspects of Ezra’s poetry that have been debated over is his definition of poetry as metaphor and how it fuses Aristotle’s early ideas. Ezra’s philosophical works were minor compared to his impact on poetry, but they address the relationship that is held between God and man. [ Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA 1 ] Are we missing a Submit a Moses ibn Ezra poem here... Famous poems are below this ad. Sorry, no poems have been posted. Submit a poem using the link above.

Latest update: March 2nd, 2012 Purim is my favorite holiday, and I love to share the joy. I have spent previous years wandering around my neighborhood in costume. This year, I fully intend to celebrate with full cheer, and I want everyone to know why I plan to spend the day in costume, singing Shoshanat Yaakov at the top of my lungs. Last night, as I was telling my enthralled neighbor the story of Esther, I realized that there was a tremendous hole in the plot. Haman is the all-powerful viceroy to the king. He has the King’s signet ring and he has the power of life and death over everyone around him. As he walks through the streets, trumpets sound and knees hit the ground in homage. Basically, he is the man in charge with the power of life and death, freedom and captivity, poverty and wealth over every person he sees. He has it all. And yet, one person doesn’t cower before him and Haman goes berserk. The most powerful man in the country stops his busy schedule and decides to engage in a single-minded campaign of destruction against one man with absolutely no power. He most likely could have Mordechai executed on the spot, but even that wasn’t enough. For comparison purposes let’s take Aishwarya Rai of India who has been called the most beautiful woman in the world by many different magazines. Can you imagine that she would go crazy with anger and revenge if one person didn’t find her the most beautiful? I imagine that she would confidently walk past him, convinced of her own beauty and self worth. The viceroy here has no internal self worth and confidence. A single powerless person has defied him and he is utterly consumed by this defiance. The only thing that can make Haman feel better about himself is to commit genocide. That is more than using an elephant to crush an ant; I would argue this is using an atomic weapon to destroy the ant. And in pursuit of that goal, he’s willing to give ten thousand talents of silvers to the king. For those of us in the modern world, a single talent is 67 pounds. That’s more than three tons of solid silver. Silver is around 33 dollars an ounce. At my calculations, that’s more than 35 million dollars. There’s a lot of people I dislike, but I’d much rather have the cash than trash them. So why did Haman flip out in such a self destructive way? The answer came to me today as I cried on the shoulder of a friend. For the past two years I have been working in Israel advocacy. Dealing with bureaucratic board members, hostile organizations and just nasty people can wear on a person. Sometimes, I would fantasize about letting out my anger in a vicious tirade. At desperate times, I would dream of getting some sort of revenge by going to the Dean or prominent organizations to get them into trouble. I knew I was right and I wanted the people who impeded the rightness of my cause to be held accountable and apologize for the damage they had wrecked upon the Jewish community. And yes, I know it would have gotten me nowhere – and that is my point. Revenge turns a logical feeling of distaste for injustice into a futile and ridiculous tilt at windmills. At best, revenge is a distraction from your real goal, and at worst, it becomes a trap that ensnares and destroys those caught in it. Haman may have been a sociopath, but that wasn’t his fatal flaw. He just didn’t seem to know what his real goal was. Although I don’t know the man well, I imagine his goal was to achieve power. Haman started out right. He had managed to survive the whims of a drunken and capricious king; he admits he has everything in the world. The sight of one measly person refusing to bow should have been annoying to him, but not something worth more a few moments of irritation. There was definitely no intelligent reason to go on the warpath like he did and we all know how well that ended. Once the most powerful man in the empire, he is today best remembered for a dessert that resembles his ears. Haman’s fatal flaw of hubris made him unable to see past his own ego. It didn’t matter how much power he had, any slight flaw in his tapestry of life could not be tolerated. He could not see anything but his own dignity and missed the big picture, instead reverting to genocide as the revenge on one man. He was too ego-driven to realize that power is not something that is only external, but must be matched by an internal dignity. Ego isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It is what makes us get up in the morning, the wish to do something of acclaim and note. It’s how we channel it that is the problem. We all have goals, and unfortunately, we all have people who seem to be obstacles in our path. Whether it’s a teacher who seems to have you on their bad list, a boss who seems to take his role model from Pharaoh in Egypt, or in my case, horrible colleagues, it can almost be argued that these people wake up in the morning just to irk me. At times, I really do believe it. Yet focusing on them in any capacity beyond working around them is a waste of my energy. Making them the focus of my attention only gives them more power, and prevents me from using that energy to make my project the best it can be. If I really want to do and be right, I need to make sure I am not focusing on my ego. I think that is a vital lesson that every student needs to learn, to ask ourselves what is the real goal in the situation? In a school being plagued by anti-Israel activities, the goal shouldn’t be humiliating the students involved but making the place a more educated and safe learning environment. When dealing with an unfair teacher, the goal is ideally about passing the subject with your sanity, not getting your nemesis fired. For me, my goal is to be an amazing advocate for Israel in my personal life, without sacrificing my professional life in law, finance and journalism. As heavy as that goal is, I can’t afford to let myself be sidetracked. Sometimes, there are battles you won’t win. You won’t always be able to start an amazing Israel program on campus, or get an A you feel you deserve. Yet, if you keep your focus on your goal and consistently ask yourself if your ego is talking, you will find that the obstacles in your path are far behind you and you are much closer to achieve your ambitions. If you have confidence in yourself and your own self worth, you will realize that even the biggest obstacle is just another step in the road to success. Take joy in doing the right thing and stepping right over them, moving on to what’s really important. Do you want to be remembered as a hero or a pastry? Act accordingly. About the Author: 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.

Ch? H? Two “n”‘s or one? One “k” or two? Is there an “h” at the end? How to spell its name is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to confusion about Chanuka. I don’t really want to reinvent the wheel, so first you should go and read this post about how Chanuka is not a Jewish Christmas. Go read it. I’ll wait. Back already? Alrighty then. I linked to that post on facebook as well, and it started a pretty long string of comments. My brother suggested that the “Christmasfication” (a new word, coined by moi. Like it?) of Chanuka is just another example of how things tend to change over time. “And why,” he asked, “is change necessarily a problem?” Well. My objection to this particular change is its motivation. Nobody has argued that the themes of Chanuka would be better represented with blue-and-silver tinsel, strings of dreidel-shaped lights, a new focus on gift giving, and equal billing with Christmas. No, Chanuka has changed because of ignorance (mostly unintentional, but ignorance nonetheless) and envy (doesn’t every Jewish kid whine about wanting Christmas at some point or other?). In other words, the cause of Chanuka’s newfound commercialism and widespread fame is… assimilation. For those of you who don’t understand why this is ironic… The Chanuka story tells of a small group of religious zealots (the Maccabees) who reject the Hellenization (assimilation into ancient Greek/Syrian culture) of the Jewish people. When the Syrians/Greeks defile the holy temple in Jerusalem, they snap. They take up arms and fight – not only against Antiochus and his army, but also against other Jews – those who assimilated and resembled their non-Jewish neighbours. Let me repeat: the fight may have been about freedom of religion, but it was also about the right and responsibility of Jews to separate themselves from the non-Jewish culture around them. Maybe I’m strange, but I’ve often found it… unsettling… to think that most of the Jews I know today would not have been on the side of the Maccabees, and yet we celebrate their victory by… wait for it… imitating the celebrations of the majority culture. As Bart Simpson once said, the ironing is delicious. So it’s not that change is bad. But change that contradicts the message of the holiday, and moves towards approximating the original problem that the holiday sought to eradicate, is bad. Why does it matter? Well, that depends. Why do we remain Jews? Are we simply another tile in the cultural mosaic? Another spice in the melting pot? I don’t think so. In the Torah, we are commanded by God: “Kedoshim t’hiyu”. “Kedoshim” is from the word “kadosh” which is usually translated as “holy”, but basically means set aside, consecrated, special. It’s the same verb that is used in a Jewish wedding ceremony. The groom says to the bride, “you are mekudeshet (consecrated, set aside) to me”. We are commanded to be separate, to be different. And to what end? We have a huge (some might say burdensome) number of commandments to fulfill. Some are ethical, some ritual, some personal and some national. God tells us that it is our job to be a “light unto the nations”. “Stop!” you say (well, let’s say just for the sake of argument, you do). “We’re not assimilated. We know we’re Jews. We still light candles every Friday night. We go to synagogue, not church (well, when we go, it’s to a synagogue.) We’ll get married under a chuppah.” Well, yes. But assimilation is insidious, and I fear the more dangerous assimilation occurs when, rather than abandoning our beliefs and rituals, we change them to conform to the ideals of the majority. When we move from being commanded not to cause suffering in any living creature to agreeing with Peta’s shock tactic of equating the Holocaust with the slaughter of chickens for food, we are abandoning Jewish thought and assimilating. When we say that Hallowe’en is not a religious holiday and therefore it’s fine for our kids to Trick or Treat – we’re co-opting a Pagan holiday and encouraging our children in a tradition that is out-of-line with most Jewish practices (namely, that it’s fine to go from door to door demanding candy from neighbours rather than giving treats to them as we do on Purim; also, that it’s generally acceptable to play destructive or annoying pranks on neighbours you just don’t like, or to smash other people’s pumpkins.) When we think of giving to charity as something kind that we do when we have extra money lying around rather than as an obligation to give from our income regardless of its size, we are assimilating. When we claim that environmentalism is a central part of Judaism because of one commandment not to destroy the fruit trees of a city captured in battle, we’re assimilating. (Don’t get me wrong – there are other commandments regarding our obligation to be responsible for the earth we inhabit, but it being embraced as a major Jewish value just as the secular environmental movement is picking up steam seems… a bit too coincidental, don’t you think?) And when we string up lights and give gifts in the name of religious freedom and peace on a holiday that commemorates religious separatism and an armed-revolt-turned-civil-war, you’d better believe we’re assimilating. Look, I’m no modern-day Maccabee. As Jewishly engaged as I am, I’m pretty far from rejecting the majority culture in its entirety. But this Chanuka, I’ll celebrate by lighting candles (a direct commemoration of one of the miracles of Chanuka) and saying the blessings; eating foods fried in oil (again with the miracle of the oil); playing dreidel (rumored to have been a clever ruse to keep the Syrian/Greek soldiers thinking that we were gambling rather than illegally studying Torah); and giving my children chanuka gelt – money – as their gift, because (legend tells us) Jewish parents had to bribe their children to begin studying Torah again after the Syrians/Greeks had outlawed it. So, no gifts, tinsel, or lights for my kids. But they do get some aspects of the Christmas experience: they decorate our sukkah each fall. And, just like a Christmas tree, the sukkah is still up nearly two months after the holiday is over.

Catholics, other Christians support immigration reform, but say faith plays small role Several prominent U.S. Catholic bishops called attention to immigration reform today in Nogales, Ariz., along the border with Mexico. The bishops celebrated Mass and said they would “pray for and remember” the migrants who have died trying to cross the border. Their goal, they said, was to highlight “the human consequences of a broken immigration system and call upon the U.S. Congress” to fix it. Immigration reform also came up during last week’s meeting between President Obama and Pope Francis. It’s not just Catholic leaders who are speaking out over reform. Some large Protestant evangelical organizations are strong supporters of immigration reform, as are some Mormon and mainline Protestant leaders. They have framed the issue as a moral one, with both Christian and Jewish leaders citing a verse from the book of Leviticus: “The stranger who resides with you shall be to you as one of your citizens.” Three-quarters of American adults say that immigrants living in the United States illegally should be able to stay, according to our 2014 survey. Catholics as a whole closely resemble the general public on this question, though Hispanic Catholics are much more supportive than non-Hispanic white Catholics of allowing undocumented immigrants to remain in the country (91% vs. 70%). Like Catholics, majorities of other religious groups also support allowing undocumented immigrants to remain in the country. Half of Americans – including 59% of Catholics – say it’s extremely or very important to them for President Obama and Congress to pass significant new immigration legislation this year. Not surprisingly, the issue is of particular concern to Hispanic Catholics, 73% of whom say passing immigration legislation should be an extremely or very important priority for political leaders this year. Among white Catholics and people from other racial and religious backgrounds, by contrast, half or fewer attach this level of importance to immigration reform. While the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops is pushing for legislative action on immigration, it also recently asked Obama to use his executive powers to limit deportations. In February, we asked Americans whether the increased number of deportations of undocumented immigrants in recent years is a good thing or a bad thing. The public is evenly split on this issue (45% say it’s a good thing vs. 45% bad thing), as are U.S. Catholics (47% say it’s a good thing vs. 46% bad thing). When it comes to prioritizing immigration reform and views of deportations, differences between the parties and among racial and ethnic groups are as large as or larger than the divisions among religious groups. Far more Republicans than Democrats say that increased deportations in recent years have been a good thing, and Hispanics are much more likely than non-Hispanic whites and blacks to say passing immigration legislations is a very or extremely important thing to do. And a survey we conducted in 2010 found that just 7% of U.S. adults said their religious beliefs were the biggest influence on their thinking regarding illegal immigration. It was far more common for people to cite their personal experience (26%), education (20%) or what they have seen or read in the media (20%) as the most important influence on their thinking about this topic. Michael Lipka is a senior editor focusing on religion at Pew Research Center.

While I generally try to avoid political or real world cultural issues posts here, the events of last weekend in Charlottesville, VA deserve, I think, some commentary. I waited on writing this, and posting it, to fully gather my thoughts and response to the situation. Even so, this may ramble a bit, my apologies in advance. First, despite a certain “world leader’s” claim, there were no “many sides” and the situation was clear cut. The situation is always clear cut when neo-Nazis and white supremacists are involved and there are always only two sides: neo-Nazis/Supremacists & everyone else. There really is no middle ground here. I’m the first to argue against oversimplifying and dichotomies, but, in this case, there are only the two and it really is that simple. Claims of equivalency between the neo-Nazis/Supremacists and the antifa/BLM movement are false; the former use violence against people simply because of their skin color or for being Jewish in order to kill or intimidate, the latter use violence less often, but do so to protect people of all races & creeds from being beaten or killed. Regardless, the default state should always be Nazis = bad, no “buts”, no “what abouts”, no excuses. Nazis always = bad. A little semi-digression. My paternal grandfather was the child of Polish immigrants. He was an irreverent Catholic. He was not, to my knowledge, especially political. He was known to occasionally indulge in what can euphemistically be called “ethnic humor”. I never heard him raise his voice in anger (it probably happened, but I don’t ever recall it). He was also an NCO in the U.S. Army MPs during the occupation of Germany after WWII. In this role, he sometimes escorted Nazi officers, particularly SS officers, to their trials. Occasionally, in the process, he shot at, or ordered others to shoot at, Nazis. Keep in mind, the second largest ethnic population sent to the concentration camps was the Poles, possibly some of his relatives. I can only imagine what he’d think of the events in Charlottesville and those on the American Right who stood up for Neo-Nazis. (To Head off Objections: No, people who fought in the Korean War did not fight communists or Marxists. They fought fascist oligarchs. The same holds for the entire Cold War. Cuba? Military dictatorship. Yes, they called themselves communists, but they weren’t any more than I’m a Catholic, no matter what I may choose to call myself.) Back to the main point. The central element of white supremacy, and really the neo-Nazis, is this idea that they are somehow “defending White Culture”. However, “White Culture” (or “White European Culture”) is a myth. There is no such thing. There are many white, European cultures, not a single unified one. A culture involves traditions and tangibles, ex. food & attire. “White Culture” lacks both. Rather, there is Irish culture, German culture, Romanian culture, Canadian culture, etc. The argument that says, “If White Culture is racist, then so is Black Culture” is another false equivalency. In the U.S., if you ask a white person (or Asian or Latinx) what country (or countries) their family originated in, they can probably tell you. Ask the same question of a black individual and the majority are unable to say, because it’s impossible to tell unless their families immigrated in the 20th century or later. Thus, “Black Culture” or “African-American Culture” is not equivalent to “White Culture”, it is equivalent to saying Irish culture or Vietnamese culture or Puerto Rican culture. That brings to mind another thing I keep hearing: “Let’s get rid of the prefixes, we’re all Americans.” I have two problems with this. First, no one ever says this when a white guy identifies as Irish-American or German-American. The prefixes only seem to be a problem for certain people when they’re used by someone who is black (African-American) or brown (Mexican-American, etc.). Second, those prefixes are an important part of our American culture, a reminder that we are a hybrid culture, a multicultural society, Frankensteinian if you will. In the States, it’s difficult to find anyone, except a recent immigrant, whose lineage is entirely from one country. Virtually all of us are mixed something, e.g. multicultural. For example, I’m a mix of Polish (paternal) and Anglo-Scots-Irish (maternal). This also goes to cultural festivals. There are those who complain about “black pride” festivals or black history month, of course they say nothing about the country’s numerous Irish cultural festivals, celebration of Oktoberfest, etc. On the whole, the States are an experiment on a number of levels. We’re not the first multicultural society in existence—Rome, China, India, Russia, and others beat us there—nor are we the oldest multicultural society is existence—again, see China, India, Russia. To think otherwise is sheer ignorance. But, we’re, most of us, trying very hard to make it successful despite elements of our society that wish to sabotage society.

Can we literally feel that everyone must remember the Holocaust? That there is something of import achieved in recounting the whole story to, say, primitive tribesmen in New Guinea?1 —Jerry Samet In September, 1990, I took a walk down to the Vietnam Veteran’s Memorial (“the Wall”) in Washington, DC. To enter the Memorial proper, visitors must pass by the literature tables set up on the paths leading to the Memorial and on the plaza in front of the Lincoln Memorial, where Viet Nam veteran entrepreneurs and true believers pass out POW/MIA propaganda, hawk commercial products, and campaign against flag burning, peace, and Jane Fonda.2 On this particular afternoon I paused before a booth that sold t-shirts. In addition to the usual “POWs Never Have a Nice Day” logo, I spotted a stack of new “Desert Shield” shirts that featured the legend “Desert Shield: Persian Gulf Pest Control” and a graphic depicting Saddam Hussein as a dangling spider with a man’s head. When I asked about them, the fortysomething guy in combat fatigues behind the counter commented that the shirts were “hot,” and that he was going to order “a lot more” from the “artist.”3 I bought the t-shirt, and the next day brought it along when I went to work.4 My colleagues at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum certainly found the shirt distasteful, and many commented on the striking resemblance borne by the caricature of Hussein’s face to the “Jews” in Nazi antisemitic propaganda. A few noted that the phrase “Pest Control” resonated unpleasantly with Hitler’s rhetoric in Mein Kampf, where the metaphor of vermin and insect infestation was invoked with great regularity and Hitler expressed his desire to exterminate (vernichten) the pest. Yet my suggestion that the Museum should issue an official statement condemning racist anti-Arab propaganda was met with no more enthusiasm than an earlier suggestion that the Museum had an obligation to publicly comment upon President Bush’s characterization of Hussein as “another Hitler.” The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, a congressionally mandated public institution supported by privately donated funds, refused to enter into any discussion of the Persian Gulf War, tacitly supporting U.S. policy and refusing to exercise its claim to authority over the meaning of the Holocaust in contemporary U.S. culture. As cultural critics Jochen and Linda Schulte-Sasse note, “While Western political discourse has persistently likened Hussein to Hitler, its iconography likens him in significant ways to Hitler’s Other, the ‘Jew’.”5 Images of the U.S. are equally confused. Bush portrayed himself as a glorious American Führer leading the country to deserved prominence in a “New World Order” (all that was “good” about Nazi Germany),6 and at the same time the U.S. population was painted as the victimized “Jew,” suffering at the hands of evil dictators and terrorists. Hussein is Hitler, we are Hitler, Hussein is the Jew, we are the Jew, and behind it all lies the metonym of “Holocaust.” “Hitler,” “Jew,” “Nazi” and “Holocaust” imply floating chains of signifiers in the Barthesian sense, each invoking a variety of signifieds. Every individual interpretive choice is the product of a dialogic heteroglossia—“Everything means, is understood, as a part of a greater whole—there is a constant interaction between meanings, all of which have the potential of conditioning others.”7 The resulting symmetry of competing interpretations resembles Rabelais’ “grotesque body,” a carnival environment “loud with many voices,” promising “the closure which all monologism promises, its own monologism ultimately subverted by the heteroglossia of the collection as a carnival whole.”8 Each participant in the dialogue attempts to counter the terror of the traumatic image by “fixing” the signified, restricting its meaning and, thus, its implications. The meaning of the “Holocaust” is not fixed in contemporary U.S. culture. Representations of the Third Reich in elite and popular media, the manner in which the Holocaust is taught in schools, the construction of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, histories produced by scholars, the interpretations advanced by theologians, the claims of politicians—all are sites of ideological struggle. In this chapter, I demonstrate that the critics who take the literature of the Holocaust as their subject are likewise engaged in the attempt to fix the meaning of the Holocaust. Each critic has a social and political agenda. The efforts of critics to promote particular definitions and interpretations of “Holocaust literature” are inextricably tied to the contest over the meaning of the Holocaust. Like the rhetoric of public debate, scholarly arguments are often emotional and usually charged, a “politics of the passions.”9 Debate about the Holocaust in the public arena is most visible when extremist groups such as the “Institute for Historical Review” assert that Jews have fabricated evidence of the Nazi’s genocidal campaign in order to perpetrate the “Holocaust hoax” on the peoples of the world,10 provoking impassioned responses from historians and survivors who point to the massive body of documentary proof and testimonial literature dealing with Nazi atrocity. Though not a single reputable historian supports the claims of the Institute for Historical Review, Holocaust-deniers have successfully kept themselves in the public eye by provoking a First Amendment argument of mammoth proportions over their tactic of publicizing their views by taking out ads in college and university newspapers.11 The struggle over the meaning of the Holocaust is complicated by the fact that the antagonists are simultaneously engaged in battle at several overlapping ideological sites. Though conservative Holocaust scholars like Lucy Dawidowicz express their “shock” at the discovery of the political agenda underlying curricula designed by progressive Holocaust scholars12, their pose of offended innocence is both opportunistic and insincere. In an article that is, ostensibly, about teaching the Holocaust, Lucy Dawidowicz’s words resonate with Alan Bloom’s and Dinesh D’Sousa’s when she claims that the subject of history is being squeezed out to make room for subject matter demanded by special-interest groups. Blacks have called for teaching about the role of blacks in American history and culture, and Hispanics, Native Americans, and women have followed suit, giving rise to what has irreverently been labeled “oppression studies.” The original psychological rationale for these studies—that they would foster pupils’ self-esteem—has now been superseded by an ideological rationale which preaches the equality of all cultures and attacks the “hegemony” of Western civilization and its “Eurocentric” character. In either case, the time and space that could be devoted to studying the murder of the European Jews shrink even more. And lobbying efforts by Holocaust survivors, which intentionally or not often reinforce the impression that the Holocaust is nothing more than the Jewish branch of oppression studies, cannot always compete with other more fashionable or better organized “causes.”13 Dawidowicz believed that the study of “the murder of the European Jews” does not fall into the category of “oppression studies,” although the misguided efforts of some survivors mistakenly reinforce that misconception. Rather, she asserted that “the primary lesson of the Holocaust” is that we ought to return to “the fundamental moral code of our civilization and of the three great religions whose basic text is the Jewish Bible.” Her underlying critique is that the separation of church and state prevents “teaching moral standards as they are incorporated in the Ten Commandments (or even in just one commandment) … something is clearly wrong with both our system of education and our standards of morality.”14 Dawidowicz has taken her stand against multiculturalism and “political correctness,” the conservative demon. Her critique of Holocaust scholarship relates not only to the subject of the Holocaust as history, but to contested ground in a contemporary political debate between right and left. She claims that study of the Holocaust reveals certain universal truths that transcend the limits of individual “self-esteem” and base ideology—universal truths rooted in religious dogma. She reserves her strongest criticisms for the group “Facing History and Ourselves,” a Boston-based Holocaust education project dedicated, in their own words, to “promote awareness of the history of the Holocaust and the genocide of the Armenian people, an appreciation for justice, a concern for interpersonal understanding, and a memory for the victims of those events.”15 Dawidowicz claims that Facing History is “a vehicle for instructing thirteen-year-olds in civil disobedience and indoctrinating them with propaganda for nuclear disarmament.”16 Facing History explicitly delineates the goal of its curriculum: This curriculum must provide opportunities for students to explore the practical applications of freedom, which they have learned demand a constant struggle with difficult, controversial, and complex issues. The responsibility that citizens have for one another as neighbors and as nations cannot be left to others. This history has taught that there is no one else to confront terrorism, ease the yoke and pain of racism, attack apathy, create and enforce just laws, and wage peace but us. Information and experience in the political system can challenge the fear, the propaganda, the training in obedience and the lack of information that discourage active decision making about today and the future.17 Unabashedly ideological, Facing History claims that the study of the Holocaust supports their conclusions—that, in fact, proper understanding of the Holocaust impels one into progressive political activism. Both Facing History and Lucy Dawidowicz believe that study of the Holocaust provides access to universal truths, but they each argue for a different interpretation, a different truth. For Dawidowicz, the Holocaust stands as a vindication of traditional (Jewish) religious culture and conservative politics, and places the Jew at the center of the greatest tragedy in the history of the world. For Facing History, the Holocaust is an emblem of conservative politics run amok, the result of illiberal attitudes towards difference and the refusal of individuals to take responsibility for their actions. Rather than emphasizing the particularity of the Jewish victim, Facing History urges its audience to make a direct comparison between antisemitism in the Third Reich and racism in the United States, between Hitler’s massive military build-up and our own nuclear arms race, between the apathy of German citizens and the apathy of U.S. citizens in the face of injustice. But the struggle over the meaning of the Holocaust is not limited to a tug of war between the right and the left. In the contemporary political arena, it is complicated by the reactions of various groups to current events in the state of Israel, and by tensions between African-Americans and Jews in the United States — a product of the “post-consensus politics” described by cultural critic Kobena Mercer, in which a multiplicity of social and political agents have “pluralized the domain of political antagonism.”18 Mercer writes, “No one has a monopoly or exclusive authorship over the signs they share in common: rather, elements from the same system of signs are constantly subject to antagonistic modes of appropriation and articulation.”19 Thus, in the Persian Gulf War, members of the left argued among themselves over whether it was reasonable to equate Hussein (and, by inference, the Palestinians who supported Hussein) with Hitler. A few Jewish members of the progressive political community have cautioned non-Jews that their application of the Holocaust metaphor to the Israeli/Palestinian conflict reflects a (perhaps unconscious) antisemitism. Orthodox rabbi David Landes ties leftist antisemitism to damaging representations of the Holocaust: “The Left’s difficulty with the Jews is linked to its approach to the Holocaust.”20 According to Landes, leftists “misappropriate” the Holocaust in three ways: erasing the specifically antisemitic character of the Holocaust; universalizing the Holocaust; and, equating “Jewish Israelis with the Nazis, and Arab Palestinians with the persecuted Jews.”21 He also claims that Jews who adopt the leftist perceptions of the Holocaust are “self-hating.” Though Landes admits that it is possible that “one can be critical of Israel without being a self-hating Jew,”22 and further acknowledges that the label of “self-hating Jew” has been used to suppress dissent in the Jewish community, he goes on to claim that the term is not entirely meaningless. And those whom Landes specifically and emphatically identifies as self-hating are the Jews who … identify as Jews, but … simultaneously deny as an essential part of that definition: either peoplehood, religious culture, or the Jews’ historical relationship to the land of Israel. The Israel/Nazi analogy relieves the self-hating Jews of this tension: they can be good prophetic Jews by opposing exclusivist Jews, fanatical Judaism, and the “Fascist” Jewish state. The attack on the Jewish state thus gives them an explanation for why they are not involved in Jewish concerns and simultaneously allows them to claim that they are still connected to their Jewishness.23 Landes’ insistence on a “correct” representation of the Holocaust is tied to his social and political agenda—he wishes to build a progressive Jewish community that adheres to religious traditions and supports the continued existence of the state of Israel. Jewish leftist Noam Chomsky has a different set of political and social goals than does Landes, and thus a completely different perspective on representations of the Holocaust. While Landes believes that the application of Holocaust metaphors to the current Israeli/Palestinian conflict is a great mistake, Chomsky identifies many self-proclaimed Zionists with the fascist regime of the Nazis, and equates persecuted Palestinians with persecuted Jews. Chomsky asserts that the American Jewish community is “deeply totalitarian,” and that American Jews use accusations of antisemitism and the specter of the Holocaust to silence critics of Israel as a part of a carefully engineered political strategy.24 There is just no way to respond. If you are denounced as being an anti-Semite, what are you going to say, I’m not an anti-Semite? Or if you are denounced as being in favor of the Holocaust, what are you going to say, I’m not in favor of the Holocaust? I mean you cannot win…. Why not say I am in favor of the Holocaust. I think all Jews should be killed. That is the next thing to say. The point is that they can say anything they want.25 Chomsky strongly criticizes Elie Wiesel, whom he accuses of taking the position that “one must maintain silence in the face of atrocities carried out by one’s favorite state.”26 He notes that Wiesel is far more popular in the U.S. than in Israel, and observes that it is “an interesting fact about American culture… that a man who puts forth this position can be regarded as a moral hero.”27 No one, least of all Chomsky, would argue with the assertion that his “agnostic” position on the Holocaust reflects his own political ideology. Chomsky is adamant in his insistence that the U.S. is an aggressive imperialist power bent on maintaining world dominance at all costs, a “violent terror state,” supporting equally violent client states, including the state of Israel: The modalities of state terrorism that the United States has devised for its clients have commonly included at least a gesture towards “winning hearts and minds,” though experts warn against undue sentimentality…. Nazi Germany shared these concerns, as Albert Speer discusses in his autobiography….28 There were moderate and liberal American Jews who thought that the label of “Nazi” was best applied to Hussein’s supporters. Though many progressive Jews were disturbed by a February 1990 press conference in Tel Aviv at which four prominent Israeli peace activists declared their support for the war against Iraq, others approved of their call for eliminating Hussein’s “genocidal” regime.29 Novelist and well-known Israeli peacenik Amos Oz’s assertion that a preference for sanctions over war amounted to “appeasement” struck a chord with moderate Jews like representative Stephen Solarz (D) of Brooklyn, who wrote that although Bush’s equation of Hussein and Hitler was “wildly overdrawn,” the comparison was not entirely illegitimate: “But if there are fundamental differences between Saddam and Hitler, there are also instructive similarities. Like Hitler, Saddam has an unappeasable will to power combined with a ruthless willingness to employ whatever means are necessary to achieve it.”30 Solarz and his Committee for Peace and Security in the Gulf had strong support from the liberal Jewish community, which closed ranks once the war began, some no doubt moved to join the prowar agitators by their perception of the antiwar movement as actively anti-Israel and covertly antisemitic. Jewish progressive John Judis claimed, “Peace activists did not merely criticize Israel’s government or policies, they blamed the Jewish state (as a previous generation had blamed Jewish bankers) for the ills of the world, including millennial conflicts between Arab peoples.”31 Further complicating the question of representation of the Holocaust is the current tension between the African-American and Jewish-American communities. As Cornel West notes, the period in U.S. history during which Blacks and Jews were most strongly allied depended on both sides identifying with a form of universalism that did not highlight questions of identity. There is no going back to such a period. If there is going to be a renewed connection between these two communities, or even a sensible dialogue, it depends on our ability to remain sensitive to the positive quests for identity among Jewish-Americans and African-Americans.32 West points out that the division is not always clear—conservative Jews oppose both blacks and liberal Jews on such issues as affirmative action and social welfare programs—but that it is most evident in the African-American critique of U.S. foreign policy: This critique coincided with the emergence of conservative forces in Israel after the 1967 and 1973 wars—first as a conservatizing influence in the Labor party, then as the triumph of Menachem Begin’s right-wing coalition—and the increasing identification of Israel with an American foreign policy that was dominated by cold war preoccupations and a refusal to see anything good in Third World liberation struggle. This connection to American foreign policy made it easier for many Blacks to identify Israel as a tool of American imperial interests.33 As early as 1967, black intellectual Harold Cruse observed that American Jewish Zionists seemed to support a position of “anti-Jewish-integration-assimilation,” while at the same time taking a “pro-Negro integration position and an anti-black nationalist position.”34 Black nationalists identify with the Palestinians in Israel, and see the Jewish Israelis as colonial oppressors. I have not come across black literature that equates Israelis with Nazis and Palestinians with Jews—rather, the Israeli government is repeatedly compared to the South African government, and both are accused of using brutal methods to oppress or enslave an indigenous population.35 Cruse, who was certainly an antisemite, articulated the perspective of a segment of the black community that believes the Holocaust occurred, and that it was terrible, but that “for all practical purposes (political, economic, and cultural) as far as Negroes are concerned, Jews have not suffered in the United States. They have, in fact, done exceptionally well on every level of endeavor, from a nationalist premise or on an assimilated status.”36 From this point of view, Jewish references to the Holocaust seem to be both gratuitous and manipulative—a false claim to sympathy and kinship: At the Village Vanguard, when [LeRoi] Jones and [Archie] Shepp were reminded of the six million Jews exterminated by Hitler, Jones replied to Larry Rivers, “You’re like the others [whites], except for the cover story.” Shepp added: “I’m sick of you cats talking about the six million Jews. I’m talking about the five to eight million Africans killed in the Congo….”37 The black community is divided on the meaning of the Holocaust. Cruse, in his major work, The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual, was, after all, writing to protest what he saw as a black intellectual propensity to be over fond of Jews, to see them as natural allies and as partners in suffering. He was fighting a long-lived tradition in the black church, reaching back into the antebellum period, in which enslaved blacks likened themselves to the Jews under Pharaoh, and freedom was equated with the Promised Land—Harriet Tubman wasn’t called “Moses” by accident. Among his contemporaries, Cruse criticized Lorraine Hansberry and James Baldwin for their alleged reliance on Jewish support, and he argued that the post-World War II American Jew bore no resemblance to the idealized Jews of black mythology. Today, the spectrum of debate within the black community encompasses progressives like Cornel West and bell hooks, and radical antisemites like Louis Farrakhan. Farrakhan, a Black Muslim and a strong supporter of the Palestine Liberation movement, promotes the notion of a Zionist conspiracy. His views on the Holocaust come uncomfortably close to those of the Holocaust deniers. West and hooks, on the other hand, acknowledge the importance of the Holocaust both to Jewish people, and to outside observers. Though West argues against what he calls a “rootless” universalism, he does assume that there is a basis for black-Jewish alliance—presumably on the grounds that both groups share an understanding of persecution and oppression. hooks is more explicit, explaining that comparison of black and Jewish “holocausts” leads to important new insights for members of both groups.38 There is no segment of the U.S. black community that supports the claims of conservatives like Dawidowicz or liberals like Landes to the “uniqueness” of the Holocaust, or to its overwhelming importance in world history. Black history—from the Middle Passage to the tribal wars of the African continent—seems to provide most African Americans with evidence of sufficient genocidal precedent and antecedent.39 The parallels between debate over the Holocaust and over the issues of multiculturalism and “political correctness” are not coincidental, nor is the fact that some of the most passionate arguments take place in the realm of literary theory. “Traditional” literary theorists face off against the new literary critics, who espouse a variety of interpretive strategies, including (but not limited to) poststructuralism, reader-response criticism, semiotics, cultural studies, and deconstruction. The last term, “deconstruction,” has been adopted by conservatives as a catch phrase for a whole range of nontraditional criticism as well as the leftist political agenda this criticism is assumed to endorse. As Nina King observes in her analysis of the curricular wars at Duke University: [T]he deconstructionists regard language as a tricky, slippery medium that cannot be pinned down to a single fixed meaning. The critic’s task is to demonstrate that trickiness and slipperiness in a given work, to show how meaning changes shape when the medium is carefully examined. “Meaning” and, by extension, concepts such as “truth” and “art” are viewed as relative—historically and culturally determined rather than fixed for all time.40 The notion that there is no single, “correct” interpretation of a text is deeply troubling to representatives of the political right. George Will complains that the “supplanting of aesthetic by political responses to literature makes literature primarily interesting as a mere index of who had power and whom the powerful victimized.”41 Though most new critics would hardly call literature a “mere” reflection of power relations, they would certainly acknowledge that the power hierarchies are inscribed in (and describe) texts. The claim of the new critics—that no objective standard of judgment exists—confounds conservatives, who find themselves desperately trying to conserve that which may never have been there in the first place. Tension between theory and doctrine is unavoidable, since doctrine rests upon a moral and ideological foundation that cannot bear too much questioning and it is the business of theory to question. When Terrence Des Pres detailed the three principles that comprise the set of “fictions” that “set limits to respectable study” of the Holocaust, he was both engaging in a critical act and a political protest, wrestling, in the words of Nancy Armstrong and Leonard Tennenhouse, for possession of the “key cultural terms determining what are the right and wrong ways to be a human being.”42 Des Pres claimed that Holocaust doctrine demands that one concede the following: 1) The Holocaust shall be represented, in its totality, as a unique event or special case or kingdom of its own, above or below or apart from history. 2) Representations of the Holocaust shall be as accurate, as exacting, as unfailingly faithful as possible to the facts and circumstances of the event itself, without change or manipulation for any reason—artistic or literary reasons included. 3) The Holocaust shall be approached as a solemn, or even a sacred event, admitting of no response that obscures its enormity or dishonors its dead.43 Des Pres was a literary theorist, and he engaged the question of representation of the Holocaust from a critical stance. A Catholic, and an American, Des Pres could not stake his claim to knowledge of the Holocaust on personal experience. His struggle with Bruno Bettelheim, psychoanalyst, survivor, and Jew, over the right to define and interpret the Holocaust is worth examining in some detail, and I would like to pay particular attention to the following two essays: Bruno Bettelheim’s “Surviving,” which originally appeared in the New Yorker in 1976, and Terrence Des Pres’ “The Bettelheim Problem,” which was published in Social Research in 1979. “Surviving” was Bettelheim’s response to the nearly simultaneous release of Lina Wertmüller’s film Seven Beauties and Des Pres’ widely excerpted and reviewed study of life in the concentration camps, The Survivor. Though Bettelheim does not mention it in the essay, The Survivor included a section that was very critical of Bettelheim’s earlier psychoanalytic study of the camps, The Informed Heart, and much of “Surviving” is directed at discrediting not only Des Pres’ scholarship, but at questioning his moral character. “The Bettelheim Problem” was Des Pres’ response to “Surviving,” and amounted to a bold attack on Bettelheim as both an academic and a survivor. Taken in context, these works provide a framework within which to examine the controversy over the definition of the Holocaust and the role of the survivor. The tensions between different literary critical strategies, between mythologization and medicalization, between personal testimony and “objective” analysis are all evident in the debate between Bettelheim and Des Pres, and are played out, again and again, in the works of critics of the literature of the Holocaust. In The Survivor, Des Pres asserts that “serious study of the concentration-camp experience has been done almost exclusively from the psychoanalytic point of view.”44 The two studies he points to are Elie A. Cohen’s Human Behavior in the Concentration Camp (1954) and Bruno Bettelheim’s The Informed Heart (1960).45 Both were written by Jewish survivors of concentration camps who were, before and after the war, engaged in the practice of medicine and psychiatry.46 Des Pres’ complaint is that the psychoanalytic approach is flawed at its heart, “misleading because it is essentially a theory of culture and of man in the civilized state.”47 Psychoanalysis is based on an assumption that behavior is symbolic, and Des Pres argues that human behavior in extremity is action stripped of symbolism, with only one level of meaning—survival at all costs. Des Pres does not reject the foundation of psychoanalysis—that “the phenomenon of civilization, no matter how advanced or primitive, is based first of all on processes of sublimation and symbolization”48—but he claims that the state of extremity to which concentration camp prisoners were subjected reduced each of their actions to a life or death issue, stripped away the layers of symbol that protected them from confronting their “primal needs and crude necessities,” and forced them into a state in which “at every moment the meaning and purpose of their behavior [was] fully known.”49 Des Pres rejects Bettelheim’s claim that prisoners’ behavior in the camps followed a model of regression to childlike behaviors and eventual identification with the camp authorities (parent figures) as prisoners’ individuality and autonomy dissolved. It is Bettelheim’s notion of autonomy that Des Pres most vehemently opposes, for in the circumstances of the camps, pursuit of that autonomy could only result in death: Heroism, for [Bettelheim], is an isolated act of defiance through which the individual as an individual confronts death…. The act he celebrates is suicide…. What can “autonomy” at the cost of personal destruction amount to? … Bettelheim’s argument comes down to this: “manhood” requires dramatic self-confirmation…. Insofar as the struggle for life did not become overtly rebellious, prisoners were “childlike.”50 Furthermore, Des Pres claims that Bettelheim’s analysis of the camps is shaped by his agenda: “to compare the survivor’s experience with the predicament of modern man in ‘mass society’”.51 In Des Pres’ estimation, Bettelheim is interested in recuperating the (Judeo)Christian world view that rests on the principle that “survival in itself, not dedicated to something else is both meaningless and ignoble.”52 For des Pres, however, the survivor represents man in a pure state stripped of the “style or fine language,” “masks and stratagems” we use to cover ourselves and to conceal from ourselves our own mortality—all those layers we require psychoanalysis to excavate and clarify. Although Des Pres adds that “one does not have to survive the concentration camps in order to arrive at awareness of life’s immanent value,”53 he believes survivors have a “special grace.” Our reluctance to listen to the words of survivors springs, in his estimation, from our terror of mortality and our inability to confront evil, “the demonic content of our own worst fears and wishes.”54 Survivors represent our deepest fears, they have descended into Hell and emerged transformed to remind us that the content of our nightmares can burst into the world and consume us. “The essence of survival is passage through death this way of speaking may be metaphorical for us, but not for survivors…. And here especially we must not be misled by our reliance on metaphor: the survivor is not a metaphor, not an emblem, but an example.”55 Des Pres’ claims apparently disturbed Bruno Bettelheim deeply. The psychoanalyst was moved to publicly discuss the representation and interpretation of the Holocaust in both popular and high culture—film and criticism—and to declare himself a qualified critic on the basis of his status as a survivor. Though Bettelheim notes in the short preface to “Surviving” that he was motivated to write his essay only by the “near universal acclaim”56 with which Wertmüller’s Seven Beauties was received in the U.S., and does not acknowledge his desire to respond to Des Pres, “Surviving” is obviously intended to answer (and perhaps to silence) the younger scholar. Bettelheim begins by posing a question to the reader: Which of these two claims does Wertmüller support? “Survive! No matter how. Survival alone counts!” or, “There is no meaning to survival?”57 The notion that she could be advancing both theses simultaneously—that the film might even take as its subject this contradiction—angers and disgusts Bettelheim: “If the latter is true, the film would make its urging and its warning a mocking of us—the observers who are pulled first one way, then in the opposite direction, as the ludicrous turns into horror, and the dreadful becomes farce.”58 He is intensely aware that Wertmüller’s art has political ramifications, screened in a world where “we all live under the specter of Auschwitz and Hiroshima, atomic bombs and genocide, the concentration camp in its German and its Russian varieties.”59 Bettelheim is deeply disturbed that the current generation’s fascination with the Viet Nam war seems to coincide with their indifference to the traumatic events of their parents’ generation, and his example of this indifference is Wertmüller’s reduction of “the unspeakable horror of yesteryear”60 into a farce. Bettelheim perceives of himself as a guardian of the truth, and advances his essay as a corrective measure to the dangerous misinterpretations of the Holocaust offered by wrong-headed outsiders: “Why spoil the enjoyment of those for whom the gas chambers are a hoary tale, vaguely remembered, best forgotten? Out of such considerations, I would have kept silent but for my conviction that this film and, more important, most of the public reaction to it, interpret survivorship falsely, in terms both of the past and of the present.”61 To Bettelheim, Seven Beauties stands as a justification of the acceptance of Fascism, both in past and present moments. To support his argument he psychoanalyzes Wertmüller, asserting that she consciously wishes to affirm “the goodness of man,” while she is subconsciously fascinated by Fascism and machismo.62 The result of this unconscious undermining of her own intended project is a film in which “only evil triumphs.”63 Once he has constructed this argument, he then applies it to the manner in which the “American cultural élite” read Wertmüller’s film, Albert Speer’s memoirs, and “sympathetic biographies of Hitler,” insisting that, “Nothing could be more dangerous than if disappointment with the obvious shortcomings of the free world and life in it should lead to an unconscious fascination with the world of totalitarianism—a fascinating that could easily change into a conscious acceptance.”64 Bettelheim claims that in order to be moral, all texts must present the clear message that one must “take a firm stand against evil, even if it meant risking one’s life.”65 Films like Wertmüller’s, which justify “evil by implanting a smug conviction that nothing could have made a difference and, by implication, that nothing would make any difference today,” blur a line that Bettelheim would like kept clear: “evil is evil.”66 In the morality play suggested by Bettelheim, at least one “good” character must triumph, or, at worst, no “evil” character should survive beyond the last, triumphant act of autonomy that results in the death of the “good” character. Unlike Seven Beauties, Bettelheim’s fictions would allow the audience to “truly embrace goodness as to fully reject evil.”67 Confusion is dangerous, ambiguity leads us to Fascism, absurdity threatens the foundations of our culture. In his estimation, merely viewing Seven Beauties degrades us as human beings. Ten pages into “Surviving,” after concluding his rousing indictment of Wertmüller, Bettelheim introduces the subject of Terrence Des Pres and his work. After commenting on the wide publication and the critical acclaim that Des Pres, like Wertmüller, has enjoyed, he comments that both artist and critic arrive at like conclusions: “the main lesson of survivorship is: all that matters, the only thing that is really important, is life in its crudest, merely biological form.”68 By beginning his discussion of Des Pres at the conclusion of his condemnation of Wertmüller, and then equating the two, Bettelheim clearly and immediately defines Des Pres as morally incorrect. Furthermore, both Wertmüller and Des Pres are accused of twisting the truth—“a much greater distortion than an outright lie”—weaving “misleading myths around the truism that one must remain alive.”69 Bettelheim interprets Des Pres’ claim that survivors learn the value of life by passing through death as a call to struggle for survival by any and all means, “even those which until now have been unacceptable.”70 He then argues that while Des Pres as theorist articulates the lessons to “‘live beyond the compulsions of culture’ and ‘the body’s crude claims,’” Wertmüller as artist “gives these principles visible form and symbolic expression.”71 Together, they function to prepare the way for the triumph of Fascism. Bettelheim matches his own description of survival in the camps—survival through cooperation and moral behavior—against Des Pres’ description of an environment where moral behavior often reduced one’s chance of survival. Refusing to acknowledge the complexity of the world of the concentration camps, where the choice between “good” and “evil” was often blurry and indistinct, Bettelheim concludes that the “principles that Wertmüller and Des Pres present to us as guidelines for survival were in fact those by which the Nazis, and particularly the SS, lived, or at least tried to live.”72 In Bettelheim’s estimation, both theorist and artist are Fascists, as are the audiences who praise their work, and it is his moral obligation to raise his voice in an “autonomous” act of protest, mirroring the heroic autonomy of the survivors he praises. When a large and significant segment of those who speak for the American intellectual establishment seems ready to accept the most basic principles of Nazi doctrine and to believe the suggestion—presented in carefully camouflaged convincing forms in Seven Beauties and Des Pres’ critically celebrated book—that survivorship supports the validity of those principles, then a survivor must speak up to say that this is an outrageous distortion.73 Bettelheim points out that, ultimately, survival in the camps had almost nothing to do with the behavior of prisoners, and everything to do with the timing of release or liberation. He divides the process of survival into two categories: day-to-day survival within the camp (in which a prisoner may in some small way be able to delay an inevitable execution), and rescue by an outside force. Bettelheim cautions, “Any discussion of survivorship is dangerously misleading if it gives the impression that the main question is what the prisoner can do, for this is insignificant compared to the need to defeat, politically or militarily, those who maintain the camps—something that the prisoners, of course, cannot do.”74 The impression, given by both the film and Des Pres’ essays, is “that prisoners managed to survive on their own,”75 thus avoiding the need to address larger questions. One of those larger questions, at least in Bettelheim’s estimation, is the oppression of Soviet dissenters in the Gulags, to which Bettelheim refers several times throughout the essay. Bettelheim reminds us that we would not be able to hear the survivor testimony of dissident writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn if he had not first been freed by his captors, implying that our first duty is to liberate those who are still imprisoned. The political landscape painted by Bettelheim and Des Pres stand in stark contrast. Bettelheim depicts a world of clashing superpowers—first the Axis (Fascism) against the Allied Forces (Democracy), and later the Soviet Union (Communism/Fascism) against the U.S. (Democracy)—in which the agents of freedom battle the agents of oppression. He is profoundly disturbed by the fact that Des Pres colors us all morally culpable, as nations and individuals, with no clear distinction between good and evil, right and wrong—the Allied forces liberated the concentration camps and then incinerated Japanese civilians with atomic bombs. Later, the Soviet Union maintained a concentration camp system, while the United States waged a genocidal war on the people of Viet Nam. Just as Bettelheim condemns Wertmüller for her insistence that good does not triumph over evil, that the whole world is a bordello, he condemns Des Pres for his failure to judge the behavior of survivors by an established moral code. In his attack on Des Pres’ assertion of moral ambiguity, Bettelheim uses language that is both emotional and highly charged. Des Pres’ arguments are accused of being “scandalous,” “incredibly callous,” “utterly false,” “spurious,” and “untrue.”76 This is doubtless a response to the section The Survivor in which Des Pres attempted to undermine Bettelheim’s privileged status as a survivor by publicly stating that Bettelheim had been in Buchenwald and Dachau only for a year, “at a time when prisoners could still hope for release, and before systematic destruction became fixed policy,” and asserted that Bettelheim had traded both on the fact that “he was there and speaks with that authority,” and on the early appearance of his first analysis of the camps (“Individual and Mass Behavior in Extreme Situations,” 1943) to establish his position as the authority on the subject.77 Des Pres challenged Bettelheim by declaring that Bettelheim’s version of events “differs sharply from that of other survivors,”78 and, in effect, called him either a liar or a fool for his “grave misrepresentation of basic facts” in Eugene Kogon’s memoir, The Theory and Practice of Hell.79 Des Pres accuses Bettelheim of being so obsessed with autonomy, “his concept of transcendental selfhood,” that he is blinded “to collective action and mutual aid” among prisoners.80 He claims that Bettelheim is rooted in “the old heroic ethic”—made obsolete by the machinery of mass destruction—and that by failing to embrace the necessary ambiguity of simultaneous resistance and acquiescence Bettelheim endorses a plan of action that is doomed to failure, and that will result in the ultimate destruction of all victims (including, presumably, the present generation, in the inferno of nuclear holocaust). Bettelheim’s response is to approach Des Pres from his unguarded flank. He reminds the reader that survivors lived by virtue of the fact that they were released by others, and follows by quoting some of Des Pres’ most flowery and overblown prose descriptions of survivors: It will be startling news to most survivors that they are “strong enough, mature enough, awake enough… to embrace life without reserve,” … What about the many millions who perished? Were they “awake enough… to embrace life without reserve” as they were driven to the gas chambers?81 Using his authority as a medical professional, Bettelheim reminds us of the many survivors who were psychically scarred by their experiences in the camps, who have been unable to overcome depression, nightmares, or full-blown psychoses. From this angle, also, he accuses Des Pres of outrageous foolishness for objecting “to the idea of guilt, the pangs of which are a most powerful motivation for moral behavior…. Des Pres writes that the average survivor should not and does not feel guilty, since guilt is one of the most significant ‘compulsions of culture,’ from which Des Pres claims that the survivor has freed himself.”82 At this point in Bettelheim’s critique, his deepest conflict with Des Pres emerges. In The Survivor, Des Pres constructs the survivor as example: one who has passed through the Hell that for others exists only as metaphor. In the camps (Hell), survivors adopted a communal identity which, even after they were liberated, they never abandoned: “Survivors are not individuals in the bourgeois sense. They are living remnants of the general struggle, and certainly they know it.”83 Since the survivor is merely “remnant” rather than whole, the bulk of his or her identity is with the dead; in fact, the survivor has become a sort of speaker for the dead. As such, the survivor becomes “a disturber of the peace… a runner of the blockade men erect against knowledge of ‘unspeakable’ things.”84 Removed from the realm of “normal” humanity, Des Pres’ survivor is a kind of mythic construct, a creature whose “special task” is to awaken our conscience. Guilt, which is a human emotion, has nothing to do with the survivors Des Pres imagines: “Survivors do not bear witness to guilt, neither theirs nor ours, but to objective conditions of evil.”85 Since psychoanalysis takes as its project the reintegration of the subject into society (a process that often requires “adjustment, acceptance, forgetting”86) its goals are antithetical to those of Des Pres, who wishes to preserve the survivor as outsider, frozen forever in the role of Hell’s witness, a kind of Cassandra doomed to forever prophesy the past. Bettelheim is dedicated to humanizing the survivor, to placing his or her psychological responses to trauma in the context of normal human response. He is also intent on clearly delineating good and evil, relying upon and reaffirming a traditional moral code for which the Holocaust stands as the most violent and terrifying breach. Both Des Pres and Bettelheim agree that the survivor who bears witness serves as an embarrassment to those whose lives have been untouched by atrocity. But for Des Pres, conscience is a “social achievement,” resulting from the “collective effort to come to terms with evil, to distill a moral knowledge equal to the problems at hand. Only after the ethical content of an experience has been made available to all members of the community does conscience become the individual ‘voice’ we usually take it for.”87 In Des Pres’ model, the survivor is destroyed as an individual, but can serve as a voice that redeems the collective through testimony, changing the moral order. For Bettelheim, conscience is always individual and “autonomous,” and the survivor bears witness to the truth and value of a moral order in which life is not meaningless. Bettelheim concludes “Surviving” by claiming that concentration camps taught survivors (“us”) that: … miserable though the world in which we live may be, the difference between it and the world of the concentration camps is as great as that between night and day, hell and salvation, death and life. It taught us there is meaning to life. Difficult though that meaning may be to fathom—a much deeper meaning than we had thought possible before we became survivors. And our feeling of guilt for having been so lucky as to survive the hell of the concentration camp is a most significant part of this meaning—testimony to a humanity that not even the abomination of the concentration camp can destroy.88 This final assertion rests solidly on Bettelheim’s authority as a survivor, rather than as a well-established and respected psychoanalyst. By choosing to end in this manner, Bettelheim poses himself as an insider (one who knows) defending truth, and locates Des Pres and Wertmüller as outsiders (who can only surmise). Furthermore, he reminds us that he and other survivors will soon be dead, and that soon there will be no one left to correct the misapprehensions of the uninformed public. Bettelheim privileges one way of knowing (to have been “there”) above all others, though as a scientist, he simultaneously occupies the position and assumes the authority of objective observer. Neither scientist nor survivor, Des Pres is granted no position in the debate as Bettelheim construes it. This dismissal doubtless infuriated Des Pres, who arguably felt that his status as academic and literary critic gave him a right to discuss what are certainly literary texts. Bettelheim’s assumption that his own credentials as survivor and psychoanalyst made him an expert on film and literary theory might have further irritated the younger scholar.89 Des Pres’ response was to publish what can only be called a nasty personal attack on Bruno Bettelheim entitled “The Bettelheim Problem.” It might have been more accurately labeled, “My Bettelheim Problem,” or even “Our Bettelheim problem,” since it addresses the question of authority over a subject (the Holocaust) in a particular social and cultural context, rather than some observed phenomenon in physics or mathematics. In this response to Bettelheim’s 1979 book, Surviving and Other Essays, Des Pres takes on Bettelheim’s claims of authority directly: The general view has long been that Bettelheim speaks from a privileged position, and he himself has fostered this attitude. He has always stressed his own “camp experience” as the basis for his authority in such matters. And by calling himself “a survivor of the camps” he suggests a kind of archetypal identity which might include any camp, Auschwitz, Treblinka, Belsen, from which survivors of the Holocaust emerged.90 The careful placement of quotations around the phrases “camp experience” and “survivor of the camps” calls into question the legitimacy of Bettelheim’s claim of authenticity. Authenticity is the subject of the essay. Des Pres argues that Bettelheim’s credentials as a survivor are, at the very least, inflated and, at worst, outright forgeries. He rails at the critics who acclaim his opponent, the ones who, like the New York Review of Books, give Bettelheim “laudatory reviews,” and accord him “absolute authority.”91 Des Pres quickly establishes that Bettelheim has been criticized (“discredited”) by other survivors, who themselves dispute the legitimacy of Bettelheim’s self-declared survivor status. In his introduction, Des Pres pits the survivors who “take exception to Bettelheim’s assessment of their experience,” against the “literary and scholarly community still largely [accepting] Bettelheim’s position as the final word on men and women caught in extreme situations.”92 Thus, Des Pres aligns himself with the “real” survivors, against the bulk of his colleague and peers who have accepted the world of the “false” survivor. The essay is staged as a conflict between “Bettelheim and other survivors” (one against the many) and between “eyewitness testimony and academic theorizing.”93 Des Pres’ Bettelheim is a monomaniacal control freak with a god complex: he has created his Orthogonic School for autistic children as a “uniquely self-contained world”—an inverse form of the concentration camps in which he was incarcerated by the Nazis—where he is able to engage in the “suspect practices” of “summoning… moral and emotional endorsement for his ideas by presenting them within the framework of his identity as a man who endured ‘the camps’ and as a sort of miracle worker with ‘hopeless’ children.”94 As he plays out his fantasies on helpless youths, Des Pres asserts, Bettelheim “uses his special status in order to discredit people whose position questions or intrudes on his own,”95 and to claim that his critics are closet Nazis. Des Pres’ indignation at Bettelheim’s tactics is palpable, since he believes that Bettelheim is guilty of exactly the crimes that he accuses Des Pres and Lina Wertmüller of committing: “By arguing that prisoners identified with the SS, Bettelheim openly declares that survivorship supports the validity of Nazi principles.”96 I illustrate the parameters of the argument in a parody of an R.D. Laing “knot”: Bettelheim: I am a survivor, so I know. Furthermore, I am a psychoanalyst, so I know that I know. Des Pres: I believe that only survivors know, but I do not agree with you. I know of survivors who do not agree with you. I think you are wrong. Bettelheim: You are not a survivor. Only those who are survivors know. Only survivors who are psychoanalysts know that they know. I am a survivor and a psychoanalyst, therefore I know, and I know that I know. Des Pres: You are not a real survivor. I agree with real survivors, and I do not agree with you. Bettelheim: I am so a real survivor, and you are a Nazi, whether you know it or not. If you were not a Nazi, you would agree with me. Des Pres: I am not a Nazi, you are. Real survivors think you are a Nazi, too. Three pages into “The Bettelheim Problem,” Des Pres resorts to the same kind of name-calling Bettelheim employed in “Surviving”: Bettelheim indulges in “characteristic” misuse of facts, “distortion” that is “pointed and cruel,” and sustains a “blame-the-victim syndrome” that Des Pres compares to Hitler’s own.97 Des Pres’ most substantive complaint is that Bettelheim has misread him and others—perhaps deliberately—in order to bolster his own argument that autonomous acts of resistance were the only morally correct response to Nazi terror tactics. Des Pres claims that Bettelheim minimizes the efforts of those who struggled in the camp and ghetto underground, and that he fails to recognize the manner in which mutual assistance operated as resistance in the camp environment. While Bettelheim places emphasis on the inability of prisoners to free themselves, Des Pres underlines the manner in which prisoners “had organized themselves to try.”98 In Des Pres’ estimation, Bettelheim’s refusal to focus on “the struggle to survive” even in hopeless circumstances reduces him to making senseless and dangerous comparisons between “walking to the gas chamber” and “committing suicide.”99 Des Pres writes: There is something here entirely characteristic of Bettelheim: whenever he speaks of damage and destruction, he describes it in ways which make it appear as if the victims did it to themselves…. Being driven into the gas chambers was “suicide.” Or of the dead: “they had given up their will to live and permitted their death tendencies to engulf them.”100 Des Pres poses, in ironic contrast to Bettelheim’s demand for autonomous acts of resistance, the psychoanalyst’s own path to freedom: “through money and political influence at the highest level, including a special invitation to come to America at a time when ships like the St. Louis were being turned away, he got out of the camps.”101 Such privilege places him, Des Pres argues, outside of the category of the common survivor and his “identification” with the experience of those survivors is “misleading” and “sad.” If Bettelheim presumes to the role of literary critic, Des Pres is not averse to trying his hand at psychoanalysis. Bettelheim has constructed a theory in which survival is “an act of individual self-assertion,” Des Pres suggests, only because Bettelheim’s own emotional needs are met by such a description. In Des Pres’ opinion, Bettelheim’s world view depends upon the assumption that he is superior to his peers, an uncommon prisoner and an uncommon man. Rather than describing the response of the common prisoner, Bettelheim reveals himself when he suggests that Jews interned in the camps identified with their Nazi oppressors. Why else, asks Des Pres, would Bettelheim focus so strongly on his “autonomous” act of defiance, which, after all, “entailed a crucial occasion on which Bettelheim managed to act in a way ‘acceptable to an SS soldier,’ a kind of behavior which ‘did not correspond to what he expected of Jewish prisoners.”102 Why else would such contempt for the judgment of others run through his entire corpus of work, from studies of behavior in concentration camps, to behavior in the nuclear family? Des Pres carefully undermines our belief in Bettelheim’s balance and even his sanity by excerpting passages from the works in which Bettelheim compares, “without qualification, the predicament of the psychotic child with the situation of concentration camp inmates.”103 Some of these parallels are indeed outrageous, and Des Pres makes the most of them, commenting pointedly that Equating parents with “the death camps of Nazi Germany” is an extreme example of Bettelheim’s habit of crossing worlds, an instance which shows forth the obsessive character of his vision and opens others of his well-known pronouncements to question.104 At the very least, it undermines Bettelheim’s argument that Des Pres and Wertmüller are comparable to Nazis, since, as Des Pres is quick to note, the psychoanalyst cries “Nazi!” with all the consistency of the boy who cried, “Wolf!”105 After undermining Bettelheim’s credibility, Des Pres attacks him for presuming to engage in literary or film criticism in such a naive and uninformed fashion. Bettelheim’s tendency to “cling to the Romantic notion that the protagonist, simply by virtue of occupying center stage, carries the endorsement of the artist and audience”106 is obvious both in his writings on Seven Beauties, and in the analysis of fairy tales for which Bettelheim is famous. Des Pres is also markedly upset by Bettelheim’s tendency to use excerpts from the Wertmüller film to prove points about The Survivor, from which, as Des Pres notes, Bettelheim never bothered to “quote a complete sentence or produce a concrete example of the Nazi doctrine he says the book embodies.”107 In the middle of the essay, Des Pres’ frustration with the tendency of critics to bow in the face of Bettelheim’s (to him) inexplicable authority is given full rein: he castigates a critic who has given Bettelheim’s work a positive review in the New York Times, and, in the short section titled “Kalman/Kogon,” Des Pres once again describes Bettelheim’s misreading of Eugene Kogon’s memoirs, and further ridicules the psychoanalyst for his lack of awareness (or suppression of) specific historical facts that not only undermine, but completely invalidate his argument. Having painted Bettelheim as an arrogant, but ultimately pathetic clown, Des Pres can afford to be charitable in his conclusion, commenting that “Bettelheim’s moral indignation seems so fervent and sound, his plunders… so vulnerable… his self-appointment and sense of vindication… so vigorous and unreflective that we cannot but wonder if in some fundamental way he does not see the unhappy and misleading statements that abound in his work.”108 Des Pres began his conclusion by claiming that he had “initially accepted Bettelheim’s view,” but it is clear by his final words that he (and by implication, the reader) has outgrown it. The psychoanalyst who claimed that in the concentration camps prisoners were subject to infantile regression, is himself painted as infantile in Des Pres’ critique, his authority reduced to the status of a tantrum, and his authenticity to a sad fantasy or an outright lie. Though it appears on the surface that Des Pres’ goal in “The Bettelheim Problem” is to usurp his “father’s” power, any cursory reading of his larger body of criticism demonstrates that this is not the case. Des Pres, an outsider who concedes that only survivors can “know” the Holocaust, is merely substituting one authority figure for another. The “knower” who takes Bettelheim’s place is the writer Elie Wiesel. In another essay, anthologized in the same collection as “The Bettelheim Problem,” Des Pres asserts Wiesel’s right to demand silence of everyone (including other survivors) while Wiesel struggles to articulate the Holocaust on his own terms.109 There is a profound contradiction between Des Pres’ support of Wiesel’s ability to speak for all survivors (and the dead) and his disqualification of Bettelheim, for certainly the trials of the fifteen-year-old boy in Auschwitz are no more representative of the whole than the tribulations of the adult psychoanalyst in Buchenwald. And while Des Pres condemns Bettelheim for the fact that all of his theoretical writings seem to represent an attempt to work through his concentration camp experience, he lauds Wiesel for the same tendency: “[W]hat makes Wiesel and his work outstanding has to do first with his unique position as a writer and a witness, and then with the fact that everything in his work relates directly or indirectly to that overwhelming event we call the Holocaust.”110 Des Pres is engaged in an ongoing attempt to mythologize the survivor, and his praise of Wiesel is akin to the adoration displayed by mortals to their gods. Perhaps that explains why his denunciation of Bettelheim is so bitter—the psychoanalyst is more than a poor scholar; he is a fallen idol. This is not my construction—it is Des Pres’ own, and it is most explicitly delineated in the introduction to The Survivor, where he notes that the Holocaust is a subject that one handles “not well, not finally…. Not to betray it is as much as I can hope for.”111 He uses “a kind of archaic, quasi-religious vocabulary,” because he believes that “only a language of ultimate concern can be adequate to facts such as these.”112 Because he insists on observing the testimony of survivors through a filter of religious romanticism. he is unable to build a methodological framework that can successfully support a body of survivor testimony that is often contradictory, fallacious, and incomplete. It is not pure. It is not unified. It is not consistent. When faced with this dilemma, Des Pres’ only recourse is to deny the “survivorhood” of the author of the problematic text. Even though Des Pres admits that prisoners responded in different ways to the camp environment—some became Muselmänner (the walking dead), some committed suicide, some resisted dramatically, some collaborated, some endured—Des Pres cannot account for any diversity in survivor responses after the trauma has ended. His survivors are frozen in time, always already in the midst of the traumatic universe. Nor do they ever leave it in Des Pres’ analysis, the trauma is never “over” for survivors. Thus he does not acknowledge that there is a difference between experience within the traumatic universe, and the ways in which different people live out their lives after the traumatic event is past. Even if Des Pres is correct in his assumption that on some level the trauma is always present in the life of the survivor, the form in which it is “not over” is still influenced by the interaction of a variety of personal, social and political forces that combine to create responses as diverse as, for example, those of Elie Wiesel, Bruno Bettelheim, Tadeusz Borowski, Jean Améry, Charlotte Delbo, and Primo Levi. Succumbing to his urge to designate survivor testimony as sacred, he neglects to note that testimony—by its nature—takes place after the fact. The act of writing means that one has survived, however briefly, to write. The possession of, and the ability to make use of, a pen and paper indicate at least a measure of the “civilized circumstance” that Des Pres claims extremity has stripped away. Once he has accorded survivor testimony sacred status, Des Pres makes the mistake of assuming that simply because each survivor claims to speak for a collective whole, each survivor must have the same vision. He does not take into account the possibility that, since he or she was traumatized as a member of a group, the survivor might have a need to identify with that group and to portray his or her experience as representative of the group experience, whether it was or not. Des Pres disagrees with Bettelheim’s interpretation of the “camp experience,” and with his claim to speak for all survivors, yet he does not embrace the notion that there was a multiplicity of experience; instead, he claims that Bettelheim was “wrong” (and a “false” survivor), and that Wiesel is “right” (and a “true” survivor). This belief in the survivors’ collective past, a “past identical for everyone who came through the common catastrophe,”113 is one of the premises of Des Pres’ argument, and serves as the rationalization for his idealization of the survivor as “a moral type.”114 The reduction of the survivor from human being to “type” supports the central thesis of The Survivor, which is that survivors who “bear witness” to atrocity provide the catalyst for the “progress” of social conscience: Horrible events take place, that is the (objective) beginning. The survivor feels compelled to bear witness, that is the (subjective) middle. His testimony enters public consciousness, thereby modifying the moral order to which it appeals, and that is the (objective) end. Conscience, in other words, is a social achievement. At least on its historical level, it is the collective effort to come to terms with evil, to distill a moral knowledge equal to the problems at hand. Only after the ethical content of an experience has been made available to all members of the community does conscience become the individual “voice” we usually take it for.115 Des Pres describes the survivor as a specialized organ in the body politic. He or she is the instrument of transmission, the bearer of information (“truth”) that catalyzes a shift in the “moral order.” In Des Pres’ work, there is no sense that this is a function of limited duration. This is not a stage through which the survivor passes, but a permanent state. Des Pres’ survivor is motivated to bear witness on what can only be described as a biological level, an “involuntary reaction to extreme situations,” and thus akin to “a scream.” He writes: [P]erhaps it is a scream—a special version of the social animal’s call to its group—and thus a signal of warning and appeal which on the human level becomes the process of establishing a record and thereby transmitting information vital for both moral and practical reasons. We learn what to fear, what to call evil and therefore what to call good, by absorbing the costly experience of others.116 There is a terrible confusion in Des Pres’ analysis. On the one hand, he is discussing a moral order of “good” and “evil” that transcends the physical body and is lodged in some spiritual realm. The survivor, viewed from this perspective, is an “example” that impels the receiver of testimony to participate in a life of “moral resistance” to evil. On the other hand, his description of the “special nature” of survivors has a quasibiological foundation: in extremity man is stripped of the trappings of “civilization,” and is thus somehow purified of the “delicate, efflorescing extensions of selfhood which civilization creates and fosters.”117 The prisoner’s horror and revulsion at the conditions under which he or she is forced to live is simultaneously an animal reaction and the response of a civilized person to the violation of a cultural taboo. The “scream” of survivors is both an involuntary physiological response and a call to moral order. Our reaction to the survivor is automatic—the instinctive response of a social animal to a warning of danger—at the same time that it is an ethical judgment based on the “certainty” of eyewitness testimony. This ambiguity is never resolved, in part because it is never fully acknowledged. In the Preface of The Survivor, Des Pres informs us that survivor testimony reveals “a world of actual living conditions,” of ways of life which are the basis and achievement of life in extremity.” His conflation of “actual living conditions” and “ways of life,” and of the “basis” and the “achievement” of “life in extremity” prevent him first from recognizing, and then from resolving this dilemma. Bettelheim is caught in a similar trap. As a scientist, he desires to describe the process of psychological adjustment to life in extremity, and then the reintegration into “normal” society. However, he also desires a survivor who can stand as a moral example. Unlike Des Pres, who takes a specific example of atrocity and generates a universal theory, Bettelheim constructs a rather neutral theoretical model, and then spends a great deal of time emphasizing the uniqueness of the Holocaust. This places him in the rather difficult position of both generating a model of reaction to extremity—which Bettelheim asserts has multiple uses, and which he employs in, for example, his work with autistic children—and insisting on the historical specificity of the Holocaust. Thus, he winds up defending the uniqueness of the Holocaust against all comers, from those who would judge it “an event deserving of most severe criticism but commonplace nonetheless.”118 Unsurprisingly, when faced with the arguments of those who believe other massacres, genocidal campaigns and physical assaults are comparable to the Holocaust, Bettelheim resorts to name calling: “These comparisons consciously or unconsciously take the side of the Nazis against that of the Jews, and this subtle siding with the Nazis is one of the most pernicious aspects of the attitude of all too many American intellectuals toward the extermination of American Jews.”119 Once again, Bettelheim combines his authority as a survivor and a psychoanalyst, claiming privileged knowledge of the Holocaust as well as an ability to judge both the conscious and subconscious motives of those who disagree with him. Bettelheim and Des Pres represent two poles around which the first generation of Holocaust scholars and critics clustered. The decision to align oneself with either Bettelheim or Des Pres often seemed to have more to do with politics than with disciplinary affiliation: liberals tended to quote Des Pres, while conservatives tended to quote Bettelheim. Proponents of either school of thought uncritically embraced the contradictions their chosen man embodied, resting their arguments on the authority of the testimonial voice, and on the alleged ability of the critic to discern “meaning” in survivor narratives. It was not until the late 1980s that critical literature on the Holocaust—influenced by trends in contemporary theory—began to question not only the authority of that voice, but the notion that such a “voice” even existed. These new critics are still the heirs of Bettelheim and Des Pres, and they cannot seem to escape the pitfalls of internal contradiction, of a criticism that wants, at once, to preserve the sanctity of survivor texts and to fit those texts into some coherent critical framework. The path of these arguments can be traced by looking at the progression exemplified by the following three works: James E Young’s Writing and Rewriting the Holocaust: Narrative and the Consequences of Interpretation (1988) Lawrence Langer’s Holocaust Testimonies: The Ruins of Memory (1991) and Shoshana Felman and Dori Laub’s Testimony: Crises of Witnessing in Literature, Psychoanalysis, and History (1992).120 Young begins his book as, explicitly, a second generation project: “This study began when I realized that none of us coming to the Holocaust afterwards can know these events outside the ways they are passed down to us.”121 Thus he shifts his focus from the traditional subject of those who study Holocaust literature—representations of the “horror of mass murder”—to a new question: “the narrative representation of events themselves” or “how historical memory, understanding, and meaning are constructed in Holocaust narrative.”122 Young underlines the interdisciplinary nature of his work, which he calls “literary historiography.” He is careful not to link his project to “contemporary theory and its often all-consuming vocabulary,” but rather to the critical impulse exemplified by Azariah de’Rossi, a Jewish historiographer of the 16th century. Despite his attempt to distance himself from those (unnamed) recent critics who divert “attention from historical realities,” he is obviously and admittedly influenced by Roland Barthes, Frederic Jameson, Terry Eagleton, Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, and Hayden White. Writing and Rewriting the Holocaust undertakes a dangerous project, and Young moves to build immediate defenses against the charges he assumes will be leveled at him. By employing contemporary critical techniques, he argues, he will be able “to explore both the plurality of meanings in the Holocaust these texts generate and the actions that issue from these meanings outside of the texts.”123 Though he knows his tools can be used for “mere” deconstruction, he assures his readers that he is engaged in a project of “re-historicizing” the Holocaust, rather than “de-historicizing” it.To begin his task of re-historicizing, he delicately suggests that it is perhaps time for critics to give up their roles as “guardians” of Holocaust texts, and to cease protecting and privileging “texts like the Holy Scriptures and survivors’ testimony from ‘heretical’ readings that undermine these texts’ authority.”124 At the same time that Young suggests that such “protection” is no longer appropriate critical practice, he hastens to assure the reader that his own inquiries into the nature of Holocaust literature are “pursued with care and tact” and “sensitivity.” Young attempts to bridge the gap between “testimony” and “interpretation,” while at the same time remaining adamant that the testimony of the survivor is still “privileged,” though no longer “sacred.” His strategy is to separate the “authenticity” of the survivor narrative from its “authority as ‘fact.’” He is exploring, in short, the attempt of survivors to fix the traumatic events of the Holocaust in their texts: “Their impossible task is then to show somehow that their words are material fragments of experiences, that the current existence of their narrative is causal proof that its objects also existed in historical time.”125 For Holocaust survivors who may have lived solely to bear witness and who believed they could bring the realia of their experiences forward in time through their words, the perception that their experiences now seem to dematerialize beneath the point of a pen becomes nearly unbearable…. The more insistently a survivor-scribe attempts to establish the “lost link” between his text and his experiences in the text, which ironically—and more perversely still—further undermines the sense of unmediated fact the writer had attempted to establish. Both the writer’s perceived absence from the text and his efforts to relink himself to it thus seem to thwart—and thereby inflame still further—the testimonial impulse.126 What Holocaust testimony offers us, Young asserts, in “knowledge—not evidence—of events,” the “conceptual presuppositions through which the narrator has apprehended experience.”127 Young sidesteps the Bettelheim/Des Pres contest of “my survivor is more authentic than your survivor” by claiming that “it is not a matter of whether one set of facts is more veracious than another, or whether the facts have been transformed in narrative at all.” Rather, he argues, we must determine “how writers’ experiences have been shaped both in and out of narrative.”128 And this is the approach Young takes when he generates his defense of D.M. Thomas’ controversial book, The White Hotel. Young details the controversy that appeared in the pages of the Times Literary Supplement in March of 1982. Critics charged that Thomas had lifted material from the text of Anatole Kuznetsov’s Babi Yar in order to infuse his fictional work with “documentary authority.” Young points out that Kuznetsov’s work was also a novel, based “upon the verbatim transcription of yet another testimonial source… the remembrances of the Babi Yar survivor, Dina Pronicheva….”129 Young also notes that the “interspersing of authentic witness with less authentic finds its place as a narrative technique in all kinds of Holocaust documentary literature, especially in the memoirs,” and warns us that from “invoking the ‘spiritual authority of authentic testimony’ … it is only a short step to fabricating it altogether within a text, whether it is called ‘fictional’ or ‘nonfictional.’”130 What Young is attacking is the whole notion of documentary literature, with “its relentless insistence on denying its provisionality, not revealing it”—a denial that is “accomplished ingenuously by the unconscious internalizations of the ethos of one’s tradition, or conscientiously by the writer on an ideological mission….”131 This is a profound and radical departure Bettelheim’ claim of authority, and from Des Pres’ acceptance of survivor authority. Young wishes to legitimate discussion of the Holocaust as metaphor, and force the recognition that representations of events are always already mediated: “even the Holocaust can never lie outside of literature, or understanding, or telling.”132 He insists that we engage the question of what the Holocaust itself has come to represent, acknowledging the irony that “once an event is perceived to be without precedent, without adequate analogy, it would in itself become a kind of precedent for all that follows: a new figure against which subsequent experiences are measured and grasped.”133 Young’s point is that memory moves in two directions, shaping our interpretations of the past and the present: “Experiences, stories and texts of the ancient past remain the same in themselves but their meanings, their echoes, causes and effects, and their significance all changed with the addition of new experiences in the lives of these texts’ interpreters.”134 This is indeed a slippery slope, and one that Bettelheim and Des Pres refused to set foot upon. In a chapter devoted to exploring Holocaust imagery in the work of American poet Sylvia Path—neither a Jew nor a survivor of the Holocaust—Young opposes the critics who attack Plath for her use of concentration camp and Holocaust metaphors, arguing for the legitimacy of using the Holocaust as “a figure, a universal point of reference for all kinds of evil, oppression and suffering,” just as we accept the legitimacy of comparing “our lot with that of the Jews escaping Egypt, or the destruction of cities in wartime with that of Jerusalem in 587 BCE.”135 Language, argues Young, absorbs experiences, embodies them, and thus preserves them long after the “authentic witnesses” are gone.136 Young moves from a focus on the survivor to a claim that language itself is a repository of memory—a radical departure. For if the survivor is the repository of memory, then memory is always an internal event, which can be represented only incompletely (only being is believing), but if language becomes the repository of memory, then representations exist before and outside the individual, who then interprets his or her own experience with the tools at hand. In the latter case, no experience is “pure” or “true,” since it is necessarily mediated by a kind of cultural library of symbols that limit and guide interpretation. Young concludes: [S]o long as we are dependent on the “vocabulary” of our culture and its sustaining archetypes, it may not be possible to generate entirely new responses to catastrophe. It may now be possible, however, to respond from within our traditional critical paradigms with self-critical awareness of where traditionally conditioned responses lead us in the world…. Critical reading can lead not only to further understanding of sacred and modern literary texts, but also to new understanding of the ways our lives and these texts are inextricably bound together.137 Where Young focuses on the way the critic/reader is trapped by the representational structure that his culture has bestowed on him, Lawrence Langer’s Holocaust Testimonies: The Ruins of Memory attempts to define the complicated position of the testifying survivor: Testimony is a form of remembering. The faculty of memory functions in the present to recall a personal history vexed by traumas that thwart smooth-flowing chronicles. Simultaneously, however, straining against what we might call disruptive memory is an effort to reconstruct a semblance of continuity in a life that began as, and now resumes what we would consider, a normal existence. “Contemporality” becomes the controlling principle of these testimonies, as witnesses struggle with the impossible task of making their recollections of the camp experience coalesce with the rest of their lives. If one theme links their narratives more than any other, it is the unintended, unexpected, but invariably unavoidable failure of such efforts.138 Langer focuses on the repeated attempts of survivors to externalize their memories of the Holocaust in the tapes of the Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies established at Yale University in 1982. He is suspicious of language, and believes that the “vocabulary” that Young describes confines those who have not experienced the Holocaust to inadequate and misleading representations because they are necessarily bound by traditional forms: [H]olocaust commentary gives birth to its own involuntary tensions: the habit of verbal reassurance, though a kind of internal balancing act, , tries to make more manageable for an uninitiated audience (and the equally uninitiated author?) impossible circumstances…. Tributes are cheering memorials are sad. Language often seems to be the fulcrum tilting us, as in this instance, away from one and toward the other.139 But survivors can’t escape this trap either, for the very telling of the tale implies a narrative structure that is counter to the traumatic experience it attempts to represent. To account for this paradox, Langer uses the categories he calls “common memory” (mémoire ordinaire) and “deep memory,” (mémoire profonde)—drawn from Auschwitz survivor Charlotte Delbo’s memoirs—claiming that survivors move back and forth between common and deep memory and employ (most often unconsciously) a sort of dual vision—“doubling”—to contain the contradictions of their past and present experience. Langer’s interest, then, is in what he calls the “incoherence” of video testimony, which escapes the “appearance of form” (beginning, middle, end) given by a written narrative. Video narrative demands an “active hearer“—we must Suspend our sense of the normal and to accept the complex immediacy of a voice reaching us simultaneously from the secure present and the devastating past. That complexity, by forcing us to redefine our role as audience throughout the encounter, distinguishes these testimonies from regular oral discourse as well as from written texts.140< The “confrontation” between videotaped survivor narrative and active hearer “begins in separate narrative and ends in collective memory….”141 But the memory is inevitably incomplete, for the missing voices are always the voices of the dead, who can only be spoken for. In Langer’s words, “Oral testimony is a living commentary on the limits of autobiographical narrative, when the theme is such unprecedented atrocity.”142 To explain the rupture, the failure of memory and language, Langer defines the Holocaust as “at once a lived even and a ‘died’ event: the paradox of how one survives a died event is one of the most urgent (if unobtrusive) topics of [Holocaust survivor] testimonies….”143 But Langer himself can’t escape the paradox—the impossibility of representing the “died event” becomes apparent as he attempts to describe the survivor’s doubled self using a critical terminology invented for this very purpose. The terminology—jargon, really—is as fractured and incoherent as the stories it proposes to define and contain: deep memory, common memory, anguished memory, humiliated memory, tainted memory, unheroic memory. Langer’s active hearer is charged with the task of discriminating between these categories and unraveling the threads of memory within the survivor testimony—distinctions which the survivors are, in his estimation, incapable of making. The survivors Langer describes are confused, bewildered, unconscious, frustrated, silenced, or anguished. They speak the truth, but do not know what it is they are saying. Thus, it is left to the critical audience to interpret the survivor’s narrative, to gloss the text; in fact, Langer’s theory requires a critical audience for the whole story to be told, for only the informed audience is capable of hearing the silence, of explicating the revealing incoherence: “Testimonies resting unseen in archives are like books locked in vaults: they might as well not exist. We use books to expand consciousness. We must use these videotapes for the same purposes.”144 Langer charges the reader with the responsibility of “interpretive remembering”: An underlying discontinuity assaults the integrity of the self and threatens the very continuity of the oral narrative. Perceiving the imbalance is more than just a passive critical reaction to a text. As we listen to the shifting idioms of the multiple voices emerging from the same person, we are present at the birth of a self made permanently provisional as a result of fragmentary excavations that never coalesce into a single, recognizable monument to the past.145 Langer’s survivor is a multiple personality who can never know herself, who can only be known from the outside, by others, and who—having lived past the moment of her death—is not even a subject in her own self-constitution, but a vehicle for the subjectification of those who did not survive the Holocaust: “The ‘people who have perished’ emerge as the real subject of the testimonies, while the circumstances of their death define the unheroic memory that tries to reclaim them, as it does the surviving self diminished by their absence and by its own powerlessness to alter their doom.”146 He continues: “This memory, and the loss it records, has meaning only insofar as it engages the consciousness of us as audience. Otherwise, it remains mere archival anecdote.”147 Langer’s conclusion will sound familiar to almost every critical theorist in feminist or in African-American studies: One of the unavoidable conclusions of unreconciled understanding is that we can inhabit more than one moral space at the same time—witnesses in these testimonies certainly do—and feel oriented and disoriented simultaneously. Another is that ‘damaged personhood’ is one of the inevitable prices we pay for having lived in the time of the Holocaust, provided we acknowledge our active role as audience to the content of these testimonies. Indeed, it would be more than ingenuous to contend that the sources of personhood in the twentieth century must be confined to this particular atrocity alone. History inflicts wounds on individual moral identity that are untraceable to personal choice or qualitative frameworks—though the scars they leave are real enough, reminding us that theoretical hopes for an integral life must face the constant challenge to that unity by self-shattering events like the Holocaust experience.148 Langer proposes that there is an intersection between individual psychic trauma and history, that this intersection (and this injury) is not confined to the Holocaust and Holocaust survivors, and that the appropriate response to such an intersection is active involvement on the part of a hearing audience. The fact that there is no “healing” from the Holocaust, that the wounds (individual and communal) are permanent and unredeemable, serves as a reminder for all who are willing to pay attention that “the organizing impulse of moral theory and art” masks a painful complexity difficult or impossible to contain. It is exactly this complexity that feminist and African-American literary critics have been attempting to articulate, as early as W.E.B. DuBois defined the “veil” that divides African-American consciousness. … this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity…. Two souls, who thoughts, two unreconciled strivings two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.149 Feminist critic Barbara Johnson reminds us, “Unification and simplification are fantasies of domination, not understanding”150—an assertion with which Langer would doubtless concur. That Langer has arrived at these conclusions by himself, without apparent familiarity with either African-American or feminist critical works is testament both to the isolation in which white male critics tend to work and to the commonalities between the various literatures of trauma. Langer’s focus on the survivor’s voice places him in opposition to both Young and, as we will see, the team of Felman and Laub. Unlike Langer, Young insists that video testimony mediates a survivor’s memories in a highly structured way (“unified and organized twice-over… once in the speaker’s narrative and again in the narrative movement created in the medium itself”151), and thus that video texts allow viewers to “become witness not to the survivors’ experiences but to the making of testimony and its unique understanding of events.”152 Young’s audience is passive, analytic and judgmental—the text is contained safely within the filmic framework and though it refers to and draws upon cultural representations, it does not transcend the medium; it does not demand interaction. Young favors trained professionals—whether they are literary critics or, as he describes in his chapter on video testimony, trained psychiatrists conducting interviews with survivors: Of all possible kinds of interviewers, trained psychoanalysts and therapists may well be the best qualified to elicit testimony. Trained to encourage narrative telling and interpretation, and through them insight into traumatic events, with a minimum of new psychic damage or further trauma, the psychiatrists who interview at Yale attempt as low a profile as possible.153 The combination of literary criticism and psychoanalysis has been irresistible to theorists of the Holocaust, perhaps because it seems to allow them to transcend the contradictions embodied by Des Pres and Bettelheim and to resolve tensions between literary critical strategies, between mythologization and medicalization, and between personal testimony and “objective” analysis. Testimony: Crises of Witnessing in Literature, Psychoanalysis and History is the result of a collaboration between Shoshana Felman and Dori Laub. Felman is a literary critic and Laub is a psychoanalyst who treats trauma survivors. There are seven chapters in the book—two by Laub, and the balance by Felman: the jointly written preface claims that their work evolved “out of the encounter and the dialogue between these two professional perspectives, and between the mutually enhancing lessons of these different practices,” and that these pieces “are… the product of this intellectual and conceptual interaction and of this continuous dialogue of insights, that has served both as the motivating and as the enabling force in the process of writing.”154 The key passage in this preface is: As our ventures will bear witness to and as the concrete examples we narrate will show, the encounter with the real leads to the experience of an existential crisis in all those involved: students as well as teachers, narrators as well as listeners, testifiers as well as interviewers.155 The language chosen by Felman and Laub is the language of the survivor. They are not simply writing a critical study, they are “bearing witness”—the “encounter with the real” leads to an “existential crisis” for all involved. Where Bettelheim and Des Pres focused on the authenticity of the survivor voice, Young concerned himself with the process of representation, and Langer placed his emphasis on interpretation, Felman and Laub are entirely concerned with the reenactment of the traumatic event in the psyches of those who “encounter the real.” In this critical text, the survivor’s experience has been replaced by the experience of those who come in contact with the survivor’s testimony—an appropriative gambit of stunning proportion. We are treated to a new traumatic phenomenon: “the crisis of witnessing.” Felman’s opening chapter, “Education and Crisis, Or the Vicissitudes of Teaching,” poses a series of initial questions: Is there a relations between crisis and the very enterprise of education? To put the question even more audaciously and sharply: Is there a relation between trauma and pedagogy? In a post-traumatic century, a century that has survived unthinkable historical catastrophes, is there anything that we could have learned or that we should learn about education, that we did not know before? Can trauma instruct pedagogy, or can pedagogy shed light on the mystery of trauma? Can the task of teaching be instructed by the clinical experience, and can the clinical experience be instructed, on the other hand, by the task of teaching?156< This paragraph contains a number of interesting assumptions. There is the equation of “crisis” to “trauma.” There is an assertion that this is “a post-traumatic century.” There is the claim that certain historical catastrophes are “unthinkable.” We expect, since this is a book about literary criticism, psychoanalysis, and trauma, that the answer to the questions posed above is a qualified “yes”—which leads us to wonder exactly what is meant here by “trauma,” “pedagogy,” and “clinical experience.” All of these definitions go without saying, all except the word “testimony,” which is introduced in the second paragraph and which is described first as the act “of bearing witness to a crisis or a trauma,”157 and, a short time later, As a discursive practice as opposed to a pure theory. To testify—to vow, to tell, to promise and produce one’s own speech as material evidence for truth—is to accomplish a speech act, rather than to simply formulate a statement. As a performative speech act, testimony in effect addresses what in history is action that exceeds any substantialized significance, and what in happenings is impact that dynamically explodes any conceptual reifications and any constitutive delimitations.158 But the act of bearing witness is not, in Felman’s estimation, the sole act of the survivor; rather, it is placed in Freudian psychoanalytic terms, in the framework of the “psychoanalytic dialogue, an unprecedented kind of dialogue, in which the doctor’s testimony does not substitute itself for the patient’s testimony but resonates with it, because, as Freud discovers, it takes two to witness the unconscious.”159 Felman’s analysis partakes of the worst sort of psychoanalytic pomposity, evident when she describes the testimonial videotapes in the Yale collection as Autobiographical life accounts given by Holocaust survivors to volunteer, professionally trained interviewers, most of whom are psychoanalysts or psychotherapists. Within the context of these dialogic interviews, many of these Holocaust survivors in fact narrate their story in its entirety for the first time in their lives, awoken to their memories and to their past both by the public purpose of the enterprise (the collection and the preservation of first-hand, live testimonial evidence about the Holocaust), and more concretely, by the presence and involvement of the interviewers, who enable them for the first time to believe that it is possible, indeed, against all odds and against their past experience, to tell the story and be heard, to, in fact address the significance of their biography—to address, that is, the suffering, the truth, and the necessity of this impossible narration—to a hearing “you,” and to a listening community.160 As French lesbian feminist critic Monique Wittig noted, the psychoanalyst sets him or herself up as the interpreter of the unconscious—only they “are allowed (authorized?) to organize and interpret psychic manifestations which will show the symbol in its full meaning.”161 Setting aside the problem of determining whether or not the subject of an interview has ever told his story before “in its entirely,” and the impossibility of knowing when any survivor’s story—even one recorded on videotape—is complete, we are still faced with a set of rather astonishing assertions about the role of the interviewers, whose mere presence somehow serves as an enabling force, bestowing on the survivor a sense of trust and self-confidence heretofore unattainable. The appropriative nature of Felman’s project becomes most evident in her discussion of the progress of the class on testimonial literature that she taught at Yale. As students were exposed to Holocaust testimonies, they felt increasingly—in Felman’s words—”set apart,” “obsessed,” “at a loss, disoriented, and uprooted.” In Felman’s eyes, the dimensions of the “crisis” suffered by the class was “critical.” After consulting Laub, she determined “that what was called for was for me to reassume authority as the teacher of the class, and bring the students back into significance.”162 She began by giving an address to her students in which she compared the dysfunction in the classroom to the rupture of language suffered by Holocaust survivors: I will suggest that the significance of the event of your viewing the first Holocaust videotape was, not unlike Celan’s own Holocaust experience, something akin to a loss of language and even though you came out of it with a deep need to talk about it and to talk it out, you also felt that language was somehow incommensurate with it. What you felt as a “disconnection“ with the class was, precisely, an experience of suspension a suspension, that is, of the knowledge that had been acquired in the class: you feel that you have lost it. But you are going to find it again….163 She believes that her course was a success, and she finds her proof in the fact that her students turned in final papers that she describes as “an amazingly articulate, reflective and profound statement of the trauma they had gone through and of the significance of their assuming the position of the witness.”164 From here, she goes on to claim that the practice of teaching itself takes place precisely only through a crisis; if teaching does not hit upon some sort of crisis, if it does not encounter either the vulnerability of the explosiveness of a (explicit or implicit) critical and unpredictable dimension, it has perhaps not truly taught it has perhaps passed on some facts, passed on some information and some documents, with which the students or the audience—the recipients—can for instance do what people during the occurrence of the holocaust precisely did with information that kept coming forth but that no one could recognize, and that no one could therefore truly, learn, read or put to use.165 Unsurprisingly, Felman sees parallels between teaching and psychoanalysis, just as she sees parallels between testifying and psychoanalysis. In fact, the three are often indistinguishable to her, as the following passage describing her interpretation of events in the classroom clearly illustrates: When the story of the class—the story I am telling now—was for the first time, thus, narrated to the class itself in its final session, its very telling was a “crisis intervention.” I lived the crisis with them, testified to it and made them testify to it. My own testimony to the class, which echoed their reactions, returning to them the expressions of their shock, their trauma and their disarray, bore witness nonetheless to the important fact that their experience, incoherent through it seemed, made sense, and that it mattered.166 Felman’s hubris is mirrored by Laub’s—manifest from the first page of his initial solo chapter, “Bearing Witness or the Vicissitudes of Listening.” To Laub, the one who listens to a testimony is “the blank screen on which the event comes to be inscribed for the first time,” and thus the listener “by definition” must partake “of the struggle of the victim with the memories and residues of his or her traumatic past,” and “feel the victim’s victories, defeats and silences, know them from within, so that they can assume the form of testimony.”167 It is the listener, and not the survivor, who is the “enabler” of the testimonial act; in fact, it is the “task” of the witness to be “the one who triggers its initiation, as well as the guardian of its process and of its momentum.”168 He makes no distinction between the primary trauma suffered by the Holocaust survivor and the sort of secondary stress suffered by the testimonial audience, claiming that the listener can no longer ignore the question of facing death of the limits of one’s omnipotence of losing the ones that are close to us the great question of our ultimate aloneness our otherness from any other our responsibility to and for our destiny the question of loving and its limits of parents and children, and so on.”169 The survivor herself has disappeared from the picture, reappearing only as a device for pushing the listener to self-examination, to allow him to participate in “the reliving and reexperiencing of the event.”170 Wittig views psychoanalysis as a reinscription of the victimization of the survivor: In the analytical experience there is an oppressed person, the psychoanalyzed, whose need for communication is exploited and who… has no other choice, (if s/he does not want to destroy the implicit contract which allows her/him to communicate and which s/he needs), than to attempt to say what s/he is supposed to say. They say that this can last for a lifetime—cruel contract, which constrains a human being to display his/her misery to an oppressor who is directly responsible for it, who exploits her/him economically, politically, ideologically and whose interpretation reduces this misery to a few figures of speech.171 Laub’s description of the drive to testify is at odds with Langer’s. For Langer, all testimony is inevitably failed testimony—the rupture in the narrative fabric cannot be “healed” by telling and retelling. Laub is a psychoanalyst, and it is his business to heal people—permanent wounds such as Langer describes are inconceivable. All trauma, however severe, however delayed, can be resolved by the talking cure. In his view, all survivors are impelled to speech: “None find peace in silence, even when it is their choice to remain silent.”172 Laub is unsure if narrative precedes or succeeds survival: “The survivor did not only need to survive so that they could tell their story they also needed to tell their story in order to survive.”173 Both Langer and Laub posit an active audience, but Langer’s active hearer is responsible for formulating an interpretation based upon the recorded testimony of the survivor—the interaction is between hearer and text—while Laub’s active listener is an interventionist, facilitating (even demanding) that the survivor herself revise her experience in collaboration with the listener/analyst who Laub seems to feel is at least an equal partner in the construction of the narrative. Laub’s notion that no Holocaust text can be created without the participation of the interventionist listener is linked to his belief that the Nazis created a universe so completely destructive that one “could not bear witness to oneself.”174 Borrowing from Bettelheim, Laub asserts that the Nazi system “convinced its victims, the potential witnesses from the inside, that what was affirmed about their ‘otherness’ and their inhumanity was correct and that their experiences were no longer communicable even to themselves, and therefore perhaps never took place.”175 It is impossible to ignore how convenient this construction is for a psychoanalyst, who makes a living interpreting the thoughts and feelings of other human beings—what Laub has done is abridge the authority of the survivor to speak for herself, and has appropriated that authority. Coupling of Laub’s personally appropriative interpretive strategy and Felman’s tendency to appropriate the “experience” of the Holocaust leads to some remarkable conclusions, not least the complete exoneration of literary critic Paul de Man for his collaborationist political activities as a journalist in Belgium during World War II. Felman does not dispute the charge that de Man was a collaborator, but seeks to elaborate on his silence, which she argues comprises his testimony. Since it has become the business of these critics and analysts to interpret not only texts but silences, it is hardly surprising that it is the nature of de Man’s failure to speak that Felman addresses: It is judged unethical, of course, to engage in acts that lent support to Germany’s wartime position but it is also judged unethical to forget and unethical, furthermore, to keep silent in relation to the war and to the Holocaust. The silence is interpreted as a deliberate concealment, a suppression of accountability that can only mean a denial of responsibility on de Man’s part. I will argue that de Man’s silence has an altogether different personal and historical significance, and thus has much more profound and far-reaching implications than this simplistic psychological interpretation can either suspect or account for.176 “No doubt,” Felman admits, “… the twenty-year-old Paul de Man made a grave mistake in judgment…”177 She argues that his decades-old silence on the matter does not compound his mistake, but rather (reaching for an analogy with Captain Ahab—de Man translated Moby Dick during the war—and a reference to Baudelaire) represents a sort of suicide: suicide as the recognition that what has been done is absolutely irrevocable, which requires one in turn to do something irreversible…. What appears to be an erasure of the past is in fact this quasi-suicidal, mute acknowledgment of a radical loss—or death—of truth, and therefore the acknowledgment of a radical loss—or death—of self the realization that there can be no way back from what has happened, no possible recuperation.178 Since de Man was, as Felman admits, “a controversial yet widely admired and highly influential thinker and literary critic,” and the Sterling Professor of Humanities at Yale, and the information about his collaborationist activities stayed hidden until after his death in 1983, it seems a bit of a stretch to claim that de Man had committed any sort of suicide whatsoever. Felman claims that de Man’s later writing, which does not tell his story of the Holocaust, is by virtue of that fact, bearing “implicit witness to the Holocaust, not as its (impossible and failed) narrator (a narrator-journalist whom the war had dispossessed of his own voice) but as a witness to the very blindness of his own and others’ witness, a firsthand witness to the Holocaust’s historical disintegration of the witness.”179 There is a wildly Orwellian quality to Felman’s argument—“he bore witness by virtue of the fact that he failed to bear witness”—that seems to escape the confines of logic and sense. If speaking is speaking, and silence is speaking, then what possible way is there not to testify? When is silence silence, and when is silence speech? And who is to determine the meaning of things except for Felman, the self-styled interpreter? And on what ground does one stand to contest her interpretations? For Felman, every “good” representation of the Holocaust is described as a vehicle for evoking the Holocaust “experience,” from her own class, to de Man’s silence, to Lanzmann’s epic documentary on the Holocaust, Shoah (which she compares to the testimony of the survivor Jan Karski): I would now suggest that Lanzmann’s own trip is evocative of that of Karski: that Lanzmann, in his turn, takes us on a journey whose aim precisely is to cross the boundary, first from the outside world to the inside of the Holocaust, and then back from the inside of the Holocaust to the outside world.180 Felman, as is her habit, makes no distinction between real and metaphorical crossings. And that, in the end, is the danger of her work, and of its coupling with Laub’s psychoanalytic clinical musings. The threat that such a self-referential critical stance poses to progressive forces in literary criticism is fully borne out in the next chapter. 1 Jerry Samet, “The Holocaust and the Imperative to Remember,” in Richard S. Gottlieb, ed., Thinking the Unthinkable: Meanings of the Holocaust (New York: Paulist Press) 1990: 418. 2 The following T-shirts were also popular products: 1) a shirt printed with the American flag, subtitled “Burn This!” 2) a shirt printed with a large peace symbol, subtitled “Footprint of the American Chicken” 3) a shirt bearing the slogan, “Nuclear reactors are built better than Jane Fonda.” 3 The shirt bears a prominent copyright mark at the bottom of the design which reads © 1990 Wes Caton. I was unable to locate the artist for permission to reproduce the graphic. In the author’s collection. 4 At the time, I was a consultant for the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum where I began in the Oral History department, and subsequently worked with the staff of the “Learning Center” to design the interactive multimedia computer displays intended to educate Museum visitors. 5 Jochen Schulte-Sasse and Linda Schulte-Sasse, “War, Otherness, and Illusionary Identifications with the state,” Cultural Critique, Number 19, Fall 1991 (Special Issue: “The Economies of war”): pp. 67-96: 85. 6 Mario Benedetti finds “ominous resemblances between Bush’s ‘New World Order’ and the ‘Neue Ordnung’ and ‘Ordine Nuovo’ of Hitler and Mussolini,” La Epoca (4 May 1991), quoted in Noam Chomsky, “‘What We Say Goes’: The Middle East and the New World Order,” in Collateral Damage: The ‘New World Order’ At Home And Abroad, Cynthia Peters, ed. (Boston: South End Press) 1992: 51. 7 Jonathan Culler, On Deconstruction: Theory and Criticism after Structuralism (Ithaca: Cornell University Press) 1982: 17. 8 Joseph Natoli, “Tracing a Beginning through Past Theory Voices,” in Joseph Natoli, ed., Tracing Literary Theory (Urbana: University of Illinois) 1987: xix. 9 Bill Livant, “The Imperial Cannibal,” in Ian Angus and Sut Jhally, eds., Cultural Politics in Contemporary America (New York: Routledge,, Chapman & Hall) 1989: 26-36. Livant claims, “Cultural politics in contemporary America” is “politics of the passions.” 10 See Lucy S. Dawidowicz, “Lies About the Holocaust,” Commentary 70 (December 1980): 31-37. For an extensive treatment of Holocaust deniers see Deborah Lipstadt, Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory (New York: Plume) 1994. See also Pierre Vidal-Naquet, ed., Assassins of Memory: Essays on the Denial of the Holocaust, Jeffrey Mehlman, trans. (New York: Columbia University Press) 1992. 11 See the index of the Chronicle of Higher Education. Also revisionists have carried their arguments to the broad audience of Usenet, Bitnet and Web-based bulletin boards, where they have sparked heated debate in various arenas. Revisionist strategy is to post an inflammatory revisionist article, and then to wait for the myriad angry responses of readers. Then they can legitimately begin to “answer” every response, thus involving the entire electronic community in the argument with a flood of postings. When users complain about the high volume of posts put forward by the members of the revisionist group, the revisionists can cry censorship and provoke a second debate on that topic, keeping themselves and their claims in the readers’ eye. 12 Dawidowicz, “How They Teach the Holocaust,” Commentary (December 1990): 25-32. 13 Ibid.: 25. 14 Ibid.: 31. 15 Margot Stern Strom and William S. Parsons, Facing History and Ourselves: Holocaust and Human Behavior (Watertown, MA: Intentional Educations, Inc.) 1982: 13. 16 Dawidowicz, “How They Teach the Holocaust”: 25. 17 Strom and Parsons: 383. 18 Kobena Mercer, “’1968’: Periodizing Politics and Identity,” in Lawrence Grossberg, Cary Nelson, and Paula Treichler, eds., Cultural Studies (New York: Routledge) 1992: 424-425. 19 Ibid.: 427. 20 Daniel Landes, “Anti-Semitism Parading as Anti-Zionism,” in Michael Lerner, ed., Tikkun: An Anthology (Oakland, CA: Tikkun Books) 1992: 367. 22 Ibid.: 368. 24 Noam Chomsky, Language and Politics, C.P. Otera, ed. (New York: Black Rose Books) 1988: 528. 25 Ibid.: 528-529. 26 Ibid. 529. 28 Noam Chomsky, Deterring Democracy (New York: Verso) 1991: 378. Though Chomsky has political views diametrically opposed to conservatives such as Charles Krauthammer and William Safire, his choice of metaphors is strikingly similar. Krauthammer, writing in the Washington Post six days before the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, claims that what makes Hussein “truly Hitlerian is his way of dealing with neighboring states…. The diplomacy practiced by the fascist powers of the ‘30s was to accumulate massive military power for translation into immediate gain—territorial, economic, political—through extortion and, if still necessary, war.” Charles Krauthammer, “Nightmare from the Thirties,” editorial in the Washington Post, 27 July 1990. 29 Robert L. Friedman, “War and Peace in Israel,” in Micah Sifry and Christopher Cerf, eds., The Gulf War Reader: History Documents Opinions (New York: Times Books) 1991: 433. This article, originally titled “Israel’s Peace Movement Calls for War,” was published in the 26 Feb 1990 issue of The Village Voice. 30 Stephen J. Solarz, “The Case for Intervention,” in The Gulf War Reader: 271. This essay was originally published in the 7 and 14 Jan 1991 issues of The New Republic under the title “The Stakes in the Gulf.” Solarz has been extremely active in the movement to revise the Viet Nam war, and his intent in this essay was to overcome “the Vietnam Syndrome” that he believed caused the U.S. to hesitate before engaging in war in the Gulf. His theme: “In Vietnam no vital American interests were at stake. The crisis in the Gulf poses a challenge not only to fundamental American interests, but to essential American values” (p. 269). 31 John B. Judis, “Jews and the Gulf: Fallout from the Six Week War,” Tikkun: An Anthology: 131. This article originally appeared in Tikkun (May/June 1991). 32 Cornel West, “Black-Jewish Dialogue: Beyond Rootless Universalism and Ethnic Chauvinism,” in Tikkun: An Anthology: 89. 33 Ibid.: 90. 34 Harold Cruse, The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual (New York: Quill) 1967/1984: 484. 35 An exemplary text is Donald Will and Sheila Ryan, Israel and South Africa (Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press) 1990. This book is sold in many bookstores that cater specifically to African-American, black nationalist, and Afrocentric readers. Simply because I looked for and found no African-American literature that uses the Nazi/Jew Israeli/Palestinian analogy does not mean this literature does not exist (or that it has not been written since 1994, when I concluded my research). It is, however, a good indication that such a comparison is rare, even in the literature sold in bookstores that cater explicitly to black communities. 36 Ibid.: 483. 37 Ibid.: 486. 38 bell hooks, Yearning: Race, Gender, and Cultural Politics (Boston: South End Press) 1990. 39 Though there is an enormous amount of evidence of genocidal inter-tribal behavior on the African continent, as well as colonial genocidal practices (in the Congo, for example), this topic is rarely broached in discussions of “comparative” holocausts. The genocidal war waged by the Tutsi against the Hutus in Burundi in 1972 resulted in the massacre of upwards of 200,000 Hutus in a three-month period, and in Rwanda (where the situation was reversed) the Hutus murdered about 100,000 Tutsis in 1959 and continued to persecute the Tutsi through 1964. Those few who have observed the results of the African genocides haven’t hesitated to make comparisons: Stan Meisler, the African correspondent for the Los Angeles Times, wrote of his visit to Bujumbura, the capital of Burundi, “It is a little like entering Warsaw after World War II, and finding few Jews there,” and that inveterate critic of atrocity, Bertrand Russell, called the killings in Rwanda “the most horrible and systematic human massacre we have had occasion to witness since the extermination of the Jews by the Nazis.” However, such references have not entered the common discourse on the nature of the ‘Holocaust.’ See David Lamb, The Africans (New York: Vintage Books) 1983: 12-14. 40 Nina King, “What Happened at Duke,” in Patricia Aufderheide, ed., Beyond PC: Toward a Politics of Understanding (St. Paul, MN: Greywolf Press) 1992. 120. 41 George F. Will, “Literary Politics,” in Beyond PC: 24. Conservative critics like Will claim that there is an absolute standard by which “literature” can be judged—most often called an “aesthetic” measure—presumed to have no political location. Will and his ilk claim that the “great” books that have traditionally comprised the canon taught in U.S. colleges and universities are selected on the basis of an objective standard of excellence—a standard that it just so happens no works by minority and/or female authors meet. In what must be one of the most arrogant assertions of the PC debate, Mortimer J. Adler (editor-in-chief of the 1990 edition of the Great Books of the Western World) boldly claims that “great books are relevant to human problems in every century, not just germane to current twentieth-century problems. A great book requires reading over and over, and has many meanings a good book need be read no more than once, and need have no more than one meaning” (Adler, “Multiculturalism, Transculturalism, and the Great Books,” in Beyond PC: 60). In response, I refer the reader back to the Jerry Samet quote that heads this chapter. 42 Nancy Armstrong and Leonard Tennenhouse, eds., The Violence of Representation: Literature and the History of Violence (New York: Routledge) 1989: 24. 43 Terrence Des Pres, “Holocaust Laughter?” in The Writer Into the World: Essays 1973-1989 (New York: Viking) 1991: 277-278. 44 Terrence Des Pres, The Survivor (New York: Oxford) 1976: 155. 45 Elie A. Cohen, Human Behavior in the Concentration Camp 1954 (London: Free Association Publishing) 1988 Bruno Bettelheim, The Informed Heart (Glencoe, IL: Free Press) 1960. 46 A Dutch citizen, Cohen was arrested and assigned as a transport doctor at the Westerbork transit camp from December 1942-September 1943. Cohen was imprisoned in Auschwitz I until January 1945, and he survived the death march to Mauthausen to bee interned in Melk until April of that year (Cohen: xxi). He was liberated by the Americans at Ebensee in May, 1945. Bettelheim was an Austrian citizen he was arrested and imprisoned in Dachau within a few weeks of the annexation of Austria by Germany in 1938, transferred to Buchenwald, and then released by the Gestapo in 1939, when he immigrated to the United States (Des Pres, “Bettelheim Problem”: 63). 47 Des Pres, The Survivor: 155. 48 Ibid.: 156. 49 Ibid.: 157. 50 Ibid.: 161. 52 Ibid.: 164. 53 Ibid.: 167. 54 Ibid.: 170. 55 Ibid.: 176. 56 Bruno Bettelheim, “Surviving,” in Surviving and Other Essays (New York: Vintage Books) 1979: 274. The essay originally appeared under the same title in The New Yorker (2 Aug 1976): 31-52. The original essay was slightly different from this anthologized version, but it is to the anthologized version that Des Pres responds. 57 Ibid.: 274 60 Ibid.: 275. 61 Ibid.: 276. 62 Ibid.: 278. 64 Ibid.: 279. 67 Ibid.: 281. 68 Ibid.: 285. 72 Ibid.: 287. 74 Ibid.: 289. 76 Ibid.: 290-291. 77 Des Pres, The Survivor: 157. 78 Ibid.: 158. 79 Ibid.: 160. The reference is to Eugene Kogon, The Theory and Practice of Hell, trans. By Heinz Norden (New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux) 1953. 81 Bettelheim, “Surviving”: 296. 82 Ibid.: 297 83 Des Pres, The Survivor: 37-38. 84 Ibid.: 42. 85 Ibid.: 49. 86 Ibid.: 39. 87 Ibid.: 47. 88 Bettelheim, “Surviving,”: 313-314. 89 Textual critics are often annoyed when amateurs see a film or read a book and feel qualified to offer their opinions as if they constituted a serious analysis. This may be one of the reasons that literary criticism has joined other professions in its tendency to employ a lot of jargon. There is a valid argument that complex ideas require complex structures of theory and language, not easily accessible to the layperson, but an excess of jargon may also indicate a desire to exclude outsiders and preserve “secret” knowledge. 90 Des Pres, “The Bettelheim Problem”: 63. 92 Ibid.: 63-64. 93 Ibid.: 64. Des Pres is himself an academic theorist, of course, and with the benefit of distance, the reader may find him or herself remarking on the peculiar strategy of undermining one’s own authority in order to advance one’s viewpoint. This is, however, a common practice in the arena of debate about the Holocaust (and about other traumatic events, such as military conflicts) where the authority of those who were “there” is accepted by all parties without question. In such circumstances, those who were not “there” have to content themselves with asserting, in the manner of feuding schoolchildren, that “my survivor can lick your survivor.” 95 Ibid.: 65. That Des Pres’ analysis might have been more accurate even than he suspected was suggested by a series of articles that appeared in the national press following Bettelheim’s death in 1990. Charles Pekow, a writer who as a child had attended the Orthogonic School, write: “The Bettelheim I knew was a man who while publicly condemning violence, physically abused children. And the Orthogonic School I knew was an Orwellian world where mail and reading was censored, where staff tried to monitor conversations, and few were permitted outside unescorted.” William Blau, a counselor at the school (1949-1950) concurred: “I would characterize the atmosphere at the Orthogonic School, at that time, as the beginnings of a cult, with Dr. B. as the cult leader.” Blau also commented on Bettelheim’s “limitless ability for self promotion.” Alida Jatick, a computer programmer who had been an inmate of the Orthgonic School, claims that, “Bettelheim once pulled her out of shower and beat her, wet and naked, in front of a room full of people.” Charles Pekow, “The Other Dr. Bettelheim,” in The Washington Post, Outlook section (26 Aug 1990): C1-4. 96 Ibid.: 65. Italics mine. 97 Ibid.: 66-68. 98 Ibid.: 67. 100 Ibid.: 68. 101 Ibid.: 69. 102 Ibid.: 73. 103 Ibid.: 74. 104 Ibid.: 75. 105 Ibid.: 76. Des Pres makes an interesting aside in the text at this point: he uses Bettelheim’s rage at student antiwar protests in the 1960s, and his equation of those students with fascists of the “pre-Hitler days” as yet another illustration of his point. 106 Ibid.: 76-77. 108 Ibid.: 86. 109 Terrence Des Pres, “The Authority of Silence in Elie Wiesel’s Art,” Writing Into the World: 32. 110 Ibid.: 25. 111 Des Pres, The Survivor: v-vi. 112 Ibid.: vi. 113 Ibid.: 184. 114 Ibid.: 49. 115 Ibid.: 47. 116 Ibid.: 199-200. 117 Ibid.: 13-14. The most fascinating part of this argument is that the cleansing is accomplished by a literal “immersion in shit,” the excremental assault to which Des Pres devotes an entire chapter of The Survivor. His rather bizarre reference to the Jewish tradition of ritual bathing passes without remark in most critical analyses. 118 Bruno Bettelheim, “The Holocaust—One Generation After,” in Richard S. Gottlieb, ed., Thinking the Unthinkable: Meanings of the Holocaust (New York: Paulist Press) 1990: 381-382. 120 James E. Young, Writing and Rewriting the Holocaust: Narrative and the Consequences of Interpretation (Bloomington: University of Indiana Press) 1988: Lawrence Langer, Holocaust Testimonies: The Ruins of Memory (New Haven: Yale University Press) 1991 Shoshana Felman and Dori Laub, Testimony: Crisis of Witnessing in Literature, Psychoanalysis, and History (New York: Routledge) 1992. 121 Young: vii. 123 Ibid.: 4. 124 Ibid.: 5. 125 Ibid.: 23. 126 Ibid.: 24-25. 127 Ibid.: 37. 128 Ibid.: 39. 129 Ibid.: 55. 130 Ibid.: 60. 131 Ibid.: 80. 132 Ibid.: 98. 133 Ibid.: 99. 134 Ibid.: 109. 135 Ibid.: 130-132. 136 Ibid.: 132. 137 Ibid.: 192. 138 Langer: 3. 139 Ibid.: 2. 140 Ibid.: 21. 142 Ibid.: 61. 143 Ibid.: 69. 144 Ibid.: 36. 145 Ibid.: 161. 146 Ibid.: 197. 148 Ibid.: 201. 149 W.E.B. DuBois, The Souls of Black Folk, reprinted in Three Negro Classics (New York: Avon) 1965: 214-215. 150 Barbara Johnson, “Metaphor, Metonymy and Voice, in Their Eyes Were Watching God,” Black Literature and Literary Theory, H.L. Gates, ed. (New York: Methuen) 1984: 218. 151 Young: 158. 152 Ibid.: 171. 153 Ibid.: 166. 154 Felman and Laub: xiv. 156 Ibid.: 1. 158 Ibid.: 5. 159 Ibid.: 15. 160 Ibid.: 41. 161 Monique Wittig, “The Straight Mind,” in Russell Ferguson, et al., eds., Out There: Marginalization and Contemporary Culture (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press) 1990: 52. 162 Felman and Laub: 48. 163 Ibid.: 50. 164 Ibid.: 52. 165 Ibid.: 53. 166 Ibid.: 54-55. 167 Ibid.: 58. 169 Ibid.: 72. 170 Ibid.: 76. 171 Witting: 52. 172 Felman and Laub: 79. 173 Ibid.: 78. 174 Ibid.: 82. 176 Ibid.: 121. 177 Ibid.: 123. 178 Ibid.: 135. 179 Ibid.: 139. 180 Ibid.: 238.

John 2 – The fire of God spreading The Wedding at Cana 2:1-12 The first miracle story told by John is not found in the other Gospels. The story takes place in the city of Galilee, the location of which is unknown to us. The events unfold during a Middle-Eastern wedding which included a solid meal. The wine runs out, but Jesus salvages the young couple’s wedding by changing 600 liters of water into exceptional wine. John describes that the disciples had seen Jesus’ glory and believed in him. What does the story teach us? In the Old Testament wine had a symbolic meaning. Part of the wonderful salvation granted to us by God involves abundance and feast (Genesis 49:8-12). When Jesus rescues the wedding feast, John probably points towards this: there is now a mighty savior amongst God’s people. Another point – often undiscussed – is Jesus’s attitude towards the young couple and their wedding celebration. Even though he called several other people to leave everything behind and to follow Him, he does not by any means disdain family. Quite the opposite, a normal family life receives His blessing. We should also discuss the Bible’s outlook on wine. Drunkenness is a grave sin, but the Bible does not demand absolutism. Absolutism, much like other types of discipline, is a good and a recommended lifestyle, but it should not be demanded from anyone. The gate posts of the narrow path have been set in this fashion – everyone in their conscience weighs which side of the path they are walking. It is wrong and pernicious to act against one’s conscience. An additional remark: John and the synoptics At times the Gospel of John is difficult to fit together with the other three Gospels. This comes out for example in the following story: the three first evangelists tell about Jesus’ work in Galilee, his journey towards Jerusalem, and his death and resurrection. In their descriptions, the story of Jesus cleansing the temple is situated in the last days of Jesus’ life. John provides a different timeline. Jesus visits Jerusalem many times, and also during the Passover, thus working publicly for numerous years. The cleansing of the temple is placed at the early stages of Jesus’ public life by John. Scholars differ in their opinions on whether John is historically more trustworthy than the synoptics. It is possible that Jesus taught his smaller group of disciples for a longer time than others and only later stepped into public. On the other hand, John may have purposely placed the event to the early stages of Jesus’ public work. In that case nobody could mistake Jesus for a political leader. We have to be satisfied with the larger picture without dwelling too deeply into the details, however interesting they may be. Only an attentive reader of the Bible notices the difference between John and the synoptics. All four evangelists describe the cleansing of the temple as well as Jesus’ suffering and resurrection. The Gospels are not biographies, even though they have recorded a lot of historically accurate information. They have been written so that we may believe in Christ. The testimonial of the four evangelists, despite their tensions, is a richer and a more abundant description than one written by a single author. Jesus cleanses the temple 2:13-25 In the ancient times as well as today, the group of people swarming around the temples established a suitable market. The beggars took an area of their own. The Jews only had a single temple where they could sacrifice to God. Those who came to sacrifice needed accommodation and food as well as lot of sacrificial animals, abundantly on offer. The temple tax could only be paid by a specific Jewish currency, hence the exchange system had a marketing whirl of its own. The dug up graves of the high priests indicate that the priestly nobility, who provided all these services, had a considerably rich lifestyle. It is no wonder that the actual purpose of the temple might have been forgotten. The cleansing of the temple was a radical act, and the events are described by John and the synoptics fairly consistently. Jesus drove away all of the market people from the temple, because they had made the holy place into a trading emporium. The Jews who knew the Old Testament had in their minds the word of prophet Malachi: “Behold, I send my messenger, and he will prepare the way before me. And the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple; and the messenger of the covenant in whom you delight, behold, he is coming, says the Lord of hosts. But who can endure the day of his coming, and who can stand when he appears? For he is like a refiner's fire and like fullers' soap. He will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver, and he will purify the sons of Levi and refine them like gold and silver, and they will bring offerings in righteousness to the Lord. Then the offering of Judah and Jerusalem will be pleasing to the Lord as in the days of old and as in former years” Another important Old Testament scripture is found in psalm 69:10, which the disciples only later realized to be a prophecy about Jesus. Jesus’ response to the Jews, in a typical fashion to the fourth Gospel, is deliberately enigmatic. Each listener imagined that he was talking about a magnificent temple building, but in reality he was talking about his own body. In this way Christ’s death and resurrection come to view already at this stage of the Gospel. We observe a similarity with Mark’s messianic mystery: Christ describes his sovereignty openly, but the people do not understand his words. The time of the events recorded by John – 46 years after the beginning of the building of the temple – is surprisingly detailed and with its aid we may discern the year of the Passover. The building of the temple begun in 20/19 BC. If the information is accurate, the year would be 29 or 30. In the last verses of the chapter we are again faced with the question of the purpose of the miracles. Jesus does miracles, which lead people to believe in him. In this way the miracles in John’s Gospel have an important significance. Yet at the same time, the evangelist adds Jesus’ own assessment which places human faith in its proper place: Jesus did not confide to people, because he knew human faith to be weak.

Have the tensions between the Obama and Netanyahu administrations led to an increase in American anti-Israelism and anti-Semitism, and have these tensions spurred the movement for the delegitimization of Israel? While these questions cannot be answered scientifically, there are various elements which can help us reflect on this issue. The main problem probably lies in Obama’s often negligent attitude toward crimes emerging from large parts of the Muslim world. This distorted attitude has manifested itself from the beginning of his tenure. The latest and most absurd expression of Obama’s attitude was displayed in 2014, when the mass murders and beheadings occurring in Iraq and Syria, committed by the extremist Muslim organization Islamic State (IS), gained wide publicity. Some observers, including Obama, started to label IS the embodiment of pure evil. In a speech about the movement, Obama said IS was “not ‘Islamic’” and added, “No religion condones the killing of innocents.” Obama’s sentiment was shared by British Prime Minister David Cameron, who stated of IS, “They boast of their brutality. They claim to do this in the name of Islam. That is nonsense. Islam is a religion of peace. They are not Muslims, they are monsters.” Whereas Plato spoke about the philosopher- king, Obama and Cameron seemed to introduce a parallel concept – that of the political leader-theologian. This is a particularly remarkable feat, as they refer to the theology of Islam while not being Muslims themselves. As American terrorism expert Andrew C. McCarthy points out, “The perception that the Islamic State is something new and different and aberrational compared with the Islamic-supremacist threat we’ve been living with for three decades is wrong, perhaps dangerously so. Decapitation is not a new jihadist terror method, and it is far from unique to the Islamic State. Indeed… it has recently been used by Islamic-supremacist elements of the US-backed Free Syrian Army against the Islamic State.” By declaring IS as “un-Islamic,” Obama provides a cover for genocidal Islam. The attitude toward Hamas is yet another example of the administration’s whitewashing of what can only be called Islamo-Nazism. The Obama administration considers Hamas a desirable member of a Palestinian unity government. One might recall that Hamas has in its official charter a call to murder all Jews for the sake of pleasing Allah. During last summer’s Protective Edge campaign, Hamas leaders reiterated the call for the killing of all Jews. Obama continues to look away from the Hamas problem. In an interview with Thomas Friedman of The New York Times, he said, “In some ways, Bibi [Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu] is too strong [and] in some ways [Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas] is too weak to bring them together and make the kinds of bold decisions that [former Egyptian President Anwar] Sadat or [Israeli prime ministers] Begin or Rabin were willing to make.” It was a radically false comparison to introduce. Behind Abbas and his Fatah movement stands a strong Islamo-Nazi movement, Hamas, which is more popular among Palestinians than Fatah. Hamas won a parliamentary majority in the only Palestinian election, that of 2006. Sadat, however, represented the legitimate Egyptian administration. The problems of Obama’s distorted view of the Muslim world were already evident in his 2009 Cairo speech. Obama expressed apologetics and appeasement and understated the major criminality prevalent within many parts of the Muslim world. Obama applied double standards through the omissions of many important facts. He said that it was time to put a halt to Israeli settlements. He did not say however, that “it is time for Egypt and many other Muslim states to stop the murderous anti-Semitic incitement.” Obama, a self-professed Christian, did not mention the continued persecution and incitement against Christians taking place in a variety of Muslim countries. He even ignored major American interests as he did not mention anything to the effect of, “In this new century we saw an unprecedented terrorist attack on 9/11, which was driven by the religious Islamic convictions of major criminals.” The ongoing problems and dangers emanating from the Muslim world are the main geopolitical issues threatening much of the Western democratic world. Yet in Obama’s 2013 address to the United Nations General Assembly, he said, “In the near term, America’s diplomatic efforts will focus on two particular issues: Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons, and the Arab-Israeli conflict. While these issues are not the cause of all the region’s problems, they have been a major source of instability for far too long, and resolving them can help serve as a foundation for a broader peace.” A large part of his speech was devoted to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, instead of focusing on the larger problems at hand. It would not take that long for Obama to decide that the US had to re-engage militarily in Iraq in order to fight IS. The American military engagement was then extended to Syria, where the US military had not been previously involved. Yet there is silence from the Obama administration – besides the issues regarding nuclear Iran – about the many world-threatening aspects of a multitude of developments in the Islamic world. An American Jewish leader we spoke to off the record also mentioned the Muslim connection. He said, “Hammering on Israel from people close to the administration does contribute, if not explicitly, to a climate that makes it easier to bash Israel on campus, and to a lesser extent, in some church circles. It is also not lost on anyone that the administration more broadly still sees the Muslim Brotherhood as a positive entity that America can do business with – that effectively has provided Hamas a lifeline.” He added: “As for anti-Semitism, the administration has not rushed the Justice Department to investigate anti-Semitic incidents. Obama’s justice focused primarily on race issues. On the plus side is the seriousness of purpose with which Ira Forman, the special envoy on anti-Semitism, pursues his mandate.” It would have been exceedingly difficult for academic and other boycotters of Israel to move forward if Obama and his administration were honest about the huge threats to humanity coming from large parts of the Islamic world. The boycotters would have been easily exposed as the anti-Semites they are, because they would be rightly seen as focusing on what was at most a marginal issue, while the civilized world would be waiting for answers to the serious threats facing it, including extreme violence, jihadism, discrimination and slavery, just to mention a limited selection. The Obama administration official calling Netanyahu “chickenshit” and the other such expressions of hate mentioned by American journalist J.J. Goldberg would hardly have been relevant if the administration’s focus had been on crimes coming out of Muslim societies. Such statements would rightly have been seen as the aberrations of people who should not be employed by the US administration at all. The answer to the question, therefore, seems to be that the Obama administration does promote the delegitimization of Israel and does cause anti-Israelism. This is not due, however, to any ambiguity of its position toward Israel, but rather due to its whitewashing of many of the major crimes emerging from large parts of the Islamic world. The author’s upcoming book The War of a Million Cuts analyzes how Israel and Jews are delegitimized and how to fight it. He is a recipient (2012) of the lifetime achievement award of the Journal of the Study of Anti-Semitism.

Parents and staff react to school board striking holocaust biography from curriculum McMinn County School Board voted unanimously to strip the historical illustrated novel ‘Maus’ from the 8th grade ELA curriculum. KNOXVILLE, Tenn. (WVLT) - On January 10, in a called meeting of the McMinn Co. School Board, the board voted unanimously to strip the historical holocaust novel “Maus” from the districts eighth-grade English and Language Arts Curriculum. The board in a Facebook post cited Thursday that the decision was made because the content was too adult-oriented for use in McMinn County Schools. Parents, graduates, and grandparents were reacting to the board’s decision both in support and against. ”I don’t think with my daughter inside, that is something we should pull from these history books or even a reading curriculum,” said James Cockrum, a McMinn Co. Central graduate. Those who disagree with the board’s decision worry keeping the book from being accessible to students is harming the teachings of what happened in the holocaust. ”This is a documentary, this is a man’s life, this is his story, this is true and if we start to censor truths then those critical information avenues are taken away from us,” said Cynthia Webb McCowan, a grandparent of a McMinn County eighth-grader. “Maus” is written and illustrated by Art Spiegelman. The story is told through Jewish people depicted as mice and Nazis depicted as cats. According to the minutes, “Maus,” was used as eighth-grade reading material ‘because of the content and the deeper meaning of what is going on in the book.’ The McMinn Co. Board of Education removed the book from the curriculum because of eight bad words and one depiction of a naked mouse, supposed to be inferred as a woman. ”I don’t think they need to be exposed to it if they don’t have to be exposed to it,” said Alex Thomason, a supporter of the board’s decision. Many who support the board argue that the content is too graphic for students, especially as impressionable as eighth-graders, and should be saved for high-schoolers, or possibly even college reading material. Additionally, those who back the 10 board members said they weren’t arguing to cut the Holocaust from the curriculum, but rather the graphic nature of “Maus” to be held from young eyes. ”It does need to be in schools you can teach it without like I said the profanity and all that,” said Thomason. The district added they plan to add a new book to the module in place of ‘Maus” and have directed the administration to start that process. Copyright 2022 WVLT. All rights reserved.

3229 views, 5019 days ago Excerpts from the "High-speed Video Magic" DVD, featuring billiards and stupid human tricks (also... 4859 views, 5015 days ago 2961 views, 5008 days ago 2216 views, 4945 days ago In 2003, the Hubble Space Telescope took the image of a millenium, an image that shows our place in the universe. Anyone who understands what this image represents, is forever changed by it. 3332 views, 4939 days ago For 55 years, Gershon Jacobson, a journalist for some of the most famous newspapers, including the New York Herald Tribune, the National Jewish Post and Opinion, the Yiddish Day Jewish Journal and ... 2653 views, 4938 days ago In a world, where ordinary people lead ordinary lives, one holiday ends in horrific madness. Friendship, revenge, terror, turkey and an angry ex-girlfriend...all in this chest bursting short film. ...

I am in love with music. I cannot see straight for the love of her. But if music is, as Duke Ellington put it, my mistress, then we have had a stormy relationship. I have cheated on her, lied to, neglected and beat her. On the other hand, she is too demanding. When she nagged I left her and when I neglected her she left me. I spent my time under too many hats, between too many stools. It has been a stormy affair. hipsters slouched through my living room, eyes red, leaning forward with gig-bags cradled in their arms. They wore Dizzy Gillespie goatees and berets. Those who were not junkies scratched their noses and spoke with a rasp to make believe they were. Charlie Parker was a junky and that was hip enough for them. "Groovy, man. What a gas!" they'd say as my father looked over his New York Times in disbelief. They'd climb the stairs to my attic studio where there was a wire recorder, an upright piano and pictures of jazz giants on the wall. Earl Brew burned some piano keys but my mother did not say anything because Earl was black and she was a Socialist. She thought the burns were from cigarettes. When we weren't playing music we were listening to or talking about it. We did not have to ask each other: "What do you want to be when you grow up?" We took professional names. Bob Milner became Bob Mills. Frank Hamburger chose Duke Frank. I was Mike Wayne. Al Goldstein picked Al Young in honor of Lester Young but everybody called him Lester Goldstein. My attic studio overlooked the Forest Hills Tennis Club. The tennis players complained because our jamming jammed their concentration. We were the first Jewish family in Forest Hills Gardens, an exclusive enclave. My father suspected the tennis players were anti-Semitic. The tennis players accused him of operating a rehearsal studio in violation of zoning laws. Lester Goldstein loved to honk out the window during set points and Lester really knew how to honk. I cut high school to catch noon shows at the Paramount, the Capitol, the Strand - Broadway theatres where my heroes rose hungover from pits for the first of five daily shows playing "Blues Flame," "Take The A Train," and "Let's Dance," my own "Star Spangled Banners." I was dazzled by the sparkle of spots off brass. I daydreamed of future hungover noons rising from pits. I knew big-band personnel like other kids knew big-league baseball lineups. My parents took me to a Catskill Mountain hotel for a summer holiday. After breakfast one morning, walking in the crisp mountain air, we passed the hotel-band bass-player coming in with a dazzling suntanned brunette on his arm. We had talked and he knew I wanted to be a musician. "You're up early," I said. He hesitated: "Yes...early." Later I realized he had not in fact been to sleep. How I envied grown-ups who could stay up all night playing music and be with beautiful women. Now when I think of that hack working in the Jewish Alps for the summer, I wonder how children survive their fantasies. In the summer on 1949 I was in New York on vacation from the University of Miami where I was majoring in sailing. No, actually sixteen of us were on full scholarship to play for dinner in the streamlined student cafeteria which was cantilevered over an artificial lake. It was sort of like sailing at that. In those days, to mix metaphors, I played my horn like a kid skiing down a slalom, with more courage than sense. Falling on my face never occurred to me. One night I climbed up to Minton's, where bebop was born, in Harlem. A lot of white cats considered Minton's too steep a slope. I never imagined somebody might not like me because I was white. I was absolutely fearless. I took out my trombone and started to play "Walkin'" with Art Blakey, then known as Abdullah Buhaina, a fearful cat I was later told. I noticed Miles Davis standing in a dark corner, I tried harder because Miles was with Bird's band. (Miles loved dark corners). He came over as I packed up. I slunk into a cool slouch. I practised cool slouches. We were both wearing shades - no eyes to be seen. "You got eyes to make a rehearsal tomorrow?" he asked me. "I guess so." I acted as though I didn't give one shit for his "Four." Miles made it clear he couldn't care less if I showed up or not: "Nola Studios." Driving over the Triborough Bridge to the house by the tennis courts at five-AM, I felt like a batboy who had been offered a tryout with The next day at four I found myself with Miles, Gerry Mulligan, Max Roach, John Lewis, Lee Konitz, Junior Collins, Bill Barber and Al McKibbon playing arrangements by Mulligan and Gil Evans. We would come to be called "The Birth Of The Cool." when I started cheating on my mistress. I went into my father's steel fabricating business to support my young wife and three young children. When my father died, I became President. I was the only President my friends knew. Everybody's Only President had problems presiding. He had a closet full of neckties, custom shirts and a suit for every day of the week. By the age of twenty-three his ambition was to grow old. Responsible people call this attitude "responsible," "mature," "serious." Youth was a preparation for old age, music a tangent and vacations were spent to work more efficiently when they were over. You might have asked Everybody's Only President whatever happened to his burning love for music. He asked himself....Wait a minute. Talk about alienation. What's this third person shit? That was me! I quit the business when my first wife left me, came to Paris to "find myself," practiced my trombone a lot, went back to New York and joined Maynard Ferguson's big band. Realizing my ambition, I rose out of pits hungover. Maynard's band worked opposite Miles and Trane in Birdland for two weeks. I felt extremely hip walking from my Tenth Avenue apartment across 57th street to Birdland carrying my horn. A few weekends later, I drove one of Maynard's cars to Cincinnatti and back through a snowstorm for a one-nighter. He gave me two checks; $35 for playing and $102 for driving. And so Everbody's Only President was reincarnated - "responsible, mature, serious." was a flash. I had moved to Greenwich Village. My local paper, The Village Voice, had no jazz critic. I would be it. I became it. It became me. The idea was to get a name in print so I could work with my own band, a rationalization for cheating on mistress music. Wearing still another hat, I stopped practicing and only started again a decade later, after marrying my French wife when we were both vegetables for too many seasons in the Vaucluse and I had nothing better to do. Which more or less brings us up to date. Oh, I forgot a few details - I have been writing for the International Herald Tribune for 21 years, I toured with a French rock band called Telephone and I had a son...not necessarilly in that order. I am the only living trombone player ever to have played with Miles Davis and Telephone. My son, seven at the time, came on tour with us. Kids are good luck on the road and the members of Telephone, kids themselves, carried him on their shoulders, played ping pong and video games and rolled around dressing room floors with him. During concerts, he sat on-stage right behind drummer Richard Kolinka, who juggled his sticks and painted his face like a pirate. When the tour was over I asked my son to keep me company going to the office to get paid.

Dec. 16, 2012 Background Scripture: Romans 12:3-8 Devotional Reading: Ephesians 4:1-16 In the motion picture “Alfie,” the theme song asks, “What’s it all about, Alfie?” The “it” is life; the meaning of human history. Is there a purpose to all this and, if there is, what is it? Although written in the 17th century, Shakespeare’s “Macbeth” puts it more eloquently: Tomorrow, and tomorrow and tomorrow Creeps in this petty pace from day to day To the last syllable of recorded time; And all our yesterdays have lighted fools The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle! Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player, That struts and frets his hour upon the stage And then is heard no more. It is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, I will admit, I do not hear anyone today expressing the mystery of existence with such artistry, but I see lots of people living as though it is true that we are no more than shadows, poor brief players, idiots full of sound and fury and signifying nothing. Macbeth’s words are a response to the tragic death of his queen. And it is when we experience loss – loss of a child, a spouse, a job, a career, a physical attribute or facility – that we are likely to ask what this life is really all about. The truth in love This is the mystery the writer of Ephesians mentions on six specific occasions: 1:09, 3:03, 3:04, 3:09, 5:32 and 6:19, a mystery that is not meant to be hidden or rationed to an elite few, but revealed plainly to all who truly want to know. “I pray that you may have the power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth, to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God” (4:18,19). It is a “mystery,” not of divine intention, but out of human blindness to it. The writer of Ephesians reveals the mystery in different ways. For example: “There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to the one hope of your calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism one God and Father of all, who is above all and through all and in all” (4:4-6). The emphasis all through Ephesians is the “oneness” revealed and experienced in Jesus Christ: the oneness of God’s purpose, the oneness of His universe and the oneness of intended humankind. This oneness includes the unity of congregations, denominations and of all who bear the name of Christ. This is the plan of God and there is no need to ask if there is another. This is it. As Ephesians chapters 1-3 lay out the mystery to which we are all called, chapters 4-6 spell out the practical ways to implement the mystery of God’s plan, so that it is no longer a “mystery” in the world: “I therefore, the prisoner of the Lord, beg you to lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, making every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace” (4:1-3). Frankly, does that sound like your congregation? Like your denomination? Like the community where you live? And, if not, why not? Recently, I heard two friends arguing bitterly about, of all things, God’s will for the presidential election last month. It disturbed me to hear them so angry with one another. Then, into the room walked another friend who, quickly catching the gist of what was going on, said angrily, “For Christ’s sake, grow up!” I don’t know if he meant it as profanity or something more profound. But I recalled the challenge in Ephesians 4:14,15: “We must no longer be children, tossed to and fro and blown about by every wind of doctrine, by people’s trickery, by their craftiness in deceitful scheming. But speaking the truth in love, we must grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ.” The argument ended abruptly and silently. Rabbi Hillel Silverman told of a new family that, some years ago, moved into a northern Minnesota village. Their religion was similar to that of the majority of villagers. Although there was no notable prejudice in that community, the new family nevertheless felt a wall separating them and their neighbors, who seemed cold, distant and suspicious. At sunset late one afternoon, however, the family’s six-year-old child wandered away from their backyard. The parents searched frantically through an adjoining wheat field. It began to get colder. Suddenly, the neighbors – Protestant, Catholic and Jewish – began to appear to help in the hunt. But there seemed no trace of the little girl. Finally, the town mayor said to all: “Before it’s too late, let us all join hands, let’s form an unbroken human line, a human chain, and we will sweep this wheat field before it is too late. We will go up and down until we find her.” Within 30 minutes they found her, half-frozen but alive. The rabbi finished, saying, “I just cannot forget these words of the mayor: ‘Let’s all join hands before it is too late.’” Followers of Christ in the USA: Is it too late? The views and opinions expressed in this column are those of the author and not necessarily those of Farm World. Those with questions or comments for Rev. Althouse may write to him in care of this publication.

- Special Sections - Public Notices On Chanukah, the main mitzvah, or commandment is to light the Hanukkah menorah at sundown. This is to remember the miracle that the oil that was lit on the menorah was only enough to last a single day but ended up lasting for eight complete days. One of the traditions regarding lighting candles is to light oil like what was done in the Temple. However, we are not allowed to use a menorah that has seven branches like the one in the Temple –— which the Maccabees lit after expelling the Greeks from Israel. Instead, we light a menorah with eight branches, which is also known as a Chanukiyah. The simplest explanation for why we light an eight-branch menorah is because each candle represents one of the eight nights over which the miracle lasted. However, there is a more complicated reason as to why the mitzvah is performed as it is. To understand why we may light with oil and may not use a seven-branch menorah, we must look at Jewish Law, especially those laws involved with the building of the Mishkan and Beit HaMikdash, the Tabernacle and the Temple, respectively. If you currently subscribe or have subscribed in the past to the Los Alamos Monitor, then simply find your account number on your mailing label and enter it below. Click the question mark below to see where your account ID appears on your mailing label. If you are new to the award winning Los Alamos Monitor and wish to get a subscription or simply gain access to our online content then please enter your ZIP code below and continue to setup your account.

Keneseth Israel's new Blue Bell campus is thriving, with a congregation that boasts nearly 100 families, a Hebrew school and monthly Shabbat services. Rigler usually leads the monthly service, though occasionally, Senior Rabbi Lance Sussman or another member of the senior staff will step in. The campus currently operates out of St. John Lutheran Church, and members say that the relationship is solid. "It's been a wonderful partnership," said Andrew Flame, vice president of K.I. and a resident of Blue Bell. "From the first phone call, the pastor was immediately interested in welcoming us, and it's worked very well, I think, for the church and for us." Sussman, who's in his sixth year at the synagogue, stressed that it's not just the quantity of new members but the quality of the experience that is so significant. "A community has developed," he said, describing it as full of "wonderful people who came ready to jump in with both feet, both hands, and be part of the synagogue." The families have really taken the new campus to heart, and committees and activities have sprung up quickly. "Over the course of the year, what has transpired is that we have out in Blue Bell now a really dynamic, dedicated group of congregants, who have slowly taken hold and taken ownership of the campus in such a tremendous way," said K.I. president Carey Roseman. "It feels wonderful," added Sussman. "Brand-new people, who've just come into the congregation, are running Mitzvah Day projects, fundraising projects and all types of things." According to the rabbi, the Jewish population has been moving farther and farther out into the suburbs in the past decade, which led K.I. to look at where it could expand. When the congregation researched where families were moving, they saw the Blue Bell area as an opportunity for expansion. "We believed there's a good number of unaffiliated families that would have interest in a Reform synagogue in the Bell Bell area," said Flame. He added that there is currently no plan for K.I. in Elkins Park to move from its current location. Above all, the goal of unity remains paramount for the Blue Bell campus and the K.I. facility in Elkins Park. "We want to be one congregation," said Sussman. Moreover, according to the rabbi, since the new campus has had such a successful first year, leaders have now begun a search for a permanent home in Blue Bell. And as the campus begins its second year, it continues to grow. "It's been a metamorphosis," said Roseman. "And we could not be happier."

No Christianity without Jesus’ resurrection On Sunday, churches throughout the West celebrated Easter. For those of the Eastern Orthodox tradition, it will be celebrated next Sunday. While for many the focus of Easter celebrations is more on egg hunts and time with family and friends, the focus for Christians is on the resurrection of Jesus and what that means for each of us. What remains a mystery to me is how so many can claim to be Christians and observe the Easter celebration and yet not believe in the historical resurrection of Jesus. The bodily resurrection of Jesus is so central to the Christian Faith that there really could not even be a Christian Faith if Jesus did not rise from the dead. Without the resurrection of Jesus – who was crucified and suffered and died for the sins of all the world – there would be no reason to celebrate, no acquittal of sinners, no pardon, no forgiveness from God! The Apostle Paul wrote of this to the believers in the Greek city of Corinth: “For if Christ was not raised, your faith is futile, you are still in your sins, and then those who have fallen asleep in Christ are lost” (1 Cor. 15:17-18). Everything hinges on the factualness of the resurrection of Jesus. That is also why the Apostle not only told the believers in Corinth that Christ truly did rise from the dead; he provided them with a long list of eyewitnesses who had seen the risen Christ to prove Jesus’ resurrection was a historical fact. He wrote, “For I delivered to you at the first what I also received, that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He rose again thethird day, according to the Scriptures” (1 Cor. 15:3-4). He then went on to list those who had seen Jesus alive. There was Peter, the 12 apostles, more than 500 brothers at one time (and most were still alive at the time of Paul’s writing if any had questions or doubts about the resurrection). There were James, all the apostles again, and, lastly, Paul himself. Because Jesus did rise from the dead, Christians are assured of forgiveness and life in His name. Paul wrote to the believers at Rome, saying that Jesus “was delivered on account of our sins and was raised on account of our justification” (Rom. 4:25). The sins of the world were laid upon Jesus, and He was punished in the stead of mankind. His resurrection means that indeed full atonement was made. God accepted the sacrifice of His Son. For Jesus’ sake, the sins of all are paid for in full and pardoned by God! He wrote to the Christians in the Greek city of Thessalonica: “If we believe that Jesus died and rose again, those also who have fallen asleep through Jesus God will bring with Him” (1 Thess. 4:14). And he goes on to describe how, when Jesus returns, the dead in Christ will be raised up first, and then we believers who are alive and remain will be caught up in the clouds to meet our Lord Jesus in the air to be forever with the Lord. Now I wonder what those celebrate who do not believe the eye-witnessed accounts of Jesus’resurrection? What hope could they possibly have? They have no guarantee of forgiveness from God. They remain dead in their sins. They have no reason to believe that they will ever be raised up from the dead to enjoy the everlasting joys of heaven because, if Christ did not rise, how could they ever hope to be raised up? If they claim to be Christian but do not hold to the historical resurrection of Jesus, they are, as Paul said, “of all men, the most miserable” (1 Cor. 15:19). [Scriptures in this article translated by author directly from the Greek Received Text.] “And the angel answered and said unto the women, Fear not ye: for I know that ye seek Jesus, which was crucified. He is not here: for He is risen, as He said. Come, see the place where the Lord lay.” Matthew 28:5-6 If you were looking for a loved one who had died and was buried, where would you look? Wouldn’t you go to the cemetery and to the grave site? I believe most of us, at least at times, visit the graves of much-loved family members and friends. Where would you have gone to find Jesus on that first Sunday morning after His crucifixion and burial? Wouldn’t you, like the women who followed Jesus, have gone to His tomb, expecting to find His body there? Yet, we see from the Scriptures that the tomb was the wrong place to look for Jesus – we would not have found Him there! When the women went to the tomb on the third day, that first Sunday morning following Jesus’ death and burial, they did not find the body of Jesus laying in the tomb (Matthew 28:1ff.; Mark16:1ff.; Luke 23:55ff.). Instead, they saw an angel of God who told them, “Fear not ye: for I know that ye seek Jesus, which was crucified. He is not here: for He is risen, as He said. Come, see the place where the Lord lay.” Jesus was not found in the tomb, because He had risen “as He said” (cf. Matthew 16:21; 17:22-23; 20:17-19). There had been “a great earthquake; for the angel of the Lord descended from heaven, and came and rolled back the stone from the door” of the tomb, showing to all the world that the tomb was empty – that Jesus Christ had risen from the dead (Matthew 28:2). Where can we find Jesus? If we travel to Jerusalem, to the tomb site, as many do at this time of year, we will not find Jesus; for He is not there! He is not in the grave, as some would have us believe (vv. 11-15)! He is risen as He said, and the tomb is empty! And so, where can we find Jesus? We know and believe that He has risen and is alive, and that He has paid in full for all our sins and is ascended to the right hand of God the Father, where He intercedes for us and prepares a place for us to be with Him forever (cf. Romans 8:34; 1 John 2:1-2; John 14:1-3). We know that He rules and fills all things and is with us always to the end of this world (cf. Ephesians 1:20-23; Matthew 28:20). We know that He dwells in our hearts by His Holy Spirit (John 14:23ff.; 16:7ff.). And, we know that He will come again to raise up the dead and to take all who have placed their hope in Him to be with Him forever in heaven (cf. Hebrews 9:24-28; John 5:28-29; 6:39-40; 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18; Revelation 20:11- 21:8; 1 Peter 1:3-5)! Where can we find Jesus? Not among the dead, but among the living! And, we look for Him to appear in clouds of glory at any moment! This same Jesus who “loved us, and washed us from our sins in His own blood … cometh with clouds; and every eye shall see Him” (Revelation 1:5, 7; cf. Acts 1:11). Don’t look for Him in the tombs. Instead, keep looking up! O Dear Lord Jesus, grant that we not look for You among the dead, but among the living, and trust that, as You have died for our sins and are risen again, we have forgiveness for all sins and shall also rise to dwell with You in the eternal mansions of heaven. Amen. “And it came to pass, as he sat at meat with them, he took bread, and blessed it, and brake, and gave to them. And their eyes were opened, and they knew him; and he vanished out of their sight. And they said one to another, Did not our heart burn within us, while he talked with us by the way, and while he opened to us the scriptures?” Luke 24:30-32 Read Luke 24:13-43 Not desiring that these two disciples go away in unbelief and filled with doubts over what had occurred in Jerusalem and the accounts they had heard of His resurrection, Jesus joined them on the road to Emmaus that first Easter eve and showed them from the Old Testament Scriptures that it was indeed necessary for the Messiah to suffer and die for the sins of all the world and to rise again on the third day. Their hearts burned within them as Jesus taught them from the Word of God and opened up to them the Scriptures. And, as we read, in the breaking of bread, their eyes were opened and they recognized Jesus, alive from the dead. Jesus does not want us to go away from hearing again the events of that first resurrection Sunday without faith. He doesn’t want us to leave perplexed or troubled by doubts and fears over what happened and what it means to us, and so, by His Holy Spirit, He comes to us and shows us from His Word that it truly was necessary for Him to suffer and die upon the cross and be forsaken and condemned of His own Father on account of our sins. He opens up the Scriptures to us and shows us that He was to die for the sins of the world and rise again on the third day (cf. Isa. 53) that we and all sinners might have God’s pardon and forgiveness and through faith in Christ’s shed blood receive life everlasting. And though we may not yet see with our eyes His bodily presence with us, Jesus reveals Himself to us as our crucified and risen Savior through the Scriptures. He opens to us the divine Word that we might see Him and know and trust in His great love and mercy toward us. And do not our hearts burn within us as we hear the Word of our God and Savior? Through the Scriptures, He reveals and makes known to us that indeed “Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures … He was buried … and He rose again the third day according to the scriptures” (1 Cor. 15:3,4). He makes known to us that “He [God the Father] hath made us accepted in the beloved. In whom we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of his grace” (Eph. 1:6,7). Dear Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, grant that we not come away from the hearing of Your innocent sufferings and death upon the cross, and of Your glorious resurrection, troubled by doubts and fears. Come to us by Your Holy Spirit and open up the Scriptures to us that we may come to see You and know and believe that in You we have forgiveness for all our sins and life everlasting. Amen. If Christ Be Not Raised…. “And if Christ be not raised, your faith is vain; ye are yet in your sins. Then they also which are fallen asleep in Christ are perished. If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable. But now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the firstfruits of them that slept.” 1 Corinthians 15:17-20 Today, we as Christians celebrate the bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ from the grave after His crucifixion and brutal death upon a Roman cross just days before. But not all believe in the resurrection. Even among so called “Christians” there are some who question and deny the bodily resurrection of Jesus and treat the whole issue of Jesus’ bodily resurrection as an insignificant matter, speaking only of a spiritual resurrection in which Jesus’ followers carry on His work by showing love and doing charitable works for the good of all mankind. But is the historical fact of Jesus’ resurrection really important? Does our faith really depend upon it? I invite you to listen to the inspired Word of God penned by the hand of the Apostle Paul and consider the hypothetical question: What “if Christ be not raised”? “And if Christ be not raised, your faith is vain; ye are yet in your sins. Then they also which are fallen asleep in Christ are perished. If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable.” What does the Word of God say? If Jesus did not truly rise from the dead, our faith is vain, empty and useless! If Jesus is not alive, you and I are still dead in our sins and have no hope of forgiveness and life everlasting. If Jesus’ body is still moldering or decaying in some ancient tomb near Jerusalem, all those who died trusting in Jesus Christ – from Adam and Eve, Abraham and David to our very own loved ones who fell asleep in the confidences that Jesus would raise them up are lost forever. And if our faith and hope in Christ Jesus is only of benefit in this life – a crutch or security blanket to help us cope with life’s problems – we are, as St. Paul writes, “of all men most miserable.” Think of the Apostle Paul and the other disciples of Jesus who suffered the loss of all things and were persecuted and even killed because of their faith in the crucified and risen Christ. If Christ did not rise, what a waste the lives of his followers were! And what about you and me? If Christ be not raised, all our time and effort put into serving Christ and spreading His kingdom would have been a sham, a deception and a complete waste of our time and resources. If Jesus were not raised, we would have nothing to celebrate today, no reason to be here on Sunday mornings and no hope for tomorrow! Without the bodily resurrection of Jesus, there can be no Christianity, no Church, no kingdom of God! But Jesus did rise bodily from the grave! The tomb was empty. Angels announced His resurrection, and Jesus Himself appeared to His disciples showing Himself to be risen and alive by many infallible proofs over a period of 40 days (cf. Acts 1:3). Jesus appeared to the women, to the twelve apostles and to many other of His disciples on numerous occasions. The apostle sums up Jesus’ resurrection appearances in this way: “For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures; and that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures: And that he was seen of Cephas, then of the twelve: After that, he was seen of above five hundred brethren at once; of whom the greater part remain unto this present, but some are fallen asleep. After that, he was seen of James; then of all the apostles. And last of all he was seen of me also, as of one born out of due time” (1 Corinthians 15:3-8). You see, if anyone during the First Century had questions or doubts about Jesus’ resurrection, there was no shortage of eyewitnesses to His resurrection appearances. He even appeared to more than 500 disciples at once, and most of them were still alive if anyone wanted to talk to them and hear their eyewitness accounts. The Apostle Paul includes himself in the list of witnesses because of the risen Christ’s appearances to Him. The Jewish rulers who tried to cover up the fact of Jesus’ resurrection by bribing the soldiers to say Jesus’ disciples stole the body while they were asleep – in itself, a foolish story – could have put an end to all question if they had just produced the body, but they didn’t and they couldn’t because there was not body to be found – they knew the tomb was empty! And, if such a story were true, why would Jesus’ disciples give up everything, including their lives, to promote a lie? They wouldn’t have; but they did give up all, they did suffer painful and torturous deaths for one reason: Jesus did rise, as He said. And what does the historical fact of Jesus’ resurrection mean for us today? It means our faith is not empty or vain. Jesus did indeed pay in full the just punishment for the sins of the whole world, for God raised Him up on the third day (cf. Romans 4:25). We, by the grace of God, are not still dead in our sins. Your sins and my sins are paid for in full and forgiven because of Christ’s perfect sacrifice. It means that we too will be raised up, Christ, the first fruits, and we also when He returns. As Jesus said, “Because I live, ye shall live also” (John 14:19). It means those who have fallen asleep before us, trusting in the Lord Jesus, have not perished. They are not lost forever. Rather, those who “sleep in Jesus will God bring with Him” on the Last Day (1 Thess. 4:13-18). Yes, it’s true. Everything depends on the resurrection of Jesus. If Jesus did not rise, all is lost, no one can be saved. But Jesus did rise! And, because he died for all our sins and rose again in victory, we have forgiveness for all sins and the assurance that we shall be raised up to be with Him forever in paradise! Dearest Lord Jesus, we give You thanks and praise for Your bitter sufferings and death in our stead, and for Your glorious resurrection on the third day, that we might be assured of our salvation and await Your return in the sure hope of life everlasting, Graciously keep us unto that Day. Amen. From the Lutheran Confessions The Smalcald Articles THE THIRD PART OF THE ARTICLES Part III, Article IV. Of the Gospel. We will now return to the Gospel, which not merely in one way gives us counsel and aid against sin; for God is superabundantly rich [and liberal] in His grace [and goodness]. First, through the spoken Word by which the forgiveness of sins is preached [He commands to be preached] in the whole world; which is the peculiar office of the Gospel. Secondly, through Baptism. Thirdly, through the holy Sacrament of the Altar. Fourthly, through the power of the keys, and also through the mutual conversation and consolation of brethren, Matt. 18:20: Where two or three are gathered together, etc. Part III, Article V. Of Baptism. 1] Baptism is nothing else than the Word of God in the water, commanded by His institution, or, as Paul says, a washing in the Word; as also Augustine says: Let the Word come to the element, and it becomes a Sacrament. 2] And for this reason we do not hold with Thomas and the monastic preachers [or Dominicans] who forget the Word (God’s institution) and say that God has imparted to the water a spiritual power, which through the water washes away sin. 3] Nor [do we agree] with Scotus and the Barefooted monks [Minorites or Franciscan monks], who teach that, by the assistance of the divine will, Baptism washes away sins, and that this ablution occurs only through the will of God, and by no means through the Word or water. 4] Of the baptism of children we hold that children ought to be baptized. For they belong to the promised redemption made through Christ, and the Church should administer it [Baptism and the announcement of that promise] to them. Part III, Article VI. Of the Sacrament of the Altar. 1] Of the Sacrament of the Altar we hold that bread and wine in the Supper are the true body and blood of Christ, and are given and received not only by the godly, but also by wicked Christians. 2] And that not only one form is to be given. [For] we do not need that high art [specious wisdom] which is to teach us that under the one form there is as much as under both, as the sophists and the Council of Constance teach. 3] For even if it were true that there is as much under one as under both, yet the one form only is not the entire ordinance and institution [made] ordained and commanded by Christ. 4] And we especially condemn and in God’s name execrate those who not only omit both forms but also quite autocratically [tyrannically] prohibit, condemn, and blaspheme them as heresy, and so exalt themselves against and above Christ, our Lord and God [opposing and placing themselves ahead of Christ], etc. 5] As regards transubstantiation, we care nothing about the sophistical subtlety by which they teach that bread and wine leave or lose their own natural substance, and that there remain only the appearance and color of bread, and not true bread. For it is in perfect agreement with Holy Scriptures that there is, and remains, bread, as Paul himself calls it, 1 Cor. 10:16: The bread which we break. And 1 Cor. 11:28: Let him so eat of that bread. Bible Study in Preparation for Sunday Scripture Readings for Sunday are: Psalm 148; Acts 4:32-35; 1 John 1:1 – 2:2; and John 20:19-31. Please read them in their context as you prepare for worship on Sunday. The Sunday Adult Bible Class will continue its study of the book of Hebrews, in chapter eight, verse 8ff. Remember to Pray Remember to pray for our church and for all our members, that none be lost to Christ’s kingdom but that all continue in repentance and be strengthened and built up in the true and saving faith in Christ Jesus through the hearing and study of His Word. We continue to pray for all who have been sick or who are suffering among us – for Dixie Grant, Dawn Hiebert,Sam Rusch, Bonnie Hawes, Mel Boren and Pastor Moll; for those who have been absent from us, for our extended families and for believers who are alone and have no congregation. Continue to pray for Lutheran congregations and believers around the world who are persecuted or suffering for their faith in Christ Jesus. Events and Announcements Information for bulletins or newsletters may be sent to Pastor Moll by calling him at 479-233-0081 or by e-mail at email@example.com. [Unless otherwise noted, Scripture quotations are from the King James Version of the Bible.]

To start, Drake knows exactly as much about shooting guns as I do, which is very little. But, okay, sure Drake, whatever you say. The video for “Hold On (We’re Going Home)” is not at all what you’d expect. It starts with former child star Aubrey Graham sitting at a table with his friends. You see, he is the first Jewish Canadian to run a drug cartel. Can you hear the glass chuppah shattering? Drake and his friends then stage a violent rescue mission to save Drake’s girlfriend. Spoiler alert: there’s a happy ending. Honestly, though, this is better than half the romantic comedies released in theaters in the past five years. Lyrics for the track are now on Directlyrics.

One of the foremost second-generation Abstract Expressionists, Norman Bluhm was born on March 28, 1921 on the South Side of Chicago and graduated with distinction from high school at the age of 16. He became Mies van der Rohe's youngest student at the Armour (now Illinois) Institute of Technology. For the next three years Bluhm was rigorously trained in the Bauhaus approach to modern architecture. He spent long hours at the drafting table, making meticulously detailed architectural drawings. In his free time he learned to fly an airplane and played semi-pro basketball. The exacting discipline of his studies coupled with his knowledge of flying and the intense physical regimen of basketball stood him in good stead as a soldier and later as an artist. During World War II Bluhm served in the United States Air Force as a B-26 bomber pilot and flew 44 missions over North Africa and Europe most notably, the famous mission over Romania that destroyed the last oil supply of the Nazis at the cost of about 75% of American bomber crews. Upon his return home Bluhm decided not to resume his architectural studies and instead decided to study art at the Academia de Belle Arte in Florence, Italy and at both the École des Beaux Arts and at the Académie de la Grande Chaumiére in Paris. Throughout the 1940's and 1950's he lived in Paris. He had numerous friends in the art, literature, and other creative fields. Among his close acquaintances were the artists Joan Mitchell, Sam Francis, Jean Paul Riopelle, and Zao Wou-Ki. He was married to Claude Souvrain until 1956 and returned home to the United States. Shortly thereafter he embarked on a successful career as an Abstract Expressionist Painter. Bluhm came to New York in 1956 (the year Jackson Pollock died) and was a central figure in the second-generation of Abstract Expressionism. He was an integral part of the hard-drinking, hard- charging crowd who frequented the infamous Cedar Tavern, an almost mythical meeting place for New York bohemians. A year after arriving in New York, Bluhm had his first solo show with the new Leo Castelli Gallery, where he appeared with such other notable artists as Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns. In 1961 he married Carolyn Ogle and stayed in New York City until 1969 with their two children, David and Nina. While in New York City Bluhm collaborated with the curator and poet Frank O'Hara to create a legendary collection of works entitled "Poem Paintings." From 1970 to 1980 Bluhm and his family lived in Millbrook, New York. From 1980 to 1987 they lived in East Hampton, New York and thereafter in East Wallingford, Vermont until his death on February 3, 1999. An important figure in the heyday of Abstract Expressionism, Bluhm enjoyed substantial critical success during his lifetime. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Museum of Modern Art are just a few of the museums that hold the work of Bluhm. Bluhm found greater comfort in painting than in any fame he might have achieved or in any time spent theorizing about art. Shortly before Norman Bluhm died at his home in East Wallingford, Vermont on February 3, 1999 "Art in America" Editor Raphael Rubinstein predicted that his body of work would be as important to the 21st Century as Cezanne's work was to the 20th century. Bluhm's work, while recognized and critically praised throughout his career, has never received the measure of appropriate attention that some of the work of his contemporaries like Jackson Pollack, Robert Rauschenberg, and Jasper Johns did. This lack of recognition was due in large part to his unwillingness to cater sufficiently to those in the commercial art world who would have promoted his work in order to ensure a continuing lucrative career as well as a lasting legacy. Bluhm's exact place in the annals of art history was complicated by the changing art tastes in the 1960's with the advent of Pop Art, a movement which Bluhm found utterly lacking both in beauty and in any form of emotion. Still and all there is no denying the great talent that Norman Bluhm exhibited in his works many of which are part of the permanent collections of several prominent museums. Leo Castelli Gallery, 1957 (solo) Carnegie Institute, 1958 Paul Kantor Gallery, Los Angeles 1958 Galleria del Naviglio, Milan 1959 Whitney Museum of American Art, 1959, 1972 Leo Castelli Gallery, 1957, (solo), 1960 (solo) "American Abstract Image", Guggenheim Museum, 1961 Galleria Notizie, Turin 1961 David Anderson Gallery, New York 1962 Galerie Semiha Huber, Zurich 1963 American Gallery, New York 1963 Galerie Smith, Brussels 1964 Galerie Anderson-Mayer, Paris 1965 "Two Decades of American Painting", Museum of Modern Art, 1966 "Large Scale American Painting", Jewish Museum, 1967 "Poem Paintings by Frank O'Hara and Norman Bluhm", New York University 1967 Galerie Stadler, Paris 1968, 1972, 1975, 1982, 1988 Corcoran Gallery of Art, 1969 (solo) Martha Jackson Gallery, New York, 1971, 1972, 1974 Everson Museum of Art, Syracuse, New York 1973 Vassar College Gallery of Art, Poughkeepsie, New York 1974 Palazzo delle Prigioni Vecchie, Venice, Italy 1974 Galleria II Cerchio, Milan 1974 Galleria Rotta, Milan 1974 Contemporary Art Museum, Houston 1976 Robinson Gallery, Houston 1976 Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington DC 1977 Fine Arts Center Gallery, State University of New York, Stony Brook, 1984 Herbert Palmer Gallery, Los Angeles 1985 Washburn Gallery, New York 1986, 1989, 1990, 1991 Zolla-Lieberman Gallery, Chicago 1986 "Norman Bluhm, "Works on Paper, 1947-1987", Fred L Emerson Gallery Hamilton College, Clinton, New York 1987 Anderson Gallery, Buffalo, New York 1992 Ace Contemporary Exhibitions, New York 1994 "In Memory of My Feelings: Frank O'Hara and American Art," The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, 1999 Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown, OH 1999 "The Late Paintings of Norman Bluhm", Station Museum of Contemporary Art, Houston, TX, 2007 "Norman Bluhm Drawings", Worcester Art Museum 2002 Museums and Public Collections Addison Gallery of American Art, Andover, MA Albright-Knox Gallery, Buffalo, NY Arizona State University, AZ University of Arizona Art Museum, AZ Ball State University Museum of Art, IN Chrysler Museum of Art, VA Cleveland Museum of Art Columbus Museum, GA Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. Dallas Museum of Art, TX Dayton Art Institute Everson Museum of Art, NY Harvard University Art Museums, Cambridge, MA High Museum of Art, Atlanta, GA Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington D.C Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY Museum of Modern Art, NY National Museum of American Art, Washington, DC National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Australia Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO Neuberger Museum of Art, NY New York University Collection Phillips Collection, Washington, DC Phoenix Art Museum Smithsonian Museum of American Art University of Iowa Museum of Art, Iowa City His unvarnished ambition translated into paintings such as Untitled, 1978 that are epic in their originality and yet profoundly classic with their roots in the annals of art history. Amidst sensuous swirls of flowing violet and purple colored paint there is a sense of motion as the provocative shapes roll across the paper and carry the viewer through a visual treat for the eyes to behold. There is no stopping, only the enjoyment of the picture's intensity as the picture seems to exist beyond the physical limitations of the paper. In 1973, James Harithas organized an exhibition at the Everson Museum of Art in Syracuse to display Norman Bluhm's most recent work. Many art historians believe that this exhibition signified a transition in the artist's career. Thomas B. Hess, a previous editor of ARTNews, noted this change: "The basic forms have changed too, becoming more Baroque and engaging in a lucid game of curve and counter-curve, in 8-shaped elements and passages where pink and yellow reinforce an association with anatomy—a highly abstracted glimpse of the belly, buttocks and breasts of an odalisque." At this point in Bluhm's career, he was carrying Abstract Expressionism to a new level by expanding its spiritual meaning and cultural potential. His later works, as mentioned by Hess are sweeping erotic creations. Although it is not easily identifiable, Bluhm is portraying the nude. Furthermore, swirling explosions of paint interact and create a composition that consists of two separate movements. Together, these movements reveal the tension of an inward-circling picture that draws the eye to the center. When comparing Untitled, 1978 and works of this period to Bluhm's earlier paintings of the 50s and 60s, Peter Schjeldahl, the famous Art Critic for the New Yorker, wrote: "The sense of struggle, of a wrestling match between the artist and his physical and psychic materials, remains central to one's experiences of his paintings. What has abated is the desperate, go-for-broke attrition that marks his earlier work. The combat is mellower now, the combatants wilier and more mutually respectful. The warm eroticism of the new work is one result, a quantum of energy liberated from the primary confrontation of man and canvas." Private Collection, New York

Purim (Hebrew: פּוּרִים) is a Jewish Holiday which commemorates Jewish people being saved from extermination in Persia. Top Tweets for Purim Starts - Purim Starts Facts & Quotes Purim Top Events and Things to Do Purim References and Related SitesPurim Cantor Matt Axelrod: Your Guide to the Jewish Holidays: From Shofar to Seder, Jason Aronson Inc., 2013

A 19C structure, formerly a Nazi prison, today operating as a mausoleum for its victims and holds a memorial for Jewish soldiers. The Rotunda - Martyrs' Museum, Zamosc Plan your perfect trip to Poland! Easily create an itinerary based on your preferences: Where to visit? For how long? What to do there?Plan your trip

His father was arrested for failure to disperse from a Ku Klux Klan rally. He was also investigated for profiteering by the U. S. Senate and the State of New York and sued by the Department of Justice for civil rights violations. His son-in-law’s father spent fourteen months in Federal prison for illegal campaign contributions, tax evasion, and witness tampering. These are the men Donald Trump and Jared Kushner idolize. So, can it be any surprise that Trump has proven to be a religious bigot and a racist and Kushner an unapologetic defender of his father-in-law’s many crimes? Yet these characteristics are only a small part of the sordid story that emerges in Andrea Bernstein’s shocking new book about the two families, American Oligarchs. Even if you already know a lot about Donald Trump and his family, you’re likely to learn more from this impressive account of the Trumps and Kushners backstory. American Oligarchs: The Kushners, the Trumps, and the Marriage of Money and Power by Andrea Bernstein (2020) 496 pages @@@@@ (5 out of 5) The Trumps and Kushners backstory begins with both grandfathers Bernstein’s impeccably researched account is grounded in the lives of Trump’s grandfather, Frederick Trump, and Jared Kushner’s, Joseph Kushner. Both were immigrants from Europe, Trump from Germany in 1885, Kushner from Poland in the years following World War II. And both Frederick Trump and Joe Kushner were homebuilders. The wealth they left behind on their passing became the foundation of the fortunes now enjoyed by Donald Trump and Jared Kushner. Passing along immense wealth from generation to generation Bernstein explains in detail how both the Trump and Kushner families have managed to pass along such immense wealth from generation to generation, paying little or nothing in taxes. “Fred Trump and Donald Trump engaged in secret schemes to avoid paying taxes that the New York Times called ‘outright fraud,'” Bernstein notes. Apparently, the Kushner family has used similar tax-avoidance mechanisms. And it is through such means that ultra-wealthy Americans have grown their fortunes from generation to generation, creating what many observers have come to view as an oligarchy. Jared Kushner and his wife are ultra-wealthy in their own right Much has been made of the claim that Donald Trump is a billionaire, and it may well be true. He is, in any case, extremely wealthy. What is less well known is how rich his son-in-law is. Bernstein makes that clear. “In the year they became senior White House advisors,” she writes, “[Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump] made at least $82 million in income. The next year they reported earning between $29 and $135 million.” She reveals, further, that at the age of twenty-six, he had “owned a building valued at almost two billion dollars and the New York Observer publishing group.” The amazing story of how Jared’s grandparents survived the Holocaust Joe and Rae Kushner were Holocaust survivors, and Bernstein does justice to their heroic tale. Half the population of the town they lived in — then Polish, now Belarusian — was Jewish. Of the 10,000 Jews who lived there before the Nazi invasion, only about 550 survived. Joe and Rae managed to escape in 1943 with 250 others by digging a tunnel from the Jewish ghetto and hiding the dirt they excavated in the walls of the homes where they were quartered. For the duration of the war, Rae hid out with a band of Jewish partisans in the nearby forest, and Joe lived in a hole in the ground, venturing out only to steal food from neighboring farms. And their ordeal didn’t end then. Interned after the war as “displaced persons” in a series of camps, they could find no country willing to accept them until, at last, using doctored papers, they managed to gain entry to the United States. Given this family history, it’s startling that Jared Kushner could support his father-in-law’s bigoted immigration policies. American Oligarchs is not an easy read. Bernstein’s prose is serviceable, but her material resists speed-reading. Much of the book is devoted to details about real estate transactions, tax avoidance schemes, and litigation that only unravel on close inspection. About the author Andrea Bernstein is a long-time contributor to NPR and the co-host of the Trump, Inc. podcast (through which I learned about this book). She has won the Peabody and more than fifty other awards for her reporting. With her colleague Ilya Marritz, Bernstein has broken key stories, including those on how Donald Trump, Jr., and Ivanka Trump avoided criminal indictment, Paul Manafort’s money-laundering, Michael Cohen’s fraudulent business practices, and Rudy Giuliani’s dealings in Ukraine. Now, in American Oligarchs, her first book, she adds to the luster of her career with a groundbreaking account of the Trumps and Kushners backstory. For further reading I’ve also reviewed The top 5 books about Donald Trump and his impact on American democracy. You might also enjoy: - My 10 favorite books about business history (plus dozens of others) - Top 20 popular books for understanding American history - Top 10 nonfiction books about politics (plus dozens of runners-up) And you can always find my most popular reviews, and the most recent ones, plus a guide to this whole site, on the Home Page.

9:00am Monday 20th February 2012 By Tom Barnes Pupils as young as nine have been excluded from schools in Kingston for racist abuse, a Surrey Comet investigation has revealed. The primary school pupil is among 14 youngsters in the borough suspended from school in the last year. The nine-year-old, who is said to be white British, was given a half-day suspension for the offence which includes physical attacks and derogatory name calling and racist jokes. Kingston Council, who looks after schools in the borough, said the exclusion was for using racist language but could not reveal further information due to data protection laws. The shocking stats also revealed a 12-year-old white British girl was excluded from school last year for two days for using racist language toward another student. Exclusions for racist abuse are on the increase in the borough with five more incidents reported than in 2010 and nine more than in 2009. Tory education spokes-woman Andrea Craig said she was alarmed by the stats and plans to investigative further. She said: “Children do not pick these things up on their own, it comes from somewhere else, either parents or outside influences. “For a child to be excluded it must be something quite particularly if that child is just nine years old. “It is something that must be looked at, it must be scrutinised, we are lucky to live in a tolerant borough but that does not mean we can be complacent. It must be stamped out.” A spokesman for Kingston Council said they have procedures in place to monitor racial incidents in schools. He said: “We, together with school governors, have a duty to create and implement strategies to prevent and address racism. “All staff, teaching and non-teaching, should see dealing with racist incidents as an important part of their professional duties. “There should be an appreciation of the serious implications that racial harassment can have for the wellbeing of the school and the community. “Openness about incidents is encouraged. All schools promote racial tolerance through their inclusive ethos and the pastoral curriculum.” Reaction from community leaders. Rizwan Khaliq, a spokesman for the Muslim Association of Kingston, said: “Look at what is happening in football at the moment with Luis Suarez and one time England captain John Terry. “Children are very impressionable and can receive messages from different sources that can have a very negative impact. “Schools need to be more forthcoming with information so that a wider picture can emerge. It could just be that this is one isolated incident, however, if it is indicative of a wider problems in a certain area or areas of the borough then it is something that would need to be tackled sooner rather than later.” Rabbi Charley Baginsky, Kingston Liberal Synagogue, said: “We take a lot of time to go into schools because the people I work for, the Jewish community feel it is important to engage. “Many of the kids who come to the synagogue are the only Jewish children in the schools they go to, so getting involved in their school is important to breaking down barriers and suspicions about other groups. “What is also important is speaking to parents because it is all very well educating children but if they are getting negative messages at home then that will have no impact.” Kingston Racial Equality Council chairman John Azah described the figures as “absolutely shocking”. He said: “I am surprised to hear these figures as I have always thought Kingston was a very tolerant place. “We do a lot of work in secondary schools and because of that things are generally for good in our schools. “However, a lot of primary schools have been reluctant to have us come in. “Some school perhaps thinks if they ask us for help that will label them as a racist school. “But getting into schools early and tackling these problems is important.” © Copyright 2001-2013 Newsquest Media Group

Ohio Jewish Chronicle, 1961-12-29, page 01 |Save page Remove page||Previous||1 of 13||Next| Loading content ... COLUMBUS EDITION COiUMBUS EDITION i])\J/ Serving Columbus, Dayton, Central and Southwi Vol. 39, No. 53 FRIDAY, DECEMBER 29. 1961 QQ Davoted to Aoierl^n and JtwTih idealt Morocco Stops Jews From Property Sale GASABUANGA, (JTA) — Moroccan authorities in the southern part of the country are prohibiting the sale of property by Jews who wish 'o leave their towns, it was reported here recently. In Elssaouria, leaflets are being distributed urging local Moslems to refrain from purohasing houses or any property frbm. Jews leaving the town. At the same time, five Jews were arrested in the southern MIoroccan region of Ksar es-Souk on charges of "Zionist activities" and of allegedly helping Jews to I leave the country for emigration to Israel. A sbcth JeW, Slon Mr koubi, had been arrested earlier an simltor charges, and is stlU in jail pending trial. The five arrest¬ ed were Identified as Troubly, EerkW, Nejjar, lohou and Melr Anna, A Moroccan court of ai>peala In Tanglers will hand down a Judg¬ ment next month In the case of Captain Morilas Reinardo, slUpper of the vessel "Prdce," In which 42 Jews were drowned last January when the slilp san'' off the Moroc¬ can coast. Reinardo was sentenced to four years and two months' after he was convicted by a lower court of manslaughter through ¦ negligence. Appeals by two other crew members of the ship, San¬ chez and Oastroman, who were sentenced to one year each, were rejected, and their sentences were confirmed. During the interrogation by the appeals court, Reinardo testified that a sudden gale had hit the ship and flooded the hull. He said the ship sank within a few mJn- utes. He admitted that he had abandoned the ship while It was sinking. Relnardo's attorney, a Jew Identiflied as Zaoul, pleaded ithat the court was Incompetent ' tu ^ly tile ca&e. Tl^e Mvtt4i|ii..&i)> At¬ torney General has demanded the maximum penalty provided by law. The appeals court is compos¬ ed entirely of Moslem judges. DEBATE VIEWS OF PROF. MARTIN RUBER TEL AVTV, (JTA) — Professor Martin Buber was presented with the Tel Aviv Municipality award for literature but not until after a sharp debate on his publicly ex¬ pressed view that Adolf Blioh- manm's death sentence should be eonununted to life Imprisonment CJouncll members of the Herut party demanded that the prize should not be awarded to Prlf. Buber. Joseph Soalphoff of Herut said that Professor had not denied a statement attributed to him that he would seek a revision of the death sentence imposed on the former Gestapo colionel. Acting Mayor E. Shechter op¬ posed the motion and said that Prof. Buber, whom he described as "ome of the greatest thinkers of our time," had the right to ex¬ press his opinion on any subject he chiose. The Council approved the prize b ya majority vote. RAANANA OUTLINES GOTIlilON PLANS A new feature of Raanana's Cotillion Ball, on Jan. 20 will be an "Alumni Table" for past Debs and their friends. This year's Debs will make their debut in society under a rose decked arbor at the Agudas Aohlm Synagogue. Mrs. Jerry Goldfarb will be at the piano to acconi.i>any them. They will officially be presented by Mr. Joseph Eiseniberg tind will glide through an exhibition waltz, with their dads, taught them by Ted Holmes. Music will be provided by Tom¬ my Dale. Hard at work to make this dance a success are: Dance chair¬ man Mrs. David Jacobwitz; Fund Raising, Mrs. Gerald Pruzan; Tictets, Mrs. Burton Kirscihner arid Mrs. Ben Grinblatt; Hos¬ pitality, Mrs. Michael Seldman and Mrs. Joseph Gwlrtsman; I>ec- orations, Mrs. Richard Brown and Mrs. George Heihn; Ad Book, Mrs. Sherman Krivlt and Publicity, Mrs. Sanford Joseph. Mrs. Sam Taub, president, in¬ vites the community to share the excitement and enthusiasm over the lovely debuntantea She also wishes to remind the Debs about the rehearsals for the CotUllon ball. Debs and Dads are to be at Agudas Achlm Synagogue on Jan. 7 at 4 p.m. Call Mrs. Burton Kirschnes BE. 7-7055 or Mrs. Ben Grinblatt BE. 5-3504 for tickets or they may be purchased at the door. Tickets are $5 per couple. A. A. Men Plan BaU For New Year's Eve The New Year will be welcomed in this Sunday night, Dec.. 31, at the Agudas Achim Social Hall, with dancing from 10 p.m. till 3 a.m., to the Danny Aberman Band. According to the committee, the Brotherhood's Annual New Years Eve dance promises to be the best yet, with nolsemakers, hats, set¬ ups and a breakfast at 1 ajn. be¬ ing provided. A limited number of reserva¬ tions are still available at $8.S0 per couple, by calling Marty Kaufher atBEJ. 5-B861 or Sol Tob- In at BE. V2917. SPRING FASHIONS TO RE PRESENTED AT ANOa-BIRTHDAY A star-dusted afternoon has been planned for members of the Columbus section, Council of Jewish Women according to' the committee In charge of the fourth anmiial Angel-Blrthday luncheon to be held on Tuesday, Peb. 6, at The Maramor. "Preview of Spring, 1962" wiU be . presented by professional models, through the courtesy of The Union Company, during the lunch6K>n. Gifts galore will be given to many lucky Anigels, Cherubim, Seraphim, and Arch-Angels dur¬ ing the afternoon. Mrs. Bernard FeitMnger, co-ohalrman of the luncheon, is making plans with the Richard Lewis Travel Agency for several gift trips. The "Angel of the Day" will be announced as the highlight of the afternioon. Suggestions for the fourth "Angel of the Day", a de¬ serving Council volunteer, should be sent to Mrs. Allan L. Meyer, 2756 Dale Ave. Members of Council are found working in many capacities through their service program. Weekly, many volunteers enter- bain the children at Nightingale Cottage with stories and enter¬ tainment. Included in OouncLl'a budget each year is an allotment for the Golden Age Program at Tlie Jewish Center. Council mem¬ bers, under the Qhairmanshlp of Mrs. Abe Greenspun, spend many hours assisting with this activity program tor our senior citizens. The Sewing group, under the co-cihrairmanship of Mrs. Herbert Cummins and Mrs. James Feibel, recently com.pleted a project for the maternity department of Grant Hospital. At the suggestion of Miss Jane Rowland, supervisor of the Maternity floor, members of the Sowing Group miadc Christ¬ mas stockings to present the new born infants to the new mothers on Christmas Day. Members of the Sewing Group include Mrs. Gertie Pinsliy, Mrs. Saul Koltun, Mrs, Ernest Deutsch, Mrs. Reuben Zalk, Mrs. Max Dre- If us, Mrs. Fay Levy, Mrs. Armand Abel, Mrs. Richard Abel, Mrs. S. Goodman, Mrs. Milton Katz, Mrs. M. L. Yuster, Mrs. Joseph Elngeiman, Mrs. S. Omstein, Mrs. R. Stern, Mna. B. Lurie, Mrs. S. Levine, Mrs. B. Yalman, and Mrs. M.' Resjer. Members desiring to attend the luncheon at The Maramor on Tuesday, Feb. 6, may pledge to be an Angel for $10.00; a Cheru¬ bim, for $15.00; a Seraphim for $25.00; or an Arch-angel for $50.00. Mrs. Jerome Kohn, Mrs. Murray Landers, or Mrs. George Ornstein, co-chairmen of pledges, will lie happy to receive Angel pledges. Teens From 3 States Attend K.LO. Convention In Columbus Columbus B.B.Y.O. members were host to 175 Teens from Ken¬ tucky, Indiana and Ohio at the K.I.O. regional convention, Deo. 24 to Dec. 28. Activities Included workshops, oratory and storytelling contests, business meetings and elections. The busy schedule waa top¬ ped off by a banquet, dance and installation of officers at Tifereth Israel last Wednesday night. For the second time In a row, a Columbualte won in the B.B.G. Oratory contest. First place was taken by Debbie Llnlck of the Emma Lazarus chapter. Last year's winner waa Rita Snyder, also of the Emma Lazarus ohAp- ter. Subject of this year's oratory contest waa "In The Beginning— God." Second place in the BjB.G. story- EXTRA SHOWS FOR "LOST RIRTHDAY" Due to heavy demand for tickets for the next performance of the Gallery Players production of "The Lost Birthday" on Dec. 31, two extra performances have been scheduled for the foUowin® Sun¬ day, Jan. 7, at 2 and 4:30 pjn. "The Lost Birthday," produced by Gallery Players, is an Actor's Lab Production by adult actors for a children's audience. The fast moving and wonderfully Imagina¬ tive play has been' staged and de¬ signed by William Buahnell. Since thcs eating capacity for this chil¬ dren's show ja Hmited, Interested individuals are requested to nMike their reaervations as early as pos¬ sible. This may be done by calling the Gallery Players ticket office at BE. 1-2731. Tickets are priced at fifty cents for children and seventy five cents for adults. The cast for "The I-ost Birth¬ day" includes: Al€in Altman, Betty Cohen', Phil EJnoch, Fran Flam- holz, Henry Grinsfelder, Willie Mcworter, Tom Reddy, Bea Roth, Mary Jo Rotunda; Lauren WerUn. Costumes have been arranged througih the servteos of Carol Ann BushneU, assisted by Sally Alt- man and Syl-via Frager. Other memt>ers of the bacit&tage crew include: Joe Cohen, technical di¬ rector; Alan Atantin, stage man¬ ager; Zelda Austen, Robert Red¬ dy, properties; Dennis Mellman, Ugo Epelbaum, lighting; Steve Pollack, Etenny Dorman, sound; Joe Cohen, Denny Yairian, Abe Green, set construction; Hal Tan- enbaum, art director; Rosa Ker- stein, Laddy Pinke, box office. president. The balance of the A.Z.Z. officers had not yet been voted on as the Chronicle went to press. telling contest was won by Terry Trager, ZIV chapter. Winners of contest are eligible to represent their chapters at the next District 2 convention. Harvey Wasserman, Heart of Oliio chapter won third place in the A.Z.A. Oratory contest. His subject was "Man Does Not live by Bread Alone." Among the resolutions passed was an agreement by the various chapters to give boolca for a libr¬ ary for Camp B'nai B'rith in Star¬ light, Pa. It was also agreed to donate funds to the lAF (Inter- natlon Service Fund) which cov¬ ers 11 different charities. Twenty adult advisors partici¬ pated in the convention. Among the advisors from Columbus were: Marvin Horkln, Joe White, Buz- zde Kanter, Henry Sterling, Mrs. Albert Becker, Mrs. Saniford Kop- pleman, Mrs. Sam Cohen, Bob Sobolovitch, Mrs. Murray Rosen, Mrs. Murray Edison and Sol Kaufman. Members of the Jewish com¬ munity of Columbus also partici¬ pated in the convention by hous¬ ing out-of-town delegates, furn¬ ishing car transportation day and night, and preparing €md serving meUs for the more than 250 youths in attendance at the con¬ vention. Election of officer swas held on Wednesday, Dec. 27. B.B.G. of¬ ficers elected were: President, Linda Feldman of South Bend, Ind; BUrst vice president, Susie Berk of Fort Wayne, Ind., second vice-president, J'tinet Brinn of Fort Wayne, Ind. and secretary, Bella Barton of Hammond, Ind. Barry Sherman of Louisville, Ky. was elected regional A.Z.A. president and Barry Cooper, also of Louisville was the new vice- Volunteers Needed Volunteer workers are need¬ ed for Heritage House, accord¬ ing to an annoiincement by Lazar Brener, executive direct¬ or. Persons interested In serv¬ ing as volunteers should con- tect Mrs. Joseph Scheoter, BE 1-5000; Mrs. Abe Yenkin, CL 2-1774; Mrs. I. NuUs, BE 1-8887 or Heritage House office, 237- 7417, A training course tor vol¬ unteer wvM-kers will be held on Jan. 16. SEEK WITNESSES TO NAZI CRIMES Witnesses to testify against the four Nazis above are being sought by the World Jewish Con^rress In New York In connection with a West German trial of S.S. Commander and Criminal Police Chief Heinrich Hamann, charged with the murder of thousands of Jews In Nowy Sacz, and other towns of Poland. Hamann's helpers are (left to right) Georg Urban, a gendarmerie lieut¬ enant in Llmanowa; Egbert Brook, Criminal As¬ sistant In Nowy'Saoz; Gunther Labdzke, Gestapo officer In Nowy Sacz; and Josef Rouenhoff, Crimi¬ nal Assistant, who for some time headed the local Jewish section of the Gestapo. The pictures were supplied by the Investigating Judge in Bochum, who has asked the World Jewish Congress to help trace any persons who can Identify them or have any knowledge of their crimes. Anyone who has such information should contact Dr. Nehemlah Robinson, Director of the Institute of Jewish Af¬ fairs, World Jewish Congress, 16 East 84th Street, New York 28, N.Y. The WJC has already traced a considerable number of witnesses against Hamann himself. YEAR'S END BALL AT BETH JACOB SUNDAY Beth Jacob's Brotherhood is in¬ viting everyone to celebrate with them at their Year's End Ball, to be held on New Year's Eve, Sunday night, Dec. 31, at the Beth Jacob Shul Grand Ballroom. Don Tate and hia orchestra will play and entertain from 9 tUl late. A dance contest, to be par¬ ticipated in by all will be held. According to the committee, set¬ ups, snacks, favors and noise makers will be In abundance. There is no oorkage charges and dress is optional. The committee Is confident that the ball will be the outstanding event conducted by BJ Brother¬ hood in all of the years this mid-winter event has been spon¬ sored by them. Reservations are being accept¬ ed, at $7.60 for the Individual couple and at $6.60 per couple in joint group reservations of a minimum of five couple reserva¬ tions received at the same time. Chfimpagne will be served gratis at the table organizing the larg¬ est group reservation received by Saturday, Dec. 23. All reservations must be made in advance. No ticltets will be sold at the door. For reservations, phone the Mil¬ lers at BE. 5-7386 or the Schecten at BiE. 6-0357. WBNS-TV SHOWING FILM SERIES ON 'UNDERSTANDING' Concluding ita aeries of thirteen half-hour television programs under the title of "Understand¬ ing," WBNS,TV Channel 10 will feature three half-hour programs on Jan. 1, 2 and 3. The programs were made avail¬ able by the Community Relations committee of the United Jewish Fund and Council. The programs are seen from 7:15 to 7:45 a.m. On Monday, Jan. 1, two films make up the liiaif-hour program. They are "Heritage", which shows what iiappens when an indi'vidual disregards the rights of others and "Commencement", the story of a business executive who learns that his personnel department Is guilty of discriminatory employ¬ ment practices. The program of Tuesday, Jam 2, consista of "The WUdemeas of Zln", which ahows how the Bible Is used by the tirchaeologist. Dr. Nelson Glueck, to discover water resources in the barren Negev and "Which Way for Human Rights", a discussion of the uni¬ versal declaration of human righ'ts. On Jan. 3, the series will con¬ clude with "An American Girl", the story of an American teen¬ ager who was mistakenly believed to be Jewish by 'her friends and neighbors. The Incident addresses Itself to anti-Semitism. The films used in the series are distributed by the Anti-JDefamat- lon League of B'nai B'rith. COMMUNITY HEADS AT U.J.F.C. TEA On Thou-sday, Dec. 14 at 1 p.m., a tea was held by the Oomimunlty Coordinating committee of the Women's Division ¦of the United Jewish Fund and Council. Repre¬ sentatives of all Jewish women's organizations were Invited to the home of Mirs. Jerome Gross, 295 S. Ardmore Rd. The purpose of this meeting was to eatablisih plans for the specific contribution to the B^md Drive of these cooper¬ ating groups. Mrs. Albert Blank and Mrs. Gross, co-chairmen of the Com¬ munity Coordinating committee, greeted the 25 assembled women. One of the topics discussed was the part which the member groups would play In Education' Day, which will be held In February. Elach group In the Commimlty Coordinating Committee agreed to contribute ita energies towards the success of this annual activity of the Fund. OrgEinlzatlons comprising the Community Coordinating Commit¬ tee, their invited presidents and representatives are respectively: Agfudaa Achlm Sisterhood: Mrs. Albert Beim, Mrs, Irving Seff; Ahavas Sholom Sisterhood: Mrs. Sam Greenberg, Mrs. Harry La- kln; Beth Jacob Sisterhood: Mrs. Arthur Miller, Mrs. Sam Komes- sar B'nai B'rith Candlelight: Mrs. Joseph Blum, Mrs. Marvlh Katz; B'nai B'rith Zlon: Mrs. Robert Bender, Mrs. David Peppercorn; Brandeis University: Mrs. Her¬ bert Fenburr, Mrs. Abe Yenkin. Heritage House Womens' Auxi¬ liary: Mrs. I. Nutls, Mrs. Ger¬ trude Pinsky; Counoil of Jewish Women: Mrs. David Gerstenfeld, Miss Helen Nutls; Council of Jewish Wom'en Evening Group: Mrs. Jack Rubin, Mrs. David Cohen; Jewish War Vetersjis Auxiliary: Mrs. Victor Rofsky, Mrs. Herman Jacobs; Mizrachl Women: Mrs. Dora Abrams, Mrs. Chari-es Block; Raanan'a: Mrs. Sam Taub, Mrs. Ivan Ptomanhoff; Pioneer Women, Golda Melr Chap¬ ter: Miss Helen Seldenberg, Mrs. William KIsch; Pioneer Women, Sabra Chapter: Mrs. lisadore Le¬ vine, Mrs. Rudolph Hlrsch. Columbus Chapter of Hadassah: Mrs. Norbert Kruger; dull Chap¬ ter: Mrs. Melvln Rackoff, Mrs. Irving Fireman; Mitzvah Chapter: Mrs. Sam Sui>ow, Mrs. Ed Ootden; Zkma Chapter: Mrs. David Gutt- man, Mrs. Morris Ojalvo; Llloh Chapter: Mrs. Malcolm Robbins, Mrs. Bernard Yenkin; Business and Professional: Mrs. Joseph Goldslager, Mrs. &im Goldman; Sholom Chapter: Mrs. Fred Ro¬ land, Mrs. Norman Levine. Temple Israel Sisterhood: Mrs. Sidney Berg, Mrs. Gus Bowman; Jr.; Tifereth Israel Sisterhood: Mrs. Charles Tails, Mrs. Julius Margulles; Workmens' C!lrcle Lad¬ les' Auxiliary: Mjb. Rose Izemsn; Ort: Mrs. Elliott Gr'ayson, Mrs.^ StanlQT Schwartz, Jr. |Title||Ohio Jewish Chronicle, 1961-12-29| |Subject||Jews -- Ohio -- Periodicals| |Place||Columbus (Ohio); Franklin County (Ohio)| |Creator||Ohio Jewish Chronicle| |Collection||Ohio Jewish Chronicle| |Submitting Institution||Columbus Jewish Historical Society| |Rights||This item may have copyright restrictions. Online access is provided for research purposes only. For rights and reproduction requests or more information, go to http://www.ohiohistory.org/images/information| |Image Height||Not Available| |Image Width||Not Available|

March 2, 2012 (LifeSiteNews.com) - I have received numerous e-mails over the last 36 hours asking if Mitt Romney really flip-flopped on his support of the Blunt Amendment, a motion to re-establish employers’ religious freedom over health insurance coverage. He did not, despite frantic coverage of his answer to a confusingly worded question from an Ohio reporter. But his reply signals that pro-lifers have a far deeper problem with the Republican presidential hopeful: he’s disengaged from our issues, dismissive of our concerns, and disinclined to give us the time of day. The Blunt amendment controversy can be attributed to another case of media malpractice. Ohio News Network (ONN) reporter Jim Heath told Romney, “The issue of birth control, contraception, Blunt-Rubio, is being debated, I believe, later this week. It deals with banning, or allowing employers to ban, providing female contraception.” The question meandered a bit longer before Romney replied, “I’m not for the bill. But look, the idea of presidential candidates getting into questions about contraception within a relationship between a man and a women, a husband and a wife, I’m not going there.” The motion’s sponsor, Sen. Roy Blunt, R-MO, defended Romney, saying, “The question was about as confusing and disjointed as you could be.” There is no “Blunt-Rubio” bill – they are two entirely different measures, neither of which conforms to the dominant media template of “banning” female contraception, something no presidential candidate has suggested. Romney has publicly, admirably supported religious liberties on this issue. His problem is perhaps best conveyed by a headline in the hard-Left magazine Mother Jones: “Romney Didn’t Know What the Blunt Amendment Was.” “Democrats are accusing Romney of another characteristic flip-flop, but that’s not really what happened here,” wrote Adam Serwer. “Either this whole ‘war on religion’ rhetoric is entirely overblown, or Romney just doesn’t care enough to be minimally conscious of what’s happening on the front lines.” That is precisely the issue. For advocates of religious liberty, the First Amendment, and protecting the unborn, there has been no issue as pressing as overturning the HHS mandate. These two measures (the Blunt and Rubio amendments), the only pending legislative remedies, are known to virtually everyone in our movement. Dr. Richard Land, Dr. Albert Mohler, the USCCB, and legions of our readers in the United States are familiar with both pieces of legislation by name. Rick Santorum surely is, as well. Even if asked such a misleading question as Jim Heath’s, they would have understood what was being discussed. Mitt Romney did not. Had Heath butchered a question about the capital gains tax or R&D credits, Romney would have undoubtedly caught the drift of his inquiry. But when it came to the First Amendment’s protection of religion, he got lost and needlessly embarrassed himself. The fact that he was not conversant with these measures is symptomatic of his candidacy’s wide, broad, deep, and well-cultivated estrangement from the pro-life movement. In a nutshell, Romney campaigns as though we did not exist. Social issues rarely if ever pass his lips unbidden. He alone skipped pro-life debates hosted in Iowa, South Carolina, and Florida. In bypassing our events, he either takes our votes for granted or has written them off. If he feels he can win without the pro-life, pro-family movement, he will conclude that he can govern without the pro-life, pro-family movement. He has signaled his intention to do as much by refusing to sign the pro-life pledge, drawn up by the Susan B. Anthony List, “to select only pro-life appointees for relevant Cabinet and Executive Branch positions” and the federal bench. Do pro-lifers believe they will play as big a role in a Romney administration as they would in a Santorum, Gingrich, or Paul administration? In politics, personnel is policy. If pro-life conservatives are not present when major decisions are about to be made in a Romney administration, their concerns will be ignored. Romney’s record is not especially reassuring. He was not known for surrounding himself with pro-life advocates, nor appointing strict constructionist judges. (Click “like” if you want to end abortion! Romney has said he believes Roe v. Wade was “improperly decided,” but the twists and u-turns in his circuitous route from pro-life to pro-choice to pro-life have sometimes been determined by poll results rather than personal conviction. He has been credibly accused of forcing Catholic hospitals to distribute the “Plan B” morning-after pill based on his private counsel’s advise, even when liberal officials disagreed with that conclusion. Pro-life leaders around the country maintain their concern at his diffidence. And every so often, one of Romney’s supporters jumps out of the woodwork to heighten their sense of unease. Planned Parenthood Federation of America President Cecil Richards said last year of Romney, “He used to come to Planned Parenthood events. He asked for our endorsement.” David Nierenberg, a national Romney 2012 finance chair and major fundraiser, describes himself as a “proper New York Jewish liberal Democrat” who supports Planned Parenthood. He gave $225,0000 to the Washington state Democratic Party to support pro-abortion Governor Christine Gregoire, who recently signed the same-sex “marriage” bill. Nirenberg told the media he backed Romney to save the nation from “a lot of angry people running for president this year,” who do not focus on “fundamentals” like creating a “muscular” foreign policy. (It would be difficult to conceive of a more activist foreign policy than that of Rick Santorum, who promised to launch “airstrikes” against Iran.) In 2003, Romney endorsed Salt Lake City Mayor Rocky Anderson. Anderson’s history as a former board member of the Planned Parenthood Association of Utah and former president of the state chapter of the ACLU did not stop Romney from calling him “a strong leader and a great man.” If Romney seeks to staunch doubts over his commitment to the right to life, he must ask for our support – and provide concrete reasons we should offer it. He could begin by appointing someone to keep him engaged on the issues most vital to us. He proved this week he is incapable of doing so on his own. 1. In the interest of full disclosure, this author’s journalism has been featured on the Ohio News Network.

JEWISH REFLECTIONS ON TRINITARIAN THINKING * Scriptural and Early Rabbinic God Language The Philosophic Challenge The Zoharic Response Three is Not Enough In earlier times, people did not ask questions about God language; they just used it. Talking to God, directly, brought people close to the Lord of creation and history. Addressing God, in a straightforward manner, drew them into relationship with the Lord of life. Imagine the intensity of relatedness between God and the person who said (Psalm 139:1-12): - Lord, You have probed me and You know. - You know when I sit and when I stand. - You discern my yelling from afar. - You sift through my life path and my sexual patterns. - You have intimate knowledge of all my ways.... - You encompass me, front and back.... - Where can I run away from Your presence? - Where can I flee from Your Face? - If I go up to heaven, You are there. - If I descend below, You are there too. - If I fly with wings to the east, if I dwell on the western horizon, there, too, Your hand will guide me, Your right hand will grasp me. - If I say, "Let darkness envelope me and night be light for me," even darkness cannot be dark for You, night will light up as the day, darkness and light are the same. Or, imagine the intimate relationship with God of the person who said (Isaiah 66:13): "As a man is comforted by his mother, so shall I comfort you and you shall be comforted in Jerusalem." Or, imagine the imagination of the one who talked of God as follows (Psalm 78: 59-66): God saw and got angry and He detested Israel greatly. He deserted His sanctuary in Shiloh, the tent He had set among humans.... He handed over His people to the sword and was angry with His inheritance. His young men were consumed by fire and His young women could not even wail. His priests fell by the sword and His widows could not even weep. But then the Lord woke up like one asleep, like a warrior intoxicated with wine. Even when trying to describe the ineffable nature of God, concrete language and real action were the rule (Isaiah 40:12-24): Who measured the waters in the hollow of his hand? or meted out the heavens with a span? or contained the dust of the earth in a measure? or weighed the mountains in a scale and the hills in a balance? ... He spreads the heavens as a curtain, stretching them out as a tent to dwell in. He makes princes as nothing and human judges as if they had done naught. Scarcely are they planted, scarcely are they sown, scarcely have their stocks taken root in the earth, then He blows on them and they are dried up, the storm carries them away as straw. The tendency to personalist language in describing and addressing God, especially in Scripture, is well-known. The question is, can it be improved upon? Pre-philosophic rabbinic thought said, No. The language of the midrash, therefore, continued the earlier personalist understanding and expression. The following passage is typical midrashic language about God: "God came down in a cloud and stood with him [Moses] there, and H/he called out in the name of God. God passed before him and H/he called, `Lord, Lord, God, merciful, and kind, of great patience, and full of grace, and truth. Who stores up grace for thousands, Who forgives purposeful sins, rebellious sins, and inadvertent sins, and Who cleanses...'" (Exodus 34:5-7) -- Rabbi Yohanan said, "Were it not written in Scripture, it would be impossible to say it: This teaches that the Holy One, blessed be He, wrapped Himself in a tallit like a shliah tsibbur [one who leads in prayer] and showed Moses the order of prayer. He said, `As long as Israel sins, they should follow this order of prayer before Me and I will forgive them...'" Personalist language also remained the mode of understanding and expression for addressing God, that is, in rabbinic liturgy. "Our Father, our King, we have sinned before You.... Our Father, our King, inscribe us in the book of life." How else could one pray? Indeed, one might say that rabbinic Judaism intensified the personalist thrust of language about, and address to, God. return to head of document Philosophic rabbinic Judaism, which begins in the ninth century, first raised the systematic question of God language. Which words, the philosophers asked, are to be taken literally -- that is, which words have truth value as descriptors of, and modes of address to, God? And, which words are not to be taken literally -- that is, which words are images and metaphors? Once raised, the question was, and still is, hotly debated. Some said that certain words are true while the rest are metaphors. These are the thinkers who taught the doctrine of "essential attributes." Saadia Gaon, tenth century Iraq, claimed there were five words / ideas that truly applied to God; the rest was images. Some claimed more; some claimed fewer. But the solution was the same: There is a legitimate but limited God language; theology and, to a certain extent, liturgy must conform to that language. Other philosophers said that no language at all is adequate to describe or address God. One can only advance in theological reflection by realizing how powerless human beings and the tradition are in describing and addressing God. These are the thinkers who taught the via negativa, the theology of negation, best represented by Maimonides, twelfth century Egypt. Many followed him, more or less systematically. But the solution was the same: One cannot describe, and therefore one cannot directly address, God. This theology, properly followed, leads to silence, to an acknowledgement of our inability to say anything coherent about, or to coherently address, God. Biblical and liturgical language is all metaphors and is to be used only with reservation. Each of these philosophical schools of thought led, in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, to a configuration of serious problems. The school of negative theology, which denied especially the personalist language of Scripture and liturgy, ran into the wall of spiritual experience. Even the most radical of negative theologians had some form of spiritual experience, sometimes rooted in the intellection of God and sometimes rooted in the love of God. This led to the paradox of denying all language about God but affirming God as intellect or God as love. This paradoxical affirmation, in turn, was rooted in a form of religious experience that can properly be called "philosophic" or "intellectualist mysticism," which was a well-recognized form of spirituality in the Middle Ages. The school of essentialist theology, which asserted some but not all language of God, ran into the wall of the unity of God. Even the most elegant essentialist theologian had some form of pluralism in his conception of God. God, in God's essence, was limited, but always more than one. It is in the context of essential attributes that Jews understood the problem of the trinity: Granted that God could, in God's essential divinity, be three -- or four, or five -- how could God also be only one? A good question -- for Jews, for Christians, and for Muslims. Insofar, however, as the doctrine of the trinity claimed more than the identity of three dimensions within the essence of God, Jews did not, and do not, understand it. Jews simply denied, as a form of polytheism, that the persons of the trinity could be more than essential attributes of God. (The other problem Jews had with the trinity was its use as a tool for persecution, forced conversion, and religious murder. The trinity has not been experienced by Jews as the embodiment of God's inalienable and grace-filled love.) Non-philosophic Judaism took another tack on the matter of God language. Non-philosophic -- and post-philosophic -- Judaism followed in the footsteps of the biblical and early rabbinic tradition and simply did not get tangled up in the question of when a word is true and when it becomes only an image, of when a phrase is real and when it becomes only a metaphor. This stream of the tradition adopted the doctrine that some words / ideas were more important than others, but rejected the conception that other words and images are somehow not valid expressions of, and address to, the divine. I think this was due, in the first instance, to a loyalty to the earlier, traditional language of Scripture, midrash, and liturgy which is, everyone agrees, personalist. I think, too, that the non-philosophic return to what Scholem called "mythic" language was also due to a recognition of the limited affective range of philosophic Judaism. The rarified rational mysticism of the philosophic rabbis was not the favored cup of tea of everyone. Rather, these others found the expression for their own experience of God in the personalist language of the earlier tradition and built their theologies and liturgies in that language, rejecting the intellectualist, restrained speech of the philosophers. return to head of document Probably, the most imaginative, and powerful, non-philosophic response in the personalist tradition of thinking about and addressing God is to be found in the Zohar (end of the thirteenth century Spain) and in the tradition that developed from it. This worldview became known as "The Kabbala," which is a somewhat too restricted use of the term. It taught that God Godself is made up of ten dimensions, called sefirot (sing., sefira ). These sefirot are not extradeical hypostases, like the intellects of the neoaristotelian philosopher theologians. Nor are they attributes of God, quite like the essential or accidental attributes of the other philosopher theologians. Rather, the sefirot of the Zohar are extramental -- that is, they are real and not just mental constructs of the human mind -- and they are intradeical dimensions of God's very being -- that is, they are inside God, integral parts of God. Furthermore, the sefirot are not static; they interact with one another. Thus, God's Hesed (grace) interacts with God's Gevura (God's power to draw lines, set standards, and make judgments). Thus, too, God's Tiferet (compassion, mercy) draws on God's Hesed and God's Gevura. All three draw on God's Hokhma (knowability) and God's Bina (intuitive understanding), as well as upon God's Keter (ineffability). God's Malkhut (God's ruling ability) is God's Face to creation, God's Name by which God is known. Malkhut is the point of contact between God and the world; it is where the spiritual energy of humanity and of God meet and interact. This interactive and dynamic system of the dimensions of God can be graphically portrayed as a tree, as a human being, as well as in various more abstract representations. These representations are widely available and form the core of "kabbalistic art." The clearest is given in Figure 1. Further, the Zohar, unlike modern literature, is written in a style which regards multiple imagery as a fine art. Hence, each sefira is depicted with multiple metaphors and even with multiple meanings. An inkling of the complexity of this system is given in Figure 2. return to head of document The following text, which uses the image of the common flame, best illustrates the dynamic and interactive quality of the sefirot: Rabbi Simeon began by saying: There are two verses [that contradict one another]. It is written, "For the Lord your God is a devouring fire" (Deuteronomy 4:24) and it is also written, "And you who cleave to the Lord your God are alive, all of you, to-day" (Deuteronomy 4:4). We have reconciled these verses in several places, but the [mystical] companions have a [deeper] understanding of them.... Whoever wishes to understand the wisdom of the holy unification, let him look at the flame that rises from a glowing coal, or from a burning lamp, for the flame rises only when it takes hold of some coarse matter. Come and see. In the rising flame there are two lights: one is a radiant white light and one is a light that contains black or blue. The white light is above and it ascends in a direct line. Beneath it is the blue or black light and it is a throne for the white. The white light rests upon it and they are connected together, forming one whole. The black light, [that which has] blue color, is the throne of glory for the white. And this is the mystic significance of the blue. This blue-black throne is joined to something else, below it, so that it can burn and this stimulates it to grasp the white light.... This [blue-black light] is connnected on two sides. It is connected above to the white light and it is connected below to what is beneath it, to what has been prepared for it so that it might illuminate and grasp [that which is above it]. This [blue-black light] devours continuously and consumes whatever is placed beneath it; for the blue light consumes and devours whatever is attached to it below, whatever it rests upon, since it is its habit to consume and devour. Indeed, the destruction of all, the death of all, depends upon it and therefore it devours whatever is attached to it below. [But] the white light which rests upon it does not devour or consume at all, and its light does not change. Concerning this, Moses said, "For the Lord your God is a devouring fire," really devouring, devouring and consuming whatever rests beneath it... Above the white light rests a concealed light which encompasses it. Here is a supernal mystery and you will find all in the ascending flame. The wisdom of the upper realms is in it. The Zohar begins this passage in classical midrashic style by showing a contradiction between two verses, one of which speaks of God as a consuming fire while the other advocates cleaving to God. It, then, goes on to draw an analogy to the common flame which is attached to a dark coal, which it must consume in order to burn. The flame itself is composed of two parts -- a blue-black center, which is attached to the wick or coal, and a white periphery which encompasses and rises above the blue-black center. In this passage, the Zohar depicts the central sefira which is Tiferet as the white part of the flame. It rests upon the sefira which is the point of contact with creation, Malkhut, here depicted as the blue-black part of the flame. At the end of this passage, the Zohar calls attention to the invisible part of the flame -- the zone of invisible heat which surrounds every fire -- and interprets it as Keter (God's ultimate ineffability). Finally, the Zohar notes that the blue-black part of the flame, Malkhut (God's ruling ability), consumes the coal or wick to which it is attached. The coal and wick are material; they depict creation, particularly humanity. Having decoded the symbolism of the passage, we can address the theology. The Zohar teaches here that God's compassion (Tiferet, the white part of the flame) is interactive with God's providence (Malkhut, the blue-black part of the flame) for, or governance of, creation. Energy flows from compassion to governance and also from governance to compassion. God is in discussion with Godself, so to speak, on the issue of how best to act in creation -- just as there can be no flame without both a blue-black and a white light and the interaction between them. The Zohar also teaches here that God's very energy depends on creation -- just as, without the wick or coal, there can be no flame. This means that God's providence is fed by human action and, further, that that energy is passed on even unto God's inner being, God's compassion. To put it differently, spiritual energy generated in creation rises up into God's Self. This human-generated spiritual energy, according to the Zohar, actually sustains the dimensions of God's very being, God's providence, God's compassion, and God's ineffability -- just as the wick or coal sustains the blue-black, the white, and even the invisible parts of the common flame. Finally, the Zohar teaches that, for most of creation, this feeding of energy to the divine is consuming; that is, that it results in the death of created beings. This death-into-God is the purpose of most of creation. Death is not only a part of the natural action of God's governance; it adds energy to God. The text continues: Come and see. The only stimulus that causes the blue light to burn and to grasp the white light is that which comes from Israel, who cleave to it below. Come and see. Although it is the way of the blue-black flame to consume whatever is attached to it beneath, Israel, who cleave to it beneath, survive as they are. This is the meaning of "And you who cleave to the Lord your God are alive" -- ... to the blue-black light that devours and consumes whatever is attached to it beneath and yet you who cleave to it survive as is written, "alive, all of you, to-day." Here, the Zohar takes another theological step and identifies the stimulus that sustains the flame as being the Jewish people. They, in their proper zoharic observance of the commandments, feed spiritual energy first into Malkhut and then into Tiferet. Performing the mitsvot with the proper zoharic intent allows the Jewish creature consciously to direct energy into God. It allows the Jew to interact directly with God, not just in dialogue but in inter-action, in a conscious directing of spiritual energy into God. This ability to feed spiritual energy back into God through the zoharic observance of God's commandments is the height of interactivity with God. It is the purpose of Jewish existence. It gives life; hence, the verse from Deuteronomy 4:4 which contrasts with Deuteronomy 4:24 in which contact with the Godhead results in death. The theology of the spiritual inter-action of humanity and the dimensions of God's very being is repeated and extended in an important way in another passage: Rabbi Judah said: When the righteous increase in the world, the Assembly of Israel exudes a sweet perfume, and she is blessed by the Holy King and her face shines. But, when the wicked increase in the world, the Assembly of Israel does not exude sweet perfumes, so to speak, but she tastes of the bitter "other side." Then is it written, "He has cast down earth from heaven" (Lamentations 2:1) and, then, her face is darkened. To decode this passage, one must know that "Assembly of Israel" is not the Jewish people; rather, it is Malkhut (God's Face to creation). Similarly, the "Holy King" is not God but is Tiferet (God's compassion). To "exude sweet perfume" is to radiate positive spiritual energy. To have a "face shine" is to experience joy, bliss. Finally, "earth" is Malkhut and "heaven" is Tiferet. The theology of this passage is deceptively clear. It teaches that the righteous, by their righteousness -- that is, by their zoharic observance of the commandments, especially prayer -- consciously return energy into God; that is, the righteous return positive energy into Malkhut, the outward dimension of God that governs creation. Malkhut, then, radiates that positive spiritual energy into Tiferet, the more inward compassionate dimension of God's being. With this positive unification of the outer and inner dimensions of God -- that is, with the union of compassion and providence inside the Divine -- God Godself experiences bliss! This understanding of the human-divine relationship in which humans help God unite Godself parallels that of the previous passage, with the addition that the Zohar teaches, here, that God Godself experiences bliss. The really new idea in this passage is that, the wicked, by their wickedness -- which includes, but is not limited to, their non-zoharic observance of the commandments -- return negative energy into God. This, in turn, means that God (that is, Malkhut ) does not radiate positive spiritual energy into Tiferet, and God Godself does not experience bliss. In fact, the passage teaches that, when the wicked prosper, God is drawn toward the "other side," the dark side, of God's own being and, then, God Godself experiences darkness, which is absence-of-bliss, but is also anger and dangerous power. When the wicked prosper, God Godself is fragmented -- as the passage says, "earth" is separated from "heaven"; that is, Malkhut is severed from Tiferet. To put it succinctly: When the righteous prosper, God's governance and compassion act together, and God is in bliss. But, when the wicked are ascendant, God's ability to govern is severed from God's compassion, and God is subject to the dark side of God's nature, and is depressed and dangerous. This is a remarkable double theological statement: first, that God is influenced by the actions of humans, for better but also for worse; that the human capacity consciously to direct energy into God can have bad, as well as good, consequences -- not just in this world but also inside God. Second, and perhaps more revolutionary, the passage is clear -- and it is typical of zoharic thinking -- that God has a "dark side"; that, within God Godself, is the capacity to act in ways that are wrong, evil, sinful. It is passages like these that led me in Facing the Abusing God: A Theology of Protest to dare to use the term "abusing" of God, as reviewers familiar with the Zohar have noted. The Zohar and the tradition that developed out of it, including Lurianic kabbalah, then, constitutes a reappropriation and a deepening of the personalist language of the biblical and earlier rabbinic tradition. It produces textual, spiritual, and theological insight into God in a very, very personalist mode. As Walter Brueggemann, in another context, has noted: "Thus, we need to consider not only mutations in the social processes, or mutations in the articulations of God which serve the social processes, but mutations that are said to be going on in the very person of God." Interestingly, Christian theologians seem to have sensed this. When, in 1553, the (otherwise good) Franciscan brothers ordained the burning of all Jewish books in the Campo dei Fiori in the center of Rome, they specifically ordered copies of the Zohar to be removed from the pyre. In a more constructive vein, counterreformation Catholic scholars developed a whole theological enterprise called "Christian Kabbala" which translated and commented upon the Zohar and related texts. The reasons for this are quite direct: First, Christians easily found trinitarian allusions in the Zohar in the groupings Keter, Hokhma, Bina; or Hesed, Gevura, Tiferet; or Netsah, Hod, Yesod. Second, there were zoharic texts that lent themselves easily to a trinitarian interpretation. One well-known rabbinic saying teaches that the world was created by ten acts of creative speech, each act corresponding to one occurrence of the Hebrew va-yomer, "And God said," in the first chapter of Genesis. However, if one counts the occurrences of that word, there are only nine. The Zohar, along with other sources, takes the other creative word to be the first word of the Bible, bereshit, "In the beginning." This yields the following rendering of the opening two words of Scripture, Bereshit bara': `The first-creative-speech-act created....' or, as Christians probably heard it, `the Logos created....' One zoharic text goes even further, understanding the second word of the Bible, bara', "created," in its Aramaic sense, bra, "son," as follows: Bereshit bara': Bereshit -- is a saying [that is, a creative speech act]. Bara' -- is half a saying [that is, a second and partial creative speech act]. Father and Son (Heb., 'av u-ven ); concealed and revealed. To the author of the Zohar, "Father and Son" are the sefirot, Hokhma and Tiferet. To the Christian reader, the allusion was clearly trinitarian. Finally, I suspect that part of the Christian interest in the Zohar stemmed from the distinctly feminine character of Bina and Malkhut, as opposed to the distinctly masculine character of Hokhma, Tiferet, and Yesod. This leads to a theology which is trinitarian; perhaps, Marian. return to head of document The historical interlude of the Christian reception of the Zohar in counterreformation Italy aside, it seems to me that a more profound theological question has arisen: If God can, indeed, have personalist dimensions as part of God's own inner being, why should there be only three such dimensions? If God can, indeed, encompass different levels of being, all of which are equal within God's inner-ness, why should there not be as many such levels as necessary? To put it clearly: If God's being is plural, why only Father, Son, and Holy Spirit? Why not Ineffability, Knowability (Father), Intuition (Mother), Grace (male), Judgment (female), Compassion (Husband), Eternity, Awe, Fecundity (male), and Providence (Bride, Mother) -- all of which are equally integral to the divine whole? To put it in declarative form: The zoharic dialogue with the trinity leads to the statement: Three is not enough! God, in God's fullness, is more than three. God, in Whose Image humanity is created, has more than three dimensions. The awesome complexity of the human personality -- in which Image humanity is created -- suggests that there are many more than three basic dimensions to God's personhood. Indeed, if we, humans, are more than trinitarian, certainly God is more than three. Jewish readers of the Zohar and its related literature knew all this. The non-philosophers were struck by the very depth of its insight into God, and into humanity, and made the Zohar into a holy book, probably the third holiest in Judaism after the Bible and the Talmud. Jewish rationalists of philosophic or halakhic bent were struck by the almost heretical pluralism within the divine and objected strenuously to teaching, publishing, and translating the Zohar. In fact, the charge of the Zohar being a book that aids and abets trinitarian thinking precisely because the sefirot are integral elements of God Godself, was first made by Jews and it is surely one of the reasons why the Zohar may not be taught to Jews who are too young or uneducated, or to Christians. Jewish rationalist hesitations notwithstanding, the question remains: If God's being is plural, why only Father, Son, and Holy Spirit? Why not Ineffability, Knowability, Intuition, Grace, Judgment, Compassion, Eternity, Awe, Fecundity, and Providence -- all of which are equally integral to the divine whole? If we, who are complex beyond three, are created in God's Image, God must be complex beyond three. I must admit that I am in sympathy with this question and with the theology it generates. There could, of course, be more than ten dimensions to divine, and hence to human, personhood. The choice of ten is an historical and exegetical artifact of the documents and culture which created this system, ten being an ideal number in late antique and medieval thinking. However, the personalist orientation of the system is, to my mind, right on the mark. It is biblical, midrashic, and liturgical, and it concords with our commonsensical experience and understanding of God. Furthermore, the subtlety of the understanding of personhood in this theology is remarkable. Each of us is many, and yet one. Each of us relates in many ways, and yet is somehow consistent in who she or he is. When we lose our oneness, we have multiple personality disorder and, when we lose our multipleness, we are too rigid to be fully in the world. God, too, according to the texts and according to our commonsense experience of the divine, is many and yet one. God, too, relates in many ways and is somehow consistent in who God is. In a universe in which we are created in God's Image, it cannot be otherwise. In a creation in which the Creator is present in Personhood, the most powerful and insightful understanding of personhood is the best theology. return to head of document [*] This appeared in Ethical Monotheism, Past and Present: Essays in Honor of Wendell S. Dietrich, ed. T. Vial and M. Hadley (Providence, RI, Brown Judaic Studies: 2001) 181-95. It was first delivered as paper at the AAR. Heb., ke-gibbor mitronen mi-yayin. On the term "personalist," see e.g., B. P. Bowne, Personalism (Boston, Houghton, Mifflin: 1908) and D. Blumenthal, Facing the Abusing God: A Theology of Protest (Louisville, KY, Westminster / John Knox: 1993) at the Index, "Personality." Talmud, Rosh haShana 17b. On these two schools of philosophic Judaism, see Facing, 6-31, 246-48 and D. Blumenthal, "Croyance et attributs essentiels dans la théologie juive médiévale et moderne," Revue des études juives (1994) 152:415-23; also available on my website <http://www.emory.edu/UDR/BLUMENTHAL>. On "philosophic mysticism," see D. Blumenthal, "Maimonides: Prayer, Worship, and Mysticism," Prière, Mystique et Judaisme, ed. R. Goetschel (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France) 89-106; reprinted in Appproaches to Judaism in Medieval Times, ed. D. Blumenthal (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1988) 3:1-16; also available on my website (see n. 4); and D. Blumenthal, Understanding Jewish Mysticism, vol. 2 (New York, Ktav Publishing: 1982) 3-86. H. A. Wolfson, The Philosophy of the Chuch Fathers, 2nd ed. (Cambridge, MA, Harvard Univesity Press: 1964) ch. 7-15; idem., Studies in the History of Religion and Philosophy, 2 vols. (Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press: 1973, 1977) at indexes. See for example, A. J. Heschel, The Prophets, 2 vols. (San Francisco, Harper and Row: 1962) and M. Kadushin, The Rabbinic Mind (New York, Jewish Theological Seminary: 1952), cited in Facing, 7, 12, 25-29. G. Scholem, "Kabbalah and Myth," On the Kabbalah and Its Symbolism (New York, Shocken Books: 1969) ch. 3. Since I claim that the philosophers also had a form of mysticism, I cannot label the non-philosophers "mystics." Further, the non-philosophers also include liturgists and halakhists who were not mystics in its narrow sense or philosophers. For a typology of Jewish mysticism, see Understanding Jewish Mysticism, 2 vols. (New York, Ktav Publishing: 1978, 1982). To call the Zohar "non-philosophic" is, technically, not quite correct. Part of the Zohar is rooted in Maimonidean philosophic concepts and terms (e.g., the use of "intellects"). Further, the doctrine of the sefirot is, in a way, a development of Saadia's essential attributes. The picture is, thus, not black and white. However, the basic intradeical and dynamic conception of God envisioned by the Zohar, and in particular its view of evil, is surely contrary to both schools of philosophic theology; hence, the use of "non-philosophical." See Understanding Jewish Mysticism, 1:116-18, for three diagrams. I proposed the third of those diagrams when I was first at Brown University with Wendell Dietrich, to whom this volume is dedicated. I have, however, much in Wendell's tradition, continued to ponder these matters and have rethought the translations I used then. I, now, propose those in Figure 1. Students of these sefirotic trees will note that sometimes Hesed is on the right and sometimes on the left. The rule is quite simple. Hesed is always on the left; the issue is the point of view of the reader. If the reader considers the representation to be a roadmap, then right on the image corresponds to the reader's right and so with the left. If, however, the reader considers the representation to be a person, i.e., in face-to-face position, then left on the image corresponds to the reader's right and vice versa. The latter form of representation is a mirror; the former a diagram. I first used these texts in "Confronting the Character of God: Text and Praxis," God in the Fray: Divine Ambivalence in the Hebrew Bible, ed. T. Beal and T. Linafelt, forthcoming; also available on my website (see n. 4). Zohar 1:50b-51b, modified from F. Lachower and I. Tishby, The Wisdom of the Zohar, transl. D. Goldstein (Oxford, The Littman Library and Oxford University Press: 1989) 1:319-20. The Zohar, although it exists in translation, is not comprehensible without an explication. Tishby's three volumes do that. For a shorter presentation based on Tishby's method, see Understanding Jewish Mysticism, 1 (1978) 101-91. For syllabi on teaching the Zohar, see my website (see n. 4). For a good explication of the difference between symbol decoding and theological interpretation, see Understanding Jewish Mysticism. The Zohar did not envision non-Jews (and Jewish women) as participating in this process. Zohar 3:74a; Tishby, 1:364. Part of the great art of the Zohar is that most of its passages can be read on a simple midrashic level referring to God and the Jewish people. Texting by double-entendre is an art lost to contemporary theological writing. This passage does not spell it out but other passages draw a further conclusion -- that, when the wicked prosper, God actually radiates negative spiritual energy to creation, with disastrous consequences. See Tishby, vol. 2, part 2.. W. Brueggemann, "A Shape for Old Testament Theology," Catholic Biblical Quarterly, 47:35, italics original. C. Roth, History of the Jews of Italy (Philadelphia, Jewish Publication Society: 1946) ch. 7; Tishby, 1:27-8. See Encyclopedia Judaica, 10:643ff; Tishby, 1:27-8, 33-8. Zohar, 2: 178b, "Sifra DeTsniuta". Y. Liebes, Studies in the Zohar (Albany, NY, SUNY Press: 1993) ch. 3. D. Bakan, Sigmund Freud and the Jewish Mystical Tradition (New York, Schocken Books: 1958, 1965) maintained that Freud had studied the Zohar. I find the suggestion intriguing but the evidence skimpy -- the Zohar is almost impenetrable without direction, in addition to which Freud's copy thereof has never been found. Tishby, 1:30, 35-8. Indeed, our most imaginative texts tell us that there are moments when even God loses God's oneness or God's multipleness, and then God is lost. On the relationship between multi-dimension and unity, see Facing, ch. 4-5. This theology which denies the perfection of God in favor of the multipleness of personhood has generated fierce resistance. For an analysis of this, see D. Blumenthal, "Theodicy: Dissonance in Theory and Praxis," Concilium, 1 (1998) 95-106; also available on my website (see n. 4). return to head of document return to index of Selected Articles David Blumenthal's HomePage

About Rabbi Tokayer After his ordination as a rabbi, Marvin Tokayer served as United States Air Force Chaplain in Japan. Upon discharge he returned to Tokyo to serve for eight years as the rabbi for the Jewish Community of Japan. He wrote 20 books in Japanese, including several bestsellers; discovered literally the last of the Chinese Jews; located a long-lost Jewish cemetery in Nagasaki; contributed to the Encyclopedia Judaica; acted as a bridge for many travelers between East and West; served the needs of his congregation; and became spellbound by the threads of a story which he began piecing together. His investigation of the facts took him throughout Asia, to Israel and Washington D.C. as he searched for documents and tracked down the people, both Jewish and Japanese, who had taken part in the rescue of Jews from the Holocaust. After his time in Japan, he founded and led the Cherry Lane Minyan shul in Great Neck, New York for fourteen years, while leading tours of Japan, China, India and Southeast Asia. He and his wife are the parents of four children and grandparents of fifteen. Rabbi Tokayer is now in high demand for his dynamic presentations, scholarship, and annual tours of Jewish Asia.

This article has been a long time in coming. Throughout the years, our ministry, purveyors of the most accurate Bible teaching we can do, has been watching as some seminaries have deteriorated.. You will recall a few years ago our arguments with Dallas Theological Seminary over an anti-Israel professor whom they subsequently fired. That particular Arabist cursed Israel on a radio program, and enough was enough. And you will recall our project last year was trying to get Criswell College and some other Bible schools to drop the terrible textbook, A Survey of The New Testament by Robert H. Gundry, from their teaching. That textbook advocated Replacement Theology and a Gentile church "in Matthew's time," and so forth. We came to them in a spirit of helpfulness, having special sensitivities to that subject in general and Israel in Zola Levitt particular. We were treated as rabble-rousers and troublemakers' and I was thoroughly criticized for even speaking up. The results were disheartening. While a Bible college in Lakeland, Florida, dropped the book, the president of Criswell said they were dropping it, but that never happened. our newsletter published his very words. We received a provocative email from a viewer recently: I feel as though I am an inside spy! I work at Moody Bible Institute and have been keeping a close watch on their use of the Gundry book. I just checked the bookstore, and it appears that the Gundry book is a required text for a New Testament Survey class offered in the evening school. It is also a "recommended" text for the New Testament Survey class offered in the day school. After reading of the dangers of this book, I am very concerned of its use. I think I would like to send a letter to some of the VPs I know here, but need your help in what I should say. Can you forward me some information I could use to support my request that Moody reconsider its use of the text? I would greatly appreciate it! Thank you for your wonderful ministry! In Yeshua, -- RSE THE AWFUL UNTRUTH Our present subject is Progressive Dispensationalism, a doctrine we discovered back at Dallas Seminary, which has now infected Moody Bible Institute, Talbot Seminary, Biola College, Dallas Baptist University and any number of other formerly fine, trustworthy Bible teaching institutions. Some of the formerly Dispensational seminaries, teaching the very logical system of spiritual economies given in the Bible, have departed into this strange teaching which takes a negative view of modern Israel, and that is our chief objection. Like Amillennialism, a doctrine which holds that there will be no future Kingdom on earth, Progressive Dispensationalism considers modern Israel to be the work of man and not of God. It rejects the concept of God's covenant with an unsaved Israel such as we have today. Despite the teachings of the Dry Bones vision and any number of other passages, Progressive Dispensationalists demand a believing Israel before they will accept it as a nation regathered by divine miracle. In fact, these theologians have adopted the politically correct view that Israel is oppressing the Palestinians. They are apparently convinced by the media's negative reports despite the plain evidence of the eyes of any pilgrim who goes to the land. The Progressive Dispensationalist teachers ignore the resurgence of the Messianic movement in Israel and even the heartening spread of faith in Yeshua (Jesus) among the Jews in this country, They seem not to understand how the situation in modern Israel leads to the Tribulation and the Millennium, which is very clear even to Sunday school teachers everywhere. They seem embarrassed about the idea of Israel becoming the head of the nations, and they think that an emphasis on Israel somehow diminishes the church. They seem to de-emphasize the study of eschatology- or prophecy- entirely. There has been a decline of prophecy conferences nationwide and little teaching of Revelation going on these days in the pulpits or classrooms. There is, in particular, a reduced teaching of the Pre-Tribulation Rapture which is arguably the doctrine of prime importance to the church today. The fact that the Lord can come at any moment would have a profound influence on every Christian. HOW TO CHOOSE A SEMINARY Dr. Thomas S. McCall, our senior theologian, has proposed a four-question test in choosing a seminary or Bible school. Assuming that you want Bible teaching and doctrines that are accurate, then you must FIRST BE ASSURED THAT THE SEMINARY HOLDS TO THE DEITY OF CHRIST. It is amazing that there are Bible schools operating which do not consider our Lord to be God incarnate, but they're all over the place. We call them liberal seminaries, and we gave an example in a recent newsletter of a student of one of those who didn't care if Christ even, ever lived, according to what he said. Once the truth of the deity of Christ is settled, other important matters such as His virgin birth, substitutionary death and physical resurrection readily become believable. SECONDLY, YOU MUST INSIST ON A SEMINARY HOLDING TO THE INERRANCY OF THE BIBLE. Obviously, if we're going to say that some Scriptures are not accurate or literal, etc., that way lies madness. Either the Bible is true or it's not true, and if we're going to have a seminary at all, it must hold to the Bible containing no error. There are some schools claiming to be conservative that are not willing to assert that the Scriptures are without error. They may use some slippery terms like, "the Bible contains the Word of God," or "the Bible is inerrant in matters of faith" (but not history). Beware these evasions. THIRDLY, THE FIELD OF ESCHATOLOGY IS SO CRITICAL TODAY. Prophecy is more important than ever and, in particular, the Pre-Tribulation Rapture, as we said above. When a school that was founded on the blessed hope of the imminent PreTrib Rapture begins to depart and waffle on the subject, it is a sign that both their eschatology (prophecy) and ecclesiology (knowledge of the church) are deteriorating. TRUTH AND FINALLY, THE TRUTH ABOUT ISRAEL!S IMPORTANCE IS CRITICAL. Does your seminary teach that God is moving in Israel today and that we are seeing prophecy fulfilled? Or does it teach, like the Dallas Seminary professor, that Israel is merely a political entity and that "conceivably these people (the Jewish people) might be driven off the land," (his words on Christian radio!)? Such is the fruit of doctrines like Progressive Dispensationalism. Many seminaries and Bible schools used to be friends of Israel and were convinced that the regathering of the Jewish people was a harbinger of the second coming of Christ. Recently, though, some leading evangelical schools are beginning to question "the promise of His coming" and the significance of modern Israel. Beware such statements as "prophecies about Israel won't be fulfilled until Christ's return." This is misleading and ignores all the preparation of Israel that, must take place before and during the Tribulation. So there you have Dr. McCall's four questions (like the four questions in Passover): the Deity of Christ, the Inerrancy of the Bible, Eschatology, and the Truth about Israel-or D.I.E.T., a healthful and nutritious diet for believers! TENSION IN THE BIBLE SCHOOLS AND SEMINARIES We have noted over our experience that some Bible schools offering accredited BA degrees suffer from very tense atmospheres on certain subjects. There is stress between theological and non-theological faculties, which is to say that virtually secular teachers are brought in to teach secular subjects as the Bible school negotiates the slippery slope of accreditation. When a Bible school or college wants to offer a Bachelor of Arts degree, then academic professors are brought in from outside who may well teach that the Old Testament is mythological as they teach their various subjects. In the seminaries, graduates have to go elsewhere for doctoral degrees (encouraged by accreditation committees to "broaden" their training), and they come back changed. The seminary and Bible school tend to present themselves to supporters as godly places indeed where much prayer, sincerity and teaching truth according to the doctrinal statements is happening, but the atmosphere is quite different in the classroom. Supporters and donors of these big schools must be convinced that all is well, while there is almost a shooting war behind the scenes. Progressive Dispensationalism, with all its confusing prophecy, is a key issue. Drs. Blaising and Bock at Dallas Theological Seminary have written two books on Progressive Dispensationalism. Dr. Saucy at Talbot Theological Seminary has written a similar book promoting Progressive Dispensationalism. Dr. Pate at Moody Bible Institute has also chimed in with a Progressive Dispensationalism book. Normative Dispensationalists like Dr. Ryrie, Dr. Walvoord, and Dr. Ice have all written books and articles vigorously exposing and refuting this aberrant teaching, but most supporters are not aware of this significant theological battle. Administrators have become political, like CEOs of secular businesses. Dr. McCall and I are acquainted with the administrators at Dallas Seminary, Moody Bible Institute, Criswell College, Dallas Baptist University and any number of others. We cannot help but reach the conclusion that, rather than dealing with us as Christian brothers, they are more like common businessmen and, in some cases, not as trustworthy as common businessmen. Their emphasis seems to be on donations and enrollments and not on what is being taught; hence, one college fought us to the death over keeping a clearly bad textbook, and the president of another college ignored all of our correspondence and appeals. We found disillusioned students and faculty members everywhere. Our ministry chaplain taught a college student who spent 18 months at Moody Bible Institute and came out of there totally shocked with what he had heard in the classrooms. He is now enrolled in a secular university. Faculty members likewise are under pressure to keep a smile for donors and a "don't rock the v boat" attitude where the administration is m4l concerned. One professor at one of the leading seminaries, who continues to teach all the important Biblical truths, says he is being kept as "window dressing" so that when informed alumni ask about the current doctrinal shift, the administration can point to him as evidence that the school has not changed. But he has little or no voice in the current theology of the seminary faculty. Doctrinal statements that the new professors have signed need "reinterpretation." Their interpretations are often broadened to include what amounts to false doctrines. HARD TO CORRECT It will be very hard to correct seminary errors because of the mindset that the administrators are great men, indeed, who utter something next to Scripture when they speak. They do not take kindly to suggestions or constructive criticism. We found most administrators in denial. The presidents of Dallas Seminary and Moody Bible Institute told us they had "no problem" with Progressive Dispensationalism, when we knew there was tremendous tension over this very doctrine behind the scenes. We have many friends at these institutions, after all. Dr. McCall is a doctoral graduate from Dallas Theological Seminary, and he and I were among Moody's best-selling authors over the past 25 years. We have personally both spoken in the chapels of these institutions and are well acquainted with faculty members there and elsewhere. Criticism of any doctrinal shift is considered disloyal and divisive. Supporters are purposely confused and made to think any theological argument is mere hairsplitting when, in reality, there has been a sea change in the doctrinal teachings at the seminaries we have mentioned. What exactly is Progressive Dispensationalism? We asked theologians as knowledgeable and seminal as Dr. John Walvoord and Dr. Charles Ryrie, and they almost shrugged because, as it is often said, the stuff is so "slippery" that it is hard to get a handle on it. Essentially, Progressive Dispensationalism teaches that Jesus is already sitting on the throne of David. The distinctions between the church and Israel are purposely blurred, and the doctrine seems to move in the direction of Amillennialism which, of course, does away with the Pre-Tribulation Rapture, the whole Millennial Kingdom, the importance of modern Israel and virtually all of the basics of accurate eschatological teaching. They claim to be Dispensationalists, but have gutted Dispensationalism of some of its most important concepts. With Biblical inerrancy, there are professors at leading seminaries pronouncing that some of the Scripture is mythical and that its histories are inaccurate. In keeping with political correctness, there is also Egalitarianism, which has been covered extensively in the Moody Bible Institute student newspaper. This is the doctrine that teaches that women are equal in function to men in the pulpit and other ministries. This has led to the ordination of women to serve as pastors of churches. Some modem professors consider this a very good move, while those who believe the Scriptures find the idea repellent. And finally, the relative importance of prophecy, the Pre-Tribulation Rapture of the Church, and the significance of modern Israel are de-emphasized to a point of almost irrelevance. Israel, in particular, is criticized, as we've pointed out above, rather than heralded as a sure sign of the coming of the Tribulation and second coming of Christ. THE BRIGHT SIDE We must say that there are any number of Bible schools available which are holding to Dispensationalism and correct doctrines about Israel and prophecy. We can name some-Philadelphia College of The Bible with Dr. Ryrie, Liberty University with Dr. Falwell, Tyndale Theological Seminary with Dr. Couch, Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary with Dr. Patterson, and Cedarville College with Dr. Gromaki. Readers should know that we are open to any seminary writing in with positive answers to Dr. McCall's four questions. Simply go to your local Bible school or the one you're considering attending, and ask them if they're on a proper Biblical "DIET." And the other good news is God is still running the world, Israel is still His heart's desire and the focus of His activity among men, and prophecy marches onward with an imminent Pre-Tribulation Rapture of the born-again Church coming to deliver us before a seven-year Tribulation and then to a thousand-year Kingdom of rejoicing on earth! Please know that in the last two weeks of February, for most of you, we will have two television programs on the subjects discussed in this article, and we encourage you very much to write to these seminaries, particularly those we have mentioned above. The addresses of the two major seminaries we have mentioned above are: President Charles R. Swindoll Dallas Seminary 3909 Swiss Avenue Dallas, Texas 75204 President Joseph Stowell Moody Bible Institute 820 N. La Salle Boulevard Chicago, Illinois 60610-3284 February 2000 P.O. Box 12268 - Dallas, TX 75225-0268 * (214) 696-8844 * http://www.levitt.com

John R. Houk © October 6, 2011 This WND article is about NATO and Turkey invading Syria with the blessing of the U.N. to end Assad's tyranny against his own citizens. Sounds great! There is a "but". The theme for the attack is a Left Wing strategic doctrine: "Responsibility to Protect OR to Act". Apparently it is a Soros based doctrine and Obama is all for it. Responsibility to Protect, or Responsibility to Act, as cited by Obama, is a set of principles, now backed by the United Nations, based on the idea that sovereignty is not a privilege but a responsibility that can be revoked if a country is accused of “war crimes,” “genocide,” “crimes against humanity” or “ethnic cleansing.” The Global Centre for Responsibility to Protect is the world’s leading champion of the military doctrine. Billionaire activist George Soros is a primary funder and key proponent of the Global Centre for Responsibility to Protect. Several of the doctrine’s main founders also sit on boards with Soros. The article is about using force to make nations comply with a greater authority of responsible sovereignty. WND focuses on the NWO aspect. The article written by Aaron Klein should have included also what this strategy might imply for Israel, Palestine and Bush using the U.S. military with Congressional OK but not with a Congressional Declaration of War. The NWO thing is significant on a global scale pertaining to Free Speech, Religious Freedom, Property Rights, and the freedoms guaranteed in the U.S. Constitution that is absent or watered down in other Western nations. This you can read about this in the Klein article. Frankly I thought it was a great thing to bring down psycho-terrorist supporting Moamar Qaddafi. It was a rare occasion of brilliance by Obama to utilize NATO as the brunt of the support for the Libyan rebels while keeping significant American troops off the ground. However, using the doctrine of Responsibility to Protect as the justification opens the door to an irresponsible use. For example Israel is often accused of being an apartheid State by Western Leftists (particularly in Europe) and Muslim nations might be an excuse for an Arab sympathetic American government to use military power to force Israel accept a Palestinian State that would have the constitutional preamble of destroying Israel and killing Jews. Of course no American President would have the guts to say that the existence of a Palestinian State would have a purpose of destroying Israel and killing Jews; nonetheless the reality of the existence of an Arab nation called Palestine will evolve into an existential threat to the existence of the Jewish State of Israel. Israel is again facing a situation in which the land is surrounded with openly hostile Muslim forces. The new Egypt is beginning to the line of Jew-hatred and anti-Israel animosity toward Israel. Lebanon has ceased to be a Christian jewel of acceptance among Muslim nations or from Lebanese Muslims. Hezbollah controls the reins of power in Lebanon. Hezbollah has a throw the Jews into the sea mentality. Syria has had a hate Israel thing since their existence and particularly under the rule of the Assad family. The only nation bordering Israel that may or may not contribute to the demise of Israel is Jordan. There is no love from Jordanians for Israel; however the Jordanian Monarchy has an ingrained distrust for Arabs that call themselves Palestinians because they have no commitment to the Monarchy which is supported by Jordanian Bedouins. In Jordan itself Palestinian-Arabs outnumber Bedouin-Arabs. Arabs that are descendants of the refugees caused by invading Arab armies are treated as second class citizens in Jordan to assure they do not the political power to toss out the Hashemite Monarchy of Jordan. I can see the doctrine of Responsibility to Protect as a ploy to force Israel to 1967 borders which include pilfering the eastern half of Jerusalem which is a Jewish city founded by the ancient Jewish King David. It is the Star of David that is on the Israeli flag. This Power to Protect could be an excuse for Obama to take a step back as European nations and perhaps various Muslim nations such as Turkey and Egypt to cause the Third Diaspora removing Jews from their heritage. I don’t like it. Do you?

LONG BEACH (CBSLA.com) — A bomb threat at a Jewish community center in Long Beach that prompted a temporary evacuation was among several reported threats across the nation Tuesday. The Alpert Jewish Community Center at 3801 East Willow Street was evacuated as police searched the building, according the Long Beach Police Department. Evacuation orders were canceled after a search revealed no detected threats, police said. There were a spate of bomb threats reported at Jewish centers nationwide, including in San Diego. The reported threats come in the wake of similar threats reported across the U.S. earlier this month. (©2017 CBS Local Media, a division of CBS Radio Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. Wire services contributed to this report.)

The American doctrine of “employment at will” exists nowhere in Canada! Perhaps because we are a kinder-gentler society, or perhaps because of a more liberal bent in the distinct society that is Québec, the Civil Code requires that, except for terminations “for cause”, styled in this Province “serious reason”, an employee receive “reasonable” working notice prior to termination, or pay in lieu thereof, which pay must include all remuneration that the employee would be entitled to receive during the period of such reasonable notice. Over the past number of years the appetite of Plaintiffs for ever larger settlements and/or awards has grown. While there have been some indications of limits in the past, definitive and binding pronouncements seemed to be absent. In Canada Jewish Congress vs. Polger and Smajovits, C.A.M. 500-09-019743-095, decided just last week (June 21, 2011), the Court of Appeal has defined conclusively the outside limits of such “reasonable notice”, absent proof of egregious conduct by the employer in the termination or other such exceptional and compelling circumstances, at twenty-four (24) months. All three judges of the panel (Hesler, J.A., Beauregard J.A. and Bich, J.A.) agreed the benchmark of twenty-four (24) months set in Aksich vs. Canadian Pacific Railway, RJDT 997, should be confirmed as the absolute outside limit, absent such egregious conduct. Where they parted company however, was in respect of an alleged “usage” of the employer in “topping up” pension rights or advantages and the ability of the Plaintiffs on that basis to seek additional amounts to top up their defined contribution pension plan payouts. Bich J.A. noted that while Art. 1434 C.C.Q. permits “usage” in some circumstances to become a source of contractual and legally binding obligations, it requires that the practice be general (i.e. widespread), consistent, uniform, steadfast and established over a very long period of time! As she put it: “ In my view, all that the evidence shows is that ex gratia payments in a variety of forms were made over the years to a certain number of employees, upon request only and following a decision by the board of directors or by management on a case-by-case basis.” More particularly, she wrote: “ These rules – more particularly the requirements that usage be general consistent and steadfast in character – are applicable mutatis mutandis to the practices developed within a single firm (which is what the respondents alleged here) or by parties within their own contractual relationship . In the present case, as my colleague Beauregard has shown, there was no general (that is, widespread), uniform and established practice of granting employees additional pension advantages. It is true that there were, over a period of 50 years, a number of occasions where, upon an employee's request, pension contributions or benefits were enhanced. But even then, there was no uniformity or generality in the nature, amount or duration of such enhancement that would enable the Court to conclude that a binding practice existed that could be applied to the respondents. Certainly, the evidence does not establish that the appellant ever accepted, directly or indirectly, to transform the defined contribution pension plan offered to its Quebec employees into a defined benefit pension plan or to remedy, systematically, its perceived inadequacies. It does not establish that all (or even most) employees were entitled to the additional benefits received by some; it does not even establish, on a balance of probabilities, that all employees' requests were granted (even though all of those who received an additional benefit had made a request). If the respondents' claim cannot be justified on the basis of usage, could it be acknowledged on the basis of equity? In the circumstances, equity, as a source of implicit obligations under article 1434 C.C.Q., cannot, in and of itself, justify that respondents' claim for an additional pension be granted (as the trial judge decided), nor can we on that basis order the payment of a special contribution to their existing pension fund. Equity alone cannot allow the transformation of a defined contribution plan into a defined benefit pension plan, as the respondents would have it for all practical purposes. Nor can it justify imposing upon the appellant, as the employer, the burden of a substantial addition to its contribution to each respondent's pension fund, beyond what was required by the existing defined contribution pension plan.” (Underlines, our own) No doubt that those who, like the undersigned, practice Management side labour and employment law, will be greatly relieved that the judgment of the Superior Court substantially topping up pension payments for the life of the terminated employees has been set aside and this particularly so, since the employer is and was a non-profit organization supported by the community.

Hugh McEwen and Catrina Stewart met while studying at the Bartlett School of Architecture and began to collaborate on small architectural projects, launching Office S&M in 2013. They work on a range of projects, from high street to high end, and they feature in our 2019 campaign for Readywear. We caught up with Hugh to chat about the office, projects that are in the pipeline, and what makes a uniform. Hi Hugh! Let’s start with two of our favourite projects: Valetta House and Salmen House. Can you tell us about these? Which one is your favourite? Our favourite project is always the next one we’re going to do! We don’t necessarily have a house style; we have a house approach, but not a house style. We’re always looking at what we can develop that can lead into something interesting. With all our projects, our aim is that the finished outcome is something that neither us nor the client could have imagined at the start. Both Salmen and Valetta House responded to the specifics of the client, the site and the time at which they were built. We developed something that was very unique in each of those cases. We tend to develop bespoke materials and bespoke colours schemes so that each project is very individual. Where does your inspiration come from? All projects are a response to the location, as well as other things we’re interested in: recycling, environmental considerations, things that have been forgotten about, and things that can be reimagined in a creative way. You created the Janus House for our founder and creative director Janice and her partner, Mike: can you tell us a bit about that project? Janice and Mike came to us looking for something that was very different to their existent terrace house. We started to look at materials that were informed by Field Grey, looking at industrial materials. We looked at three different material options that could be used in a domestic setting to contrast the brick work. Out of those three, Janice and Mike were really interested in rubber, so they went to visit The Rubber House by Simon Conder in Dunganess. We wanted to go one step further and create something that was very monolithic. The extension would house both a kitchen and bathroom, with a view over the garden, so the inside of the extension was always going to be in two halves. We wanted to create something that would wrap them both together. The result was something we haven’t seen used on a project like this in quite the same way. What projects are you working on at the moment? Can you tell us about Putnoe House? We hope that Putnoe House will improve the quality of what is proposed in the area, something we tend to do with our projects. Putnoe House is very sustainable and energy efficient. While we’re definitely doing things in terms of design, it’s important to produce things that are contemporary in their construction as well. I think Putnoe House will be something that can showcase what a contemporary new build house can be in terms of design, aesthetics and sustainability. It’s designed to be 50% better than a zero-carbon house and its designed to be fully wheelchair accessible; it has longevity built in. What are your thoughts on building new vs. renovating an existing property? Both types of project are about making the best of a property or site. House renovations bring lots of problems to get to grips with; there are lots of constraints with existing buildings. The quality of extensions we’re seeing is compounded by the cost of moving, not only in fees and stamp duty, but also in the market, and people are seeing they can’t get anything better for the money they have. We have a huge demand for housing and councils and local authorities are finally realising that smaller sites and infilled developments can play a huge part in that. Infill projects are becoming much more supported as we run out of sites. It’s an important thing to look at. What’s your favourite building in London? James Sterling’s Number 1 Poultry. There’s some really wonderful complexity in it. I had been on a tour just before it was renovated and saw some of the spaces that are carved through it, which was fantastic. It is built in response to the site and the history of the area, but it’s also a building very concerned with itself. It’s a really fascinating building to move through and one of the first buildings in the City of London to have an accessible rooftop, which we now of course see all over the city. …and what’s your favourite building in the world? A very different type of building: the Jewish Museum in Berlin. It’s incredibly narrative; there’s the old saying that architecture is frozen music, and the experience of walking through it is really moving and really incredible. It is unlike any other building in the world. How would you describe your own uniform? I used to wear the traditional architect’s uniform of all black. There’s a quote that says something like ‘dress prosaically so your work can be radical’. But now, I’m more interested in investigating colour through the clothes I wear. Colour and pattern are things we investigate through the architecture we’re producing, and now there’s the opportunity to do the same with clothing; you can buy a t-shirt in any colour! You took part in our Readywear campaign – how was that for you? It was great! I love the utility jacket that I wore; I was expecting to wear an apron, so it was really interesting. The idea of ‘what is a uniform’ is a really interesting question; there are so many industries that have a uniform, but it isn’t called that. Questioning that is really appropriate. Something designed for its function can also be something that is beautiful. I think there’s still more of a normcore approach to fashion, but a range of expressions within those pieces allow that. And how was it to use Salmen House as a location for the shoot? We’ve seen other fashion designers and photographers going back there without us knowing and conducting photoshoots; we often get notifications on Instagram where somebody has tagged us in a shoot for their clothing line. It’s really interesting to see the projects we’ve done taking on other uses in public; people using the buildings in another way. They’re not living inside the properties, but they become something that’s useful to them on the street.

December 16, 2019 – First Day of Misa de Gallo Is 56:1-3a,6-8; John 5:33-36 Today, on this first day of Misa de Gallo, our Filipino Church also dedicates this day as the National Youth Day. I would like to invite you now that we listen to personal faith story from one of our Youth Missionaries. He has served in our missions in a remote Mission Station in Davao Occidental and in the missions in Bukidnon. Let us welcome, Edgar Vladimir Tecson. Good morning everyone! I am going to share with you the journey of my faith. It all started in my elementary days when my father asked me to be an altar boy here in Redemptorist Church. I became an altar boy from grade 5 to grade 6. Every Holy Week, I actively joined the activities conducted by the RYM especially the “Passion Play” on Good Friday. I officially joined Redemptorist Youth Ministry in the year 2011. In 2014, I was invited to join the “General Youth Mission” in Maramag, Bukidnon for two weeks. After that mission, I became an active participant in every youth activity here in our parish. And then came 2016! During that year, I was invited by our Youth Coordinator to join the Mission Team and be a full member. I accepted the challenge and became part of the Davao Redemptorist Mission Team that was based in Nuing Mission Station, Jose Abad Santos, Davao Occidental for three years. In that mission experience in Nuing Mission Station, I have known God more. When I arrived at the mission area, I have experienced that God is really alive. I’ve seen it through the locals in that area. I have encountered different types of people, especially our “lumad” brothers and sisters in the upland areas. Through them, I have really felt the presence of God since they were always calling His name in every situation that they would face in life. Their faith helped me a lot to strengthen my faith’s foundation because whatever problems they may have, they would always say, ‘Eleg se Ontong te Temenem’ (Thank You Lord!). Until this very moment I bring that attitude with me, to be always grateful to the Lord, no matter what. As a youth missionary, I was able to understand deeply the goodness of God. I learned to be thankful in every blessing that comes. I want to say thank you to all my co-missionaries in Davao Redemptorist Mission Team and the Redemptorist Youth Ministry because you have taught me so many things to deepen by faith journey as a young person. And also to my family, thank you for letting me know and experience God’s love from the very beginning. Let me end this with a verse , TRUST IN THE LORD WITH ALL YOUR HEART AND LEAN NOT ON YOUR OWN UNDERSTANDING, IN ALL YOUR WAYS SUBMIT TO HIM, AND HE WILL MAKE YOUR PATH STRAIGHT ” (from the Book Proverbs 3:5-6) Thank you so much and Good morning! God bless us all. Amen. We commonly call Edgar Vladimir as Bhady. What we have heard from Bhady’s faith story was the wonder of having people and even recognizing events in life that have directed us towards Jesus. The experiences of Bhady remind us of the readings we have heard today. The Book of Prophet Isaiah tells us of the presence of the foreigners. These foreigners have joined themselves to the Lord. They too have recognized the wonders of the Lord God. This tells us that the Hebrew people who have become their friends created a huge impact in their life because through them, they were led to the one True God. Indeed, it was the joy that they have experienced from the believers of God that they too were assisted to know God. God even promised in the Book of Isaiah that through the presence of the many peoples, there will be joy in the house of prayer, in the community. This is what we find also in the Gospel. Jesus recognized the person of John the Baptist, his cousin who became that person for others to know Jesus. John the Baptist led the people to recognize God in the person of Jesus by preparing their hearts and minds. This is how John had become a reflection of the True Light. John never assumed that he was the source of Light. John knew very well who the light was. That is why, through his preaching and way of life, he reflected the light that came from Jesus. John, indeed, is the burning and shining lamp for the people. On this first day of Misa de Gallo, we are reminded too of the person of Mary who through her, God entered in our human history physically. Through her, Jesus was born for us. Mary too is the shining lamp that leads us to Jesus. This is the reason why we have this 9-day Misa de Gallo in honor of Mary because she leads us to Jesus. With that, today our liturgy is also centered on the theme, “Entering into Dialogue with the World in which we live in.” This means that our encounter with the different people in our life is the dialogue that we have with the world. Because in every encounter, we are also presented with a story. Bhady’s story tells us of his many encounters with the world through the people who have become significant in his faith-journey. Those foreigners in the Book of Isaiah were able to dialogue with God also through their encounter with the Hebrews. The Jewish people who came to believe Jesus, had a dialogue first with John the Baptist that also paved the way for them to dialogue with others and with Jesus. This dialogue now became the very space of encounter between a person and Jesus. This is the invitation for us today. Considering the way of life of the many young people today. The internet has become a space for encounter, though virtual. In fact, our country Philippines has been branded as the Social Media Capital of the World. There are about 76 millions of Filipinos spending as much as 4 hours a day on social media sites. With this, let us maximize the gift of technology by bringing people closer to Jesus through the very gadget in our hands and through the media that we are very familiar with. Indeed, the Lord invites us today, especially the young to be “a Social Media Influencer” in our own group of friends in Facebook or Instagram. Dialogue and create encounters with your friends and followers by sharing God experiences in your social media sites. This include also sharing on how God shows his goodness and generosity to you and your family. Preach to others how God changed your life. Share with others how you have experienced love and forgiveness. Share with your friends the Word of God that has struck you. Share the good news rather than your hatred and bitterness towards others, rather than fake news and misinformation. Thus, even as young persons, we can be an instrument of hope and love, of transformation and peace by bringing people closer to Jesus. Let us flood the Social Media with love and hope by actively preaching our Christian faith. May I also remind you, as we maximize the gift of technology, never forget also the gift of your presence in making physical and personal encounters with people around you, with your family and friends. With that, be present by being the present/gift to people. Lastly, I would like to invite all of you who have your phones right now, after this mass, please take a selfie or grofie with your friends in this Church and share to others the good news that you have received and use these hashtags, #encounterwithjesus #nationalyouthday #omphdavao #SANAALL. Jom Baring, CSsR

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Rabbi Richard Camras assumed the role of rabbi at Shomrei Torah Synagogue in April of 1999. Rabbi Camras' passion and focus has been in the area of Jewish education through Torah study. By learning and living the traditions of our heritage, our members enrich their lives with greater meaning and engage each other and the larger community with acts of loving kindness. As founder of the Conejo/West Valley branch of the Florence Melton Adult Mini-School, Rabbi Camras continues to bring new and innovative programming to Shomrei Torah Synagogue and the West Valley. Equally involved in building our Jewish community, Rabbi Camras serves as President of the Pacific Southwest Regional Rabbinical Assembly. He served for three years as the Chair of the West Valley Rabbinic Task Force at the Valley Alliance Federation and is a lecturer of Practical Rabbinics at the Zeigler School of Rabbinic Studies as well as oversees the West Valley/Conejo Valley Introduction to Judaism class sponsored by the American Jewish University. He previously served as Associate Rabbi of Chizuk Amuno Congregation in Baltimore, Maryland for seven years and was ordained from JTS in 1992. He and his wife, Carolyn, have two children, Talya and Noah. Rabbi Jonathan Bubis is the newest addition to the Shomrei Torah Synagogue family, a recent graduate of the Zeigler School of Rabbinic Studies at the American Jewish University in Los Angeles. He is a Jewish educator and performing artist with a passion for music, theater, and Jewish text. Additionally, Rabbi Bubis has a penchant for Jewish prayer and leading communities in participatory, spiritually uplifting prayer services. Since graduating from Indiana University, majoring in Jewish Studies and minoring in music and Hebrew, he has been teaching and tutoring in different Jewish institutions around LA. He spent three summers heading up the drama department at Camp Ramah in Wisconsin - and seven summers total on drama staff - where he directed Broadway musicals in Hebrew and created original pieces of Jewish theater. Rabbi Bubis has also worked as a Storahtelling Maven, a revived form of the ancient translator/interpreter of Jewish biblical text, making ancient stories and traditions accessible for new generations in the synagogue and in the classroom, advancing Judaic literacy and raising social consciousness. He and his wife Becca are thrilled to be a part of the Shomrei Torah Synagogue community.

What was God doing during the 400 years of silence? By the phrase “400 years of silence” I am assuming you are referring to the 400 years between the Old and New Testaments since Malachi was written about 432-424 B.C. and Matthew was written about A.D. 40. The Old Testament traces the history of the Jewish people from Adam and Eve to the downfall of Israel’s theocracy and then to the reestablishment of the nation Israel in their land. The Old Testament stops with the book of Malachi – the last set of events surrounding the coming of Christ. The older scriptures contain 1) prophecy which validates its message and 2) history which reveals God and the sinful nature and character of men and women. Throughout the scriptures God was revealing Himself. But the most important reason for the Old Testament is to teach us who the Messiah would be and why He would come. During the “400 years of silence” also called the intertestimental period, God was active in world history causing major political and military events to occur as He had predicted in the book of Daniel. During this time the nation of Greece came to power and was conquered by Rome. God had predicted this. It was now count down time to the coming of Messiah. The nation of Israel was under going change. The Pharisees, Sadducees, and scribes came to positions of influence. Israel was looking for Messiah. The stage was set for Jesus Christ to come . . . During the “400 years of silence” God was fulfilling prophecy and counting down to the time for Jesus to arrive on this earth and then eventually die. God told us that Messiah would die in one year and in only one year – A.D. 33. No one who has lived before or after that year can or will qualify to be Messiah – only Jesus Christ.

Auschwitz the Christian and the Council AUSCHWITZ, THE CHRISTIAN, AND THE COUNCIL by Msgr. John M. Oesterreicher Born in Austria, Monsignor John M. Oesterreicher witnessed the Nazi invasion of Germany. He thus writes from experience. Author and editor of several books, he is the Director of the Institute of Judaeo-Chrisitan Studies, Seton Hall University, Newark, NJ, and a consultor to the Roman Secretariat for Christian Unity to which Pope John XXIII gave the mandate of preparing a declaration on the Church and the Jews for the Second Vatican Council Men and women everywhere, those at home in the Church and those afar, see the Council as a great promise: a promise for the Church as well as for the world. Many expect vigorous stirrings from it; indeed, we are already witnessing the first movements of the Spirit. Many hope that it will contribute to a re-ordering of human society, that it will set a new pattern for the co-existence of men of all faiths in the sight of God, particularly for that of Jews and Christians. The Secret of the Concentration Camps It would be shallow optimism to assume that the new day will arrive without pain or anguish. The "will" in this sentence is incomplete. The birth pangs of the coming age are not reserved for today or tomorrow; much of the torment has already been borne, the heaviest portion of it, no doubt, by the Jewish people. Not only was their burden the heaviest in a world of many sufferers — it was heavier than any other they had endured. Jewish suffering during the 1930s and 1940s is best summed up in the name "Auschwitz," a name made so horrible that it stands for all the killing centers, all the concentration camps, all the gas ovens, all the barracks, cellars, and ditches the Nazis turned into tombs. Auschwitz is a symbol because there the process of murder was the most elaborate, the most technically developed. Before I dare describe the horror of Auschwitz, I feel I must deal with a few vexing problems that may be on many minds. What was it that made the Nazis call the crematoria they had built to extinguish all Jewish life "special installations" or "bath houses"? Was it a last trace of shame? Was it a desire to avoid outside interference by throwing a net of secrecy over the horrors of mass murder? Or was it one more devilish device to forestall riots and enforce "orderly procedure," in death as in life? The three hundred wild geese kept at Sobibor, one of the largest extermination camps in Poland, seem to answer the question. Again and again, they were deliberately frightened by their keepers so that their shrieks would drown out the shouts of those about to die; thus even the screams of mothers for their children and the children's cries: "Mommy! Mommy!" failed to arouse the prisoners chosen, not yet to die, but to do forced labor. The two great weapons in the death scheme of the Nazis were brutality and deception. Why, it is often asked, did millions of Jews permit their slayers to do as they pleased? Raul Hilberg has convincingly shown that resistance depends on two factors: the willingness of the victim to rise against his oppressors and a precise knowledge of the dangers he faces. For centuries, however, Jews "had deliberately unlearned the art of revolt"; moreover, the captives were kept in the dark by their Nazi oppressors about the fate that awaited them. Undoubtedly, many incoming Jews had a premonition that they had arrived in a killing center. Reports, rumors, and logical deductions had accomplished that. But the victims did not know the details of the killing operation, the when and the how. They did not know what to expect from step to step. In Belzec, as in other "plants," the first instruction given the new arrivals over the loud-speakers was to take off their clothes. Immediately afterwards, an SS man escorted the victims to the inhalation chamber. As they marched along, he "comforted" them: "Breathe deeply, it will strengthen your lungs. It's a good disinfectant!" This lie and similar ones with which the Nazis lulled their victims show the fiendish character of the plot in a special light: The murderers pretended to be good Samaritans. When the deception had done its work, brutality took over. As soon as the naked columns arrived at the gas chambers, whips sped their final steps. The whip was the "scepter" of the guards. Often men, small-minded, petty, and weak, men who had never amounted to anything in life, they now wielded power over a whole world, as it were: even the best, even the wisest were helpless before them. One wonders, however, what was more brutal, the lashing or the stripping. The forced nakedness of the prisoners was an attempt to divest them of their dignity as persons. Clothes not only protect and adorn the body, they also bespeak the spirit of man, his sense of beauty, his style, his respect for himself, his reverence for others. In short, clothes mark a man as a civilized being. When the victims were compelled to undress, they were robbed, therefore, of their part in civilization. They were thrown into a mass of like men, all drained of initiative, and the last flicker of resistance was snuffed out. Most of the time, this efficiency device worked only too well. But in Treblinka, another death camp — where, during the winter, people had to stand naked at temperatures from 20 to 30 degrees below zero -- babies were not so easily silenced. When some of these little ones saw their mothers' hair being shaved to the scalp, they tried to interfere -- only to be grabbed by their feet and dashed against a wall. At times, the guard would return the little smashed body to the mother. When one thinks of the coolness and the zeal with which the guards and other helpers seem to have served this program of mass murder, one is not surprised that Himmler himself was shaken, at least for a moment, when one of his lieutenants remarked: "Look at the eyes of the men. . . . They are finished for life. What sort of followers are we really training here? Neuropaths or brutes?" The Horror of Auschwitz Auschwitz was the model. There, inhuman efficiency was at its peak. There, the lie was cultivated. There, brutality had become a conveyor belt so that in a given day from ten to twenty thousand Jewish men, women, and children could be "eliminated." The total number of Jews gassed in Auschwitz will never be known. Hoss, its commander, first estimated the number at 2,500,000; later, at his trial, he reduced it to 1,350,000. Others speak of "only" 600,000. Each of these figures, one must remember, refers to the victims of the gas ovens, and not to those shot, starved to death, or dying in other ways. When the victims, who had been herded into box cars, arrived at the railroad station, they were met by the camp physicians. There, on the platform, the doctors would choose those who were to die immediately and those who were first to give the few ounces of strength left in them to the Nazi industrial empire. As the deportees went by, the physicians selected, in a rather haphazard manner, the physically "fit" from the "unfit." A thumb pointing right meant work; a thumb pointing left, death. The majority of those going right became forced laborers; a few, however, were used as guinea pigs by the camp's "medical researchers" till they were of no further use to their torturers. Those going left were deprived of their luggage; men and women were separated and led to the area of extermination. The better to deceive them, an outdoor symphony orchestra, made up of Jewish players, was sometimes placed along the road to death. The victims saw the chimneys, the flames, the smoke; they smelled the stench of the crematoria -- yet the farce of Nazi benevolence continued. In the halls leading to the gas chambers, signs had been posted, reading "wash and disinfection room." The low in the game of camouflage was reached by the receipts handed to the death candidates for clothing collected. Under the watchful eyes of Nazi guards -- but also of Jewish work gangs who were made accomplices in the murder of their kinsmen and held to this odious task by the bait of a temporary exemption from the fate of the rest -- the victims were shoved into the gas chambers. Even then many, still clinging to hope, thought they were to take showers. Those who hesitated were whipped to make them move along. The moment the victims were trapped inside the "wash-room" they must have realized the ghastly hoax. The deceptive shower sprays did not work; the light suddenly went off. Zyklon B, a quick-working gas that Hoss, the above-mentioned commander of the camp, had introduced, was delivered to the building in -- of all things! -- a Red Cross car. The gas pellets were poured through a vent into the death chamber. As the fumes rose, panic sometimes took hold of the victims: The stronger among them struck down the weaker, stepping on them to reach a level of air not yet contaminated. But this desperate effort helped only for moments. Generally, the agonies lasted for about two minutes; in four, everyone was dead. The Unvanquished Spirit Only a man unfeeling and unconscious of his own frailty would dare judge those who, gripped by fear, fought to prolong their lives, no matter how foolish their struggle. Moreover, I would not only be lacking in compassion, I would also wrong the murdered were I to give the impression that, at Auschwitz and other places of terror, mutual aid and solidarity in suffering were unknown, that among the transients through these death factories fierce strife for survival was the only rule. One need only look at the famous photograph of men, women, and children being marched out of the burning Warsaw ghetto, at gun point. Some walk arm in arm; all keep close; the hatred of their torturers and their own fellowship in suffering makes them one heart and one body. Eyewitnesses also tell of many who, the very instant they realized their doom, prayed aloud. Often the Jewish profession of faith: Shema Yisra'el, "Hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One" rent the air, thereby turning defeat into victory. That men, about to breathe the deadly gas, could proclaim the living God; that at the moment of agony, they could call upon Him who is love, foretold the ultimate ruin of the would-be masters of destruction. While Hitler's war still lasted, Sholem Asch wrote an article, In the Valley of Death. The many victims of the Warsaw ghetto made him wonder who was to be pitied more, the victims or the murderers. The believers among the victims, he held, saw "the light of salvation in their martyr death." If the murderers, however, possessed any human feelings, he asked, did they not see the mark of Cain on their foreheads, a mark no detergent could wash away? Referring to a proclamation by the underground forces of Warsaw on the mass murder of Polish Jewry, Sholem Asch continues: There is one sentence in the proclamation which is characteristic: "Catholics dying with the name of Christ and the Holy Mother on their lips, together with orthodox Jews calling their last prayer Hear O Israel . . ." I do not believe that since Nero those two calls have been mingled together in one arena of martyrdom. The death-ovens were a later development in the Nazi technique of extermination. The primitive method was an open ditch or a mass grave which the victims frequently had to dig themselves. At times, they were made to run toward the place of execution, to lie down at the bottom of the ditch, or on those just killed, so as to be machine-gunned by the SS. At other times, they were made to stand at the brink of their grave, so as to be shot and kicked into the charnel pit. All their efforts notwithstanding, the executioners were not able to suppress altogether the dignity of their Jewish victims, An eyewitness recounts: During the quarter hour that I stood near the pits, I heard no complaints or pleas to be spared. I watched a family group of about eight people, a man and his wife, both approximately fifty years old, surrounded by their children of about one, eight, and ten, as well as two grown-up daughters, between twenty and twenty-four. An elderly lady with snow white hair held the one year old baby in her arms, sang something to him and tickled him. The child gurgled with joy. The couple looked on with tears in their eyes. The father held the boy of about ten by the hand and spoke to him softly; the boy was fighting his tears. The father pointed toward heaven, stroked his head and apparently explained something to him. The same sworn statement contains this description: The pit was about three fourths full. According to my estimate about one thousand people already lay in it. I turned toward the sharpshooter. He, an SS man, sat on the ground at the edge of the narrow side, his legs dangling into the pit; an automatic pistol lay on his knees while he smoked a cigarette. The people, completely naked, went down some steps that had been cut into the clay wall of the pit, clambered over the heads of the people lying there, to the place indicated by the SS man. They lay down in front of the dead or injured, some caressing those who were still alive and whispering to them. In this and other ways, some six million Jews died in the countries that had come under Hitler's mad rule. Many thousands were hidden and survived, thanks to the heroism of those who defied the ubiquitous hand of the persecutor. A few were daring and lucky enough to escape from the heavily guarded concentration camps. One such escapee tells how, at night, he and his comrades approached a peasant's house near the river Bug. They knocked, were welcomed in, offered rest, given bread for their journey by the woman of the house and, in the end, shown the road to safety by the young peasant himself. As they departed, the patriarch of the family made the sign of the Cross over them. There were those who supported the Nazis, though not necessarily their program of murder. There were others who, feeling utterly paralyzed, feared to think or act. But there were also those who shared the anguish of the victims and gave them of their love. The old man near the Polish-Russian border stands for those few. His blessing was a pledge that the Son of Man, who had "nowhere to lay His head" (Mt 8:20), was not far from the persecuted. The Cloak of Anti-Semitism To tell the horrors of Auschwitz is to invite the question: Why? Why did the Nazis hate the Jews? Why did they try to wipe them out? Apparently, several motives spurred Hitler and his cohorts. The most obvious was a tactical one: Agitation against the Jews was a "superb" means of propaganda, a political and economic weapon in Germany as well as in the occupied countries. By pointing to a secret enemy, the Nazis thought to distract attention from their own doings. While they railed against "a Jewish plot for world domination," they had their followers sing: "Today Germany is ours, tomorrow the entire world." A mixture of audacity and cowardice, the Nazis transposed their own lust onto the Jews. In this way, they disguised their own actions as self-defense and prepared their own exoneration, should their tyranny collapse. It was Jewry, Hitler declared again and again, that sought to encircle Germany, ruin it economically, and enslave it politically. It was the Jews who directed British imperialism, American plutocracy, and Russian bolshevism. Even in the farewell statement he drew up only hours before his suicide. Hitler could not refrain from blaming the Jews. "Those international statesmen who were either of Jewish descent or worked for Jewish interests," not he, had started the war. Jewry was "the real criminal of this murderous struggle." Forever will it be "saddled with responsibility." To the very end. Hitler remains true to form and thus concludes his testament with a call to "merciless resistance against the world poisoner of all nations, international Jewry." Were Hitler's last words but wanton propaganda? Or did he tell his lies so often that he believed them himself? Like many of his sayings, his last utterance reveals the anti-Semitism of the Nazis to be something more than a mere technique. To be sure, it was an attempt -- not always unsuccessful -- to weaken other nations by disrupting their unity. It was a prelude to the attack on the "inferior Slavs," the "negroid French," the "mongrelized Americans." It was meant to serve as the training ground for world conquest. Though it became carefully planned strategy, its roots lay not in the calculating mind but in more primitive reactions. For the most part, the Nazis were hollow men who craved an ideology that would save them from their inner emptiness; they were misfits who needed the illusion of grandeur. Rather than watch their own disintegration, they let instinct push them toward the destruction of others. Thus the Jew became the symbol of their inner selves. Few documents reveal the psychological structure of the Nazis so well as one published by the headquarters of the SS. It is entitled The Subman. "As the night rises against the day, as light and shadow are enemies forever -- so is man the greatest foe of the man destined to rule the earth," the anonymous author rhapsodizes. Outwardly the two types of men resemble one another. Hands and feet, eyes and mouth, make them look alike. Yet, the latter is a mere sketch; indeed, his urges make him rank below the beast. "Within this man, there reigns an appalling chaos of wild, unrestrained passions: a nameless drive toward destruction, a primitive greed, an undisguised meanness. Subman -- nothing else!" All the great thoughts and works that adorn the earth are the fruit of the man destined to rule. In his desire to advance, he made the plow, fashioned the tool, built the house. In his quest for a higher level of existence, he became social, good, and great. Family, people, state came into being, and man became God's neighbor. But the subman, too, was alive. He hated the work of the other. He raged against it, secretly as a thief, publicly as a slanderer, a murderer. . . . Never did the subman maintain peace. Never did he leave the world undisturbed. He needed the twilight, the chaos. He shunned the light of cultural progress. For his self-preservation he required the swamp, hell, but not the sun. And this subworld of submen found their leader -- the eternal Jew. No excursion into modern psychology is necessary to realize that the anonymous author unwittingly painted his own likeness and that of his comrades. The Fear of Conscience In the days of Auschwitz, Jews were defamed and killed because the Nazis had projected upon them the evil that possessed their own souls. This, however, was not the only function the Jews served in the Nazi scheme. As Scripture tells us, the Jewish people, bidden by God, once took its place at the foot of Mount Sinai. Ancient Jewish tradition goes a step further: The generation that witnessed the promulgation of the commandments represented all future generations. Because the children of Israel are, as it were, one body, the generations-to-come were gathered with the desert pilgrims around the mountain that trembled before the majesty of the Lord. The Jews are the people that heard -- not once, but again and again -- the words "You shall," "You shall not," words that are like thunder in man's rebellious ear. Theologically, then, the Jews are the people of the law; they are and remain this people, no matter whether individual Jews do or do not conform to the quality the law demands. With the intuitive grasp that only deep passion, be it love or hatred, can give, Hitler saw the theological significance of the Jewish people. It was not an empty boast when he declared: We are putting an end to the wrong path mankind has taken. The tablets of Mount Sinai have lost their validity. Conscience is a Jewish invention. Like circumcision, it mutilates man. A new age of magic world interpretation is on the rise: an interpretation that springs from the will, and not from knowledge. There is no such thing as truth, either in the moral or in the scientific sense. . . . Every deed is meaningful, even crime. . . . The word crime belongs to a world over which we have triumphed. There are positive and negative activities. Every crime in the old sense towers above bourgeois immobility. . . . One must distrust mind and conscience, one must place one's trust in one's instincts. Thus spoke Hitler, champion of the new age, master of a new morality, founder of a new society. No wonder he was compelled to detest a people whose elite had preached to the world that man is not meant to be ruled by his inclinations but by the everlasting will of God. If, as he held, conscience was their legacy to the world, they had to be hated. If they were like the invaders of Troy, if theirs was a gift deceitful and lethal, they had to be disarmed, better still, wiped out. Such was the logic of absurdity. The Scandal of Christ Hitler's loathing of conscience still does not tell the whole story. As Jews reproach the man who wishes to live by instinct alone because their very existence reminds him of the moral imperative, so the very sight of them speaks to him of the Christ -- Christ leading man from the yoke of the commandments to the dynamic of love. If anything was more hateful to Hitler's circle than the words of Mount Sinai, it was the words spoken on the Mountain of the Beatitudes. Even of humanness, Himmler said that it was "a Christian softening of the spine." At his order, a plaque with Nietzsche's saying "Praised be what hardens" was hung in almost all SS offices. What might he have said about confidence in, and life by, grace? The German bishops knew what they were saying when, on a Sunday in June of 1961, in a prayer for the murdered Jews and their persecutors, they asked all German Catholics to recite: Lord, God of our fathers! God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob. Father of mercy and God of all consolation! You ranged yourself at the side of Israel, your servant; you sent to him and to all men Jesus Christ your Son, their Redeemer. You delivered Him, the guiltless One, for our sakes so that we might all be saved. We profess before you: In our midst, countless men were slain because they belonged to the people from which comes the Messiah, according to the flesh. That Nazi hatred of the Jews was, at its deepest layer, hatred of Christ is the conviction even of witnesses not necessarily friendly to the Church. In The Black Book, for instance, published by a group of organizations, prominent among which was the Jewish anti-Fascist Committee of Moscow, its authors declare: The war against Jewry and Judaism also served as the spearhead of the Nazi crusade against the Christian religion, diametrically opposed to the new gospel of the Fuehrer and the Fuehrer-State. Beginning with a vituperative attack on the Old Testament, the Nazis soon launched a crusade against the New Testament, "laden with the filth of Near Eastern Jewish and African life." They started by defiling and burning the synagogues, but before they were through they nearly dominated the churches of Germany and the occupied countries. Anti-Semitism was the strategic weapon for the attack on "Jewish-tainted Christianity." Evidence of this thesis is overwhelming, though it may not easily be found in the Nazi literature designed for the outside world. To lull his pupils, and perhaps also himself, into a false peace, a grade school teacher went so far as to compare -- I hesitate as I write these words -- Hitler to Jesus. The ideas dominating the inside circles, however, were of a different order. A marching song of the storm troopers, called "Out with the Jews! Out with the Pope!", makes its point over and over again: Defiantly, we struggled for fifteen years to win abiding power. We stormed, we won, even though Rome and Judah mocked. We did not shed our blood, without name or glory, So that Christianity keep Jew-ridden the German way. . . Let the Christian offer Palestine his years, his heart, his hand; We are free of Mount Sinai, Germany is our Holy Land.... Pope and rabbi, both must go. Heathens we will be again, No longer crawl to Church. Ours is the sun wheel's lead. These are but four of the stanzas of a song whose theme is repeated endlessly by the refrain: "Out with the Jews! Out with the Pope! Turn them out of Germany's house!" Another rhyme that made its rounds among the storm troopers of Munich in the fall of 1934 proclaimed that "as long as priests utilize confession and altar to ensnare German souls into the Pope's militia, as long as Christian teaching betrays the Nordic way, Jewry will continue to violate German honor." The Slow Awakening Anyone who did not experience those years of utter disgrace may be tempted to consider these songs merely occasional vulgarities, as if one of the characteristics of that time had not been the marching columns that dominated, not only streets, but also hearts. The following episode shows how very slow the awakening was, no, how far the blindness went. In 1938, I saw a photograph of the entrance to a German village that, like many others, had -- instead of the customary road sign or invitation to strangers -- a notice forbidding access to Jews: "Jews are not welcome here!" This dismal board was bad enough in itself. It may be that the village president had been told by higher authorities to erect the warning at the village gate, but certainly no one had commanded him to plant it next to -- a wayside cross. Obviously, neither he nor the other villagers were aware of the abysmal irony of this juxtaposition. Here hung the Crucified -- "Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews," the inscription above His head proclaimed --, imploring with arms wide open: "Come to me, all of you who labor and are burdened. I will give you relief" (Mt 11:28) .There was the rejection, directed not only at Jewish passers-by but also at Him who, one might have thought, had found a lasting abode in the hearts of many villagers. We must not read too much into a story like this. Yet, it shows how little the National-Socialist revolution was understood in those days. It shows how few realized that, to the masters of the Third Reich, Synagogue and Church were one and the same enemy. The really "final solution of the Jewish problem" was to be the doing away of the entire biblical heritage, of gospel and Church, of grace and mercy; the physical slaughter of the Jewish people was only a giant step toward this goal. To put it differently, Jews were made to "pay" for having been the instruments of God's revelation, Is it not appalling that rancor against salvation history should have made Adolf Hitler, Alfred Rosenberg and the rest pierce two thousand years of conflict between Christians and Jews, years of mutual recrimination and bitter hostility, to see their solidarity when, even today, there are still Christians as well as Jews who do not think or feel in terms of their common brotherhood? An inner mutual bond like this is not of our making, nor is it left to our choice. It exists whether we like it or not. For our own good, however, we had better like it. I can understand that Jews find no comfort in the thought that the Nazis held them responsible for the coming of Christ, that the victims of Auschwitz were, therefore, unwitting martyrs for His sake. For centuries, they had been pursued as Christ-killers. Suddenly, they were attacked as Christ-bearers. Here is an antithesis, an irony a Jew cannot but find hard to take. It may even be offensive to him to think of his kinsmen tortured by the Nazis as forced witnesses to Jesus. A Christian, however, should go down on his knees. The thought that Jews were made to bear the Christian's burden should shake him into the realization of a kinship he has too long forgotten. To return to the perplexity and pain experienced by Jews at the thought that, despite the long separation, their enemy should still link them to Jesus: Has this difficulty led Jews more and more to abandon the view that the Christophobia of their torturers fed the fire that engulfed them? During Hitler's war, men like Maurice Samuel favored this interpretation. To quote a few passages from various chapters of his book: Anti-Semitism is the expression of the concealed hatred of Christ and Christianity, rising to a new and catastrophic level in the western world. . . . The liberals, still committed to a non-moral dream of human perfectibility, though a few are shaking themselves free, refuse to understand that an attack on western civilization must operate as an attack on the Christian morality. Therefore they see in anti-Semitism one of many political devices instead of the specific symptom of the anti-Christ convulsion. . . . We shall never understand the maniacal, world-wide seizure of anti-Semitism unless we transpose the terms. It is of Christ that the Nazi Fascists are afraid; it is in his omnipotence that they believe; it is him that they are determined madly to obliterate. But the names of Christ and Christianity are too overwhelming, and the habit of submission to them is too deeply ingrained after centuries and centuries of teaching. Therefore they must, I repeat, make their assault on those who were responsible for the birth and spread of Christianity. They must spit on the Jews as "the Christ-killers" because they long to spit on the Jews as the Christ-givers. The fury of anti-Semitism is universal and inevitable because to destroy Christ and Christianity is the most important single idealistic objective of the force-philosophy. It is in fact, the objective. The Result of Christian History? At the time of Hitler's tyranny, not a few Jews saw eye to eye with Maurice Samuel. In our day, most agree with Jules Isaac. In The Teaching of Contempt, he asks whether it is really astonishing that after centuries of abuse -- centuries during which the Jews were called a people of Cains, of Judases, of God-slayers -- that there should arise from German Catholicism "the cruelest, most relentless fighters for Nazi racism." "They have only taken up," he continues, "and carried to its point of perfection a tradition well established in Christendom since the Middle Ages -- a tradition of hatred and contempt, of degradation and servitude, of disgrace and violence, on the official as well as the popular level." I shall not discuss the careless manner with which "German Catholicism" is made to bear the responsibility for all those Nazis who had not only left the Church but hated her with venom and prided themselves on their unbelief. I shall deal here only with what might be called Isaac's "exposure" and its appeal to those who favor a straight-line reading of history. So plausible does it appear that it has been accepted not only by Jews but also by some Christians. Still, the evidence is to the contrary. It is more than probable that the horrifying charge that all Jews are deicides prevented many Christians, of high rank and of none, from seeing, for a time, the Nazi crimes for what they were. This warped view may have maimed the conscience of thousands, even millions, as irritation at the subversive activity of a few Jews deafened many ears to God's plea rising from the torture of all. In 1958, at the war crimes trial in Ulm, the prosecutor questioned a minister on his silence. He asked the pastor why he had not taken a stand when, back in his Lithuanian parish at the beginning of the war, the brutal Einsatzkommandos, the "special duty troops," had mowed down masses of Jews. After some hesitation, he declared it had been his opinion that their massacre was but a consequence of the curse with which they had once cursed themselves. They had shouted before the judgment seat of Pilate: "His blood be on us and on our children." (Mt 27:25) (The "they," incidentally, are not the Jews of all times but a crowd of that time -- a few thousand men at most, among them many sympathizers of Barabbas, the freedom fighter admired by some, feared by others -- which can hardly be considered the true representative of all Jewry and which certainly could not have forced Pilate to deliver Jesus to his soldiers for execution.) Mistaking the sinful and often inhuman chair of Pilate for the holy throne of God, mistaking, too, the shouting of an ill-tempered and foolish crowd, manipulated by Caiphas, not knowing what it was saying, for an unalterable decree of the Lord, the minister obviously thought the blood shed by the Nazis was the blood the mob had called upon their children. To hold, however, that the sin of a few is laid by God on an entire people till the end of time is poor, is bad theology. I am sorry I can quote only a Protestant, and not a Catholic. A truly Christian critique of any situation demands that, instead of searching for the sawdust in the eyes of others, one seek first the beams in one's own eye and in the eyes of one's brethren. I am compelled to refer to a Lutheran pastor because I have never heard a similar statement by a Catholic priest, though many may have been made. To speak of things that I myself have heard and seen: In the Austria of the middle thirties, there were Catholics who tried to adjust a little to the Nazi philosophy. Some even thought that they might "take the wind out of Nazi sails" by favoring a legislation that would give Jews a status apart from their fellow-citizens. One heard people use all the old slogans again: for instance, that Jews were too loud for Nordic ears; that they were given to luxury; that they were irresponsible in their business dealings; that they were strangers to the soil. Orientals really, and therefore obeying a different moral code, particularly in sexual matters. There seemed to be no end to these and similar phrases, and never did those who recited them ask themselves whether these facile judgments were really true and what consequences they might have. To a sickening point, one had to listen to these hollow declamations. Yet, I cannot remember a single instance in which one of those "fellow travelers" demanded a "special statute" for the Jews because they were guilty of the death of Christ. Never did I hear any of these Nazi sympathizers even refer to Jews as Christ-killers. This personal experience may not be conclusive. A look, however, at the history of ideas makes clear that Auschwitz was not the logical conclusion, not the climax of a distorted reading or understanding of the passion of Christ. Auschwitz was the bitter fruit of an ancient ressentiment against the crucified Lord. Having smoldered for centuries, it burst out first in Nietzsche's writings, then in Hitlers deeds. Nietzsche, The Trail Blazer In calling Nietzsche one of the forerunners of Nazi anti-Semitism, indeed, one of its major trail blazers, I do not wish to imply that, had he witnessed its appearance, he would have approved it; on the contrary, he would have turned from its every aspect in utter horror. Still, Nazi hostility toward the Jews was, at times directly, at times indirectly, nourished by his words. I readily admit that he was not only critical of the anti-Semites of his day, he detested them. He called anti-Semitism a folly and poured his scorn on "anti-Jewish stupidity," in the same breath with which he had ridiculed anti-Polish, Wagnerian, Prussian stupidities -- all mental derangements of a people afflicted by the fever of nationalism. In The Antichrist, written in 1888, however, he said "that before reading the New Testament one had better put on gloves" -- it was simply unclean. "One would as little choose 'early Christians' for companions as Polish Jews. . . . Neither has a pleasant smell." Nietzsche could not bear the incomparable greatness of a Redeemer whose invitation went out to the healthy but also, indeed above all, to "the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind" (Lk 14:13)! A few lines later, he declares that the only New Testament figure worthy of honor is Pontius Pilate, the man who refused to take a Jewish brawl seriously. "One Jew more or less" did not matter to the Governor, animated as he was by "the noble scorn of a Roman." That noble scorn "enriched the New Testament with the only saying that has any value -- and which is, at once, its criticism and its destruction: 'What is truth?'" In the context of Nietzsche's life, his words on "the predatory beast," "the magnificent blond brute, avidly rampant for spoil and victory" may have been no more than subconscious outcries of ebbing vitality. In the context of his thought, "the blond beast" hardly meant what his inferior imitators made of it. Still, he coined the phrase, and this coinage, like other words of his, became the rallying cry of the would-be strong. Nietzsche applauded the mighty, the rulers who, when among their own were restrained by respect, custom, jealousy; who, toward their own kind, distinguished themselves by consideration, self-control, tenderness, loyalty, and friendship, whereas toward the outside world, toward things alien, they were "not much better than beasts of prey let loose." There they relish freedom from all social constraint; in the wilderness, they make up for the tension a long enclosure and imprisonment within the peace of the community brings about. They revert to the innocence, the [unhampered] conscience of the beast of prey, like jubilant monsters who have come, let us say, from a ghastly series of murder, arson, rape, and torture with a bravado and equanimity as if they had taken part in nothing but a students' prank. . . . At the center of all these noble races, there is the beast of prey. When Nietzsche concluded that, from time to time, the predatory animal needed release that "the beast must be let out again, must return to the wilderness," he gave to the Nazi tormentors of the Jews, and of all the groups and nations they disdained, not only free rein, but he also crowned them with false glory. To repeat, I am not concerned with the totality of Nietzsche's thought nor with its contradictions. I cannot possibly analyze here what in his writings is sheer spite, sheer perversity, and what is real conviction. Neither have I the least desire to judge Nietzsche the man, but I must judge his role in the history of anti-Semitism. As judge of this role, I cannot but say that he sired the anti-theological impulse of Nazism. One only has to read aloud his outpourings in order to realize their poisonous effect on the generation that followed him. Here is an example: Christianity, sprung from Jewish roots and understandable only as a growth of that soil, is the counter movement against every morality of breeding, race, and privilege: It is the anti-Aryan religion par excellence. Christianity is the transposition of all Aryan values, the victory of chandala values [values common to the "untouchables," the outcasts]. It is the gospel preached to the poor, the lowly, the total revolt of all that is downtrodden, wretched, ill-developed, or crippled against "race" -- the immortal revenge of the chandala as the religion of love. What is Christianity, then, for Nietzsche? Contempt for the body; cruelty toward oneself and toward others; mortal enmity for all that is aristocratic; hatred of the mind, of pride, courage, and freedom, hatred of the senses, of joy in the senses, of joy in general. The god of Christians is "the patron of the sick," "a spider" -- "one of the most corrupt god-concepts ever attained on earth." So pale is he that all that is strong, brave, lordly, and proud is gone from his image. Here god has sunk to a level where he is nothing but "a staff for the weary, a sheet anchor for the drowning." So distorted is Nietzsche's vision that he mistakes the lofty summons of the Christian message for a call to the great leveling. Nietzsche's sarcasm continues through his later writings; like any craving, it is never satisfied. "The poor man's god, the sinner's god," he mocks, went with the chosen people into strange lands, went about till he was at home everywhere, "the Great Cosmopolitan." Though he won half the earth to his side, he has remained a Jew, he has remained the god of back streets, the god of dark holes, of shacks, of all the unhealthy quarters of the world! His universal kingdom is, now as always, a domain of the underworld, a hospital, a basement realm, a ghetto kingdom. Here speaks no deep thinker, rather, I am sorry to say, a sensation-hungry writer. His pathos is false, his rhetoric that of a man inebriated by the wine of his own words. Behind the scornful "he has remained a Jew" stands the fact -- so shocking to Nietzsche, the Aryan -- that the holy and living One, the Creator of the heavens and of the earth, wishes for all time to be known and to be addressed as the God of Israel, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and that the Church adores Him as such. Behind the flippant "the god of back streets and dark holes" hides the resentment that Jesus was born in a cave; that He spent much of His life in "unhealthy quarters" till, at the hour of His death, He made the agonized cry of all pain-laden creatures His own. Himself the very opposite of a life-intoxicated, dancing Dionysos, Nietzsche compensated for his delicate constitution by hymning the lust for life and for destruction, by ridiculing the "pale" redeemer who broke down under his burden. Nietzsche did not tire of speaking of the ressentiment of others because his own did not let him go. Christianity, the Jewish Revenge Lest his readers brush his "diagnosis" aside, Nieztsche "hammers" it in. Christianity is "not: a reaction against Jewish instincts, it is their natural issue, another step in their fearsome logic." I am the last one to deny that Christianity is deeply rooted in the faith, the life, and the worship of ancient Israel. But it is not rooted in any instincts, Jewish or "Aryan," rather does it crucify them. It proclaims to all, Jews as well as heathens, that the "old Adam" must give way to the new man; that in order to have a share in God's kingly reign, everyone -- no matter where he was born, no matter what the color of his skin, no matter what his language -- is in need of rebirth. Nonetheless, Nietzsche sees the origin of Christianity like this: Faced with the question of whether to be or not to be, the Jews chose to be at any price, and the price was falsification of everything natural. To get even with their enemies, their conquerors, they upset the aristrocratic equation: good = noble = mighty = beautiful == happy = loved by the gods. In its place they set the opposite. The wretched alone are the good, none but the suffering, the needy, the loathsome are the truly devout. Thus, "the hatred of the impotent" begot, what Nietzsche considers, the Jewish slave revolt in the moral realm, the most subtle revenge. Not only did Nietzsche misunderstand the gospel completely, he was blind to the fact that it was power, divine power (I Cor 1:18, 24). Never does it praise degradation, suffering, or want as such. Yet, it empowers everyone who lives by it to bless his own burden, indeed to turn that burden into a source of blessing. Nietzsche's counter-proclamation of the gaiety of Greece, the joyousness of the pagan world, the triumphant exuberance of the "blond brute" was nothing but propaganda. His ideals were wish dreams: The man of antiquity, like the neopagan, was at bottom a man of desperation. But Nietzsche refused to acknowledge the gospel's victory over despair. For him, Christ's entry into the pagan world had nothing majestic, nothing magnanimous about it. What took place was simply this: From the trunk of that tree of revenge and hatred, Jewish hatred -- that most profound and sublime hatred which creates ideals and transforms values) the like of which has never existed on earth -- there grew something equally incomparable, a new love, the most profound and sublime of all loves. And from what other trunk could it have grown? Let no one think that this love went on its upward climb as the very negation of that thirst for revenge, as an antithesis to the Jewish hate! No, the opposite is the truth! . . . This Jesus of Nazareth, incarnate gospel of love, this "redeemer" who brought bliss and victory to the poor, the sick, the sinful -- was he not really temptation in its most uncanny and irresistible form, the temptation and detour to none other than those Jewish values? . . . Has not Israel obtained the first goal of its sublime revenge, by precisely the snare of this "redeemer," for all that he might appear as Israel's adversary and destroyer. The Leap from Reverie to Crime The gospel had often been maligned but never with Nietzsche's vehemence. It had had powerful foes but hardly ever enemies as obsessed, as twisted as he and his epigoni. No opponent who went before him equaled his intensity in making Church and Jewry a joint target. To be sure, his animosity was not that of the vulgar anti-Semite, but it was nonetheless dangerous. No doubt, Nazi anti-Semitism had other mentors as well -- Count Joseph de Gobineau, Richard Wagner, Houston Stewart Chamberlain, to mention only a few. Fichte, Treitschke, Stocker, Lueger, and others contributed to its formation. But compared with Nietzsche, they were just bunglers. Even if someone could prove that the ideologists of the Third Reich had never read a single line of Nietzsche's anti-Semitic declarations, it would mean little. Surely, his outbursts against Germans and things German must have infuriated them, but they were still under his spell. One cannot call, as Nietzsche did, the Christian concept of God "the perverse castration of a god to make him a god of goodness alone" and expect it to be cast to the winds. Nietzsche's challenge to his time was: Is it not part of the secret black art of a truly great policy of revenge -- of a farseeing, subterranean, slow moving, and calculating revenge -- that Israel herself had to brand the actual instrument of her revenge before all the world as a mortal enemy and nail him to the cross so that "all the world," that is, all of Israel's adversaries could, without suspicion, nibble at this bait? Further, is it possible, even for the most cunning of minds, to invent a bait more dangerous than this one? Once questions like these are shouted into the world, they will be echoed, again and again. Not only will they be echoed -- they will be magnified and translated into deeds. Nietzsche's provocations were, alas, acted out in blood. Despite all the passages I have given, despite the evidence they seem to offer, my thesis, I fear, will meet resistance. Some will simply say that I attribute too great an influence to Nietzsche -- though, if I may repeat myself, I do not maintain that Nietzsche, and Nietzsche alone, made the Nazis what they were. Nonbelievers whose hearts may not be free of ressentiment against everything Christian, indeed, against everything religious, will find my conviction unacceptable because they will find in it an unspoken call to a change of mind. Many a Jew will not read my thesis with pleasure because its acceptance would compel him to relinquish the cherished view that Nazi anti-Semitism sprang from Christianity. Many a Christian, himself filled with, or scathed by, aversion to Jews will suddenly become aware of the company he keeps and in what direction he is moving. Will he try to repress his awareness or will he reverse his course? Yet, whether or not I am right in the assumption that Nietzsche was a -- no doubt unwitting -- sponsor of Nazi anti-Semitism, its doubly murderous character is undeniable reality. In this respect, I should like to make my own the words of a Lutheran friend: In the days of the so-called Third Reich, days that now lie behind us, Jews and Christians were persecuted together, with our Jewish brethren bearing the main burden. Only since then have we been granted the altogether new opportunity of seeing the suffering that overtook the two groups as a sign of election and of the resulting kinship (Zusammengehorigkeit). Hence, enmity against the Jews ultimately becomes enmity against the Jew Jesus of Nazareth. This enmity may become manifest in mild or brutal protests, in all sorts of "Aryanizing" efforts, or in terrifying attacks in which all masks are dropped, as in the shocking incident that took place in the Wilna ghetto. In that ghetto, there was a Jew whom the police mockingly called "Jew Jesus." One day, they seized him, took him outside the camp, lacerated his head with a crown of barbed wire and -- in order to taunt both Jews and Christians -- crucified him. Here the curtain is torn from the dreadful nakedness of anti-Semitism: In the end, anti-Semitism storms against the God of Israel and the Israel of God. The Revolt of Nothingness In singling out Nietzsche as one whose ravings cut the road to Auschwitz, I in no way wish to imply that he was the only one who did so. Others, too, helped in laying it: philosophers, poets, historians, even simple people, indeed, an entire age that had lost its moorings. In Nazism, the black emptiness of a world that thought it could do without the living God was made manifest; the great void appeared as if on a large screen. Max Picard's Hitler in Our Selves sees the Fuhrer as the prototype of the "disconnected, discontinuous man." Morally and spiritually uprooted. Hitler made moral rootlessness his program. So fascinated was he by the idea of the superman -- the uprooted man par excellence -- that even without Nietzsche, Picard holds, he would have lived and died acting the superman. For where can the disconnected man go, Picard asks, if not "above" or "below" man, "to crime or to madness or to both"? To lay bare the roots of Hitlers hostility to the Jews in the thought and life of a society in which apostasy from the biblical tradition had gone much further than believers and unbelievers imagined is not to absolve Christians from any guilt. Quite the contrary, Nazism lived by principles like these: "One most sacred human right, which is at the same time the most sacred obligation, is to see that the blood be kept pure," or: "The sin against blood and race is the original sin of this world," or: "The most universal and pitiless law of life is . . . the struggle for existence and growth, the struggle of the races for their living space." A Christian who did not know that these maxims were daggers plunged into the heart of faith indicted himself. Again, in 1934, the Nazi government justified the treacherous assassination of several early associates of the Fuhrer, who had become "inconvenient" to him, with these words: "The . . . accomplished measures are to be considered self-defense of the State; they are, therefore, lawful." A Christian who, after such a declaration, remained unaware of what was in store for him and for the world was simply blind. To be fruitful, the examination of conscience must not be restricted to Christians. The holocaust does not dispense even a Jew from such self-scrutiny. As a matter of fact, he should be driven to ask whether or not he helped prepare the atmosphere in which a Hitler could thrive. To give one or two examples: "Man, the image of God" is an essential part of Israel's faith, and so is the call derived from his image-existence to be God's presence on earth. A Jew, however, who exchanged this faith for the opinion that man was nothing but a highly developed animal lent his support, however unknowingly, to Hitler's idea that men be bred as cattle are bred; unconsciously, he made it possible for many to find Hitler's plan, if not acceptable, at least tolerable. No less disastrous was the notion that law was but a convention among the citizens of a state, without basis or sanction in the eternal order; no less disastrous the advice that a man ought to obey his "nature," ought never to restrain it or keep his passions reined, lest he lose his "personality." Hitler responded to these ideas, which many had taken lightly, with deadly seriousness and thus disclosed their inner absurdity. But Hitler's recklessness does not render innocent those Jews and Christians in name only, those agnostics or humanists who advocated them. As Hitler's insanity does not free them from their complicity in the rise of Nazism, so it warns us, too, not to become guilty of allowing another daemonic invasion. Similarities and Differences Without flinching, we must face these facts, discern their quality and value, if we wish to understand what happened and to prepare for what we hope will become more and more real: the reconciliation and brotherliness of Christians and Jews. Many writers on the Nazi crimes against the Jews lay the blame at the door of Christianity, occasionally even at the door of Christianity alone. With ease, they can show that most of the measures the Nazis took against the Jews were advocated centuries before by Luther. With the same ease, they can point out that much of the Nazi legislation against the Jews had parallels in conciliar and synodal statutes. As a decree of the Third Reich empowered local authorities to banish Jews from the streets on Nazi holidays, so the Third Synod of Orleans in the mid sixth century, and the Fourth Lateran Council six hundred years later, forbade Jews to walk out in public at the end of Holy Week or on Easter Sunday. (The background of the latter decree seems to have been the feeling that by donning festive garments during Holy Week Jews wished to express their disdain for the passion of Jesus.) Under Hitler, Jews in Germany and all occupied countries were compelled to wear a yellow star. Imitating a Moslem decree that made Christians wear blue belts and Jews yellow ones, the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215 ordered Jews to wear such clothes as would mark their identity. (For the sake of historical accuracy, one must add that the Council Fathers cited not only the example of Mohammed's successor but also Leviticus 19:19. They obliged the clergy, too, to wear a distinctive garb. Moreover, the ordinance was never vigorously enforced. Pope Honorius III, for instance, mitigated its application.) The same Council sought to bar Jews from public office, an exclusion in which the Third Reich succeeded as no medieval prince or ecclesiastic ever had. As the engineers of the "final solution" clamored for the blood of the Jews as the ultimate enemy, so, during the crusades, armed hordes demanded it as that of "infidels" and "enemies of Christ." (One ought not to forget that in the first instance the agents of death were government officials, in the second, the riffraff of the time.) There is no denying that parallels exist. But resemblance is not identity nor does parallelism establish dependence. A post hoc is not always a propter hoc; what follows in time need not have been caused by what preceded it. Though I am convinced that it was apostates from Christianity, and not Christian teachers and writers -- no matter how distorted, mistaken, and deplorable their views were -- who handed the deadly poison to the Nazis, I readily admit that there is a common element that binds the hostility of recent days to the hostility of the remote past. When, on November 9, 1938, storm troopers burned down all the synagogues of Germany and took every Jew they could find into "custody"; when the lackeys of death kept the transports rolling, the camps filled, and the ovens smoking; when the crusaders trampled Torah scrolls in the mud, plundered Jewish houses, and left their inhabitants no other choice but to be baptized or killed -- they were all animated by blind perversity. Here and there, the brute in man -- normally held in check by fear of those who represent the law, or mastered by the love that springs from faith in God -- was let loose. In the first instance, man the beast masked his crime as a cleansing of soil and blood; in the second, he disguised his cruelty as a defense of the faith. In both instances, otherwise decent men -- men, however, with little or no personal commitment to a life of goodness -- were absorbed by the mob, indeed, liked being sucked into it. In both instances, men who under ordinary circumstances would hardly have dared transgress even the smallest rule were ready to do anything at all, as long as the ringleaders barked their commands loudly enough. There is no other way of preventing mob rule than the continuous strengthening of every man's conscience and the resultant watchfulness of each citizen who sees to it that only men of integrity be allowed to wield authority at all levels. There is no substitute for that commitment which makes a man free because it binds him irrevocably, at least in intention, to justice and love. As, in this age of mass media and mass standards, the man truly reborn -- the individual who remains true to his pledge and refuses to be carried off by the tide -- is our hope, so light cannot be shed on the past unless one distinguishes between various forms of anti-Semitism. A massacre that is government ordered and controlled, that is carried out with the efficiency and precision of a conveyor-belt and on an astronomical scale, a massacre whose secret drive is contempt for literally everything human, everything divine, cannot be called the logical climax of the kind of abuse and tortures the Jews had to suffer in medieval times. The motive) the method, the goal are in many ways different. I would serve neither truth nor peace, however, were I to insist only on the distinctions, and not on the common features. Though I deny that the intemperate and abusive speech of Chrysostom or the vituperative and aggressive writings of Luther caused Hitlers fever and frothings, they have one thing in common: They held Jews up to contempt. It is this common bond -- the ugliness, the eeriness of every form of Jew-hatred, indeed, of all hatred -- that Auschwitz reveals. Jesus in Auschwitz In September 1938, before anyone thought the death factories of the Third Reich possible, Pius XI condemned anti-Semitism as a mouvement antipathique, a movement revolting to the heart, repugnant to moral awareness, offending true Christian sense. Though it would be wrong to say that Nazi anti-Semites were the heirs of the many preachers who, alas, treated the Jews as an accursed people, cast away by God, there is a link between them, as there is an even stronger link between them and the medieval inciters of mobs. Though Himmler's massacre of the Jews was a unique move to erase Christ's name from the earth, a Jewish chronicler at the time of the crusades, Ephraim Bar Jacob, was able to record these words of Bernard of Clairvaux: "Whoever touches a Jew to lay hand on his life, does something as sinful as if he had laid hand on Jesus Himself." Whoever has followed the soaring thought of the Abbot of Clairvaux will not be puzzled by the outcry of the American-French writer Julian Green: Jesus' torment goes on in this world, day and night. Having once been nailed to a Roman cross, He has been persecuted with inexorable cruelty in the person of His own people. One cannot strike a Jew without having the same blow fall on Him who is the Man par excellence and, at the same time, the Flower of Israel. It is Jesus who was struck in the concentration camps. It is always He, His suffering is never ended. Ah, to put an end to all this, and to begin anew! That we could only meet one another on the morning of the Resurrection, that we could embrace Israel, weep, and not say a word. After Auschwitz, tears alone have meaning. Christian, wipe the tears and the blood from the face of your Jewish brother, and the face of Christ will shine on both of you. It would be wrong to quarrel with a poet who, in a passionate diary note, skips over the time that saw the oppression of the young Church by the Synagogue and, in doing so, has the persecution of the Jewish people at the hands of Christians follow immediately on the crucifixion of Jesus. It would be wrong, too, to quarrel with him when he only touches the mystery of the One who suffers in all men unjustly afflicted. "It is always He, His suffering is never ended." It would be wrong to quarrel with a poet because, in him, the heart speaks, and it is good to let the heart speak. A few years ago, a wave of anti-Semitic desecrations swept across parts of the Western world. The walls of synagogues and churches were besmeared with swastikas. At that time, Cardinal Suenens -- then auxiliary bishop of Malines-Brussels -- went on the radio to denounce the outbursts. He concluded his pithy broadcast with these words: The long sufferings of a people down the centuries and in many lands, whose mystery continues to this day, beckon us to discard all human prejudice and open our heart to that people. Let us honor its high spirit. Let us honor the way of the cross it has had to walk. Let us honor God's design which unfolds before our eyes and which one day will assume its full meaning and splendor. Let us honor the people of Israel which has given to the world the most precious treasure the earth bears, our Lord Jesus Christ. The Word of the Council Only a man sluggish of heart can resist voices as strong and ardent as these. But what is the import of words charged with emotion, words like "embrace," "weep," "honor," "open the heart"? Who mourns with the mourners lessens their pain; who weeps at the injustice done to Jews, done to men everywhere, cleanses, as tar as he can, the face of history. Yet -- here one must contradict the poet -- tears are not enough. Tears may renew a man, emotions are one of the most wondrous gifts of God. To underrate them impoverishes, but to overrate them does not enrich. What we need is a new encounter between Christians and Jews. Does not God speak to every man through his fellow, the one near and the one far? Above all, does He not address the Christian through the Jew, and the Jew through the Christian? Only where His summons is thus heard can the new encounter come about. Obviously, this encounter requires warmth, tact, delicatesse du coeur. But it demands, no less, articulation: that kind of speech which is truly human because it is nourished by the word of God. In this light, it seems to me, one must view the draft of the conciliar statement on the attitude of Catholics toward Jews, which Cardinal Bea proposed to the bishops at the Council's second session and which, in the course of its third session, became part of an all-encompassing declaration on the Church's relationship toward non-Christian religions. This is not the place to quote or compare the various texts, rather to expound the guiding thoughts that are more or less common to all. (1) With joy does the Church acknowledge that her roots reach deeply into the Israel of old to whom the living God revealed His will, the Israel that honored Him in sacrifice, song, prayer, and praise. The beginnings of the Church are thus amidst the patriarchs and the prophets of the chosen people. They go back to the day on which Abraham received the mysterious summons to sever the ties binding him to his family and to their idols so as to take the new and venturesome road of faith. They go back to that hour when God singled out Moses to lead the children of Israel from bondage to freedom, a freedom that was to be theirs only if they forsook the bulls of Egypt and turned to their mighty Deliverer, the God who is holy, After a long pilgrimage, marked by hardship and wonder, the great Moses brought his people to the gates of the promised land. Israel's humble beginning in the desert is not the least of the reasons why the Church must see herself as the people of God en route, as the pilgrim community of the Lord. As long as she remains mindful of her birth in poverty -- the poverty of Egypt and the wilderness, the nakedness of Bethlehem and Golgotha, the hiddenness of the tomb and the cenacle -- she remembers that she is but on the way to the glory of God. When, however, her members forget those beginnings and anticipate the triumph that is not to come till the end of time, they mock her, and the world suffers. (2) Though her roots are in the ancient Israel, the Church is a new creation because in her Jews and Gentiles have been made one through Christ, our Peace, who by His death broke down the wall of separation. Real though this unity is, it is not complete: a seed, a sign, it points to the future, to the ultimate reconciliation of the whole earth with God, in Christ. Yet, the Church's newness does not wipe off her Hebrew features, provided they are not taken in a narrow, restrictive spirit but understood in the light of salvation history. For her rise and growth in the bosom of the Jewish people is not merely a historic event, a fact of the past, but also an existential reality. At all times, this reality moves the life of the Church and quickens that of every Christian. (3) The deepest bond of the Church with the Jewish people is the humanity of Jesus. Never can she nor will she forget that when the Lord was made man's brother, He entered the world as a Jew. In other words, He, the Saviour of the entire world, lived and died a member of the people God had chosen and formed. The Church can never overlook that the mother of Jesus was of the house of David, nor that His apostles and disciples were of Abraham's stock, nor that she herself spent her pristine youth amidst the children of Israel. (4) Though the primitive community of Jerusalem was made up entirely of Jewish men and women, though thousands upon thousands of Jews accepted the gospel of the risen Lord, by far the greater part of the chosen people did not recognize Jesus as the Christ. It is not to make light of the awe-full drama of redemption acted on the stage of ancient Jerusalem, rather is it to give honor to God when we say that it is wrong to see in the Jews a people upon which rests His curse and which, driven by that curse, must go from place to place, must wander from country to country -- as Christians of the past have often asserted and as some even think today. The Jewish people is not cast off. It remains, as the Apostle says, dear and precious to God because of the patriarchs, that is, because of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. It remains loved by God because the God of Israel, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, is a God of fidelity, a God firm in His promise and in His choice (cf. Rom. 11:18-29). (5) It is not the doctrine of Holy Scripture and cannot therefore be the doctrine of the Church -- nor has it ever been her doctrine, even though many of her preachers and teachers have spoken as if it were -- that the Jews of all times, and the Jews alone, are guilty of Christ's passion. Whatever the guilt of Christ's antagonists in the drama of salvation may have been, it runs counter to the mystery of that passion to impose its burden on a single group of men. Every grievous sin is an attempt, however vain, to dethrone God, to do away with Him. Every grievous sin sent Jesus to the hill of pain and nailed Him to the cross. Since the cross is the place on which redemption was wrought, it can never be anything for the Christian but the wood of mercy, the tree of love. If someone were to throw the blame for the pain and death of Jesus on the Jews alone, if he were to call them all Christ-killers, indeed God-slayers, he would not only sow disgust, contempt, ill-will, and hatred, he would turn the mystery of divine suffering upside down, he would, however unknowingly, put the Christian message to ridicule. Nothing could be more twisted than to think that the blood of Jesus -- the very sap of salvation -- cries for revenge. To think so is to be deaf to Christ's summons. It is to resist the redeeming power of His death, the death by which we are to be freed not only from sin, but also from the spell of those primitive drives that lead to it. (6) As the Church rejects the injustices against any man, any group, so does she deplore and condemn the hatred, the persecutions to which the Jewish people were and are subjected. If true to her calling, the Church must reject injustice, must repudiate hatred in its subtle as well as in its savage forms, for both injustice and hatred are the very opposite of her nature. She must reject them, not only when they strike her own members. Were she to do so, she would be like one of the many associations of men. But she is not a club, not a party, not a segment -- she is mankind redeemed; she is the People of God, embracing, or rather called to embrace, all individuals, all tribes, all nations. Whoever experiences her deepest nature perceives her as the shelter of every creature. Hence he knows that whenever men are tormented, she is tormented; whenever Jews suffer, she suffers. Indeed, in the case of the Jews, her pain is special, as her bond is special. Moreover, real anti-Semitism, if it does not begin with bitterness against Christ, will so end. (7) With unshaken hope, the Church expects, at or near the end of time, the perfect reconciliation and final union with the people from which Jesus the Christ sprang. The day on which this hope will be fulfilled -- a day known only to God -- may be far away in a future, beyond anything we can imagine. Still, the Church cannot wait idly for that great hour. Nor can the Synagogue, different though her vision of the consummation of time is, live behind ramparts. The patrimony both Church and Synagogue have in common -- despite all that separates them -- is too great, too deep, for them to pass each other by, uninterested, unconcerned. Hence Christians and Jews must learn to know one another better, and respect one another more. But that such knowledge and respect may grow, theological, biblical, and other studies are necessary, and no less, brotherly conversation. Response to Auschwitz It may be good to repeat that the points just given are the themes of the conciliar statement on the Jews, not an exact wording. How the final version will read has not yet been decided. I am confident, however, that it will contain all these points, though in a simpler, sometimes even rudimentary form. Such abbreviation need not astonish anyone. It is not the purpose of the Second Vatican Council to issue documents that do not belong to space and time, or to settle every question before it, once and for all. Rather, its task is, in the persuasive words of Pope John, to open windows, that is, to inspire, to give fresh incentives, to create a new intellectual and spiritual atmosphere. No doubt the Council wishes to proclaim truths but it also wishes to spur theologians on to further work and all men on to greater love; it wishes to usher in a vibrant, unfolding of Christian teaching and a brilliant flowering of Christian action, of Christian life. In a certain sense, the declaration on the Jews -- in its text as well as in its conception -- is a response to the terror of Auschwitz, indeed, to the manifold wrongs of the past. Critics have complained that expressions, such as "we confess," "we beg God's forgiveness," are missing from all the draft versions. This is true. But is this prayer not the inner significance of the document the Council contemplates and to which it has already given a preliminary affirmative vote? Is it not deeply bound up with the shattering confession Pope Paul made at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem? There, he prayed: Lord, Jesus, we stand before you. We have come here like guilty men who return to the place of their misdeed. We have come here like the one who followed you but also betrayed you. Faithful, unfaithful we have been, so many times. We have come to confess the mysterious relationship between our sins and your Passion, our work, your work. We have come to beat our breasts, to ask your forgiveness and to beg your mercy. We have come because we know that you are able to forgive, that you are willing to do so because you have atoned for us. You are our redemption, you are our hope. Thus spoke the Pope during his pilgrimage to the Holy Land. Am I the victim of an illusion if I relate the spirit of this penitential service to the conciliar pronouncement on the attitude of Christians toward the Jews? I do not think so. And I am not alone, for two noted American priest-journalists share my view. "The statement on the Jews presented at the second session of the Council showed not only prophetic vision but also contrition for two millennia of injustice to the Jews," wrote Father John B. Sheerin, C.S.P., the Editor of the Catholic World. Of like mind is the Editor of the Catholic Star Herald, Monsignor Salvatore J. Adamo: "Brotherhood with the Jewish people is not only a welcome act of amity; it is a Christian imperative, and in a measure, an act of atonement for the past misdeeds and misunderstandings of some Catholics." The Task of the Individual In the context of our theme, words like "contrition" and "atonement" must not be pressed beyond their intended meaning. Fundamentally, I can be contrite only for my own sins, not for the sins of other men, much less the evil of a whole society. I can deplore, however -- when necessary, detest -- the aberrations, the wrongdoings of generations past or present, and I ought to. Though it is impossible to undo what was done to act as if what happened had not happened, no inexorable fate looms over us. As soon as a past injustice is lifted into our consciousness, is mourned, confessed, repudiated, it receives a new meaning: The misdeed loses its poisoned barb, the fault may even become a source of blessing. Thus an erroneous path can, in the end, lead to wisdom. This is not to say that the Christian possesses this miraculous gift of transformation through any native power, it rather flows to him from the love and work of Christ. In His name, then, he may and must make amends, he must try to repair the damage of the past. Neither the individual Christian nor the whole of Christendom is ever done with learning. Till the end of time, they will remain learners for whom failures may turn to gain. When Christians cease to learn -- even to relearn, when the occasion demands it -- the past becomes a deadening weight; when they continue to learn, the past turns into a lever to great things. Certainly, no one can flee the effect of the evil deeds of his spiritual or physical forebears any more than he can altogether escape the influence of their good deeds. What was, is part of him. It would be foolish, then, for him to disavow the things gone by as though they were none of his concern. Christians are particularly bound to understand the past, to penetrate its obscurity, to "love away" its festers, in a word, to "redeem" it. The task of individual Christians goes deeper still. By pointing to the fact that the Church is anchored in the ancient Israel, the Council's declaration on the Jews leads her children to marvel at God's ways and seeks to awaken in them gratitude for His gracious choice of Israel as the first guardian of revelation. Such gratitude, however, must not be confined to the Creator-God, it must be offered to His creature and instrument as well. By impressing on Christians that they are sons and daughters of Abraham, sons and daughters of his spirit, of his faith, and that they ought to feel as such; by impressing on them that they are the descendants of the wanderers through sea and desert, followers also of Israel's mighty prophets, indeed, the choir of divine praise united to Israel's psalmists in Christ, the Singer of singers, the declaration seeks to fill them with a sense of the continuity of salvation-history, a sense without which their faith lacks a proper dimension. The Church has budded from Israel's history with God or, rather, from God's dealings with Israel; she is still nourished by the root and sap of the olive tree He cultivated (Rom. 11:18). This is so because Christ is the true, though sovereign, Fulfiller of the promises given to the chosen people. To be and to remain aware of this vital link between the Church and Israel tends to make the Christian humble, while the steady awareness of Christ's "accomplishment" opens to him a true understanding of the Church's mission. So deeply are Old and New Covenants entwined that their interdependence is best expressed in a twofold statement, one part complementing the other: It was in Jesus the Christ that Abraham became the blessing with which all the generations of the earth are blessed (Gen. 12:3; 18:18; Ac 3:25; Gal 3:8); it was Abraham's obedience that made possible the stream of grace flowing upon all the earth in and through Jesus, Abraham's unique Offspring. Thus communion with Jesus is, at the same time, communion with Abraham, and communion with Abraham should be fellowship with all of Abraham's sons. But whenever this fellowship cannot be one of faith, it ought to be, at least, one of respect, concern, and love. The declaration tells Christians to be wary of some pitfalls on the road to perfection. There are, for instance, those scriptural passages in which Jews are castigated. Nothing is easier, but nothing more detrimental to the spiritual life, than barricading oneself behind them in order to declare: "Those wicked Jews! It is they who opposed the good Master and nailed Him to the cross." To do so is to forget that the gospel is at once history and parable, report and message, that, no matter of and to whom it speaks, it speaks also, in some way, of and to me. Anyone who thinks the mob before the Jerusalem residence of the Roman governor shouted: "Crucify Him!" (Mt 27:22f) because it was a Jewish mob; anyone who thinks that the crowd of another city, another land, another people would have espoused the cause of the accused -- of the little understood Jesus, whose stature eluded not only the people's grasp but that of His judges as well -- does not know human nature or, more concretely, does not know himself. Anyone who forgets that those Jews and Romans who brought Jesus to the cross were his own deputies, his own envoys, bars himself from many graces. Unless he has the courage to say: "I did it, my sins delivered you to the cross," he pretends not to belong to the world-community of sinners -- he even runs the risk of excluding himself from the community of the redeemed resting on grace. One can render the trial of Jesus, and thus the mystery of His pain, "inoffensive," as is frequently done today, but one can also render it "offensive," as was often done in the past. To my mind, faith forbids either posture: The Christian can neither load nor empty the events of Holy Week. Once their uniqueness dawns on him, he will approach the beata passio, the saving passion -- as the Canon of Mass calls the Good Friday mystery -- with nothing but tenderness, discretion, and awed discernment. Where is there a love like this one, a love that makes sin the tool of reconciliation? Sin erected the cross, but the cross blotted out sin. Once a man has grasped this secret, he cannot blame Christ's climb to Golgotha on anyone but himself; were he to act differently, he would cheat himself out of the wonder that turns guilt into grace, solace, and life. Seen in this light, the planned statement on the Jews is a gift to Christians. It summons each Christian man and woman to strive for gratitude and humility, to seek reverence and love, to live by faith and hope, and not by instinct. It charges him, as worshipper and witness, with great tasks. The theologian, too, is called upon to pursue the problems the declaration touches, with boldness and with restraint. I have made clear, I am sure, that the contemplated document on the Jews is meant for Christians. It therefore speaks, and must speak, the language of the Church. Some were interested in a document that would merely serve Christian-Jewish relations, order them anew, and steady them. But these relations -- their circumstances, scope, and impact -- vary from country to country. They are one thing in Germany, another in France or England, still another in the United States or Canada; they are again different in Latin America, in African countries, or the state of Israel. What the Council has before its eyes, however, is not a regional problem, rather a new vision of faith, a deepening of the Christian consciousness, another effort to make the life of Christians pure and whole. Guide to a New Future When Cardinal Bea, wise advocate of all ecumencial concerns, introduced the first draft of the declaration on the Jews to the Council Fathers, he explained its purpose. In the course of his introduction, he mentioned the ardent desire of John XXIII that the Council become for the Church a second Pentecost. It was the Pope's hope that it restore to the Church's face the simple and pure features of her early youth. The declaration on the relationship of Christians toward the Jews -- together with all other decrees -- is intended, therefore, to serve that inner renewal which wells up from the everlasting fountains. "In this Council," the Cardinal declared, "the Church strives to renew herself and thus, in the words of John XXIII of venerable memory, 'seeks to find again the contours of her growing youth.' It is obvious that she must also take up this question." Clearly and unequivocally, the declaration on the Jews is a theological, a pastoral, and not a political document. In no way does it treat civic, socio-psychological, or similar problems. Still, by its very nature, it must shape anew the conduct of Christians towards Jews. Its salutary influence must go beyond this. I hope it will not only serve a new encounter between Christians and Jews but also help to bring Catholics and evangelical Christians nearer to one another. As a profession of brotherliness it calls for ultimate brotherhood. I should like to close with a small but telling experience. In the spring of 1964, I spoke to the League of Catholic Women in Boston on the new age of the Church, particularly on the fresh look she is taking at the Jewish people. One of the rabbis of the city was asked to comment. The climax of his remarks was the recitation of the blessing an observant Jew pronounces on various occasions of newness: on tasting the first fruit of the season; on taking possession of a new house or a new parcel of land; on donning a garment for the first time. The rabbi applied this blessing to what he hoped was the dawn of a new period of history, an era of greater openness, deeper loyalty, and mightier love. In reciting it, he wished to give voice to his expectation that the world-grown-old would don a new garment; that the earth would be a shelter to all; that its children would relish the fruits of the spirit as if they had never tasted them before. The Christian, too, knows that revealed, and therefore never-aging truth must ever be seen, thought, felt, and lived anew. Yet, unless he is a man of illusion, he knows that on the way to a new epoch, he will be spared neither tears nor toil. Thus the venerable blessing of the Synagogue seems to me, not only an appropriate conclusion to my own thoughts but a beautiful invitation to all of us to make ourselves ready for God's gift. The words of praise I wish to make my own are: Baruch atah Adonay Eloheynu ve-higiyanu la-seman lia-seh Blessed are you, Lord our God, King of the universe! You quickened us, you kept us, you brought us to this season. Please God, we may be bolder still and say: Blessed are you. Lord our God! You brought us to this appointed season. You let us see this, your time. 1. See Albert Nirenstein, A Tower from the Enemy (New York: Orion Press, 1959), p. 312. 2. Raul Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews (Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1961), pp. 624-625. 3. See ibid., p. 625. 4. Obergruppenfuhrer von dem Bach-Zelewski; see ibid., pp. 218, 646. 5. See, for instance, William L, Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (New York: Simon Schuster, 1960), p. 973. 6. See Hilberg, op. cit., pp. 626-627. 7. See Time, June 23, 1958, 8. The New York Times Magazine, February 7, 1943. 9. See Rudolf Vrba and Alan Bestic, I Cannot Forgive (New York: Grove Press, 1964), pp. 70-71; Leon Wells, The Janowska Road (New York: Macmillan, 1963), pp. 173-174. 10. Affidavit by Hermann Friedrich Graebe (PS 2992); see Leon Poliakov, Harvest of Hate (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1954), pp. 125-126 and Hilberg, op. cit., p. 669. Rather than give the original references to Nazi documents not easily accessible to the majority of readers, books are referred to that can be obtained with little difficulty. 11. See Nirenstein, op. cit., pp. 345-347. 12. See Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf (New York; Reynal and Hitch-cock, 1940), pp. 928-929. 13. Political Testament by Hitler, April 29, 1945 (PS 3569); see Hilberg, op. cit., p. 635. 14. Der Reichsfuhrer-SS, SS-Hauptamt (Doc. No. 1805); see Leon Poliakov, Josef Wulf, das Dritte Reich und die Juden (Berlin: Verlags-GmbH, 1955), p. 217. 15. Hermann Rauschning, Gesprache mit Hitler (4th ed.; Zurich: Europa Verlag, 1959), op. 210-211; cf. The Voice of Destruction (New York: Putnam, 1940), pp. 223-224. 16. See Poliakov, Wulf, op. cit., p. 92. 17. Katholische Nachrichten-Agentur, May 31, 1961 (No. 39/61). 18. The Black Book. The Nazi Crime Against the Jewish People (New York: Duell, Sloan and Pearce, 1946), pp. 12-13. The words quoted in the passage are those of Alfred Rosenberg, the author of Mythus des Zwanzigaten Jahrhunderts (Munchen, 1932), p. 91. 19, See Johann Neuhausler, Kreuz und Hakenkreuz (2nd ed.; Munchen: Katholische Kirche Bayerns Verlag, 1946), 1, 111-112. 20. Ibid., pp. 331-332. 21. Maurice Samuel, The Great Hatred (New York: Knopf, 1940), pp. 36, 56, 127-128, 142. 22. Jules Isaac, L'Enseignement du Mepris (Paris: Fasquelle, 1962), pp. 105-106; cf. The Teaching of Contempt (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1964), p. 116. 23. See Rudolf Pfisterer, Juden, Christen -- getrennt, versohnt (Glad-beck: Schriftenmissions-Verlag, 1964), pp. 13-14. 24. See Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, VIII, 251. 25. Nietzsche, The Antichrist, 46. 27. Nietzsche, The Genealogy of Morals, I, II. 29. Nietzsche, The Twilight of the Idols, VII, 4. 30. Nietzsche, The Antichrist, 21, 18. 31. Ibid., 17. 32. See Nietzsche, Ecce Homo, "Introduction." 33. Nietzsche, The Antichrist, 24. 34. See ibid. 35. Nietzsche, The Genealogy of Morals, 1, 7. 36. Ibid., 1, 8. 37. Nietzsche, The Antichrist, 16. 38. Nietzsche, The Genealogy of Morals, 1, 8. 39. Pfisterer, op cit., p. 49. 40. Max Picard, Hitler in uns selbst (Erlenbach-Zurich: Eugen Rentsch Verlag, 1946), pp. 193-195; cf. Hitler in Our Selves, trans. Heinrich Hauser (Hinsdale: Henry Regnery, 1947), pp. 197-199. 41. Hitler, Mein Kampf, p. 606. 42, Ibid., p. 339. 43. Karl Zimmermann, Die geistigen Grundlagen des Nationalsozialismus (Leipzig, 1933), p. 73. 44. See the government declaration of July 3, 1934, issued after the murder of Rohm and others; cf. Reichsgesetzblatt, 1934, 1, 71 (529). 45. For the full text of Pius XI's address, see John M. Oesterreicher, Racisme-Antisemitisme-Antichristianisme (New York; Editions de la Maison Francaise, 1943), pp. 104-105. 46. Ps 58 : 12; Quellen zur Geschichte der Juden in Deutschland, ed. A. Neubauer, M. Stern (Berlin, 1892), II, 188. 47. Julian Green, "Journal," Revue de Paris, June 1949. 48, "Antisemitisme, ' Demi-heure religieuse. Radio-television nationale belge, January 17, 1960. 49. Il pellegrinaggio di Paolo VI in Terra Santa (Libreria editrice Vaticana, 1964), pp. 41-42. 50. America, III, 1 (July 4, 1964), p. 1. 51. Ibid., p. 2. 52. See St. Augustine, Sermon on Ps 122 (PL 37:1630-31). 53. Cf. Council Speeches of Vatican II, ed. Hans Kung, Yves Congar, O.P., Daniel O'Hanlon, S.J. (Glen Rock, N.J.: Paulist Press, Deus Books, 1964), p. 259; the words of Pope John are taken from his discourse of November 14, 1960. (See AAS 52 , 960.) This item 609 digitally provided courtesy of CatholicCulture.org

A Teacher in the Lawrence Family Jewish Community Center Preschool (aka Nierman Preschool) is responsible for the day-to-day program in their assigned classroom, developing and implementing a developmental milestone curriculum within the framework of Judaic values, culture and religion. The Teacher is to provide a warm, nurturing, safe and inclusive environment. The Teacher is responsible for carrying out the goals and objectives of the program as established by the JCC and Early Childhood Parent Committee. It is each Teachers role to translate the schools philosophy and goals into effective curriculum and programs which meet the needs of students and families in the community. The Teacher provides overall leadership within the classroom with the staff team. A minimum of 12 units required by the State of California in Child Development with a BA/BS or above preferred. Experience as a teacher assistant or a teacher in Early Childhood. Knowledge of Jewish holidays and culture with experience in Early Childhood setting. Attendance of workshops, classes, or conferences for continuing education in Child Development or related fields. Strong knowledge of early childhood education and developmental milestones. Strong interpersonal skills including the ability to communicate with parents, children, and co-workers. Strong written and oral communication skills. Familiarity with basic office machines including, but not limited to, copy, computer, internet, phones, and digital camera. Ability to attend conferences and workshops which may include travel. Must move easily around the classroom, playground, gymnasium, building, deck, swimming pool, and far field. Frequently is required to stand, walk, sit, and reach with hands and arms for long periods of time. Occasionally required to use hands to finger, handle, or feel; climb or balance; and stoop, kneel, crouch, or crawl. Regularly required to communicate. Specific vision abilities required by this job include close, distance, peripheral, depth perception, and ability to adjust focus. Ability to lift up to 45 lbs. May be necessary, in emergency or other situations, to pick up a 45 pound child. SALARY/STATUS: $16.00-$24.00 per hour / Full-Time Non-Exempt / 30+ hours per week HOW TO APPLY: If interested in the position, please reply to firstname.lastname@example.org with your cover letter and resume. NO PHONE CALLS MORE DETAILS: The position has an opportunity to work up to 40 hours per week. This full-time position is eligible for a wide variety of benefits that include: Long-Term Disability Insurance Paid Vacation and Holidays 403(b) Retirement Plan Contributions JCC Annual Family Membership The mission of the Lawrence Family Jewish Community Center, JACOBS FAMILY CAMPUS is to provide social, cultural, educational, and recreational programs to individuals and families of all ages, religions, races, financial abilities, and physical and mental abilities. Likewise, the JCC provides equal opportunity employment to individuals of all religions and backgrounds. The JCC welcomes San Diego's diverse Jewish community and the community at large. Jccs Of North America

“O you who believe! Fight those of the disbelievers who are close to you, and let them find harshness in you, and know that Allah is with those who are the righteous.” Quran 9:123 Greetings of Peace on you. If you are here it means you are either a Muslim who has been directed to this by someone who hates Islam or you have some hate towards Islam in your heart. Either ways, I am presenting a justification to the Quranic verse 9:123 here to end the misconception associated with it and to change that hate. If you don’t wish to read this long article then I will give you a short answer. Quran Does not tell the Muslims to fight the disbelievers ALL THE TIME EVERYWHERE UNDER ALL CIRCUMSTANCES. Even to think so is foolishness. Verse 9:123 was revealed with a battle-like situation and several conditions and contexts in the background. It commands the Muslims to fight those who are hostile to them and strategically starting from the nearest ones. How do we know this? It is because elsewhere the Quran commands the believers to cease hostilities if the other party also ceases implying that the hostilities can never resume unless the other party initiates the hostility. “But if the enemy incline towards peace, do thou (also) incline towards peace, and trust in God: for He is One that heareth and knoweth (all things).” Quran 8:61 The above was the short answer. If you need a detailed explanation of the context and background of this verse then you may read the below. Trust me, inshallah you will love it and will treasure the knowledge if you are patient. There are two possible contexts associated with verse 9:123 and I will present them both. May Allah forgive me if I state anything incorrectly unknowingly. – CONTEXT 1 – Quran 9:123 is not a standalone verse which can be read without any context. It certainly has a context which is easily seen if you read few verses before it. The context begins from verse Quran 9:117. Quran 9:117 – Allah has already forgiven the Prophet and the Emigrants and the Helpers who followed him in the hour of difficulty after the hearts of a party of them had almost inclined [to doubt], and then He forgave them. Indeed, He was to them Kind and Merciful. Quran 9:118 – And [He also forgave] the three who were left behind [and regretted their error] to the point that the earth closed in on them in spite of its vastness and their souls confined them and they were certain that there is no refuge from Allah except in Him. Then He turned to them so they could repent. Indeed, Allah is the Accepting of repentance, the Merciful. Quran 9:119 – O you who have believed, fear Allah and be with those who are true. Quran 9:120 – It was not [proper] for the people of Medina and those surrounding them of the Bedouins that they remain behind after [the departure of] the Messenger of Allah or that they prefer themselves over his self. That is because they are not afflicted by thirst or fatigue or hunger in the cause of Allah , nor do they tread on any ground that enrages the disbelievers, nor do they inflict upon an enemy any infliction but that is registered for them as a righteous deed. Indeed, Allah does not allow to be lost the reward of the doers of good. Quran 9:121 – Nor do they spend an expenditure, small or large, or cross a valley but that it is registered for them that Allah may reward them for the best of what they were doing. Quran 9:122 – And it is not for the believers to go forth [to battle] all at once. For there should separate from every division of them a group [remaining] to obtain understanding in the religion and warn their people when they return to them that they might be cautious. Quran 9:123 – O you who have believed, fight those adjacent to you of the disbelievers and let them find in you harshness. And know that Allah is with the righteous. Verse 9:123 is one among 7 verses which are bound by a context. So Analyze them accordingly. The below verses were revealed concerning the campaign of Tabuk, a city halfway between Mecca and Present day Syria. The believers had peace treaties with many tribes in and around Medina and many of these were not Muslims yet. According to the treaties they were supposed to march with the Prophet to help him in his cause but they failed to do so as Tabuk was too far and it was the season for harvest. Among those who lagged behind were three believers as well whom the Prophet peace on him hoped that they joined him. In verse 9:117 – Allah is narrating the events after this incident when the Muslims had returned from the campaign. Read this verse properly and you will find it speaks of three parties viz the Prophet peace on him, the Emigrants and Helpers.The Emigrants are the first generation of Muslims who “immigrated” from Mecca to Medina due to persecution. The “Helpers” are those people of Medina who welcomed these refugees as there own and hence known as “Helpers” to the cause of God. None of these three parties are alive today. The whole incident narrates to something that was past. In verse 9:118 – Allah says that he “forgave the three who were left behind“. These three people failed to join with the Prophet and the Main body of believers who were marching for this Campaign. Again, the reference here is to a specific incident that happened 1400 years ago. In verse 9:119 – Allah is reprimanding “the three who were left behind” of the previous verse and instructing them not to repeat there mistake again of failing to be with the believers. They believers are supposed to be one united unit. In verse 9:120 – Allah directly takes the name of a specific city called “Medina” and speaks few words to its inhabitants proving once again that the reference here is to a specific incident that happened 1400 years ago. Allah is reprimanding those tribes of Medina and Bedouins who failed to join the Prophet peace on him in the campaign. At the same time Allah praises the efforts of those who actually went. In verse 9:121 – Allah continues to speak about these people of the old who were the best in his sight. Again, a direct reference to a specific group of people who have longed passed away. In verse 9:122 – Allah provides instruction to the management of the early Muslims who were few in number compared to the gigantic number of enemies that surrounded them. He instructs them telling that when they go forth to battle they should leave few knowledgeable people behind so that in case they all die in the battle, the knowledge is not lost. During that time Islam was present in only two small cities called Mecca and Medina. Besides the pagans of Arabia, the Muslims were surrounded by ancient empires like the Roman Empire, the Byzantium Empire and the Persian Empire, all of whom had legions of armies hundreds of thousand strong and trained. In verse 9:123 – STILL, Your Creator Commanded in this verse to the small band of Muslims to be hostile towards the sea of disbelieving people. This is guts. O you who have guts in your heart, you can’t but admire such courage of men and such instruction that these men of courage followed. If you can get inspired by Hollywood then why not be inspired by this? This is the real deal. These people fought to establish the truth. As an example, entertain the possibility for a second in your minds, what if the Quran was really the latest and the last book from God? What if these people who were few in number were really following the instruction from the Creator of the Universe? If this was really true, then even though they were engulfed from all sides by a sea of people who believed in idols, saints and others attributing sons and daughters to God, the Creator of the Universe would still command them to oppose falsehood. This is exactly what happened. These small band of people would still have to struggle inch by inch against falsehood and prove to themselves that they were worthy to be the first among the mankind of that time to be guided to truth. And they did this to perfection. God is not in need of us, it is us who are in need of him. “O mankind! it is you who stand in need of Allah, but Allah is Rich (Free of all wants and needs), Worthy of all praise.” Quran 35:15 So, this was the first context of these verses. To single out verse 9:123 outside its context and say that Muslims are commanded to be harsh to disbelieves under all circumstances is bigotry. You would be guilty of doing exactly the same thing which you allege the Muslims to do, i.e being harsh to Muslims. If you believe that a God is watching you and Judging your actions then I don’t need to tell you that your thoughts are visible to Him and he is aware whether you are absolved or still involved in this bigotry. CONTEXT 2 – So far we have seen verses that precede verse 9:123. Let us now examine verses that succeed it. Quran 9:124 – And whenever a Chapter is revealed, there are among the hypocrites those who say, “Which of you has this increased faith?” As for those who believed, it has increased them in faith, while they are rejoicing. Quran 9:125 – But as for those in whose hearts is disease, it has [only] increased them in evil [in addition] to their evil. And they will have died while they are disbelievers. Quran 9:126 – Do they not see that they are tried every year once or twice but then they do not repent nor do they remember? Quran 9:127 – And whenever a Chapter is revealed, they look at each other, [saying], “Does anyone see you?” and then they dismiss themselves. Allah has dismissed their hearts because they are a people who do not understand. Reading the above verses, we see a change in context here. Allah is speaking about the hypocrites living in Medina who were from the Pagans and Jews. These people posed a greater threat to the small group of believers because they were hypocrites. Now who is a hypocrite according to the Quran? According to the Quranic terminology a Hypocrite is him who says that he is a Muslim when he meets a Muslim but when he goes back to his own people he says he is a Jew or a Pagan. He is a double edged sword who lingers among the believers trying to know their secrets, plans and spreads lies and sows discord among the communities. He is the one who destroys bridges of Peace. The Jews who were within the walls of Medina were untrustworthy as they broke every peace treaty which the Prophet peace be on him had with them. As a community they betrayed the Prophet at every turn. If you are a Christian then I should hold you and shake you to make you remember how the Jews behaved with Jesus Peace on him! Do not forget that and do not be surprised that they repeated the same with the next Prophet i.e Prophet Muhammad. Did they not do the same to Moses too even after he faced the Pharaoh and split the Ocean for them and delivered them safely? I will not go into details of history here and will cut the long story short and present below FOUR INSTANCES OF BETRAYAL BY FOUR DIFFERENT TRIBES OF JEWS who broke their Peace treaties. - The Meccan polytheists had rallied the Arab tribes and marched towards Medina with an army of 10,000 troops. This was the biggest army in Arabia during that time. The Muslims were roughly 2000-3000 including children and old. Due to such large disparity in numbers it was suicidal to meet the enemy head on as they were outnumbered by three or four times. Hence the Muslims decided to dig a deep trench across Medina and make it something like an Island. But the enemy was very near and it was just 7 days March away. So the Muslims dug a trench which covered only a partial portion of the circumference towards North. A hill called Mount Sal was a natural barrier and was made part of the Circumference. The entire stretch on the South and South-East was covered by the tall Fortresses of the Jewish tribe of Banu Qurayzah who had a peace treaty with Prophet Muhammad.To Summarize. In the North the Muslims dug the trench and to the south they left their fates in the hands of the Jewish tribe who were supposed to be allies. Now do you see where the danger was? If for any reason these Jews were to open their gates from the south, an army of 10,000 would enter and massacre the city easily. The danger was as serious as this. It was in this juncture that the Jews of Bani Qurayzah broke the treaty unabashedly and tore the parchment in pieces. But we only fool ourselves if we think we are fooling the Creator. The Creator saved us and history has documented this in great detail. We actually won the war and you can google the details. Just search for “Battle of the trench” in google. After the defeat the enemy withdrew and what do you think the Bani Qurayzah were? They were worst enemies than the ones which were just defeated. An enemy who says that he is a friend is a worse enemy than the one who declares it openly. This was one example of the treachery of Jews. - There were another Jewish tribe called Banu Nadir who had a similar treaty with the Prophet peace on him but attempted to Murder the Prophet after inviting him for a meal. - There was yet another Jewish tribe called Bani Qaynuqah who also had a Peace treaty with the Muslims but broke it unabashedly for a petty incident that happened in the market when few of them outraged the modesty of a Muslim Woman which they blew out of proportion and they declared war against the Muslims. After subduing them they were exiled out of Mecca. The Prophet was such that he allowed them to carry their possessions as Much as there camels could carry in one journey. IT is a different story the way this tribe marched outside Medina flaunting its wealth before the starved Muslim immigrants and economically weakened helpers. - When the Meccan polytheists attacked the Muslims in the Battle of Uhud, none of the Jewish tribes came to aid which was a clear violation of the Peace treaties which they had. In this case it was a collective betrayal by each one of them. As per the peace treaty they were one united people with the Muslims who were supposed to aid each other when an enemy attacked any one of them. After all they shared a common city, so why should only one community fight an invading force? But no aid came to the Muslims. Recognizing the folly of Jews there was one brave Jewish Rabbi who alone rode to the Battle field to honor the pact. His name was Mukhayriq. Just google “Mukhayriq” and check him in Wikipedia. The treachery of Jews was endless. One tribe after another they betrayed the Muslims at every stage. This was an enemy within the house. Hence to address this the Creator revealed verse 9:123. Quran 9:123 – “O you who have believed, fight those adjacent to you of the disbelievers and let them find in you harshness. And know that Allah is with the righteous.” It was to send a clear Message to the Jews and the Pagans that there behavior will not be taken lightly anymore and enough was enough. It was also a deterrence to them that their betrayal is not without consequence. Does it mean that these verses 9:117-123 are only for the past and not valid anymore? No! Quran is a timeless revelation from God whose verses are most certainly valid till the end of the world. They outline to us how we should be today if we face the same situation again. They teach us that Allah forgives our mistakes, that we should not have doubt about Allah and we should preserve in difficulty (9:117). They teach us that there is no true refuge other than Allah and we should seek refuge in him from our difficulties of life and Allah accepts the repentance of those who repents and likes us to long for his forgiveness (9:118). They teach us that we should be in awe of our Creator and not take him lightly. A Parent need to be kind and Merciful (9:117) and at the same time be strict (9:119) because fear, awe and respect compliment those things which are difficult to achieve with Love alone. The Love from Allah and the Awe towards him are of a much higher degree than that of Parents. These verses tell us the qualities of the humble souls with whom their Creator is well pleased with (9:120) and most importantly that they hold the Prophet ahead in preference even to themselves. Prophet Muhammad and all the Prophets should be dearer to us than our own selves and these verses inform us that the deeds of the doers of good are never lost (9:120-121). Verse 9:122 is a key guidance of strategy for any battle even for an army of disbelievers and verse 9:123 is a culmination or conclusion of all these with the moral that we should never relent towards falsehood and stand fast on our beliefs and present our “strong” side towards falsehood both as an inspiration and as a deterrence. Next these verses reveal us the nature of the hypocrites so that we guard against them (9:124-127). O Reader, these are the words of your creator. I sincerely hope that whatever you have read so far benefits you in truth and you be an instrument for world peace. If you would like to know more about Islam, feel free to leave a reply and what you want to know. God willing, I will reply.

‘Succumb‘ is not a fruitful prompt for someone my age. I mean, it’s not likely to be ‘the insistent advances of handsome millionaire actor George Clooney’, is it? More like viral pneumonia, or rheumatoid arthritis. All I could think of was Succubus. When I was at school we ‘did’ Chaucer and his Canterbury Tales. I wanted to like Chaucer, really I did, but it was difficult with the textbook we were given. There was Chaucer and his Olde English (well, technically Middle English) on one side of the page and a translation on the opposite side. All well and good, but we were ‘doing’ the Wife of Bath’s Tale and the Wife of Bath was – as I guessed but could not discover how, from the translation – a somewhat saucy baggage. I remember learning that she had a gap between her two front teeth and that in the middle ages a gap-toothed lady was regarded as very saucy. I am not a medieval man, so I have no idea why this should be. Maybe it was the symbolism. It doesn’t seem to work the other way round… The trouble was, every time Nanny Translator got to a saucy bit she substituted an ellipsis (…). I would have entirely forgotten the word swynke by now – and probably Chaucer and the Wife of Bath too – as in As help me God, I laughe when I thynke / How piteously a-night I made him swynke had it not been for the fact that swynke was represented on the translation page by those tantalising three dots and the teacher flatly refused to even hint what it might mean. Our teenage imaginations went into overdrive. What could swynke-ing be, for goodness sake? And how was she making him do it? Actually it just means work very hard, though by a-night we know she isn’t referring to heaving heavy sacks of coal or peeling potatoes. However… (ellipsis) why was I going on about Chaucer? Oh yes, it was via Chaucer that I learned of the existence, in medieval legend, of a demon known as the succubus. There are incubi and succubi. Incubi are male demons that prey on women, and succubi are female demons that prey on men. Particularly monks. They appear in dreams and tempt their victims to do all sorts of sinful and salacious stuff. Succcubus and succumb are related, loosely. From the Latin and then the French succomber – sub (under) + cumbere (to lie down). To succumb is to yield to a superior force or strength, or to be overpowered by a desire. It is also to be brought to an end (as in death) by destructive or disruptive forces. Since the evil succubus would exhaust or even kill her dreaming victim by feeding on his dream ‘energy’ you can see the connection, and if you google ‘succubus’ and click on Images you will get all sorts of lurid artistic re-imaginings of what she might have looked like. You know how you suddenly realise an author has been cleverer than you realised – that pleasant little moment when the penny drops? J K Rowling is particularly good a this. For example, Sirius Black in Harry Potter, who tends to turn into a large black dog at intervals, has the name of the dog star, Sirius. And Diagon Alley is diagonally. Well, I thought I had one of those with the character Lilith from Cheers and Frasier. Lilith is Frasier’s ex-wife, who simultaneously haunts, fascinates and drains him: Six months ago I was living in Boston. My wife had left me, which was very painful. Then she came back to me, which was excruciating… So I ended the marriage once and for all, packed up my things, and moved back here to my home town of Seattle. (1993 pilot episode of Frasier, “The Good Son”) Ah, I thought. Lilith from Jewish mythology was in fact a succubus – a night-hag or night-monster. How clever they have been, those screenwriters, in choosing exactly the right name for Frasier’s scary, vampiric (but nonetheless amusing) ex-wife. But then they went and let me down, those screenwriters. Researching further I discovered that Rob Sternin and Prudence Frasier had simply wanted a name that embodied sternness, like a Dickensian… headmistress in a high-necked blouse and tight bun. The Biblical badass didn’t factor in. Well…well… bah! Why didn’t it? It jolly well should have. I’m quite put out about it.

Shmuel “Arthur” Zygielbojm (1895 – 1943) was a political activist associated with the Bund socialist party; since February 1942, he had been a member of the National Council of the Polish Government in Exile in London. Facing defeat of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising he committed suicide on the night of 11–12 May 1943. Before his death he wrote the farewell letter addressed to his brother Faivel. On 11 May 2018 the Emanuel Ringelblum Jewish Historical Institute organized the exhibition Shmuel Zygielbojm. I can neither be silent nor live to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising and Shmuel Zygielbojm’s suicidal death. On the occasion of the exhibition’s opening Aveda Ayalon and Ilana Slomowitz – Faivel Zygielbojm’s daughters and Shmuel’s nieces came to Warsaw. They told us about the legacy of Shmuel Zygielbojm: the Yiddish and Bund environments that continued to exist in 1950’s and 1960’s in South Africa and Israel and also about the history of Zygielbojm family dispersed all over the world after World War II. We invite you to watch a movie in which Aveda Ayalon and Ilana Slomowitz talk with Zuzanna Benesz-Goldfinger, curator of the exhibition „Szmul Zygielbojm. I can not keep silent and I can not”.

UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff–Appellee, v. Mohammad EL–MEZAIN; Ghassan Elashi; Shukri Abu Baker; Mufid Abdulqader; Abdulrahman Odeh; Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development, also known as HLF, Defendants–Appellants. United States of America, Plaintiff–Appellee, v. Shukri Abu Baker; Mohammad El–Mezain; Ghassan Elashi; Mufid Abdulqader; Abdulrahman Odeh, Defendants–Appellants. United States of America, Plaintiff–Appellee, v. Mohammad El–Mezain, Defendant–Appellant. United States of America, Plaintiff–Appellee–Cross–Appellant, v. Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development, also known as HLF, Defendant–Appellant–Cross–Appellee. United States of America, Plaintiff, v. Shukri Abu Baker, Defendant, Nancy Hollander, Appellant. In this consolidated case, we address the appeals of five individuals and one corporate defendant convicted of conspiracy and substantive offenses for providing material aid and support to a designated terrorist organization. The terrorist organization at issue is Hamas, which in 1995 was named a Specially Designated Terrorist by Presidential Executive Order pursuant to authority granted by the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, 50 U.S.C. § 1701 et seq. Hamas was further designated as a Foreign Terrorist Organization in 1997, as contemplated by 18 U.S.C. § 2339B. Although this case is related to terrorism, it does not involve charges of specific terrorist acts. Instead, it focuses on the defendants' financial support for terrorism and a terrorist ideology. The defendants were charged with aiding Hamas by raising funds through the corporate entity Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development, a Texas-based, pro-Palestinian charity that the Government charged was created for the sole purpose of acting as a financing arm for Hamas. Although the charged conspiracy began in 1995 when Hamas was first designated as a terrorist organization, the defendants' connection to Hamas arose much earlier. Established in the late 1980s, the Holy Land Foundation held itself out as the largest Muslim charitable organization in the United States. It raised millions of dollars over the course of its existence that were then funneled to Hamas through various charitable entities in the West Bank and Gaza. Although these entities performed some legitimate charitable functions, they were actually Hamas social institutions. By supporting such entities, the defendants facilitated Hamas's activity by furthering its popularity among Palestinians and by providing a funding resource. This, in turn, allowed Hamas to concentrate its efforts on violent activity. The trial, which followed an earlier mistrial and lasted approximately six weeks, produced a massive record on appeal. The Government produced voluminous evidence obtained from covert surveillance, searches, and testimony showing a web of complex relationships connecting the defendants to Hamas and its various sub-groups. The financial link between the Holy Land Foundation and Hamas was established at the Foundation's genesis and continued until it was severed by the Government's intervention in 2001. The defendants raise a host of issues challenging both their convictions and their sentences, including numerous errors that they claim deprived them of a fair trial. While no trial is perfect, this one included, we conclude from our review of the record, briefs, and oral argument, that the defendants were fairly convicted. For the reasons explained below, therefore, we AFFIRM the district court's judgments of conviction of the individual defendants. We DISMISS the appeal of the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development. I. FACTUAL & PROCEDURAL BACKGROUND The instant prosecution began with an indictment of the defendants in 2004 that ended in a mistrial in 2007 but with a partial verdict. The defendants were re-tried and convicted in 2008. The indictment, as superseded, charged the defendants with conspiracy to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization (i.e., Hamas), in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 2339B(a)(1) (Count 1); providing material support to a foreign terrorist organization, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 2339B(a)(1) (Counts 2–10); conspiracy to provide funds, goods, and services to a Specially Designated Terrorist (i.e., Hamas), in violation of 50 U.S.C. §§ 1701–1706 (Count 11); providing funds, goods, and services to a Specially Designated Terrorist, in violation of 50 U.S.C. §§ 1701–1706 (Counts 12–21); conspiracy to commit money laundering, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1956(h) (Count 22); substantive money laundering, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1956(a)(2)(A) (Counts 23–32); forfeiture of assets; and certain tax offenses not relevant to this appeal. The charges arose after many years of widespread surveillance conducted pursuant to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (“FISA”) of several individuals and of the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development (“HLF”). Until it was closed by the Government in 2001, HLF was a pro-Palestinian charitable organization based in Richardson, Texas. Individual defendants Shukri Abu Baker, Ghassan Elashi, and Mohammad El–Mezain served as officers and directors for HLF. Defendant Abdulrahman Odeh managed HLF's New Jersey office, and Defendant Mufid Abdulqader was a speaker and performer who appeared at HLF fundraising events. HLF held itself out to be the largest Muslim charity in the United States, ostensibly with the mission of providing humanitarian assistance to needy Palestinians living in the Israeli-occupied territory of the West Bank and Gaza. The Government charged that in reality HLF's mission was to act as a fundraising arm for Hamas, also known as the Islamic Resistance Movement, and to assist Hamas's social wing in support of Hamas's goal to secure a Palestinian Islamic state in what is now Israel. The indictment charged the defendants with assisting Hamas by funneling money to certain “zakat” committees located in the West Bank. Zakat committees are charitable organizations to which practicing Muslims may donate a portion of their income pursuant to their religious beliefs, but the Government charged that the committees to which the defendants gave money were part of Hamas's social network. According to the evidence at trial, which we view in the light most favorable to the verdict, Hamas operates political, military, and social branches to serve its overall goal to destroy Israel. Its charter advocates violent jihad as the only solution for the conflict between Palestinians and Israelis, and it considers it the duty of all Muslims to participate in this objective either through direct action or through financial support. Hamas's social wing serves this purpose in multiple ways. It provides social services like education and medical care to the needy through the operation of schools and hospitals. But it also builds grassroots support for Hamas and its violent activities through these same means. The social wing is crucial to Hamas's success because, through its operation of schools, hospitals, and sporting facilities, it helps Hamas win the “hearts and minds” of Palestinians while promoting its anti-Israel agenda and indoctrinating the populace in its ideology. The social wing also supports the families of Hamas prisoners and suicide bombers, thereby providing incentives for bombing, and it launders money for all of Hamas's activities. Therefore, aid to Hamas's social wing critically assists Hamas's goals while also freeing resources for Hamas to devote to its military and political activities. The evidence showed that HLF and Hamas were created along similar time lines. In 1987, a Palestinian revolt in Israel, known as the Intifada, spurred the founding of Hamas by Sheikh Ahmed Yassin as a representative organization for Palestine. Hamas considered itself to be the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, a much older Islamic organization created in the 1920s and to which Yassin belonged. After Hamas's formation, the Muslim Brotherhood directed its world-wide chapters to establish so-called “Palestine Committees” to support Hamas from abroad. In the United States, Defendants Baker, El–Mezain, and Elashi were members of a Palestine Committee headed by unindicted co-conspirator Mousa Abu Marzook. The Government established that Marzook was the leader of Hamas's political wing in the 1990s. According to the prosecution's case, the Palestine Committee also created other organizations in the United States to support Hamas. The Committee created not only HLF but also the Islamic Association for Palestine (“IAP”), which was a media entity, and the United Association for Studies and Research (“UASR”), which published papers and books about Hamas. Defendant Baker was also an IAP board member. In 1988, Baker founded the Occupied Land Fund as a Muslim charity in Indiana. He, Elashi, and El–Mezain later incorporated the organization in California before renaming it as HLF in 1991. In 1992, HLF moved to Texas, where it was located across the street from Elashi's computer company, Infocom Corporation. HLF stored many of its records and documents at Infocom, which were later seized by the FBI. The defendants raised money through HLF by conducting nationwide fundraising events, conferences, and seminars where HLF sponsored speakers and solicited donations. Some of the events featured songs, performances, and skits glorifying Hamas. Defendant Abdulqader was part of a band that performed at many of these events. He also traveled around the country on HLF's behalf to speak and raise funds. HLF also conducted teleconferences where participants could listen to featured speakers and donate money. Prior to 1995, the individual defendants and HLF more or less openly supported Hamas. Then, after Hamas was designated as a terrorist organization, the defendants' support became less obvious. Speakers and performers at HLF fundraising events no longer openly referred to Hamas even though HLF continued to support the same zakat committees that Hamas controlled. From 1992 to 2001, HLF raised approximately $56 million in donations. The Government charged that from 1995 to 2001, HLF sent approximately $12.4 million outside of the United States with the intent to willfully contribute funds, goods, and services to Hamas.1 During the period from the late 1980s to the early 1990s when HLF was raising funds for the Palestinian cause, and prior to Hamas's designation as a terrorist organization, there were ongoing peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians, of which the defendants took notice. In September 1993, Yasser Arafat, the leader of the Palestine Liberation Organization (“PLO”), and Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin signed what became known as the Oslo Accords. These accords established mutual recognition between the Israeli government and the Palestinians. They also created a limited governing body for Palestinians, known as the Palestinian Authority (“PA”). As a political rival of Arafat and his Fatah political party, Hamas opposed the Oslo Accords. One month after the Oslo Accords were signed, Defendants Baker and Elashi, and possibly Abdulqader, participated in a meeting at a Philadelphia hotel (“the Philadelphia meeting”) that was secretly recorded by the FBI.2 The meeting participants, which included many of the members of the Palestine Committee, discussed their opposition to the Oslo Accords, their desire to derail the peace process, and their continued support of Hamas. Statements from Baker suggested an aura of deception and an intent to hide a connection to Hamas. At one point, Baker instructed that if anyone should inquire about the purpose of the meeting, participants should explain that it was a “joint workshop” between HLF and the IAP. He also indicated that the participants should not mention “samah” in an explicit manner and should refer at the session only to “Sister Samah,” which is Hamas spelled backwards. Beginning in approximately 1994, Government surveillance on the defendants included wiretaps on the telephones and facsimile machines of HLF, Baker, El–Mezain, and Abdulqader. In addition to the wiretaps, the Government conducted searches at the homes of two unindicted co-conspirators, Ismail Elbarasse and Abdelhaleen Masan Ashqar, who had also participated in the Philadelphia meeting. The searches yielded numerous documents corroborating the creation of the Palestine Committee and its oversight of HLF as a fundraising arm for Hamas. The documents included organizational flow charts, bylaws, and meeting minutes. The amended bylaws identified HLF under its previous name, the Occupied Land Fund, as the “official organization which represents the financial and charitable aspect to support the homeland people in the occupied territories.” The bylaws further showed that the Muslim Brotherhood had directed the collection “of donations for the Islamic Resistance Movement.” In January 1995 the President issued Executive Order 12947, designating Hamas as a Specially Designated Terrorist (“SDT”). The designation prohibited financial transactions with or for the benefit of Hamas and authorized the Treasury Department to block assets within the jurisdiction of the United States in which Hamas had an interest. The Executive Order determined, in part, that “grave acts of violence committed by foreign terrorists that disrupt the Middle East peace process constitute an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security, foreign policy, and economy of the United States.” Hamas was further designated as a foreign terrorist organization (“FTO”) by the State Department in 1997 pursuant to Section 219 of the Immigration and Nationality Act, as added by the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996. On December 3, 2001, pursuant to the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, 50 U.S.C. § 1701 et seq. (“IEEPA”), the United States designated HLF as a SDT. The next day, the Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control (“OFAC”) issued a blocking order on HLF's assets. On that same day, OFAC entered HLF's offices in Texas, New Jersey, Illinois, and California, and seized physical property. The seizure was conducted pursuant to the authority of IEEPA; no judicial warrant was obtained. In April 2002 the FBI sought, and was granted, a warrant from a magistrate judge to search the property that OFAC had seized. Evidence obtained from that search was used at trial. A search was also conducted at Infocom, where the FBI seized more of HLF's documents and records. At trial, the Government's evidence was voluminous and came from a variety of sources, including the above seizures, wiretaps, and financial documents. It also included evidence seized by the Israeli military from the zakat committees and from the PA's headquarters in Ramallah. The key issues addressed by the evidence were the connection between the defendants and Hamas, and Hamas's control of the zakat committees. The evidence also covered two general time periods: the time before Hamas was designated as a terrorist organization and the time following the designation. Evidence demonstrating the defendants' support of Hamas before the designation included numerous video recordings showing several individual defendants appearing at HLF fundraising events attended by Hamas leaders, such as Marzook and Khalid Mishal, who is the current leader of Hamas's political wing. The speakers and performers praised Hamas at many of these events, where donations were encouraged and solicited by HLF. Some of the videos were seized from HLF offices, while others were found buried in the backyard of a residence formerly occupied by Fawaz Mushtaha, who was associated with the Palestine Committee and also played in the same band with Defendant Abdulqader. The Government also presented evidence of numerous financial transactions between HLF and Hamas leader Marzook and Marzook's wife Nadia.3 Marzook further had personal connections to the defendants as shown through numerous telephone calls to El–Mezain and Baker, and the listing of contact information for El–Mezain, Baker, and Elashi in his personal telephone book. Mohamed Shorbagi, a former HLF representative who pleaded guilty in a separate case, testified that HLF's purpose was to support Hamas. He testified about attending closed meetings with the individual defendants and Hamas leaders. He described one meeting in 1994 where Marzook introduced Mishal, who spoke about the emergence of Hamas and the participants' roles in supporting the Hamas movement. According to Shorbagi, El–Mezain led a sub-group from that meeting in discussions on fundraising. Shorbagi's testimony that HLF supported Hamas was consistent with testimony from an Israeli Security Agency employee who provided expert testimony about Hamas financing. Using the pseudonym “Avi” for security reasons, the witness testified that most of the zakat committees that received funds from HLF had come under the control of Hamas by 1991. This testimony was also consistent with conversations captured from the Philadelphia meeting in 1993, wherein Muin Shabib, who was later identified at trial as a Hamas leader, discussed the zakat committees and the extent to which they were “ours,” meaning Hamas. It was also consistent with a 1991 letter addressed to Baker found in Elbarasse's home that discussed various zakat committees and used the same language to indicate which committees were controlled by Hamas. Prior to 1995 it was not illegal for HLF to have a relationship with or to provide support for Hamas. The above evidence was therefore important to establish the defendants' relationship with Hamas figures and to demonstrate their intent when viewed in conjunction with other evidence of their post–1995 conduct. The Government presented evidence through video recordings, letters, and other documents found in HLF's possession demonstrating that the defendants continued to support Hamas. For example, in a 1996 video from a fundraising event, Abdulqader sent greetings to Hamas leaders. In 1997 HLF sponsored a teleconference featuring two prominent Hamas speakers. Indeed, HLF maintained a computerized list of featured speakers, last modified in 1999, that included numerous individuals who were identified through testimony as Hamas members. But perhaps the strongest evidence that the defendants provided support to Hamas after Hamas was designated as a terrorist organization came through testimony and financial documents showing that HLF provided funds to the same Hamas-controlled zakat committees that it had supported before the designation. The evidence of Hamas control of the zakat committees was substantial. For example, the Government offered testimony from Dr. Matthew Levitt, an expert on the subject of Hamas, who testified based on his research that Hamas controls many of the zakat committees in the West Bank and Gaza. Avi also testified from his personal study of Hamas that all of the zakat committees named in the indictment were Hamas institutions. In addition, the Israeli military seized a voluminous amount of evidence related to Hamas from the zakat committees. This evidence included Hamas posters and paraphernalia, as well as internal Hamas documents and communications. The evidence also included video recordings seized from the zakat committees showing school ceremonies and other events consistent with Hamas ideology and Hamas's use of its social wing to promote its agenda. Furthermore, numerous individuals connected to the various zakat committees were identified as prominent Hamas leaders. The defendants' theory at trial largely was that they did not support Hamas or terrorism, but rather shared a sympathy for the plight of the Palestinian people through support of the zakat committees and the charitable work the committees performed. Their view was that the Government never designated as a terrorist organization any of the zakat committees or anyone connected to the committees. They argued that the Treasury Department had to designate a zakat committee before contributions to it would be unlawful, suggesting that non-designated committees were not controlled by Hamas. The jury rejected the defense's theories and credited the Government's evidence by finding each defendant guilty of all applicable charges. The district court imposed sentences ranging from 65 years in prison for Baker and Elashi, to 20 years for Abdulqader, and 15 years for Odeh and El–Mezain. HLF was sentenced to one year of probation. The defendants now appeal, raising multiple claims of error before, during, and after trial. Despite raising a myriad of issues, including numerous claims of erroneous evidentiary rulings, the defendants do not challenge the sufficiency of the evidence to support their convictions. We first address the defendants' various claims of trial error and their challenge to the jury charge. We then address a challenge on Fourth Amendment grounds to the search conducted in HLF's offices in December 2001, and then turn to three separate Double Jeopardy issues. Next, we will address the defendants' issues concerning classified information, and then we will consider two separate sentencing challenges. After considering the issues raised by the individual defendants, we turn to the separate appeal by HLF as a corporate defendant. Finally, we consider a separate appeal filed by defense attorney Nancy Hollander. A. Testimony of witnesses using pseudonyms The defendants' first claim of trial error involves the district court's allowance of two witnesses to testify using pseudonyms. One of the witnesses, who used the name “Avi,” was a legal advisor for the Israeli Security Agency (“ISA”) and testified as an expert witness about Hamas financing and control of the zakat committees. The other witness, “Major Lior,” was employed by the Israeli Defense Forces (“IDF”) and testified as a fact witness to authenticate documents that IDF had seized during a military operation known as Operation Defensive Shield. The district court ruled that the witnesses could use pseudonyms because revealing their true names “would jeopardize national security and pose a danger to the safety of the witnesses and their families.” The defendants argue that the use of pseudonyms by Avi and Major Lior violated the defendants' Fifth Amendment due process right and their Sixth Amendment right to confront witnesses.4 The defendants contend that they could not verify Avi's and Major Lior's credentials or investigate them for prior acts undermining their veracity; they could not present opinion and reputation evidence about their character for untruthfulness; and they could not develop other impeachment evidence. They further complain that the district court ignored procedures under the Classified Information Procedures Act (“CIPA”), 18 U.S.C. app. 3, § 6, designed to protect a defendant's right to present his defense when classified information is involved. They further note that besides Avi the Government could have called another witness it had noticed as an expert, whose identity was not classified, to testify about Hamas's control of the zakat committees, and they posit that their constitutional rights would not have been violated had the Government done so. Ordinarily, a district court's limitation on the scope of the defendant's cross-examination of government witnesses is reviewed for abuse of discretion. See United States v. Bryant, 991 F.2d 171, 175 (5th Cir.1993). Alleged violations of the Confrontation Clause of the Sixth Amendment during cross-examination are reviewed de novo, applying a harmless error standard. United States v. Diaz, 637 F.3d 592, 597 (5th Cir.2011). “Where there is no constitutional violation, we will not find an abuse of the trial court's discretion absent ‘a showing that the limitations were clearly prejudicial.’ ” Id. (citation omitted). Although the Confrontation Clause guarantees the right of a defendant to confront his accusers, that “right is not unlimited.” Id. The district court has discretion “to impose reasonable limits on such cross-examination based on concerns about, among other things, ․ the witness' safety․” Delaware v. Van Arsdall, 475 U.S. 673, 679, 106 S.Ct. 1431, 89 L.Ed.2d 674 (1986). “What is required is that defense counsel be ‘permitted to expose to the jury the facts from which jurors, as the sole triers of fact and credibility, could appropriately draw inferences relating to the reliability of the witness.’ ” Diaz, 637 F.3d at 597 (citation omitted). In Smith v. Illinois, 390 U.S. 129, 88 S.Ct. 748, 19 L.Ed.2d 956 (1968), the Supreme Court found error in allowing a witness, who testified about purchasing drugs from the defendant, to use a pseudonym. The Court held that “the very starting point in ‘exposing falsehood and bringing out the truth’ through cross-examination must necessarily be to ask the witness who he is and where he lives.” Id. at 131, 88 S.Ct. 748 (footnote and citation omitted). The Court recognized that disclosing the witness's true identity “open[s] countless avenues of in-court examination and out-of-court investigation,” and that closing that avenue “effectively ․ emasculate[s] the right of cross-examination itself.” Id. The defendants urge that Smith' s reasoning required disclosure of the witnesses' true names in this case. We are not persuaded that Smith dictates that result. There is “no fixed rule with respect to disclosure.” Roviaro v. United States, 353 U.S. 53, 62, 77 S.Ct. 623, 1 L.Ed.2d 639 (1957). Instead, there must be a “balancing [of] the public interest in protecting the flow of information against the individual's right to prepare his defense,” which depends on “the particular circumstances of each case.” Id. This balancing required disclosure of the witness's name in Smith because the “only real question at trial” was the credibility of the single, principal witness, who was the only person, other than the defendant, who testified about the crucial events at issue. Smith, 390 U.S. at 130, 88 S.Ct. 748. But Smith, unlike the instant case, did not involve classified information or issues of witness safety. See id. at 133–34, 88 S.Ct. 748 (White, J., concurring) (recognizing as beyond the proper bounds of cross-examination “those inquiries which tend to endanger the personal safety of the witness”). We must account for these considerations in the analysis. Witness safety was a factor in another case involving balancing in United States v. Celis, 608 F.3d 818, 830–32 (D.C.Cir.2010), where the District of Columbia Circuit affirmed the use of pseudonyms by Government witnesses from Colombia in a prosecution for a drug conspiracy. The defendants and witnesses were connected to Colombian revolutionaries who had threatened to kill cooperating witnesses, which justified the concealment of the witnesses' identities at trial. Id. at 833. Because the Government planned to have the witnesses testify about their involvement with the defendants and drug trafficking, however, it was necessary to allow the defendants an opportunity to attack their credibility. Id. To enable such confrontation, the district court issued a protective order allowing defense counsel to learn the true names of the witnesses for investigative purposes only days before the testimony was to be given at trial. Id. The court of appeals held that this approach was “an appropriate balancing of interests in the relevant case-specific context.” Id. In the instant case, the district court conducted a similar balancing of interests but concluded that there should be no disclosure of the witnesses' true names. It held that “defendants' interest in obtaining the names of the witnesses is outweighed by the Government's need to keep the information secret.” We agree. First, we conclude that there was a serious and clear need to protect the true identities of Avi and Major Lior because of concerns for their safety. The Government showed that Hamas and other terrorist organizations seek out the true identities of ISA agents and their families and publish descriptions of ISA officers on websites so that they can be targeted. The witnesses' names are thus classified under both Israeli law and American law, and, as noted by the district court, the true identities of the witnesses were provided to United States authorities with the expectation that they would be closely guarded and kept secret. Second, when the national security and safety concerns are balanced against the defendants' ability to conduct meaningful cross-examination, the scale tips in favor of maintaining the secrecy of the witnesses' names. The Government disclosed to the defense over twenty volumes of material that Avi used to formulate his expert opinion about Hamas financing. Moreover, the Government agreed in pretrial filings that the defense would be permitted to ask Avi about his background, his training and experience with the ISA, his legal education, and his potential bias in favor of Israelis in the West Bank. The defense was therefore well-armed with information upon which to confront and cross-examine both Avi and Major Lior, and a review of the trial record in fact shows that the defense was able to conduct effective cross-examination. See Van Arsdall, 475 U.S. at 679, 106 S.Ct. 1431 (“ ‘[T]he Confrontation Clause guarantees an opportunity for effective cross-examination, not cross-examination that is effective in whatever way, and to whatever extent, the defense might wish.’ ”) (citation omitted). As evidence of possible bias, the defense highlighted both witnesses' close connection to the Israeli military. With respect to Major Lior, the defense focused on the military nature of the Israelis' seizure of evidence from the zakat committees, and the fact that the military also entered mosques, schools, and orphanages, thereby casting negative light on both the witness and the military operation. The defense also elicited from Major Lior the fact that he did not personally seize the evidence at issue, that he did not know precisely where inside the zakat committees the various items in evidence were found, and that he did not know if any items were left behind in the committees. These questions suggested a lack of knowledge and familiarity with the subject matter, and also suggested that exculpatory evidence may have been overlooked. With respect to the cross-examination of Avi, the defense also was able to ask questions designed to cast doubt on the witness as a biased Israeli security agent. The defense highlighted for the jury the fact that Avi was testifying under an assumed name and that defense counsel could not research him or verify certain opinions. Defense counsel elicited from Avi the fact that he had never been to a zakat committee or spoken to people who had received assistance from the committees, he had not been involved in the seizure of evidence from the committees, and he had not polled Palestinians about the zakat committees. The defense also asked about Avi's work product and the materials he relied upon in reaching his opinions. The defense challenged Avi's credibility on the subject of Hamas control of the zakat committees, as well as the basis for his knowledge, by (1) eliciting the fact that no Hamas materials were found in the offices of certain zakat committees that Avi claimed were controlled by Hamas, (2) asking whether he knew that the United States Agency for International Development (“USAID”), a government organization, had given money to and visited a committee that Avi testified was allegedly controlled by Hamas, (3) showing him statements in Government exhibits that indicated a lack of Hamas presence in zakat committees that he said were controlled by Hamas, and (4) asking him questions to demonstrate a lack of knowledge about the internal election proceedings of the zakat committees. We conclude from the above that, although the defense could not verify the witnesses' credentials, the district court correctly observed that the defendants had access to significant information regarding the witnesses' employment, nationalities, and backgrounds in order to conduct meaningful cross-examination. They also had access to substantial material that formed the basis for Avi's expert opinion. With all of this information, the defense was able to probe for bias and test the basis of the witnesses' knowledge. Because “the jury had sufficient information to appraise the bias and motives of the witness,” there was no Sixth Amendment violation. United States v. Tansley, 986 F.2d 880, 886 (5th Cir.1993). The defendants complain, however, that they were unable to conduct a focused attack on Avi's and Major Lior's credibility, and they argue that the witnesses' true identities could have been disclosed for investigative purposes only to defense counsel under a protective order similar to the order in Celis. We consider this point as part of a prejudice analysis. See Diaz, 637 F.3d at 599 (when there is no Sixth Amendment violation, we “examine whether the trial court's restrictions on cross-examination were so prejudicial as to result in an abuse of discretion”). We agree with the district court that disclosure of the witnesses' true names to defense counsel for a limited investigation was unlikely to yield useful information. Because the names of the witnesses were classified, unlike in Celis, it is unlikely that anyone who knew the witnesses' true names could or would discuss them with defense counsel. The defendants therefore cannot show a reasonable probability that the jury might have assessed the witnesses' testimony any differently had they been allowed to learn the witnesses' true identities. See United States v. Davis, 393 F.3d 540, 548 (5th Cir.2004) (holding that to demonstrate prejudice the defendant “must show that a reasonable jury might have had a significantly different impression of the witness's credibility if defense counsel had been allowed to pursue the questioning”). In light of the danger to Avi's and Major Lior's personal safety that could have been caused by disclosure of their true names, and the unlikelihood that the jury would have assessed credibility any differently, the district court's decision to preclude disclosure of the witnesses' names was not an abuse of discretion. Under all the circumstances, the defendants had a more than adequate “opportunity to place the witness in his proper setting and put the weight of his testimony and his credibility to a test.” Smith, 390 U.S. at 132, 88 S.Ct. 748; see also Diaz, 637 F.3d at 597; United States v. Abu Marzook, 412 F.Supp.2d 913, 923–24 (N.D.Ill.2006) (holding, in a prosecution for materially supporting Hamas, that ISA agents could testify using pseudonyms because of the classified nature of their true identities, and that doing so did not violate the defendant's Sixth Amendment confrontation rights because the defendant was free to cross-examine the agents “on the basis of their direct testimony or any other proper basis”). Moreover, the district court instructed the jury that it could consider the witnesses' use of assumed names when assessing the credibility and weight of the testimony. We therefore hold that the district court did not violate the defendants' confrontation rights by allowing Avi and Major Lior to testify using pseudonyms. B. Hearsay evidence The defendants contend that the district court improperly admitted the following three categories of hearsay evidence that linked the defendants to Hamas or that linked Hamas to the zakat committees: (1) the testimony of Mohamed Shorbagi, (2) documents seized by the Israeli military from the headquarters of the Palestinian Authority during Operation Defensive Shield, and (3) documents seized from the homes of unindicted co-conspirators Elbarasse and Ashqar. We review the district court's evidentiary rulings for an abuse of discretion. United States v. Jackson, 636 F.3d 687, 692 (5th Cir.2011). Before addressing the defendants' specific evidentiary challenges, we pause to note that the hearsay issue, like the defendants' other evidentiary issues raised on appeal, is subject to a harmless error analysis if we find there was an error. See id. A reversal will not be warranted unless the defendant shows “that the district court's ruling caused him substantial prejudice.” United States v. Bishop, 264 F.3d 535, 546 (5th Cir.2001); see Fed.R.Evid. 103(a). Because the defendants have raised on appeal multiple claims of evidentiary error at trial, we first address the evidentiary claims to decide if an error occurred. Except for certain issues related to testimony from John McBrien and Steven Simon, which we will explain below, we then consider in a combined discussion whether any errors we identify may be considered harmless. 1. Mohamed Shorbagi Mohamed Shorbagi was a representative of HLF in Georgia who helped raise funds for the organization. He pleaded guilty in a separate case to providing material support to Hamas through HLF, and he testified in the instant case as part of a plea agreement. Shorbagi testified that Hamas controlled several zakat committees in the West Bank and Gaza to which HLF donated money. He also identified several people associated with the committees as Hamas leaders, and he stated that HLF was a part of Hamas. The defendants challenge this testimony as improper hearsay, contending that Shorbagi merely repeated what he had read in newspapers and what he had learned from friends. At one point during his testimony, the Government asked Shorbagi the basis for his knowledge, and he responded: “It came from newspapers, it came from leaflets, it came from Hamas—the internet later on in '98, '99, the website of Hamas, and from also talking among friends.” The defendants base their argument on appeal in large part on this exchange. “ ‘Hearsay’ is a statement, other than one made by the declarant while testifying at the trial or hearing, offered in evidence to prove the truth of the matter asserted.” Fed. R. Evid. 801(c). If Shorbagi was merely repeating what he had read or what someone had told him, it would be hearsay and inadmissible. See, e.g., Roberts v. City of Shreveport, 397 F.3d 287, 295 (5th Cir.2005) (newspaper articles are “classic inadmissible hearsay”); see Fed.R.Evid. 802. However, Shorbagi's testimony is more complicated than that, as a review of the record shows that he possessed personal knowledge of some of the facts to which he testified. A witness's testimony must be based on personal knowledge. United States v. $92,203.00 in U.S. Currency, 537 F.3d 504, 508 (5th Cir.2008); see Fed.R.Evid. 602 (“A witness may not testify to a matter unless evidence is introduced sufficient to support a finding that the witness has personal knowledge of the matter.”). The personal knowledge requirement and the hearsay rule “are cut at least in part from the same cloth,” as Rule 602 prevents a witness from testifying about a hearsay statement upon which he has no personal knowledge. United States v. Quezada, 754 F.2d 1190, 1195 (5th Cir.1985). It is axiomatic that a witness may not merely repeat the subject matter of a hearsay statement, nor may he rely on inadmissible hearsay as a substitute for his own knowledge. Id. If the evidence supports a finding that the witness does possess personal knowledge, however, he may testify on that basis. Id. In the instant case, we conclude that Shorbagi's testimony revealed a close association with and knowledge of HLF and the individual defendants, as well as HLF's fundraising activity, that demonstrated personal knowledge and made his testimony about HLF's connection with Hamas admissible. His testimony about Hamas's control of specific zakat committees is more problematic. After coming to the United States from Gaza to attend college, Shorbagi became a volunteer for several Muslim organizations and attended various conferences sponsored by those organizations around the country. He also helped raise money first for the Occupied Land Fund and then for HLF. He continued to raise funds for HLF when he moved to Rome, Georgia, where he collected donations for HLF as the emam at the mosque and helped coordinate appearances by HLF speakers. Shorbagi testified about attending closed meetings at conferences with some of the individual defendants, as well as with Hamas leaders, such as Marzook and Mishal. He personally attended a 1994 meeting with Baker, Elashi, and El–Mezain, where Hamas leader Mishal spoke about Hamas and the role of the attendees in supporting Hamas. Shorbagi explained that a financial sub-committee then met in a break-out session headed by defendant El–Mezain. Shorbagi testified that his personal understanding of the committee's purpose was to raise money to donate “[t]o organizations controlled or founded by Hamas in the occupied territories.” Similarly, Shorbagi was personally present when El–Mezain came to Rome on a fundraising trip accompanied by Mohamed Siam, who was shown by other witnesses to be connected to Hamas. Although Shorbagi's testimony concerned events that occurred before it became illegal to donate to Hamas, the testimony demonstrated that he had inside knowledge and personally knew that HLF's fundraising aimed to assist Hamas. See United States v. Cantu, 167 F.3d 198, 204 (5th Cir.1999) (“Personal knowledge can include inferences and opinions, so long as they are grounded in personal observation and experience.”) (internal quotation marks and citation omitted). Shorbagi also had personal knowledge about HLF's activity after Hamas was designated as a terrorist organization. He testified, for example, that HLF provided money to the same organizations in the West Bank after Hamas was designated as a terrorist organization as before the designation, although he stated that HLF changed its manner of distribution after it opened an office in Gaza. He explained that Baker had stated that money would be sent to the Gaza office for further distribution rather than to specific individuals. Furthermore, Shorbagi testified that the conferences and festivals at which HLF participated changed after Hamas was designated as a terrorist organization insofar as Hamas was no longer mentioned in the songs or speeches. Shorbagi's testimony was based on personal knowledge, as he continued to represent HLF at fundraising events during this time. He testified, for example, that he personally participated in fundraising events in Rome and Atlanta in 1999. It is clear from the above testimony that Shorbagi had an adequate basis to testify about HLF's purpose in raising money to support Hamas. See Quezada, 754 F.2d at 1195 (“[E]ven if testimony is based in part on inadmissible hearsay, Rule 602 will be satisfied if evidence is introduced sufficient to support a finding that [the witness] has personal knowledge of the matter.”) (internal quotation marks omitted). Whether Shorbagi had knowledge that Hamas controlled certain zakat committees is not as clear. Shorbagi expressly testified that Hamas controlled the zakat committees in Nablus, Jenin, Ramallah, and Hebron, all of which were charged in the indictment as receiving funds from HLF. Shorbagi may very well have personally known that these committees were controlled by Hamas from his activity in raising money for HLF, from attending conferences with the individual defendants, and from meeting various Hamas leaders at the conferences. However, when asked the crucial question as to the basis for this specific knowledge, Shorbagi gave as examples “newspapers,” “leaflets,” the “internet,” and “friends.” These sources constitute classic hearsay rather than personal knowledge. See, e.g., Roberts, 397 F.3d at 295 (newspapers are hearsay); United States v. Jackson, 208 F.3d 633, 637 (7th Cir.2000) (web postings from the Internet were inadmissible hearsay). In an effort to rehabilitate Shorbagi's answer, the Government asked if the “friends” to which Shorbagi referred were persons who were involved with him in supporting Hamas and organizations like HLF. But Shorbagi's affirmative response did not transform his apparent reliance on the statements of others, whether they were similarly situated to him or not, into personal knowledge. We therefore conclude that Shorbagi's testimony that Hamas controlled the zakat committees was hearsay, and it was error for the district court to allow it.5 We consider below whether the error was harmless. 2. Documents seized from the Palestinian Authority The defendants next challenge on hearsay grounds the admission of three documents (“the PA documents”) seized by the Israeli military in 2002 from the PA headquarters in Ramallah. They are: (1) Government exhibit PA 2, an undated document entitled, “Who is financing Hamas,” that lists HLF as a financial resource for Hamas; (2) Government exhibit PA 8, entitled “Palestinian National Authority General Intelligence Ramallah and al-Bireh Government, Security Work Plan,” a 30–page report indicating that the Ramallah Zakat Committee “has relations with the Islamic Movement” in Israel, which is affiliated with Hamas, and that its leaders and members “are Hamas;” and (3) Government exhibit PA 9, a one-page document dated December 22, 2001, purportedly from Major Khalid Abu–Yaman, Director of Operations, on PA General Security letterhead concerning the Ramallah Zakat Committee and asserting that “Officials and members of this committee are associated with the Hamas Movement and some of them are activists in the Movement.” The PA documents were excluded from the first trial but admitted at the second trial over defense objection under Fed.R.Evid. 807, the residual exception to the hearsay rule. The Government argued that the documents had sufficient indicia of trustworthiness because the Israeli military had seized them from the PA headquarters and they were therefore akin to public records. The district court agreed, noting that the documents were not prepared in advance for litigation purposes and that two of them “appear to have some kind of letterhead.” We conclude that the Government's justification for admitting the documents was insufficient to prove their trustworthiness, and they should have been excluded from the second trial. Rule 807's residual hearsay exception allows the admission of hearsay statements that are not covered by another exception if the statements have “equivalent circumstantial guarantees of trustworthiness” and the district court determines that they are material, probative, and in the interests of justice.6 See Fed.R.Evid. 807; United States v. Ismoila, 100 F.3d 380, 393 (5th Cir.1996). The district court is given wide latitude in admitting evidence under the rule, and we “will not disturb the district court's application of the exception absent a definite and firm conviction that the court made a clear error of judgment in the conclusion it reached based upon a weighing of the relevant factors.” United States v. Phillips, 219 F.3d 404, 419 n. 23 (5th Cir.2000) (internal quotation marks and citation omitted). Nevertheless, the “exception is to be ‘used only rarely, in truly exceptional cases.’ ” Id. (citation omitted). Moreover, “[t]he proponent of the statement bears a heavy burden to come forward with indicia of both trustworthiness and probative force. In order to find a statement trustworthy, a court must find that the declarant of the ․ statement ‘was particularly likely to be telling the truth when the statement was made.’ ” Id. (internal quotation marks and citations omitted). We therefore focus on the “equivalent circumstantial guarantees of trustworthiness” requirement, which is the “lodestar of the residual hearsay exception analysis.” United States v. Walker, 410 F.3d 754, 758 (5th Cir.2005). The determination of trustworthiness is “drawn from the totality of the circumstances surrounding the making of the statement, but [it] cannot stem from other corroborating evidence.” Ismoila, 100 F.3d at 393 (citing Idaho v. Wright, 497 U.S. 805, 820–22, 110 S.Ct. 3139, 111 L.Ed.2d 638 (1990)). “[E]vidence possessing ‘particularized guarantees of trustworthiness' must be at least as reliable as evidence admitted under a firmly rooted hearsay exception ․ [and] must similarly be so trustworthy that adversarial testing would add little to its reliability.” Wright, 497 U.S. at 821, 110 S.Ct. 3139 (citations omitted). As it argued to the district court, the Government maintains on appeal that the PA documents are reliable and trustworthy because they are essentially public records, which ordinarily are admissible under Rule 803(8).7 It is therefore proper to measure the PA documents against the requirements of the public records exception. See 2 Kenneth S. Broun, McCormick on Evid. § 324 (6th ed.) (noting that for purposes of Rule 807 “courts frequently compare the circumstances surrounding the statement to the closest hearsay exception”); see also United States v. Wilson, 249 F.3d 366, 375–76 (5th Cir.2001) (holding that, although foreign bank records were not admissible under the business records exception because there was no custodian available to testify, the district court properly admitted the documents under Rule 807 because “bank documents, like other business records, provide circumstantial guarantees of trustworthiness because the banks and their customers rely on their accuracy in the course of business”), abrogated on other grounds by Whitfield v. United States, 543 U.S. 209, 125 S.Ct. 687, 160 L.Ed.2d 611 (2005). The public records exception to the hearsay rule “is designed to permit the admission into evidence of public records prepared for purposes independent of specific litigation.” Quezada, 754 F.2d at 1194. It is based on the notion that public records are reliable because there is a “lack of ․ motivation on the part of the recording official to do other than mechanically register an unambiguous factual matter.” Id.; see also Moss v. Ole South Real Estate, Inc., 933 F.2d 1300, 1308 (5th Cir.1991) (explaining that the public records hearsay exception is premised on “public officials doing their legal duties,” such that the usual “distrust” of statements made by out-of-court declarants does not apply). The Government contends that the PA documents have sufficient circumstantial guarantees of trustworthiness as public documents under Rule 803(8)(A) and 803(8)(B) because the facts in the documents merely represent “activities of the office” or “matters observed pursuant to duty.”8 The matters reported in the PA documents have nothing to do with the PA's own activity, but rather describe the activities and financing of Hamas. Therefore, the guarantee of trustworthiness associated with a public agency merely recording its own actions is not present. See Rule 803(8)(A). Moreover, the conclusions stated in the PA documents are not the kind of objective factual matters we have found to be reliable under Rule 803(8)(B) when reported as a matter of course. See, e.g., Quezada, 754 F.2d at 1194 (holding that deportation record containing date and location of deportation was reliable under Rule 803(8)(B) because the document contained a “routine, objective observation[ ], made as part of the everyday function of the preparing official”); United States v. Dancy, 861 F.2d 77, 79–80 (5th Cir.1988) (finding that fingerprint card containing defendant's fingerprints, physical description, sentence, and prison reporting date admissible under Rule 803(8)(B)); United States v. Puente, 826 F.2d 1415, 1417 (5th Cir.1987) (holding that computer printouts showing that vehicle crossed the border at a specific time were reliable under Rule 803(8)(B) because license plate number was observed and recorded by customs officer complying with agency directives and procedures that were adopted to carry out its legal duty to protect the border). Instead, the PA documents contain conclusions about Hamas control of the Ramallah Zakat Committee and the sources of Hamas financing that were reached through unknown evaluative means. This leads to a larger problem with the documents: there is nothing known about the circumstances under which the documents were created, the duty of the authors to prepare such documents, the procedures and methods used to reach the stated conclusions, and, in the case of two of the documents, the identities of the authors. See, e.g., United States v. Vidacak, 553 F.3d 344, 351 (4th Cir.2009) (holding that records seized from a brigade headquarters showing that the defendant had served in the Serbian army were admissible as public records where a witness testified about the documents' seizure and explained how the army maintained and organized its records pursuant to specific procedures); United States v. Dumeisi, 424 F.3d 566, 575–77 (7th Cir.2005) (holding Iraqi intelligence documents admissible under Rule 807 where witnesses positively identified the documents, as well as handwriting, symbols, codes, abbreviations, and signatures on them, and also testified that the officers had a duty to accurately record their activities and information received from other sources). We know only that the PA documents were found in the possession of the PA. Although Avi testified that the PA had an interest in monitoring Hamas and the zakat committees, there is nothing in the documents or the record that reveals whether the declarants had firsthand knowledge of the information reported, where or how they obtained the information, and whether there was a legal duty to report the matter. See United States v. Cent. Gulf Lines, Inc., 974 F.2d 621, 626 & n. 10 (5th Cir.1992) (holding that for evidence to be admissible under public records hearsay exception, person making report must have observed matters first hand and acted pursuant to a legal duty); United States v. Perlmuter, 693 F.2d 1290, 1293–94 (9th Cir.1982) (same); see also 4 Christopher B. Mueller & Laird C. Kirkpatrick, Fed. Evid. § 8:88 (3d ed.) (for public records falling under Rule 803(8)(B) “the source of the recorded information must have personal knowledge, as the phrase ‘matters observed’ implies”). For example, nothing is known or can be inferred about the author of PA 2, which is not on official letterhead and contains an illegible signature. The document also contains apparent double hearsay because it refers vaguely to unnamed “Western Sources,” “security experts,” and “western security organizations.” PA 8 is on plain paper with a spiral binding and contains no certifications, signatures, letterhead, official seals, or other indicia of official record keeping, except for a notation that vaguely reads, “Prepared by: The Operation Room.” It contains nothing further about where the reported information was obtained. PA 9 is on letterhead and identifies the declarant, but it contains only conclusory statements with no explanation of how or why the document was created. The Government argues that the PA had a “strong incentive” to report accurate information about Hamas. There is no doubt that may be true, but the Government points to nothing in the record about the PA's practice of record keeping. There is also nothing in the documents or the record showing that the declarants in these documents were especially likely to be telling the truth. See Phillips, 219 F.3d at 419 n. 23. We therefore cannot say that there was little to gain from further adversarial testing. Without further information about the circumstances under which the PA documents were created, we are faced with conclusory assertions amounting to classic hearsay and no facts from which to divine the documents' reliability. We realize that when dealing with foreign documents, it may not be possible for the Government to learn every detail about the evidence, especially when it has been seized in a military operation. We do not foreclose the possibility that obtaining documents in such a manner from an adversary may have some probative value and could, at least under some circumstances, be indicative of trustworthiness. But the instant documents were not offered merely for their probative value, and their seizure from the PA, without more, does not impart sufficient indicia of trustworthiness in this case to permit their admission. We do not even know, for example, if the PA created PA 2 and PA 8, or whether the documents were created by some third person or agency and were merely collected by the PA as intelligence. See, e.g., United States v. Doyle, 130 F.3d 523, 547 (2d Cir.1997) (questioning reliability of “privately-generated, business records without further foundation, even though the records were found in the possession of a foreign government agency”). We therefore conclude that the district court erred in finding that the PA documents contained sufficient indicia of trustworthiness pursuant to Rule 807's residual hearsay exception. 3. Elbarasse and Ashqar documents Finally, the defendants raise a hearsay challenge to the admission of documents discovered in the homes of unindicted co-conspirators Ismail Elbarasse and Abdelhaleen Masan Ashqar (together “the Elbarasse and Ashqar documents”). The documents, which dated from the late 1980s and early 1990s, were discovered by the FBI pursuant to search warrants. They included annual reports, meeting agendas and minutes, financial records, work papers, and telephone directories that documented the activities of the Palestine Committee and demonstrated the defendants' participation with the Committee. Many of the documents referenced defendants Elashi, El–Mezain, and Baker by name, as well as HLF. Viewed in the light most favorable to the Government, the Elbarasse and Ashqar documents showed that HLF was a fundraising arm for the Palestine Committee in support of Hamas. For example, one of the documents, Elbarasse exhibit 13, was a 1989–90 “annual report” for the “Palestine Committee.” It reported the “achievement” of raising over $728,000 by the Occupied Land Fund, the former name of HLF, for “people on the inside.” It also asked the United States Muslim Brotherhood for “moral support” for the committee's work in “support for the emerging movement, the Hamas Movement.” Elbarasse exhibit 7 was another Palestine Committee document. It contained proposed amendments to the Committee's by-laws, and it expressly recognized HLF as “the official organization which represents the financial and charitable aspect to support the homeland people in the occupied territories.” The document further noted that the Muslim Brotherhood had issued instructions to collect donations “for the Islamic Resistance Movement.” Still another document, Elbarasse exhibit 11, was a meeting agenda for the “Financial Committee.” Referencing HLF as “the Fund,” the agenda set forth work assignments for Elashi, Baker, and El–Mezain. An organizational chart for the “Palestine Committee,” Elbarasse exhibit 10, showed Hamas leader Marzook as the Chairman. It also showed the Committee functions served by HLF, Baker, El–Mezain, Elashi, and Elbarasse. The defendants objected to the Elbarasse and Ashqar documents as hearsay, arguing that many of them were unsigned and pre-dated Hamas's designation as a terrorist organization. The district court admitted them as non-hearsay statements of co-conspirators pursuant to Rule 801(d)(2)(E) of the Federal Rules of Evidence. The defendants argue on appeal that the district court abused its discretion in admitting the documents because Rule 801(d)(2)(E) applies only to statements made in furtherance of conspiracies, and the Elbarasse and Ashqar documents could not have been made in furtherance of a conspiracy to support Hamas since they were created before 1995 when such support became illegal. The defendants further argue that the Government failed to show that there was an agreement between the declarants and the defendants, or that the documents were made in furtherance of that agreement. The defendants insist that the documents are therefore inadmissible hearsay. “A statement is not hearsay if ․ [t]he statement is offered against a party and is ․ a statement by a coconspirator of a party during the course and in furtherance of the conspiracy.” Fed.R.Evid. 801(d)(2)(E). “Under our precedent, ‘[t]he proponent of admittance under Rule 801(d)(2)(E) must prove by a preponderance of the evidence (1) the existence of a conspiracy, (2) the statement was made by a co-conspirator of the party, (3) the statement was made during the course of the conspiracy, and (4) the statement was made in furtherance of the conspiracy.’ ” United States v. Solis, 299 F.3d 420, 443 (5th Cir.2002) (quoting Phillips, 219 F.3d at 418 n. 21). The content of the statement may be considered as part of the analysis, but there must also be independent evidence establishing the factual predicates for Rule 801(d)(2)(E). See United States v. Sudeen, 434 F.3d 384, 390 (5th Cir.2005). Although the rule speaks of statements made in furtherance of a “conspiracy,” we have recognized that admissibility under Rule 801(d)(2)(E) does not turn on the criminal nature of the endeavor. See United States v. Postal, 589 F.2d 862, 886 n. 41 (5th Cir.1979). Instead, a statement may be admissible under Rule 801(d)(2)(E) if it is made in furtherance of a lawful joint undertaking. “One can qualify as a ‘joint venturer’ for the purposes of Rule 801(d)(2)(E) merely by engaging in a joint plan—distinct from the criminal conspiracy charged—that was non-criminal in nature.” United States v. Holy Land Found. for Relief & Dev., 624 F.3d 685, 694 (5th Cir.2010); see also United States v. Saimiento–Rozo, 676 F.2d 146, 149 (5th Cir.1982) (noting that under Rule 801(d)(2)(E) there is no “need [for] the conspiracy or agreement [to] be criminal in nature; it may be in the form of a joint venture”). Pursuant to this “joint venture” theory, a statement is not hearsay if it was made during the course and in furtherance of a common plan or endeavor with a party, regardless of the non-criminal nature of that endeavor. For example, in Postal we held that a ship's logbook was admissible under Rule 801(d)(2)(E) as a co-conspirator statement in a drug conspiracy prosecution because “it is not necessary that the conspiracy upon which admissibility of the statement is predicated be that charged. Moreover, the agreement need not be criminal in nature.” Postal, 589 F.2d at 886 n. 41. We concluded that the ship's crew were engaged in the voyage of the ship, which “was a ‘joint venture’ in and of itself apart from the illegality of its purpose,” and the logbook was created in furtherance of the voyage. Id. In support of the conclusion that an agreement between co-conspirators need not be unlawful to support admission under Rule 801(d)(2)(E), we quoted the legislative history of the rule: “While (this) rule refers to a coconspirator, it is this committee's understanding that the rule is meant to carry forward the universally accepted doctrine that a joint venturer is considered as a coconspirator for the purposes of this rule even though no conspiracy has been charged.” Id. (quoting S.Rep. No. 93–1277, 93d Cong., 2d Sess. 24, Reprinted in (1974) U.S.Code Cong. & Admin. News, pp. 7051, 7073). In light of our precedent, it is of no moment for purposes of Rule 801(d)(2)(E) that the Elbarasse and Ashqar documents were created before Hamas was designated as a terrorist organization if the statements were made as part of a joint plan with the defendants, and as long as the other requirements of the rule are satisfied. The defendants argue that Postal misread the legislative history of Rule 801(d)(2)(E), and they urge us to reject the so-called “lawful joint venture theory.” However, our circuit has embraced the theory in precedent that we may not ignore. See United States v. Castro–Guevarra, 575 F.3d 550, 552 (5th Cir.2009) (“[O]ne panel of this court may not overrule another panel's earlier decision.”). Moreover, we are not alone in our construction of Rule 801(d)(2)(E), as our sister circuits have also held that statements made in furtherance of a lawful common enterprise are admissible. See, e.g., United States v. Gewin, 471 F.3d 197, 201 (D.C.Cir.2006) (holding that “the rule, based on concepts of agency and partnership law and applicable in both civil and criminal trials, ‘embodies the long-standing doctrine that when two or more individuals are acting in concert toward a common goal, the out-of-court statements of one are ․ admissible against the others, if made in furtherance of the common goal’ ”); United States v. Layton, 855 F.2d 1388, 1400 (9th Cir.1988) ( “Rule 801(d)(2)(E) applies to statements made during the course and in furtherance of any enterprise, whether legal or illegal, in which the declarant and the defendant jointly participated.”), overruled on other grounds as recognized by Guam v. Ignacio, 10 F.3d 608, 612 n. 2 (9th Cir.1993); United States v. Regilio, 669 F.2d 1169, 1174 n. 4 (7th Cir.1981) (“The co-conspirator hearsay exception applies with equal force to joint ventures.”); see also 4 Christopher B. Mueller & Laird C. Kirkpatrick, Fed. Evid. § 8:59 (3d ed.) (“[T]he exception can apply if people act together by mutual understanding in pursuit of a common purpose․ The exception can apply even if the proponent does not show that the venture is unlawful․”). As the Seventh Circuit has explained, “[c]onspiracy as an evidentiary rule differs from conspiracy as a crime. The crime of conspiracy comprehends much more than just a joint venture or concerted action, whereas the evidentiary rule of conspiracy is founded on concepts of agency law.” United States v. Coe, 718 F.2d 830, 835 (7th Cir.1983). Just as coconspirators are generally considered partners in crime and therefore agents of each other, joint venturers may be considered partners in the joint undertaking. See id. Indeed, Rule 801(d)(2)(E) has been recognized to apply not only in criminal cases but also in civil cases where “there may be no criminal conspiracy or unlawful actions involved.” Id. at 836 n. 3. Under this rationale, the Government need not show that the defendant and the declarant were engaged in an illegal conspiracy but rather must show only “that there was a combination between them.” Id. at 835 (internal quotation marks and citation omitted). We therefore reaffirm our precedent that Rule 801(d)(2)(E) does not require that a statement be made in furtherance of a criminal undertaking in order to be admissible as non-hearsay. Turning to the application of the joint venture theory to the Elbarasse and Ashqar documents, we conclude that a preponderance of the evidence proved that the documents were created as part of a common enterprise, of which the defendants and declarants were members. The documents were therefore admissible. The documents themselves outline the Palestine Committee's activities and goals, and in some instances they specifically refer to the functions of HLF and the individual defendants in support of those goals. The Government's theory of the case was that the defendants supported Hamas by coordinating activities of the Palestine Committee and HLF. The documents themselves are consistent with this theory. We are satisfied that independent evidence also established the existence of a joint venture or combination among the declarants and the defendants to support Hamas through HLF and the zakat committees. For example, participants at the Philadelphia meeting discussed Hamas and its control of the zakat committees. The participants referenced the importance of HLF in the Committee's goals, and they identified as “ours” various zakat committees to which HLF donated funds. The Government also introduced evidence of numerous financial transactions and personal contact between the defendants and Hamas leader Marzook, who was listed in the Elbarasse and Ashqar documents as chairman of the Palestine Committee. Marzook also had in his personal phone book the contact information for Baker, Elashi, El–Mezain, and Elbarasse. Further, Hamas leader Mishal spoke at a meeting attended by Baker, Elashi, El–Mezain, and Ashqar about supporting Hamas. According to Shorbagi, who was present, El–Mezain led a break-out group at that meeting to discuss the financial issue of raising money. Moreover, Shorbagi specifically testified from personal knowledge that HLF was part of Hamas. The evidence also showed a relationship between the defendants and Elbarasse and Ashqar. For example, Elbarasse shared a bank account with Hamas leader Marzook, from which $100,000 was paid to HLF in 1992. Elbarasse and Ashqar also attended the Philadelphia meeting. When a dispute arose between HLF and Ashqar about the proceeds generated from a Hamas leader's speaking appearances, Marzook and other Palestine Committee members intervened and directed that the proceeds be administered by HLF. We conclude that the evidence at trial was more than sufficient to demonstrate the existence of a joint enterprise to support Hamas through HLF and the zakat committees, as well as concert of action toward that common goal through the Palestine Committee. We also find that the Elbarasse and Ashqar documents were made “in furtherance” of the common goal, as the documents outlined and facilitated the Committee's objectives. See United States v. Snyder, 930 F.2d 1090, 1095 (5th Cir.1991) (the “in furtherance” requirement is not to be applied too strictly and is satisfied if a statement “advances the ultimate objectives of the conspiracy”). In support of their argument against admissibility of the Elbarasse and Ashqar documents, the defendants rely on United States v. Al–Moayad, 545 F.3d 139, 172–76 (2d Cir.2008), where the Second Circuit held that the district court erroneously admitted three pieces of evidence under Rule 801(d)(2)(E). In that case, the defendant Al–Moayad was prosecuted for providing material aid and support to Hamas and Al–Qaeda. The evidence at issue was offered to show the defendant's connection to terrorists and his predisposition to terrorist activity. It consisted of (1) an application form for admittance to a mujahidin training camp that listed the defendant as the applicant's sponsor; (2) a video of a wedding hosted by the defendant where a Hamas leader gave a speech referring to a suicide bombing; and (3) the last will and testament of a mujahidin fighter whose address book included the defendant's name. Id. The Second Circuit held that the application form, the video, and the will were not admissible as co-conspirator statements because they provided evidence of only vague relationships rather than joint involvement in a conspiracy. Id. The court noted that there was no evidence the defendant knew the applicant who submitted the mujahidin form, that the wedding video showed only a “general tie[ ]” to Hamas, and that the last will and testament did not show any shared criminal activity between the defendant and the testator. Id. The defendants argue that Al–Moayad is analogous to the instant case. We are not convinced. Unlike Al–Moayad, the evidence in this case does show a relationship between the defendants and Elbarasse and Ashqar, as well as their connections to Hamas leaders. The documents further show shared activity by the defendants and the declarants in the Palestine Committee, and they indicate that HLF was the principal fundraising apparatus for the Committee's goal of supporting Hamas. The record here, unlike Al–Moayad, showed the defendants' joint participation in a shared undertaking involving the Committee, and the documents were properly admitted under Rule 801(d)(2)(E). The defendants further complain that many of the Elbarasse and Ashqar documents are anonymous, and therefore there could be no showing of an agreement between the declarants and the defendants. The failure of a document to identify the declarant is not fatal to admissibility under Rule 801(d)(2)(E), however, if the facts and circumstances surrounding the making of the statement indicate that the speaker is a member of the conspiracy or joint venture. For instance, in Postal, we stated that even though the author of the ship's logbook was unknown, the statements in the logbook were still admissible pursuant to Rule 801(d)(2)(E). Postal, 589 F.2d at 886 n. 41. We reasoned that circumstantial evidence made it “inescapable” that the logbook belonged to the ship and that one or more of the ship's crew made the statements. Id. We noted, for example, that the log was the “only such book found,” its notations corresponded with charts that were also found on board, and the log's final entry corresponded closely to the time and course of the ship that was recorded while the ship had been under surveillance. Id. We applied similar reasoning in United States v. Fierro, 38 F.3d 761 (5th Cir.1994), where two of the defendants argued that drug ledgers were improperly admitted as statements of co-conspirators under Rule 801(d)(2)(E) because the Government did not prove who authored the ledgers. We held that “identification of the declarant—such as the author of a drug ledger—is not always necessary for the admission of a co-conspirator statement.” Id. at 773. Other evidence in Fierro connected the defendants to the ledgers, including the fact that both of the defendants “lived in the house where the ledgers were found, and there was other evidence of their involvement in the cocaine conspiracy, including [the two defendants'] connections and activities with the other defendants.” Id.; cf. Davis v. Mobil Oil Exploration & Producing Se., Inc., 864 F.2d 1171, 1174 (5th Cir.1989) (holding that anonymous statement was admissible as a statement by a party's agent under Rule 801(d)(2)(D), and noting that “a district court should be presented with sufficient evidence to conclude that the person who is alleged to have made the damaging statement is in fact a party or an agent of that party”). Our conclusions in the above cases are consistent with those of our sister circuits, which have also held that anonymous statements may be admissible under Rule 801(d)(2)(E) if sufficient evidence is presented to connect the declarant with the conspiracy at issue. For example, in United States v. Martinez, 430 F.3d 317 (6th Cir.2005), the defendant argued that the Government failed to prove “that the anonymous declarant was a member of the conspiracy.” Id. at 326. The Sixth Circuit held that “[a]n anonymous statement may be admissible under Rule 801(d)(2)(E) if circumstantial evidence permits a finding by a preponderance of the evidence that there was a conspiracy involving the author and the defendant․” Id. The court stated that the essential requirement is that “the government show that the unknown declarant was more likely than not a conspirator.” Id. (internal quotation marks and citation omitted). In applying this standard, the court reasoned that the Government had established that an unsigned letter was more likely than not written by a member of the conspiracy, because “[t]he letter was found in a place connected to one of the conspirators and purports to be from someone knowledgeable about and involved in the conspiracy․” Id.; see also United States v. Smith, 223 F.3d 554, 570 (7th Cir.2000) (holding that an anonymous list was admissible under Rule 801(d)(2)(E) because “[t]he details contained in ‘The List’ were such that it could only have been written by a member of the [street gang] or by someone sufficiently involved with the business to be intimately familiar with it—in other words, by a co-conspirator”); United States v. Dynalectric Co., 859 F.2d 1559, 1582 (11th Cir.1988) (holding that statements made by an unidentified telephone caller were properly admitted under Rule 801(d)(2)(E) because “it is clear from the testimony and the context that the caller was associated” with members of the alleged conspiracy); United States v. Zuniga–Perez, 69 Fed.Appx. 906, 913 (10th Cir.2003) (holding that the identity of the declarant need not be established as a predicate for Rule 801(d)(2)(E) “so long as the district court determines that the declarant was a member of a conspiracy with the defendant and that the statement was made in the course of and in furtherance of the conspiracy”); 4 Christopher B. Mueller & Laird C. Kirkpatrick, Fed. Evid. § 8:59 (3d ed.) (“[A]n inability to attribute the statement to any particular person does not necessarily get in the way” of admissibility under Rule 801(d)(2)(E) because “[c]ircumstantial proof that the person making the statement was involved in the conspiracy can suffice to support use of the exception.”). As the above cases demonstrate, the defendants here “are wrong to suggest that it is necessary to know the precise identity of” the declarants in the Elbarasse and Ashqar documents. Smith, 223 F.3d at 570. We conclude that the circumstantial evidence in this case made it “inescapable” that the declarants in the documents were joint venturers with the defendants in support of Hamas through the Palestine Committee. For example, as noted above, the participants at the Philadelphia meeting referred to various zakat committees, including Ramallah and ICS Hebron, as “ours.” The same language appears in Elbarasse exhibit 22, a letter addressed to Baker that also referred to the committees as “ours.” The letter further identified many of the same committee members whose names appeared in other evidence the Government introduced to establish the composition of the committees. Another of the documents, Elbarasse Search 15, was a “Resolution relating to the Occupied Land Fund.” The resolution was from the head of the “Central Committee” and reported on issues decided at a board of directors meeting, including the salaries for Baker, Elashi, and El–Mezain. The board of directors meeting referenced in the document was also corroborated by records later found at HLF. The similarity between the Elbarasse and Ashqar documents and other independent evidence is striking and strongly supports the conclusion that the declarants were involved in the same undertaking as the defendants. The documents were also found in the homes of Elbarasse and Ashqar, whose relationship to the defendants and the Palestine Committee was established by the evidence. We also think that many of the documents—which included internal records such as annual reports, by-laws, organizational charts, and meeting agendas—were of a kind unlikely to be found in the hands of persons outside the enterprise. The documents discussed internal activities, including the relationship and goals of the participants in the endeavor, HLF's financial matters, and even the change in the name of HLF from the Occupied Land Fund. A declarant who was not involved with activities of the defendants and HLF would be unlikely to know about these issues. We are therefore satisfied that the documents were drafted by insiders participating in the venture and were designed to be in furtherance of the common goals of the Palestine Committee. The documents were therefore admissible under Rule 801(d)(2)(E). The defendants also suggest in their brief that the Elbarasse and Ashqar documents should not have been admitted because there was no evidence that they had ever seen the documents or knew of their contents. In order to admit a co-conspirator's statement under Rule 801(d)(2)(E), however, it is not necessary that another co-conspirator know about the statement. This is consistent with the principle that a co-conspirator's statements are admissible under a general agency rationale insofar as one conspirator may be held responsible for the statements of another conspirator in furtherance of that conspiracy whether or not he was present when the statement was made. See Lutwak v. United States, 344 U.S. 604, 617, 73 S.Ct. 481, 97 L.Ed. 593 (1953) (“Declarations of one conspirator may be used against the other conspirator not present on the theory that the declarant is the agent of the other, and the admissions of one are admissible against both under a standard exception to the hearsay rule applicable to the statement of a party.”) (emphasis added). Even assuming arguendo that the defendants here were unaware of the contents of the Elbarasse and Ashqar documents, which may be doubtful given that certain documents refer to some of the defendants by name, admissibility under Rule 801(d)(2)(E) was not precluded. See 5–801 Weinstein's Fed. Evid. § 801.34 (“A defendant need not have been aware of particular transactions within the conspiracy for statements in furtherance of those transactions to be admissible against him or her.”). In sum, we conclude that the lawful joint venture theory is a viable theory of admissibility under Rule 801(d)(2)(E) and the anonymity of the documents here did not bar their admission because the evidence was sufficient to show the documents were created as part of a joint undertaking between the declarants and the defendants. The district court did not abuse its discretion in admitting the Elbarasse and Ashqar documents pursuant to Rule 801(d)(2)(E). C. Prejudicial evidence under Rule 403 The defendants next contend that the district court erred by admitting evidence that they argue was unfairly more prejudicial than probative. They specifically challenge evidence related to Hamas violence, including: testimony about Hamas suicide bombings, including an explanation of how suicide bombers choose their targets, carry out their plans, and prepare bombs to make them more lethal; testimony regarding Hamas's killing of collaborators with Israel; videotapes of demonstrators destroying American flags; and violent images of the aftermath of Hamas suicide bombings found in temporary files on HLF computers. Other evidence that they argue was improper and prejudicial included: videos of Palestinian children playing the role of terrorists in school ceremonies; Avi's testimony about PA parliamentary elections and the political maneuverings of Hamas; a video found in HLF's possession depicting the opening of a library in the West Bank but also containing an allegedly unrelated fragment showing the burning of an American flag; several questions about Iraq, Saddam Hussein, and the Muslim Legal Defense Fund; videos, photographs, and posters of suicide bombers that the Israeli military seized from West Bank zakat committees after HLF had closed; and the Elbarasse and Ashqar documents. Rule 403 of the Federal Rules of Evidence provides that “[a]lthough relevant, evidence may be excluded if its probative value is substantially outweighed by the danger of unfair prejudice․” The scope of Rule 403 is narrow. Because virtually all evidence is prejudicial, the danger of unfair prejudice must substantially outweigh the probative value of the evidence to warrant exclusion. United States v. Fields, 483 F.3d 313, 354 (5th Cir.2007). Accordingly, our review is especially deferential to the district court, and the appellant must show “a clear abuse of discretion.” United States v. Curtis, 635 F.3d 704, 716 (5th Cir.2011) (internal quotation marks and citation omitted). We have previously cautioned that “[r]are is the appellant who can make that showing,” and that “district courts should exclude evidence under Rule 403 in very few circumstances.” Id. We conclude that the defendants have not shown such circumstances in the instant case. Although the defendants correctly observe that they were not charged with planning or carrying out terrorist activity or with directly supporting such activity, evidence of Hamas violence, some of which was found in the zakat committees or on HLF computers, served the probative purpose of providing context and explanation in the case, and to rebut defensive theories that the defendants intended to support only charitable endeavors. For example, testimony about suicide bombings from Dr. Levitt came as explanation of Hamas's operations, specifically showing how Hamas operates not only a social wing but also a military wing that carries out such bomb attacks. This was relevant to show that HLF's purportedly charitable donations also indirectly aided Hamas's violent activities.9 See Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project, –––U.S. ––––, 130 S.Ct. 2705, 2725–26 & n. 6, 177 L.Ed.2d 355 (2010) (recognizing that “[m]oney is fungible” and that “material support of a terrorist group's lawful activities facilitates the group's ability to attract ‘funds,’ ‘financing,’ and ‘goods' that will further its terrorist acts”). Avi also testified about two suicide bombings, testimony that the defendants challenge as improper under Rule 403. Avi explained that the first attack, at a discotheque, was carried out by a person whose photograph was found at one of the zakat committees. This testimony therefore connected the committee with Hamas activity. The second suicide attack about which Avi testified occurred at a hotel and precipitated the Israeli military's raid on the zakat committees. This testimony served two functions. First, it provided helpful context by explaining the reason for the Israeli military operation, which was the source of much of the evidence introduced at trial. See, e.g., United States v. Rodriguez, 525 F.3d 85, 99 (1st Cir.2008) (holding, under plain error review, that testimony about defendant's fugitive status provided helpful context to the jury and clarified reasons for a search and was not unduly prejudicial under Rule 403). But second, and more important, the testimony came on re-direct examination and rebutted the defense's questioning on cross-examination. The defense elicited from Avi information about the military operation and the fact that Israeli military clashes with civilians in Jenin had resulted in civilian casualties. The defense emphasized that the USAID group provided humanitarian aid to the Palestinians as a result of those clashes. The defense thereby painted the Israelis as unprovoked aggressors, or, at best, the more culpable party in the dispute. On re-direct, therefore, it was permissible for Avi to explain that the military operation was a result of the hotel bombing and the Israeli government's decision to target the terrorist cells responsible for the bombing. Any prejudicial effect of this testimony was slight in comparison with the probative goal of rebutting the cross-examination. See United States v. Walker, 613 F.2d 1349, 1353 n. 5 (5th Cir.1980) (“Because the prejudicial impact of the evidence elicited by the government was slight, the probative value of the re-direct examination in rebutting a possible defense clearly outweighs any prejudicial impact. Accordingly, the testimony was properly admitted.”); see also United States v. Touloumis, 771 F.2d 235, 241 (7th Cir.1985) (“[A] party cannot be permitted on the one hand to introduce evidence that appears favorable to his argument and then complain, after the circumstances are fully developed, because the evidence becomes detrimental to his cause.”). Other evidence challenged by the defendants also came on re-direct examination. For example, Shorbagi testified that he did not want to return to Hamas-controlled Gaza because he feared being killed. The defendants argue that this testimony was prejudicial, but the defense brought out on cross-examination the fact that the Government had promised to help Shorbagi remain in the United States after he is released from prison. Shorbagi's fear therefore helped explain his testimony about remaining in this country. Still other evidence rebutted the defendants' defense that HLF and the zakat committees were charitable organizations independent of Hamas. Evidence which tends to rebut a defendant's claim of innocent action is unlikely to be unduly prejudicial. See United States v. Duncan, 919 F.2d 981, 987–88 (5th Cir.1990) (holding in prosecution for mail fraud that testimony of forged signature on disability statement, which tended to rebut the claim that defendants had innocently filed insurance claims for genuine medical reasons, was not unduly prejudicial). Here, we agree with the Government that evidence seized from HLF and the zakat committees, including images of violence and videos glorifying Hamas and depicting Hamas leaders, was probative of the motive or intent of the committees and HLF to support Hamas. See United States v. Hammoud, 381 F.3d 316, 342 (4th Cir.2004) (holding that videotapes found in defendant's apartment depicting violence and anti-American sentiment were not unduly prejudicial under Rule 403 in a prosecution for providing material support for a terrorist organization because they were probative of defendant's knowledge, “provided evidence of [his] motive in raising funds for Hizballah[,] and tended to contradict [his] claim that he sympathized only with the humanitarian goals of the organization”), overruled on other grounds by Hammoud v. United States, 543 U.S. 1097, 125 S.Ct. 1051, 160 L.Ed.2d 997 (2005). The defendants make much of the fact that images seized from HLF computers were not downloaded but rather were found in temporary files that are automatically saved by the computer when a web page is browsed. This objection goes to the weight of the evidence rather than its admissibility. Cf. United States v. Garcia Abrego, 141 F.3d 142, 176 (5th Cir.1998) (objection under Rule 403 that evidence of violent acts committed in furtherance of conspiracy consisted of mere out-of-court statements rather than direct evidence went to the weight of the evidence and not admissibility). The presence of images on the computer indicates that someone at HLF browsed a page where the images were located. If the images were pro-Hamas or approved of violence, one logical inference is that HLF, which was a separate defendant, had the same view.10 The same is true of Hamas-related materials found in the zakat committees. The presence of the material at the committees suggests a connection between the committees and Hamas and permits an inference that the zakat committees supported Hamas.11 The defendants rely on United States v. Al–Moayad, 545 F.3d 139 (2d Cir.2008), for their argument that the evidence of Hamas violence was inadmissible here. In Al–Moayad, the Second Circuit held that the district court improperly admitted testimony from a victim of a Hamas bomb attack on a bus, as well as images of the aftermath of the attack, where the defendants were charged with conspiracy and attempting to provide material support to Hamas but were not charged with planning or carrying out that attack. Id. at 160–61. The Government in that case argued that the evidence was relevant to show the defendants' knowledge that Hamas engaged in terrorist activity. Id. at 160. The court held, however, that such probative value was diminished because the defendants never denied such knowledge and they had offered to stipulate to that fact. Id. Therefore, the evidence served very little probative purpose. The instant case is different from Al–Moayad because evidence of Hamas violence found on the premises of HLF or in the zakat committees tended to rebut the defendants' denial that they supported Hamas and that Hamas controlled the committees. Additionally, other evidence of violence provided meaningful context and explanation. To the extent it demonstrated the defendants' knowledge of Hamas and support for it, or Hamas's connection to the zakat committees, the evidence had probative value and was not unduly prejudicial. From our review of the entire record, we are convinced that the district court did not clearly abuse its discretion under Rule 403 by refusing to exclude the challenged evidence. Because this was a case about supporting terrorists, it is inescapable, we believe, that there would be some evidence about violence and terrorist activity. It cannot be denied that the evidence at issue was unfavorable to the defendants, but we cannot conclude that it was unduly prejudicial. See, e.g., Brazos River Auth. v. GE Ionics, Inc., 469 F.3d 416, 427 (5th Cir.2006) (“ ‘Unfair prejudice’ as used in rule 403 is not to be equated with testimony that is merely adverse to the opposing party.”). “Here was no parade of horrors” under all the circumstances. United States v. McRae, 593 F.2d 700, 707 (5th Cir.1979). Given the significant deference this court shows to the district court in Rule 403 matters, the district court's rulings will not be disturbed. See Fields, 483 F.3d at 354 (“The governing law and our limited standard of review bear emphasis.”). D. Expert and lay opinion testimony Next, the defendants argue that five witnesses were allowed to provide either improper lay opinion or improper expert opinion testimony under Rules 701 and 702 of the Federal Rules of Evidence. We review the district court's rulings on the admission of lay and expert testimony for an abuse of discretion. United States v. Griffin, 324 F.3d 330, 347 (5th Cir.2003). 1. John McBrien John McBrien was the associate director of OFAC. He testified about the Treasury Department's failure to designate the zakat committees as terrorist organizations. He also opined about whether one may donate to the committees if they are not designated. The defendants argue that McBrien was not noticed as an expert witness, that his testimony was improper lay opinion, and that he gave an improper legal conclusion. We agree with the defendants. “Under Fed.R.Evid. 701, a lay opinion must be based on personal perception, must be one that a normal person would form from those perceptions, and must be helpful to the jury.” United States v. Riddle, 103 F.3d 423, 428 (5th Cir.1997) (internal quotation marks and citation omitted). A lay witness may not give an opinion that requires “scientific, technical, or other specialized knowledge within the scope of Rule 702.” Fed.R.Evid. 701. It is also generally prohibited for a lay witness to interpret statutes and to give legal opinions. See Griffin, 324 F.3d at 347–48. In Riddle, we held that it was improper for a lay witness in a bank fraud prosecution to explain provisions of the banking regulations, to express his opinion on “prudent” banking practices, and to “draw on his specialized knowledge as a bank examiner” in giving his opinions about the defendant's actions. Riddle, 103 F.3d at 428–29; see also Huff v. United States, 273 F.2d 56, 61 (5th Cir.1959) (where issue was whether jewelry was exempt from duty, a customs inspector was improperly allowed to testify about his own construction of the customs laws, rules, and regulations, and to opine that the jewelry found in defendant's possession was commercial in nature rather than a personal effect). In the instant case, McBrien explained that the Treasury Department typically does not designate every sub-group or component of a designated terrorist organization because it focuses its limited resources on designating the key parts of the organization. He also read from Treasury regulations. He then testified that a person donating money must ensure that the donation is not going to a sub-entity or front for the designated organization. He answered a hypothetical question about a specific group with Hamas ties, known as the al-Salah Society, explaining that if one lacked knowledge about the Hamas connection, a donation to al-Salah would not be illegal but that if one did have knowledge, donating to the group would be prohibited. McBrien's testimony was helpful to the jury and was relevant because it addressed the defendants' complaints that none of the zakat committees to which HLF provided funds was designated as a terrorist organization. But McBrien's testimony about the Treasury Department's practice in designating or not designating sub-groups of terrorist organizations is not within the realm of an ordinary lay witness. The Government argues that McBrien's testimony was based on his personal knowledge and served to rebut the defense theory that because the zakat committees were not on the designation list they were not controlled by Hamas. McBrien's opinions and explanations were the product of specialized knowledge, however. It is true that lay witnesses may sometimes give opinions that require specialized knowledge, but the witness must draw “straightforward conclusions from observations informed by his own experience.” Riddle, 103 F.3d at 429. Rather than make straightforward conclusions from his observations, McBrien explained the procedures of OFAC. We are also troubled by McBrien's testimony about the “test” for whether a donation may be made to an entity that is not on the designation list. McBrien explained, in part, that the “basic test is, is the entity or the individual owned or controlled by or acting for or on behalf of the designated entity or the designated organization․ [I]t means are you acting as an intermediary for them, are you acting as their front organization, are you their straw man, are you their go between.” This testimony stated a legal test and was improper under our precedent. See Griffin, 324 F.3d at 347–48 (improper to allow Government witness to read from state statutes and to give her own interpretation of the law); Riddle, 103 F.3d at 428–29 (explanation of banking regulations held to be improper lay testimony). Nevertheless, any error that occurred in the admission of McBrien's testimony was harmless because the testimony was cumulative to other testimony before the jury. See Griffin, 324 F.3d at 348. Dr. Levitt, a Government expert witness, also testified that the Treasury Department does not include every component of a terrorist organization on the designation list because doing so would be impossible. Levitt explained that the omission of a sub-group from the designation list does not mean that the group is not part of Hamas or that American citizens may donate money to the sub-group. Levitt further explained that the Treasury Department does not provide so-called “white lists” of approved organizations. Thus, McBrien's testimony was cumulative to Levitt's testimony. See id. (“Where objected to testimony is cumulative of other testimony that has not been objected to, the error that occurred is harmless.”).12 Furthermore, although McBrien gave an improper legal opinion and provided testimony based on specialized knowledge, he did not express any opinions as to the defendants' specific conduct in the case. This is unlike other instances where we have found error in the admission of improper expert testimony. See, e.g., Riddle, 103 F.3d at 429 (lay witness gave improper opinion that bank operated “imprudently,” which required witness's expert understanding of the banking industry); Huff, 273 F.2d at 61 (lay witness opined on specific legal nature of the goods at issue). We think that fact plus the cumulative nature of the evidence militates toward the harmless error conclusion. We therefore hold that McBrien's testimony was harmless and was not reversible error. 2. FBI Agents Lara Burns and Robert Miranda The defendants argue that FBI Agents Lara Burns and Robert Miranda, who were not noticed as expert witnesses, testified beyond their capacity as lay witnesses and gave improper expert opinions. The defendants object to specific testimony from Agent Burns that: (1) defined the term “Islamist” as used by Baker in the recording of the Philadelphia meeting; (2) explained why it was not relevant for her investigation whether the defendants received a salary from HLF, and why it was necessary to examine HLF's transactions before Hamas was designated as a terrorist organization; (3) connected Hamas to a flag burning demonstration seen in a videotape seized from HLF records; (4) identified the speaker on an audio tape as a leader in the Muslim Brotherhood; (5) explained the difference between “inside” and “outside” the Palestinian territories as used in some exhibits; (6) gave her understanding of why participants in the Philadelphia meeting continued to operate in America; and (6) identified various individuals as leaders of the zakat committees. The defendants further complain about Agent Miranda's testimony that (1) explained his understanding of recorded telephone calls between Baker and Baker's brother, and (2) stated that Baker's brother used a Hamas name. The defendants contend that the above testimony was not based on the witnesses' perception, was not helpful to the jury, and required specialized knowledge. We conclude that no reversible error occurred. We agree that some of the facts presented by the agents would not be known to an average lay person. The district court did not err by admitting the testimony, however, because the agents' opinions were limited to their personal perceptions from their investigation of this case. See United States v. McMillan, 600 F.3d 434, 456 (5th Cir.2010). By explaining the meaning of terms as used in the conversations and documents, as well as the relationships between the people they were investigating, the agents provided the jury with relevant factual information about the investigation. See id. (lay witnesses who investigated an HMO's financial health were permitted to testify about accounting rules, define certain terms, and report impressions of HMO's accounting records because testimony “provided factual information about the circumstances of the case” and concerned the witnesses' investigation and “perceptions in the case”). Testimony need not be excluded as improper lay opinion, even if some specialized knowledge on the part of the agents was required, if it was based on first-hand observations in a specific investigation. For example, in United States v. Miranda, 248 F.3d 434, 441 (5th Cir.2001), we held that an FBI agent could testify under Rule 701 about the meaning and use of certain code words in the drug trade. We emphasized that the agent's “extensive participation in the investigation of this conspiracy” allowed the agent to “form opinions” about the code words “based on his personal perceptions.” Id. (emphasis added). Similarly, in United States v. Rollins, 544 F.3d 820, 831–32 (7th Cir.2008), the Seventh Circuit found no error in a law enforcement officer's “impression” testimony about recorded telephone calls where it was “based on his first-hand perception of the intercepted phone calls ․ as well as his personal, extensive experience with this particular drug investigation,” rather than on his law enforcement experience as a whole. The officer was permitted to testify about his familiarity with the voices in the calls and about the meaning that the callers gave to certain words and terms. Id.; see also United States v. Jackson, 549 F.3d 963, 975 (5th Cir.2008) (a witness may testify “as a lay witness drawing from his ‘past experiences formed from firsthand observation’ as an investigative agent”). Agents Burns and Miranda were extensively involved in the investigation of HLF, and we conclude that their testimony was either descriptive or based on their participation in, and understanding of, the events in this case. See United States v. Yanez Sosa, 513 F.3d 194, 200 (5th Cir.2008) (a law enforcement officer does not provide expert testimony if it is “merely descriptive,” or if it is based on “common sense or the officer's past experience formed from firsthand observation”). For example, Agent Burns testified that her identification of certain individuals as leaders in the zakat committees was based on other records reviewed in the investigation. Agent Miranda interpreted a phone call between the Baker brothers as referring to Hamas leader Khalid Mishal because of other evidence present in the investigation.13 The opinions were not based on the agents' training and experience as law enforcement officers in general. See Rollins, 544 F.3d at 831–32. The defendants also overstate the effect of the agents' testimony in several instances. For example, they complain that Agent Burns “opined that the flag-burning demonstration” seen in the video found among HLF's records “involved Hamas.” Actually, Agent Burns testified that the headbands worn by the demonstrators in the video had also been present in other videos that were associated with Hamas. To the extent that this was an improper expert opinion on the headbands, which we doubt, it was cumulative of other testimony and was therefore harmless. See Griffin, 324 F.3d at 348; cf. United States v. Hall, 500 F.3d 439, 444 (5th Cir.2007) (erroneous introduction of cumulative evidence was harmless error). Dr. Levitt and Avi both testified that the headbands were associated with Hamas. Similarly, Agent Burns' explanation of the terms “inside” and “outside” the Palestinian territories was cumulative of similar testimony from Dr. Levitt. We conclude that the district court did not abuse its discretion by admitting the testimony of Agents Burns and Miranda. 3. Matthew Levitt As noted above, Levitt was the Government's expert witness on Hamas, and he testified twice at trial. First, he gave an overview of the rise of Hamas and the role that Hamas's social wing played in the accomplishment of its goals. That testimony has not been challenged. Second, the Government re-called Levitt to provide testimony about evidence that had already been admitted through other witnesses. The evidence had shown telephone calls and financial transactions between the defendants and Hamas leaders between 1989 and 1993. It had also shown the presence of the defendants' names in the telephone book of Hamas leader Marzook. Levitt was re-called to testify about the relative inaccessibility of the Hamas leadership to the general public, which highlighted the significance of this evidence. For example, Levitt testified that the presence of the defendants' names in Marzook's book was “significant” because “[t]his is personal and direct evidence of a relationship.” He also testified that someone calling the public number for Hamas was “not likely to get the senior leaders of an organization, any organization, Hamas or some other organization.” He further gave the opinion that “[t]he fact that there are connections with so many Hamas leaders is not coincidental, cannot be coincidental.” The defendants argue that Levitt's testimony about the significance of the contacts between them and Hamas prior to Hamas's designation as a terrorist organization was improper expert testimony under Rule 702 because the jury was capable of determining for itself what inferences to draw from the evidence. The Government argues that Levitt's testimony was necessary in order to prevent the jury from assuming that Hamas leaders were available to anyone, or that those leaders engaged in a wide range of arms-length business deals with third-parties. We find no reversible error. First, the evidence refuted specific testimony elicited by the defense on cross-examination. During its case in chief, the Government introduced evidence that in 1995, following the detention of Hamas leader Marzook by U.S. authorities, Hamas had sent an arguably ominous letter to United States Senator Orrin Hatch. On cross-examination of the senator's aide, counsel for El–Mezain pointed out that the letter contained a public address, telephone number, and facsimile number for Hamas. Counsel then asked the witness to agree that “if a person wanted to contact Hamas they could call that phone number.” Levitt's testimony rebutted the defense suggestion that Hamas leaders could be readily contacted. Second, even assuming arguendo that Levitt's testimony was unnecessary, it likely did not add to anything that the jury already knew. It seems to us that a reasonable juror was more likely than not able to assume that Hamas leaders would tend to limit their contacts and transactions to trusted persons who supported Hamas. Therefore, even if an error occurred, which we do not find, we are convinced that the challenged testimony did not affect the verdict. See United States v. Lowery, 135 F.3d 957, 959 (5th Cir.1998) (“A nonconstitutional trial error is harmless unless it ‘had substantial and injurious effect or influence in determining the jury's verdict.’ ”) (quoting Kotteakos v. United States, 328 U.S. 750, 776, 66 S.Ct. 1239, 90 L.Ed. 1557 (1946)). 4. Steven Simon Steven Simon was a former staff member of the National Security Council under President Clinton, but he was not noticed as an expert and did not testify under Rule 702. The defendants challenge testimony he gave about the dangers posed by Hamas violence to the United States' strategic interests in the Middle East and to American support of the Oslo peace accords. Simon testified that the violence interferes with the peace process and affects the United States' vital interests in maintaining stability in the region and easing Arab resentment toward America. At one point, when asked why the United States should care about Hamas and other terrorist organizations, Simon testified that “to the extent that the United States can remove one cause of resentment against America, we reduce the threat against the United States correspondingly. It is hard to do, but it is very important work.” The defendants argue that Simon's opinion that Hamas violence threatens American interests was irrelevant and improperly appealed to the jurors' fears that support for Hamas could lead to more 9/11–style attacks on the United States. The Government argues that Simon's testimony provided relevant context for the case and that it was not unfairly prejudicial for Simon to explain that one reason for U.S. support of the peace process is to remove a source of Arab resentment and thereby reduce the threat of future violence. We agree with the defendants that Simon's testimony was not relevant and should have been excluded. The Government was required to prove that the defendants provided material support to Hamas, and it therefore had to show a connection between Hamas and the defendants. The reason why the American Government wants peace in the Middle East, and whether terrorist violence disrupts the peace process, does little to establish that connection. Nevertheless, any error was harmless. Simon's direct testimony was not extensive, comprising only fifteen pages out of several thousand pages of the trial transcript. In a trial lasting approximately six weeks, Simon's momentary testimony was fleeting. The testimony also provided the jury with the unremarkable lesson that the United States has a vital interest in Middle Eastern oil, and therefore it is in the U.S. interests to avoid Arab resentment and to keep the region free from violence and instability. The defendants' argument that the testimony was a blatant appeal to jurors' fears is overstated when the testimony is read in full. Moreover, much of Simon's testimony is cumulative of other evidence. The Middle Eastern peace process and the Oslo Accords, the involvement of President Clinton, the opposition by Hamas, and the threat to the American economy, foreign policy, and national security, were all evident from other testimonial and documentary evidence, such as the testimony of Levitt and Presidential Executive Order Number 12947. To the extent that admission of Simon's testimony was improper under Rule 701, it was therefore harmless. See, e.g., Griffin, 324 F.3d at 348. E. Letter rogatory The defendants next challenge the district court's failure to grant their request for a letter rogatory to the government of Israel. A federal court may issue a letter rogatory, also known as a letter of request, to a court in a foreign country seeking assistance in the production of evidence located in the foreign country. See 28 U.S.C. 1781(b)(2); see also United States v. Reagan, 453 F.2d 165, 171–72 (6th Cir.1971). The letter rogatory process “has been described as ‘complicated, dilatory, and expensive.’ ” United States v. Rosen, 240 F.R.D. 204, 215 (E.D.Va.2007) (quoting Societe Nationale Industrielle Aerospatiale v. U.S. Dist. Court, 482 U.S. 522, 531, 107 S.Ct. 2542, 96 L.Ed.2d 461 (1987)). The decision to issue a letter rogatory is therefore entrusted to the sound discretion of the district court, and we review such decisions only for an abuse of discretion. United States v. Liner, 435 F.3d 920, 924 (8th Cir.2006). The defendants sought a letter rogatory to the appropriate Israeli authority five months before trial in order to review approximately 2000 boxes of material seized by the Israeli military from the zakat committees. The defendants sought this access because they believed that Avi had cherry-picked pro-Hamas evidence from the seized material to form his opinions about the committees. They therefore wanted to search for exculpatory evidence. The district court apparently overlooked the pendency of the request and never formally ruled on the defendants' motion. During the course of trial, however, the district court indicated that authorizing any further inquiry into the seized materials would be a fishing expedition. We do not think the court's assessment was an abuse of discretion. The issuance of a letter rogatory is a discovery issue. We will not order a new trial based on alleged discovery violations unless the defendant shows that a denial of access to evidence was prejudicial to his substantial rights. United States v. Dukes, 139 F.3d 469, 476 (5th Cir.1998). This requires “a reasonable probability that, had the evidence been disclosed to the defense, the result of the proceeding would have been different․ [A] reasonable probability is shown where the nondisclosure could reasonably be taken to put the whole case in such a different light as to undermine confidence in the jury verdict.” United States v. Webster, 162 F.3d 308, 336 (5th Cir.1998) (internal quotation marks and citation omitted). The defendants believe that non-Hamas materials, such as documents and posters related to the Fatah party or pictures of Yasser Arafat, may have been present in the zakat committees, and if so, the material would have undermined Avi's opinion that the committees were controlled by Hamas. In a footnote, the defendants suggest that such material existed because defense witness Ed Abbington testified that he had visited zakat committees in the West Bank and had seen a mixture of Hamas and Fatah posters. The defendants' argument is unpersuasive. The record shows that the Government turned over to the defense twenty volumes of material that Avi used to form his expert opinions. In testimony that the district court credited, Avi testified that he produced all the seized material that was relevant to the zakat committees, regardless whether or not it was favorable to the Government. The defendants' hope that combing through all 2000 boxes of the seized material might have produced exculpatory evidence is purely speculative. See Liner, 435 F.3d at 924 (affirming denial of letter rogatory to depose a witness where defendant offered no evidence that witness's testimony would be material); see also United States v. Marshall, 526 F.2d 1349, 1355 (9th Cir.1975) (holding that district court did not abuse its discretion in denying massive discovery request by defendant claiming prosecutorial misconduct where claimed infringement of constitutional rights was tenuous and speculative). The defendants' reliance on Abbington's testimony does not alter the result. Abbington provided no details about the Fatah and Arafat pictures he had purportedly seen. For example, he was not asked when he allegedly saw these pro-Fatah materials or where. He testified that he visited various zakat committees, but he was not asked which zakat committees he was visiting when he allegedly saw this material. Because there is also no indication in the record that the Israeli military had actually seized such material, it is also not clear that the letter rogatory would have led to evidence favorable to the defense. See 8 Charles Alan Wright, et al., Federal Practice and Procedure § 2005.1 at 70 (3d ed.2010) (district court should issue letters rogatory “whenever it is determined on a case-by-case basis that their use will facilitate discovery”). We therefore cannot say that there is a reasonable probability that disclosure of the material would have cast the case in a different light, thereby undermining confidence in the verdict. See Webster, 162 F.3d at 336; see also Rosen, 240 F.R.D. at 215 (letter rogatory denied where testimony sought was not necessary to ensure a fair trial). Given the voluminous amount of material that the Israelis seized, Avi's testimony that he produced all material that was relevant to the committees, and the absence of proof that pro-Fatah materials were present and seized from the specific zakat committees that the Government alleged were controlled by Hamas, the district court did not abuse its discretion by failing to issue a letter rogatory to the Israeli government five months before trial on the basis that doing so would enable only a fishing expedition. F. Production of the defendants' intercepted statements The defendants next contend that the district court erred by refusing to compel the Government pursuant to the Rules of Criminal Procedure to disclose the defendants' own intercepted statements to them. This issue implicates the Government's privilege in a criminal case to prevent discovery of classified information in order to protect national security. The defendants contend that the Government failed to invoke properly its privilege to withhold classified information and also failed to show that national security would be jeopardized by disclosure of their own statements. We review the district court's alleged discovery error for an abuse of discretion. United States v. Garcia, 567 F.3d 721, 734 (5th Cir.2009). We start by reviewing additional background information. During the course of its investigation in this case, the Government intercepted tens of thousands of telephone calls and facsimile transmissions through 24–hour surveillance of the defendants, as authorized under FISA, 50 U.S.C. § 1801, et seq. Because most of the calls were in Arabic, FBI translators identified which calls were pertinent to the intelligence investigation and prepared approximately 9600 English language summaries, as well as a smaller number of verbatim transcripts. Calls that were deemed not pertinent were neither translated nor summarized. Initially, all of the intercepted calls were classified by the Government. Subsequently, the Government declassified the English summaries and the entire contents of intercepts for four of the eight FISA subjects. This declassified material was produced to the defense. Defense counsel, but not the defendants themselves, were also provided access to the remaining classified intercepts because counsel had the proper security clearances. Because the classified materials were in Arabic, however, defense counsel could not understand them, nor could they discuss the material with their clients because the defendants did not have a security clearance. The defendants moved to declassify the remaining FISA intercepts, or, in the alternative, for production of their own individual statements, so that counsel and their clients could review them together. The Government opposed the motion on the ground that the intercepts could not be declassified wholesale because the materials included information relevant to national security and the enormous volume of it made review of all the material impractical. The Government offered, however, to seek declassification of any specific FISA intercepts identified by counsel. The Government suggested that counsel could review with their clients the declassified summaries and then identify which calls they wanted to hear or time periods that might contain other relevant calls. The Government would then seek a declassification review of the identified calls. The district court held that the Government's proposal was consistent with CIPA (the Classified Information Procedures Act, 18 U.S.C. app. 3 §§ 1–16), and refused to order disclosure of all the classified FISA intercepts. It ruled instead that counsel could seek declassification of specific intercepts. On appeal, the defendants contend that the district court erred because the plain language of the Rules of Criminal Procedure required personal disclosure of their own intercepted statements. Discovery in a criminal case is governed by Rule 16 of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure, which specifies the type of information subject to disclosure by the Government. See Fed.R.Crim.P. 16(a)(1). The rule generally requires the Government to disclose “to the defendant ․ any relevant written or recorded statement by the defendant” that is within the Government's possession. Fed.R.Crim.P. 16(a)(1)(B)(i). The rule also grants the district court the power, however, to restrict or deny discovery in a criminal case for “good cause.” The advisory committee notes indicate that “good cause” includes “the protection of information vital to the national security.” Fed.R.Crim.P. 16(d)(1) & advisory committee's note on 1966 amendments. Congress passed CIPA to provide further guidance and protect against the unauthorized disclosure of classified information in the custody of the federal courts. In re Terrorist Bombings of U.S. Embassies in E. Africa, 552 F.3d 93, 121 (2d Cir.2008). CIPA's purpose was to set forth procedures designed to “protect[ ] and restrict[ ] the discovery of classified information in a way that does not impair the defendant's right to a fair trial.” United States v. O'Hara, 301 F.3d 563, 568 (7th Cir.2002). Pursuant to Section 4 of CIPA, entitled “Discovery of classified information by defendants,” a district court may authorize the Government “to delete specified items of classified information from documents to be made available to the defendant through discovery under the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure, to substitute a summary of the information for such classified documents, or to substitute a statement admitting relevant facts that the classified information would tend to prove.”14 18 U.S.C. app. 3 § 4. CIPA is procedural and neither creates nor limits a defendant's right of discovery. See United States v. Mejia, 448 F.3d 436, 455 (D.C.Cir.2006); see also United States v. Varca, 896 F.2d 900, 905 (5th Cir.1990) (CIPA does not expand traditional rules of criminal discovery). Instead, it clarifies the district court's existing power to restrict or deny discovery under the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure. Mejia, 448 F.3d at 455; United States v. Aref, 533 F.3d 72, 78 (2d Cir.2008). Both CIPA and Rule 16 leave “the precise conditions under which the defense may obtain access to discoverable information to the informed discretion of the district court.” In re Terrorist Bombings, 552 F.3d at 122. We have not previously addressed the scope of the Government's privilege to prevent discovery of classified information under CIPA. Our sister circuits, guided generally by two Supreme Court decisions, have addressed the issue, however, and have adopted similar tests for application of the Government's privilege. See, e.g., Aref, 533 F.3d at 80; United States v. Yunis, 867 F.2d 617, 623–24 (D.C.Cir.1989). The first Supreme Court decision that has guided our sister circuits is United States v. Reynolds, 345 U.S. 1, 73 S.Ct. 528, 97 L.Ed. 727 (1953), where plaintiffs in a civil case against the United States sought discovery of an Air Force investigative report about the crash of a bomber. The Court there recognized a governmental privilege to protect military and state secrets, and it held that a plaintiff could be denied evidence if “there is a reasonable danger that compulsion of the evidence will expose military matters which, in the interest of national security, should not be divulged.” Id. at 10, 73 S.Ct. 528. The second case that has influenced our sister circuits' examination of the Government's classified information privilege is Roviaro v. United States, 353 U.S. 53, 77 S.Ct. 623, 1 L.Ed.2d 639 (1957), a criminal case involving the privilege to withhold a confidential informant's name. In that case, the Court recognized the Government's right to withhold the identity of an informer who provides police officers with information about violations of law, id. at 59, 77 S.Ct. 623, but it also held that “the privilege must give way” when the information “is relevant and helpful to the defense of an accused, or is essential to a fair determination of a cause.” Id. at 60–61, 77 S.Ct. 623. In Aref, the Second Circuit applied Reynolds and Roviaro in the context of the Government's withholding of discovery of classified information in a CIPA case. See Aref, 533 F.3d at 79–80. The court believed that the classified information privilege contemplated by CIPA is analogous to the common law state-secrets privilege recognized in Reynolds. It also adopted the test from Roviaro as to when the privilege may yield to a defendant's need for the information. The court held that a governmental privilege claim in a CIPA case, like the state-secrets privilege, may prevent disclosure of otherwise discoverable information when (1) there is a reasonable danger that disclosure would expose matters that otherwise should not be disclosed in the interest of national security, and (2) the privilege claim has been lodged by an appropriate governmental agency head. Id. at 80. The court also held that the privilege nevertheless may yield when the information is helpful or material to the defense. Id. Similarly, in Yunis, the District of Columbia Circuit also assessed discovery orders in a CIPA case. The court there recognized the similarity between the “sensitive considerations underl[ying] the classified information privilege” and the “informant's privilege identified in Roviaro.” Yunis, 867 F.2d at 622–23. The court concluded, consistent with Roviaro, that when the Government invokes a classified information privilege, the district court must determine (1) whether the defendant has shown that the information sought is relevant, which it considered to be a “low hurdle,” and (2) whether the Government's claim of privilege is “at least a colorable one.” Id. at 623. The court further recognized that the defendant's relevance showing could overcome the Government's claim of privilege when the information sought is helpful to the defense, but the court required more than “a mere showing of theoretical relevance.” Id.; see also United States v. Smith, 780 F.2d 1102, 1110 (4th Cir.1985) (en banc) (equating classified material sought by the defendant with information about informers in Roviaro, and holding that the district court may order disclosure only when the information is necessary to the defense and is neither cumulative nor speculative). Against this backdrop, we consider the defendants' claim in this case. As an initial matter, the defendants contend that the Government did not properly invoke its privilege to withhold classified information because a privilege claim was not lodged by the responsible agency head, i.e. the Attorney General. In support of this proposition, the defendants rely primarily on the Second Circuit's decision in Aref, where the court held that the privilege to withhold classified information could be asserted only “ ‘by the head of the department which has control over the matter, after actual personal consideration by that officer.’ ” Aref, 533 F.3d at 80 (quoting Reynolds, 345 U.S. at 8, 73 S.Ct. 528). We do not believe that the absence of the agency head's imprimatur in this case is fatal, however, for several reasons. First, Aref relied on the Supreme Court's civil decision in Reynolds even though Aref was a criminal case. The Supreme Court in Reynolds appeared to distinguish between the rationale for the Government's evidentiary privilege in criminal and civil cases. See Reynolds, 345 U.S. at 12, 73 S.Ct. 528. We therefore join the Fourth Circuit in questioning whether Aref properly adopted and applied Reynolds in a criminal context. See United States v. Rosen, 557 F.3d 192, 198 (4th Cir.2009). Second, as the Fourth Circuit observed, there is no equivalent requirement in CIPA that the governmental privilege must be initiated by an agency head. See id. CIPA imposes upon district courts a mandatory duty to prevent the disclosure of any classified materials by issuing a protective order “[u]pon motion of the United States.” 18 U.S.C. app. 3 § 3 (“Upon motion of the United States, the court shall issue an order to protect against the disclosure of any classified information disclosed by the United States to any defendant in any criminal case․”) (emphasis added); see In re Terrorist Bombings, 552 F.3d at 121. Some CIPA provisions do require the Attorney General's participation. See, e.g., 18 U.S.C. app. 3 § 6(a) (“Any hearing held pursuant to this subsection (or any portion of such hearing specified in the request of the Attorney General) shall be held in camera if the Attorney General certifies to the court in such petition that a public proceeding may result in the disclosure of classified information.”); 18 U.S.C. app. 3 § 6(e)(1) (“Whenever the court denies a motion by the United States that it issue an order under subsection (c) and the United States files with the court an affidavit of the Attorney General objecting to disclosure of the classified information at issue, the court shall order that the defendant not disclose or cause the disclosure of such information.”). However, the CIPA discovery provision does not similarly require the Attorney General to act. See 18 U.S.C. app. 3 § 4 (providing only that “upon a sufficient showing” the district court may authorize “the United States” to withhold classified information). The absence of a requirement in CIPA that the Attorney General assert the privilege suggests that the district court may order withholding of classified information from discovery without an explicit claim from the agency head as long as the United States otherwise makes a sufficient showing for the privilege. See Russello v. United States, 464 U.S. 16, 23, 104 S.Ct. 296, 78 L.Ed.2d 17 (1983) (“[W]here Congress includes particular language in one section of a statute but omits it in another section of the same Act, it is generally presumed that Congress acts intentionally and purposely in the disparate inclusion or exclusion.”) (alteration in original) (internal quotation marks and citation omitted). Finally, the Second Circuit held in Aref that a “failure to comply with [the] formality” of an agency head's assertion of the privilege may be excused when there would be no benefit in remanding solely “for the purpose of having the department head agree that disclosure of the classified information would pose a risk to national security.” Aref, 533 F.3d at 80. Even assuming arguendo that the privilege must be asserted by the agency head, we believe that a remand would be of no benefit here because we see no reason to think the Attorney General would disagree with the decision to assert the privilege.15 No one seriously disputes that the Government possesses an important privilege to withhold classified information, nor do we believe a contrary assertion could be sustained. See Yunis, 867 F.2d at 622–23 (“The Supreme Court has long recognized that a legitimate government privilege protects national security concerns.”) (citing Chicago & S. Air Lines, Inc. v. Waterman S.S. Corp., 333 U.S. 103, 111, 68 S.Ct. 431, 92 L.Ed. 568 (1948) ( “[The executive branch] has available intelligence services whose reports are not and ought not to be published to the world.”)). Therefore, we conclude that the failure of a Government agency head to invoke the classified information privilege here does not constitute reversible error. Next, the defendants contend that even if the Government properly invoked a privilege to withhold classified information, the Government failed to show that national security concerns required withholding their statements. This argument is premised on the defendants' belief that disclosing to them the contents of their own statements “could not possibly endanger national security.” We do not agree. As the court recognized in Yunis, the Government may have an interest in protecting the source and means of surveillance that goes beyond protection of the actual contents of an intercepted conversation. See Yunis, 867 F.2d at 623 (“Things that did not make sense to the District Judge would make all too much sense to a foreign counter-intelligence specialist who could learn much about this nation's intelligence-gathering capabilities from what these documents revealed about sources and methods.”). The Government persuasively argued, both here and in the district court, that because the defendants were not the only participants on the intercepted calls, disclosing the intercepts could thwart ongoing or future investigations if the calls were declassified en masse. The defendants contend that this case is not like Yunis because the Government chose to declassify and present at trial some of the intercepted communications, thereby revealing the fact and means of the surveillance obtained through FISA intercepts. But the fact that the Government determines that declassification of some of the communications will not harm national security does not ipso facto mean that declassification of all communications would have the same effect. Although the Government's claim of privilege may yield when the information is essential to fairly determine the issues at trial or when necessary for an important part of the defense, the defendants want us to second guess in the first instance the Government's determination of what is properly considered classified information. We decline to do so.16 See United States v. Abu Ali, 528 F.3d 210, 253 (4th Cir.2008) (“[W]e have no authority[ ] to consider judgments made by the Attorney General concerning the extent to which the information in issue here implicates national security.”). Having determined that the Government properly invoked its privilege to withhold classified information, we would ordinarily next consider whether the privilege nevertheless should have yielded to the defendants' need for the information, which requires a balancing of interests. See Roviaro, 353 U.S. at 60–61, 77 S.Ct. 623; United States v. Sarkissian, 841 F.2d 959, 965 (9th Cir.1988) (holding that when deciding discovery issues under CIPA § 4 the district court may balance a defendant's need for the information against national security concerns). The instant case is unusual, however, insofar as the Government sought to withhold classified information from the defendants themselves, but it disclosed the untranslated intercepts to cleared defense counsel and agreed to further consider specific requests for declassification of other calls. Under these facts, we do not believe that the district court's discovery rulings were erroneous. The defendants were provided with a substantial amount of information that was deemed relevant. The defendants themselves had access to declassified summaries of thousands of the intercepted calls that were pertinent to the intelligence investigation, all of the calls that the Government intended to use at trial, and the entire contents of four of the FISA intercepts. The calls to which the defendants lacked access were available to defense counsel. Despite arguing that they could not understand the Arabic calls, counsel concede in their brief that they began the process of having the calls translated by cleared translators, first in Texas and later in Washington, D.C.17 Given the circumstances, we question whether there was a discovery error at all, or whether the defendants have demonstrated prejudice. See In re Terrorist Bombings, 552 F.3d at 126 (holding that the district court was permitted to issue a protective order under CIPA limiting disclosure of classified information to persons with proper security clearance, and noting that “production of [classified] materials to a party's attorney alone falls within the common meaning of ‘discovery,’ ” notwithstanding defendant's claim that counsel could not interpret evidence adequately); see also United States v. Thai, 29 F.3d 785, 804–05 (2d Cir.1994) (holding that Government's failure to disclose translation of defendant's recorded statement prior to trial was not prejudicial where inter alia defense counsel had the tapes of the conversation and had had a translator listen to them). Assuming without deciding that the Government's production of the untranslated classified intercepts to the defendants' attorneys was insufficient under Rule 16, we nonetheless are satisfied that the district court did not abuse its discretion by refusing to compel the Government to produce the intercepts to the defendants themselves without further requests for declassification. Rule 16 requires that the Government disclose to the defendant “any relevant” statements made by the defendant. Fed.R.Crim.P. 16(a)(1)(A) & (B)(i) (emphasis added). This “necessarily implies the existence of irrelevant statements by the defendant” that are not covered by the rule. Yunis, 867 F.2d at 624 n. 10. It bears emphasis that the defendants were not outright denied access to the classified intercepts; instead, they were required to identify intercepts that could be reviewed for a decision by the Government whether to declassify and produce them or, presumably, to maintain its privilege claim. If the Government chose to maintain its claim of privilege, the district court then would have had to engage in the balancing test to determine if the privilege should yield. But the proceedings never got that far because, as noted by the district court, the defendants failed to participate in this process. The issue, as we perceive it, is therefore whether the district court's procedures requiring the specific declassification requests denied the defendants access to information that was relevant or would have been helpful to their defense. The defendants essentially contend that the district court should have made a wholesale determination whether their own statements on the intercepted calls would have been helpful to their defense, and they argue that we should remand the case for the district court to make that determination. We are not persuaded. An assessment of materiality by the district court of all the classified FISA intercepts without some narrowing by the parties was not feasible in a case such as this involving tens of thousands of calls. Putting aside the fact that the calls were in Arabic and untranslated, to have the district court wade through the voluminous materials searching for scraps of conversation that might be helpful to the defendants would be a waste of precious judicial resources. The defendants assert that they wanted access to their own FISA intercepts to search for exculpatory evidence, such as conversations showing their intent to comply with the law or their belief that contributions to zakat committees that had not been designated as terrorist organizations was lawful. They assert that these conversations would have shown their state of mind. But assuming such statements exist, the defendants themselves were in the best position to assist their counsel in identifying any exculpatory calls based on their own recollection and their ability to review the declassified summaries and other information provided to them. Counsel could then request that the statements be declassified by requesting them by date or by the name of the person on the call. No doubt this would be a difficult task, but courts have required defendants to demonstrate materiality even though the task is difficult. For example, in Yunis, 867 F.2d at 624, the court recognized the “Catch–22” that defendants had to demonstrate the materiality of classified information without having access to the information and without knowing its nature. The court held that the task was difficult but not impossible. Id. It emphasized that the defendant “was present during all the relevant conversations” and therefore it was reasonable “to expect some specificity” as to what benefit he expected from the evidence. Id. Similarly, it is reasonable to have the defendants specify which classified intercepts they wanted reviewed for declassification. Their argument that they wanted conversations showing their state of mind, without more, presents merely the theoretical possibility that the materials were relevant and does not justify wholesale declassification of the intercepted calls. See Yunis, 867 F.2d at 623 (holding that “classified information is not discoverable on a mere showing of theoretical relevance in the face of the government's classified information privilege”). Review of the untranslated FISA intercepts, which numbered in the tens of thousands and monitored the defendants for 24 hours per day for several years, presented a daunting task to anyone who wanted to review them. In light of the evidence already disclosed to the defendants, permitting wholesale declassification, without some narrowing of the remaining calls, would have jeopardized the Government's interest in protecting national security merely to permit a fishing expedition by the defendants. Therefore, the district court's requirement that the defendants seek declassification of specific FISA intercepts was not an abuse of discretion under CIPA and properly balanced the defendants' need to mount a defense with the Government's need to protect classified information. We therefore reject the defendants' argument on this issue. G. Harmless and Cumulative Error Having reviewed the defendants' claims of trial error, and having identified erroneous rulings by the district court, we must next consider whether those errors require a new trial under the rubric of harmless error. To reiterate, we have found error in: (1) the admission of Shorbagi's hearsay testimony that Hamas controlled the West Bank zakat committees; (2) the admission of the three hearsay PA documents showing that HLF was a financial resource for Hamas and that Hamas had ties to the Ramallah Zakat Committee; (3) the admission of John McBrien's testimony giving a legal conclusion about donations to the zakat committees; and (4) the admission of opinion testimony from former National Security Council member Steven Simon about the United States's interests in the Middle East. For the reasons stated above in Sections E.1 and E.4, we conclude that the errors in admitting McBrien's and Simon's testimony were harmless. We therefore consider the errors related to Shorbagi's testimony and the PA documents. We will then consider the defendants' claim of cumulative error. 1. Harmless error If a district court errs in the admission or exclusion of evidence at trial, “such error can be excused if it was harmless error.” Lowery, 135 F.3d at 959; see Fed.R.Crim.P. 52(a). “A nonconstitutional trial error is harmless unless it ‘had substantial and injurious effect or influence in determining the jury's verdict.’ ” Lowery, 135 F.3d at 959 (quoting Kotteakos, 328 U.S. at 776, 66 S.Ct. 1239). Under this standard, we ask “whether the error itself had substantial influence” on the jury in light of all that happened at trial; if we are “left in grave doubt, the conviction cannot stand.” Kotteakos, 328 U.S. at 765, 66 S.Ct. 1239; see also United States v. Williams, 957 F.2d 1238, 1244 (5th Cir.1992) (“[W]e must view the error, not in isolation, but in relation to the entire proceedings.”) (internal quotation marks and citation omitted). The harmless error examination is thus fact-specific and record-intensive, requiring a close review of the entire trial proceedings. For this reason, comparing the harmless error analysis in one case to the analysis in another is not necessarily helpful. See United States v. Ong, 541 F.2d 331, 338 (2d Cir.1976) (“Harmlessness is a relative term that requires specific definition in each case by determining the effect on the jury's verdict of the error's absence.”); see also United States v. Jennings, 527 F.2d 862, 868 (5th Cir.1976); Benham v. United States, 215 F.2d 472, 474 (5th Cir.1954) (“Each case stands upon its own peculiar facts and circumstances as to whether a defendant has been afforded a fair trial.”). Therefore, we must judge the likely effect of any error in the case before us based on the totality of the circumstances in this trial. “ ‘[U]nless there is a reasonable possibility that the improperly admitted evidence contributed to the conviction, reversal is not required.’ ” Williams, 957 F.2d at 1242 (quoting Schneble v. Florida, 405 U.S. 427, 432, 92 S.Ct. 1056, 31 L.Ed.2d 340 (1972)). Put another way, we will not reverse a conviction “if ‘beyond a reasonable doubt the error complained of did not contribute to the verdict obtained.’ ” United States v. Hall, 500 F.3d 439, 443 (5th Cir.2007) (quoting United States v. Cornett, 195 F.3d 776, 785 (5th Cir.1999)). After a full review of the record, we are left with the firm conviction that the trial errors we have identified do not require reversal. In light of the volume of evidence against the defendants showing HLF's connection to Hamas and Hamas's control of the zakat committees, the admission of Shorbagi's testimony and the PA documents was merely cumulative. It is well established that error in admitting evidence will be found harmless when the evidence is cumulative, meaning that substantial evidence supports the same facts and inferences as those in the erroneously admitted evidence. See, e.g., Hall, 500 F.3d at 444 (determining that the admission of disputed testimony was harmless because “[t]he challenged portion of [the] testimony was merely cumulative of other evidence introduced without objection. A number of other witnesses testified—in much greater detail—that [the defendant] purchased illegal drugs from McCallom.”); United States v. Okoronkwo, 46 F.3d 426, 435 (5th Cir.1995) (holding that “Agent Taylor's testimony was merely cumulative of substantial evidence establishing the various defendants' participation in the conspiracy,” and the admission of the testimony was harmless); United States v. Allie, 978 F.2d 1401, 1408–09 (5th Cir.1992) (concluding that, because the Government had introduced admissible testimony regarding the presence of aliens living in defendant's home, “the videotape was merely cumulative evidence and its introduction constitutes harmless error”); United States v. Hutson, 821 F.2d 1015, 1018 (5th Cir.1987) (holding that hearsay testimony about defendant's competency was harmless error in light of “voluminous” testimony on the subject from three expert witnesses); see also 3B Charles A. Wright, et al., Federal Practice & Procedure: Criminal § 854 (3d ed.) (“Error in the admission of evidence is harmless if the facts shown by that evidence are already before the jury through other properly admitted evidence.”). In this case, the erroneously admitted evidence from Shorbagi and the PA documents showed that HLF financed Hamas and that Hamas controlled the West Bank zakat committees to which HLF provided funds. We find from our review of the evidence that these facts were before the jury from a plethora of evidence.18 The Government introduced evidence showing a close connection between the defendants and Hamas, which in turn supports the inference that HLF's fundraising was designed to support Hamas. The Government also introduced evidence that the zakat committees to which HLF provided funds were controlled by Hamas. a. HLF's connection to Hamas Much of the Government's evidence at trial pre-dated Hamas's designation as a terrorist organization. However, the evidence served the important function of establishing the defendants' relationship with Hamas and the intent of their later actions. The evidence showed that the long-standing connection between HLF and Hamas began in the late 1980s when HLF arose as a fundraising arm for the Palestine Committee. This fact was notably evident from the Elbarasse and Ashqar documents, which showed that HLF was created along with the IAP (the Islamic Association for Palestine) and UASR (the United Association for Studies and Research) under the Palestine Committee's umbrella. The Palestine Committee's by-laws specifically recognized HLF as “the official organization” for fundraising. The testimony of Avi and Levitt established that Palestine Committees around the world served to support Hamas. The chairman of the Palestine Committee in the United States, Hamas leader Marzook, maintained contact information for Baker, El–Mezain, and Elashi in his personal telephone book. Although El–Mezain told the FBI that he had no relationship with Marzook other than occasional holiday telephone calls, telephone records showed that Marzook called El–Mezain 52 times from 1989 to 1993. After Marzook was designated as a SDT and was taken into custody, Baker explained to a newspaper reporter that his name was likely in Marzook's phone book because Marzook had made a large donation to HLF. That conversation was captured in a wiretap. Baker claimed that Marzook had written one check and HLF did not hear from him again. He also stated under oath in a deposition in a separate civil suit that HLF had no relationship with Marzook other than that single donation. Baker's statements were untrue. The evidence showed that the donation to which Baker referred was made in three installments and occurred in 1992, but it was far from the only contact that Marzook had with HLF and the individual defendants. Phone records showed that Marzook called Baker 25 times from January 1989 to January 1990. There were also numerous financial transactions between the defendants and Marzook. Contrary to Baker's denial of a relationship with Marzook, HLF made three payments of ten thousand dollars to Marzook and his wife in 1988 and 1989. During the late 1980s and early 1990s, Marzook made payments of hundreds of thousands of dollars to the IAP and the UASR, as well as smaller payments to El–Mezain and Elashi. These and other pre–1995 financial transactions cast suspicion on HLF as a conduit for Hamas funding. For example, in 1988 HLF made payments of over $250,000 to an entity known as K&A Trading. It sent this money to a Switzerland bank account held by Khari H. al-Agha. Levitt testified at trial that al-Agha was a Hamas financier. The evidence showed that al-Agha was connected to Marzook and was listed in Marzook's personal telephone book. His name also appeared in a document found in Ashqar's home, Ashqar Search 1, under “Important phone and fax numbers. Palestine Section/Outside America.” Three months after HLF's last payment to K&A Trading, Al–Agha sent approximately $1.3 million to Marzook. Investigating agents found no explanation in HLF's records for the payments to K&A Trading, which is not a charitable organization. Furthermore, from 1989 to 1994, HLF sent over $700,000 to the Islamic Center of Gaza, which was founded by Sheikh Yassin, the same person who founded Hamas. The Government also introduced into evidence numerous donation checks from the early 1990s that were made payable to the IAP but deposited into HLF's bank account and on which the donors had written in the memo line “for Palestinian Mujahideen only.” One donor wrote a letter to Baker in 1991 asking for books about Hamas and praising the “Islamic Uprising in Palestine.” Indicating HLF's connection to Hamas, Baker wrote back to inform the woman that the IAP would send her the books and to “assure” her that HLF was a “trustworthy organization” for people to “look up to, hoping and taking advantage of the historic opportunity to support the resistance of a nation and the jihad of a people.” HLF's role as an early financial resource for Hamas was also evident from the Palestine Committee's influence on HLF. For example, in 1994, a dispute arose between HLF and Ashqar about who should receive the proceeds raised from speaking appearances in the United States by Hamas leader Jamil Hamami. Ashqar had arranged for Hamami to come to the United States and wanted to keep the proceeds for a separate organization that Ashqar had founded. Wiretaps captured conversations among Baker, El–Mezain, and several others discussing the situation. Marzook and other Palestine Committee members intervened to resolve the dispute. One of the wiretaps, Ashqar Wiretap 4, captured a conversation between Ashqar, Hamami, and Hamas leader Mohamed Siam. Siam informed Ashqar that the Palestine Committee had decided that all funds raised by Hamami's appearances would be administered by HLF. Further evidence that HLF's fundraising was intended to benefit Hamas came from the activities of HLF and the individual defendants. Numerous video recordings found in HLF's possession showed the defendants participating at festivals, conferences, and fundraising events with known Hamas leaders, such as Marzook and Mishal. The Hamas flag was visible at some of these events, and many of the videos showed Abdulqader's band performing songs that praised Hamas.19 Moreover, HLF advertised in pro-Hamas magazines published by the IAP that also contained articles praising Hamas and urging readers to donate money to HLF in order to support the Intifada. One such magazine contained a poem written by Baker stating, in part, that “we will not accept other than Hamas.” Baker also traveled to Gaza in 1991 to meet with Hamas leader Mahmoud Zahar about “establish[ing] a central zakat committee for the Gaza sector.” The defendants' support for Hamas was also evident in suspicious statements intercepted in wiretaps and documents found in HLF's records. For example, at the Philadelphia meeting Baker made statements suggesting that participants should refer to Hamas only in code, and he instructed the participants how to respond if anyone asked about the purpose of the meeting. His statements suggested that deceptive practices were necessary to conceal the intent of the Palestine Committee. They were also consistent with security “guidelines” found among HLF's materials stored at Infocom, which directed that there should be cover stories agreed upon to explain things like meetings and travel.20 Another wiretap, just two days before Hamas was designated as a terrorist organization, captured a conversation in which El–Mezain and Odeh spoke approvingly about a Hamas suicide bomb attack. Odeh referred to the attack as a “beautiful operation,” and El–Mezain responded, “May it be good.” Although there was nothing illegal about the defendants' actions described thus far, the evidence of the defendants' early connection to Hamas and support for its cause informed the inferences to be drawn by the jury from evidence that came later, including the evidence of funds that were sent to the West Bank zakat committees after the 1995 designation of Hamas as a terrorist organization. For example, Shorbagi testified from personal knowledge that HLF continued to provide funds to the same purportedly charitable organizations as before Hamas's designation. This testimony was based in part on a conversation with El–Mezain. Indeed, there was ample evidence of financial records and wire transfers showing that HLF provided funds to the same zakat committees named in the indictment both before and after Hamas was designated as a terrorist organization. Because the evidence strongly supported the inference that the defendants were connected to Hamas before the designation, it was logical for the jury to conclude that the defendants' intent in financing the same committees after the designation was to support Hamas. But there is additional evidence linking HLF to Hamas after Hamas's designation. One organization that received over $75,000 from HLF after Hamas was designated as a terrorist organization was the Islamic Relief Agency. Avi identified the Islamic Relief Agency as a Hamas intermediary organization that received money and sent it to zakat committees controlled by Hamas in Gaza and the West Bank. HLF's continued support of Hamas was also shown in a 2001 letter on HLF letterhead addressed to Kamal al-Tamimi that directed a $5,000 grant to the Young Muslim Youth Association. Testimony showed that the Association was a subsidiary of ICS Hebron and that al-Tamimi was both a member of ICS Hebron and of Hamas. Still other evidence demonstrated that HLF's function as a fundraising entity for Hamas continued after Hamas was designated as a terrorist organization. A 1996 video seized from HLF offices showed Abdulqader on stage at a fundraising event sending a message of greeting to Hamas leaders Sheikh Yassin, Dr. Abdel Aziz al-Rantisi, and Marzook. A wiretap in February 1996 captured a teleconference that HLF sponsored where one of the featured speakers spoke of support in Pakistan for the “Palestinians under the leadership of Hamas,” and the non-recognition of Israel, which was followed by a solicitation for donations to HLF. A report from HLF's “Special Events Department” found at Infocom noted another teleconference in February 1996 that featured Mohamed Siam, a Hamas leader, and noted that $18,500 was raised during the call.21 A 1996 letter sent to HLF's New Jersey office along with a donation stated that the money was for “relief supplies and weapons to crush the hated enemy,” and that “we must destroy Israel.” HLF not only accepted the donation but continued to solicit funds from the letter's author, who continued to donate money to HLF through 1998. A June 1996 letter from defendant Odeh to an HLF officer showed that HLF had provided funds used to support the orphaned children of Yehia Ayyash, who was identified as a Hamas engineer and inventor of suicide bombs. An audio tape from 1996 that was seized from HLF's offices contained songs praising Hamas and discussions of suicide bombers as heroes. In a wiretap of El–Mezain's phone, also in 1996, El–Mezain received a phone call about a suicide bombing on a bus in Jerusalem and stated, “It is good, by God.” In 1997 HLF promoted a teleconference in a flier that advertised the call as featuring Hamed Bitawi and Mohamed Siam. Levitt and Avi identified both men as senior Hamas leaders. The flier was written in English on one side and in Arabic on the other side. However, only the Arabic side referred to Bitawi and Siam. Wiretap evidence from 1999 further supported an inference that the Palestine Committee was intimately involved in the activities of HLF. For example, two 1999 conversations were intercepted involving Omar Ahmad, who was a member of the Palestine Committee and was also associated with the IAP. Ahmad was neither an employee nor a board member of HLF but he was heard influencing HLF business. In Baker Wiretap No. 33, Ahmad instructed HLF employee Haitham Maghawri, over Maghawri's protest, to send money to Lebanon because Baker had promised to give Ahmad $50,000 for a project there. In another conversation, Ahmad instructed Baker on the compensation to be paid to El–Mezain for his fundraising work. The two men also joked about the telephone being bugged. Because Ahmad had no relationship to HLF other than his connection to the Palestine Committee, his conversations about HLF business and projects suggest that the Palestine Committee controlled HLF even after the designation of Hamas as a terrorist organization. Material seized from HLF's offices and computers also demonstrated a continuing connection between HLF and Hamas. For example, HLF maintained a list of overseas speakers, modified as late as 1999, that contained the names of several people identified as Hamas leaders, such as Fuad Abu Zeid, Hamed Bitawi, and Dr. Yousef Karadawi. More than twenty of the speakers on the list were also found in Marzook's personal telephone book seized in July 1995. At least eight of the listed speakers also shared the same phone number identified at trial as being present on Hamas letterhead. The HLF speakers list contradicted a statement by Baker to a reporter denying that HLF used Hamas members as speakers. Furthermore, numerous photographs of various Hamas leaders were found on HLF's computers in 2001. Some of the material found in HLF's offices that related to Hamas pre-dated Hamas's designation as a terrorist organization, but the fact that HLF maintained the material many years later was probative of HLF's support for Hamas. For example, a picture from 1990 was found in Odeh's New Jersey office in 2001 celebrating the one-year anniversary of the imprisonment of Hamas founder Sheikh Yassin. A book was also found in Odeh's office that chronicled the life of the martyr Izz El–Din al-Qassam, who served as the namesake of Hamas's military wing. A list of “important addresses” printed by the publisher in the back of the book included HLF's previous address in Indiana. We believe that a jury could not help but infer from the above evidence that the defendants had a close association with Hamas and that HLF acted to fund Hamas both before and after Hamas's designation as a terrorist organization. Therefore, to the extent Shorbagi and the PA documents suggested that HLF was a financial resource for Hamas, the erroneously admitted evidence was cumulative. The same is true to the extent that Shorbagi and the PA documents indicated that Hamas controlled the zakat committees, as we explain in the next section. b. Hamas's control of the zakat committees The Government introduced extensive evidence documenting HLF's financial support of the zakat committees, both before and after Hamas's designation as a terrorist organization. Therefore, evidence of Hamas's ties to those committees was also strong evidence that the defendants provided material support to Hamas as charged in the indictment. There was abundant evidence, in addition to Shorbagi's testimony and the PA documents, showing Hamas's influence on the zakat committees and demonstrating that many of the people with whom the defendants interacted from those committees were Hamas leaders and members. As already noted above, Levitt and Avi both testified about Hamas's control of the zakat committees. Levitt based his opinion on interviews with Palestinian, Israeli, and American authorities, on the Hamas leadership of the zakat committees, and on the Hamas-related materials found in the committees. He specifically identified individuals associated with the Ramallah and Jenin committees as being Hamas members, and he indicated that one such individual had participated in a suicide bomb attack in 1997. Avi also gave his expert opinion that Hamas controlled the zakat committees. In testimony cumulative of Shorbagi's testimony, Levitt and Avi both identified Hamed Bitawi, from the Nablus Zakat Committee, as a Hamas member. There was also other evidence connecting the Nablus Zakat Committee and Bitawi to Hamas. For instance, Bitawi's name was listed on the Nablus committee's bank records obtained by the FBI. His picture was found on HLF computers wherein he was seen holding a gun and a Quran, with the word “Hamas” in the background. Hamas leader Mishal specifically praised Bitawi in a 1992 video recording. Another video, found in HLF's possession and known as the “tent video,” showed Bitawi participating in a meeting along with approximately a dozen other individuals who had been deported from Israel.22 Bitawi introduced himself in the video as being from the Nablus Zakat Committee. Other participants, including Dr. al-Rantisi, actually introduced themselves as founders of Hamas, while Avi identified still others in the video as Hamas members. The Hamas logo flashed on the screen several times. One of the participants at the meeting specifically mentioned Baker and El–Mezain, as well as HLF, which was providing support for the deportees. Bitawi was further mentioned in the 1991 letter to Baker that was seized from Elbarasse's home, Elbarasse No. 22. Bitawi was listed in that letter as part of “[o]ur presence” on the al-Tadamoun Society, a sub-group of the Nablus committee. Further evidence related to Hamas that was seized from the Nablus committee included a postcard depicting two Hamas suicide bombers that praised a suicide attack by one of them in 2001, as well as a key chain with the picture of Hamas founder Sheikh Yassin. Numerous Hamas posters and postcards with pictures of suicide bombers and Hamas leaders and symbols were seized from the Nablus, Tulkarem, Hebron, and Jenin committees. Other documents seized from the zakat committees by the Israelis also showed Hamas's influence on the committees. A few examples demonstrate this point. An April 2001 “political statement” was seized from ICS Hebron. The statement supported Hamas and jihad and advocated “infliction upon the enemy [of] heavy casualties.” A 1999 letter from a group of prisoners was also found in ICS Hebron. In the letter, the prisoners asked that the Young Muslim Society, a sub-group of ICS Hebron, continue to support them. Avi testified that the letter was consistent with Hamas's support for prisoners. Avi also testified that the head of ICS Hebron, Abdel Khaleq al-Natsheh, was a Hamas leader. His testimony was corroborated by a 2001 video seized from the zakat committee wherein al-Natsheh was described as the head of Hamas in Hebron. Furthermore, al-Natsheh was also listed in Marzook's personal phone book.23 Israeli authorities also seized internal Hamas communications from the zakat committees. For example, a document from January 2001 was found folded very small and concealed in al-Natsheh's office at ICS Hebron. The document reported the results of Hamas's internal election and discussed the significance of providing support for martyrs and prisoners. The secretive nature of the document was evident from instructions directing readers to call a telephone number in Switzerland for “emergency matters” and to give a code phrase. Avi testified that these instructions were a common security precaution for Hamas. He also opined that the presence of the document at the zakat committee was significant because it showed that the committee's focus included Hamas's internal affairs.24 Other evidence also showed connections between Hamas and the zakat committees that was cumulative of the Shorbagi testimony and the PA documents. For example, Shorbagi identified Mohamed Fuad Abu Zeid and the Jenin Zakat Committee as being connected to Hamas. Abu Zeid identified himself as being from the Jenin committee in the tent video. Avi also identified Abu Zeid as a Hamas figure. His testimony was further supported by a video of a conference sponsored by the Muslim Arab Youth Association (“MAYA”) in 1992. Baker was a MAYA board member, and Hamas leader Mishal referred to Abu Zeid at the conference as an important person in the Palestinian struggle. Abu Zeid was further listed as a ranking Hamas figure in a book about Hamas published by the UASR. The book, entitled The Palestinian Intifada in the Hebrew Press: A study about the Islamic Resistance Movement “Hamas,” was found among HLF's records in the office of Defendant Odeh in 2001. Abu Zeid's name also appeared in Marzook's personal phone book, as well as on HLF's speakers list. Moreover, in Elbarasse No. 22, the letter addressed to Baker, the declarant asserted that the Jenin Zakat Committee was “Guaranteed ․ [b]y virtue of Mr. Mohamed Fouad Abu Zeid's position.” Levitt further identified still another member of the Jenin Zakat Committee, Fawaz Hamad, as a Hamas member. According to testimony from Levitt and Agent Burns, Hamad not only worked for the Jenin Zakat Committee but also became an HLF representative in Jenin after serving time in an Israeli prison for aiding Hamas. Hamad operated a hospital that was controlled by the Jenin committee, and he wrote a letter to defendant El–Mezain, Infocom Search No. 30, that discussed the hospital operation. The letter identified various hospital board members and others as “Islamist,” “deportee,” “brother,” “semi-brother,” or “Fatah.” This letter was among the HLF documents found at Infocom and was consistent with other evidence associating the term “Islamists” with Hamas. Notably, at the Philadelphia meeting in 1993, Muin Shabib referred to the Jenin committee's building of the hospital, stating that it “is really ours, for the Islamists either in management or the teams working in it.” A document found in Ashqar's home, Ashqar Search 5, also referred to the “Islamist” presence in various charitable organizations, including ICS Hebron, Nablus, Tulkarem, and Jenin. Shorbagi also identified Jamil Hamami as a Hamas member, but there was ample evidence of this fact. Hamami was associated with the Islamic Science and Culture Center in the West Bank, to which HLF donated almost half a million dollars before the center was closed in 1996. Levitt and Avi both identified Hamami as a Hamas leader, although he apparently had a falling out with Hamas in the mid–1990s. Hamami was the speaker at the center of the dispute between HLF and Ashqar in 1994 when Marzook and the Palestine Committee intervened. He was further identified as a ranking Hamas leader in the UASR book about Hamas found in Odeh's office. Furthermore, the search of HLF offices uncovered a UASR publication that referred to Hamami as a Hamas leader. The publication, The Middle East Affairs Journal, HLF Search No. 108, was published in 1998 and stated that Sheikh Yassin assigned Hamami to establish a Hamas branch in the West Bank. It also reported that Hamami became the liaison between the Hamas command in the West Bank and the leadership in Gaza. Hamami was also videotaped with Baker and El–Mezain at a 1990 fundraising event. On the video, Mushtaha exhibit 1, Baker specifically thanked Hamami for his presence. On another video, Infocom No. 67, Hamami was seen at a school construction site thanking Baker, El–Mezain, and HLF for their support. This evidence contradicted a sworn declaration from Baker wherein he had denied that he and other HLF board members had any connection with Hamas. With regard to the Ramallah Zakat Committee, which the PA documents linked to Hamas, both Levitt and Avi also testified that Hamas controlled it.25 Furthermore, the 1991 Elbarasse No. 22 letter to Baker, and statements at the Philadelphia meeting in 1993, also indicated that Hamas controlled the zakat committee. The letter stated that “all of [Ramallah] is ours,” while Shabib stated at the Philadelphia meeting, “We could say that the zakat committee is ours, including its management and officers.” Evidence seized from HLF included a letter from Baker addressed to the Ramallah Zakat Committee's director, Dr. Mahmoud Al–Rumhi, whose name and telephone number also appeared along with several other people identified as Hamas members on a list seized from Elbarasse's home. Elbarasse Search 24. The UASR journal found in HLF's records identified still another member of the Ramallah Zakat Committee, Mahmoud Mosleh, as having been arrested by the PA along with several leaders of Hamas.26 Similarly, the book about Hamas found in Odeh's office also identified Ramallah Zakat Committee member Fadel Saleh Hamdan as one of the ranking Hamas members who had previously been arrested. In light of the above evidence, Shorbagi's testimony and the PA documents were cumulative of a large amount of evidence connecting Hamas to both HLF and the zakat committees. We acknowledge that during questioning and in its closing argument the Government highlighted some of the evidence that we have found to be erroneously admitted, but we believe that the other evidence was “formidable.” United States v. Steinkoenig, 487 F.2d 225, 229 (5th Cir.1973). Rather than be left with grave doubt about the verdict, we conclude that the weight and cumulative nature of the other evidence at trial precludes a finding that the errors complained of had a substantial influence on the jury. See Kotteakos, 328 U.S. at 765, 66 S.Ct. 1239. 2. Cumulative error For similar reasons, we also reject the defendants' argument that the trial errors constituted cumulative error. “[T]he cumulative error doctrine ․ provides that an aggregation of non-reversible errors (i.e., plain errors failing to necessitate reversal and harmless errors) can yield a denial of the constitutional right to a fair trial, which calls for reversal.” United States v. Munoz, 150 F.3d 401, 418 (5th Cir.1998). On claims of cumulative error, we “review the record as a whole to determine whether the errors more likely than not caused a suspect verdict.” Derden v. McNeel, 978 F.2d 1453, 1458 (5th Cir.1992) (en banc). To be sure, this was not a perfect trial, and there were errors, as we have discussed. However, the Constitution does not guarantee a perfect trial, only one that is fair. See United States v. Lane, 474 U.S. 438, 445, 106 S.Ct. 725, 88 L.Ed.2d 814 (1986). We are convinced from our review of the record that the defendants received a fair trial. The defendants' claim of cumulative error therefore fails. H. Jury charge Defendant Abdulqader next challenges the district court's jury charge on the First Amendment.27 The Government's evidence against Abdulqader included approximately one dozen video recordings of his participation in musical and dramatic performances that referenced Hamas and contained Islamic or anti-Israel themes. The performances occurred at various fund-raising events that HLF sponsored. The Government's theory at trial was that one of Abdulqader's roles in the conspiracy was to motivate audiences to contribute funds to HLF by performing pro-Hamas songs and skits. Most of the performances occurred before Hamas was designated as a terrorist organization, but three were recorded after the designation. The recordings before the designation tended to be obvious in their support of Hamas, expressly referring to both Hamas and killing Israelis. The recordings made after the designation were less overt in their support, and the Government argued to the jury that the defendants made this change intentionally in order to avoid directly showing support for a terrorist organization. Abdulqader contends on appeal that his speech in the video recordings was protected under the First Amendment, and that the district court's jury charge misstated the law and allowed the jury to convict him based solely on protected speech or association. “Because ‘[d]istrict courts enjoy substantial latitude in formulating a jury charge,’ we review ‘all challenges to, and refusals to give, jury instructions for abuse of discretion.’ ” United States v. Davis, 609 F.3d 663, 689 (5th Cir.2010) (alteration in original) (citation omitted). “We review a defendant's objection to the jury instruction by assessing whether the district court's charge, as a whole, was a correct statement of the law and whether it clearly instructed the jurors as to the principles of the law applicable to the factual issues confronting them.” United States v. Conner, 537 F.3d 480, 486 (5th Cir.2008). We conclude that the charge, when read as a whole, properly guided the jury and correctly stated the law as it was to be applied to the facts of the case. Abdulqader was charged with, inter alia, conspiracy to violate 18 U.S.C. § 2339B, which prohibits knowingly providing material support or resources to a foreign terrorist organization.28 The statute also provides: “Nothing in this section shall be construed or applied so as to abridge the exercise of rights guaranteed under the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States.” § 2339(B)(i). The district court read both § 2339(B)(i) and the text of the First Amendment29 in its jury charge. It then instructed the jury as follows: This amendment guarantees to all persons in the United States the right to freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and freedom of association. Because of these constitutional guarantees, no one can be convicted of a crime simply on the basis of his beliefs, his expression of those beliefs, or his associations. The First Amendment, however, does not provide a defense to a criminal charge simply because a person uses his associations, beliefs, or words to carry out an illegal activity. Stated another way, if a defendant's speech, expression, or associations were made with the intent to willfully provide funds, goods, or services to or for the benefit of Hamas, or to knowingly provide material support or resources to Hamas, as described in the indictment, then the First Amendment would not provide a defense to that conduct. As he did in the district court, Abdulqader argues that the last sentence emphasized above incorrectly stated the law because, although speech may be used to establish a defendant's intent, the charge instructed that a defendant's speech, expression, or associations are themselves crimes, provided that the defendant made them intending to provide support to Hamas. Abdulqader asserts that most of his speech on the video recordings in evidence was protected and non-criminal because it pre-dated Hamas's designation as a terrorist organization. He further asserts that the speech on the few tapes that post-dated the designation was not criminal because it did not incite imminent lawless action. See Brandenburg v. Ohio, 395 U.S. 444, 447, 89 S.Ct. 1827, 23 L.Ed.2d 430 (1969) (holding that the First Amendment does not protect speech that “is directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action”). It is well established under First Amendment principles that there is no prohibition on “the evidentiary use of speech to establish the elements of a crime or to prove motive or intent.” Wisconsin v. Mitchell, 508 U.S. 476, 489, 113 S.Ct. 2194, 124 L.Ed.2d 436 (1993); see also United States v. Salameh, 152 F.3d 88, 111–12 (2d Cir.1998). In addition, speech itself may be criminal under certain circumstances. As relevant to the case at bar, for example, the Supreme Court recently upheld § 2339B in an as applied First Amendment challenge, holding that Congress could criminalize speech that provides material support to designated terrorists. See Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project, ––– U.S. ––––, 130 S.Ct. 2705, 2724, 177 L.Ed.2d 355 (2010) (stating that Congress could “prohibit what plaintiffs want to do—provide material support to [the designated terrorist organizations] in the form of speech”). The Court held that § 2339B is not limited to prohibiting monetary support of terrorists, and the statute is tailored to reach only material support “coordinated with or under the direction of a designated foreign terrorist organization.” Id. at 2726. We recognize that the pre–1995 video recordings of Abdulqader's speech could not themselves be criminal under Humanitarian Law Project because it was not illegal at that time to support Hamas.30 Assuming arguendo that the language of the jury charge emphasized above could in isolation be read to allow the jury to consider that speech to be criminal, we conclude that the charge as a whole did not permit the jury to convict Abdulqader based on protected speech. See United States v. Kington, 875 F.2d 1091, 1098 (5th Cir.1989) (“[T]he presence of an imprecise or misleading statement within the jury instruction does not by itself entitle defendants to a reversal.”). First, the district court correctly charged the jury on the elements of the offense. See id. (“Reversible error exists only if the jury charge, considered as a whole, misled the jury as to the elements of the offense.”). The court charged the jury that in order to convict the defendants, it had to find that (1) “two or more persons agreed to provide material support” to Hamas, (2) the defendant “knowingly became a member of the conspiracy with the intent to further its unlawful purpose,” (3) “one of the conspirators knowingly committed at least one overt act,” and (4) the conspiracy “existed on or after October 8, 1997” and the defendant “was a member of the conspiracy on or after that date.” The defendants do not challenge this part of the charge, which accurately set the parameters for a conviction, including the existence of a conspiracy after Hamas was designated as a terrorist organization. Second, the First Amendment portion of the charge specifically instructed the jury that a defendant could not be convicted “simply on the basis of his beliefs, [or] his expression of those beliefs.” If we assume the jury followed its instructions, as we must, the jury would not have convicted Abdulqader of conspiracy for his pre–1995 conduct because it knew that Hamas had not been designated as a terrorist organization. See Zafiro v. United States, 506 U.S. 534, 540, 113 S.Ct. 933, 122 L.Ed.2d 317 (1993) ( “[J]uries are presumed to follow their instructions.”) (internal quotation marks and citation omitted); Davis, 609 F.3d at 677. Moreover, the charge specifically limited the jury's consideration of the defendant's speech to how it pertained to the elements of the offense as alleged in the indictment. The charge stated, in relevant part, that “if a defendant's speech ․ were made with the intent to ․ knowingly provide material support or resources to Hamas, as described in the indictment,” the First Amendment did not preclude a conviction. (Emphasis added). The indictment alleged that the § 2339B conspiracy began on or about October 8, 1997, the date that Hamas was designated as a foreign terrorist organization. It then charged as follows: In furtherance of the conspiracy, the defendants ․ participated in fundraising events at various forums, including conventions, services at mosques, seminars and other programs. The HLF sponsored speakers at these events whose mission was to raise funds for the HLF. Prior to the designation of HAMAS as a Foreign Terrorist Organization, the speakers sponsored by the HLF often praised the efforts of HAMAS and its violent activities against Israel, and encouraged financial support for those efforts. After HAMAS' designation, upon instruction by the HLF, the speakers changed tactics by using inflammatory language which was designed to support HAMAS and its violent activities without openly mentioning HAMAS. Some of the speakers sponsored by the HLF included founding HAMAS leaders, prominent HAMAS spokesmen and other speakers belonging to the Muslim Brotherhood. Furthermore, at some of the fund-raising events, the speakers, including the defendant Mufid Abdulqader, performed skits and songs which advocated the destruction of the State of Israel and glorified the killing of Jewish people. The indictment thus described the kind of performances in which Abdulqader appeared and charged that the performances occurred at gatherings with the intent to raise money for HLF. It further described how the performances changed tactically after Hamas was designated as a terrorist organization, which is when the unlawful conspiracy began. The language in the First Amendment section of the charge cabined the jury's consideration of the speech to those circumstances. It thus directed consideration of the speech in the context of motive or intent. See Mitchell, 508 U.S. at 489, 113 S.Ct. 2194. As a whole, the charge provided that the First Amendment was not a defense to speech that was made with the intent to support Hamas in the manner described in the indictment. The indictment included the change in tone after Hamas's designation in order to conceal a course of conduct that became criminal after the designation. In other words, Abdulqader's speech may have been protected prior to Hamas's designation as a terrorist organization, but it became relevant to proving whether he joined the conspiracy that began after the designation. By instructing the jury to consider the intent of the speech as alleged in the indictment, the charge merely permitted the jury to determine whether the Government's theory of the case was correct and did not permit conviction based solely on speech. Finally, our conclusion that the district court's charge properly guided the jury's application of the law to the facts is supported by the way in which the Government argued its case to the jury in closing argument. The Government argued in closing that the video recordings of Abdulqader were evidence of his efforts to aid the fundraising for Hamas and were also evidence of how the defendants changed their fundraising message after Hamas's designation as a terrorist organization. Referring to the videos, the prosecutor stated: That person that Mufid Abdulqader pretended to kill wasn't dressed as an Israeli soldier. He was dressed as a civilian in a suit. And this is the message that they were sending, the Palestine Committee and the Holy Land Foundation was sending out to its audience before they toned it down after the Oslo Accords. The Government then emphasized that the speech should be used in conjunction with determining the defendants' intent: Now, the Defense attorneys have talked about, and I am sure they are going to talk about this again with you, freedom of speech. And freedom of speech is an incredible right that we have here in the United States. But the Defendants aren't charged with what they said. They are charged for what they did, and that is sending money to Hamas. * * * They are perfectly right to say, “I support Hamas.” But when they start giving money to Hamas, then what they said can and will be used against them to determine their intent. In sum, the court's charge on the First Amendment may not be read in a vacuum. The district court's charge on the elements of the offense, in conjunction with its express directive that speech alone cannot support a conviction and its limitation that the speech must be considered in relation to the indictment, rendered the charge a correct statement of the law to be applied to the issues confronting the jury.31 The First Amendment challenge to the jury charge is therefore denied.32 I. The search of HLF's offices The defendants challenge on Fourth Amendment grounds the Government's seizure of property from HLF's offices without a warrant. The Treasury Department, through OFAC, seized the property immediately after designating HLF as a terrorist organization and issuing a blocking order pursuant to IEEPA. See 50 U.S.C. § 1702(a)(1)(B). The FBI later obtained a warrant from a magistrate judge to search the property. The defendants moved to suppress the evidence found in that subsequent search because OFAC lacked a warrant at the time of the initial seizure. The district court denied the motion, holding that the search and seizure were permissible under an exception analogous to administrative searches of closely regulated industries. The court further reasoned that the good faith exception to the exclusionary rule also precluded suppression because OFAC reasonably relied on IEEPA when it initially seized HLF's property, and the FBI reasonably relied on the warrant issued by the magistrate judge. We hold that the district court correctly denied the suppression motion but for different reasons. The defendants do not challenge the blocking order under the Fourth Amendment. As we will explain, we conclude that the defendants' privacy interests were greatly reduced by the unchallenged blocking order, that the Government had a strong special need to act quickly to prevent asset flight, and that the Government's movement of HLF's property into storage until obtaining a warrant was a minimal intrusion into the defendants' diminished privacy interests. Under these circumstances, the Government's conduct did not violate the Fourth Amendment. On appeal of a motion to suppress, “the district court's findings of facts are reviewed for clear error, viewing the evidence in the light most favorable to the government. The district court's conclusions of law are reviewed de novo.” United States v. Hernandez, 647 F.3d 216, 218 (5th Cir.2011) (internal quotation marks and citation omitted). We view the facts underlying the suppression decision in the light most favorable to the Government as the prevailing party. United States v. Howard, 106 F.3d 70, 73 (5th Cir.1997). We may affirm the district court's ruling on any ground supported by the record. Hernandez, 647 F.3d at 218. The Government bears the burden of showing that a warrantless search or seizure was valid. United States v. Gomez–Moreno, 479 F.3d 350, 354 (5th Cir.2007). In this case OFAC initially acted under IEEPA and the blocking order to secure HLF's property. Pursuant to IEEPA, the President is authorized to declare a national emergency “to deal with any unusual and extraordinary threat” to the United States originating in substantial part in a foreign state. See 50 U.S.C. § 1701(a). The President is empowered to “investigate, regulate, or prohibit” transactions in foreign exchange, banking transfers, and importing or exporting currency or securities. § 1702(a)(1)(A). In addition, the President may investigate, block during the pendency of an investigation, regulate, direct and compel, nullify, void, prevent or prohibit, any acquisition, holding, withholding, use, transfer, withdrawal, transportation, importation or exportation of, or dealing in, or exercising any right, power, or privilege with respect to, or transactions involving, any property in which any foreign country or a national thereof has any interest by any person, or with respect to any property, subject to the jurisdiction of the United States[.] § 1702(a)(1)(B). The President is also authorized to issue necessary regulations to further IEEPA's purpose, which the President has delegated to the Treasury Department. See § 1704. OFAC is the office that is principally responsible for administering the Government's orders and regulations under IEEPA. As relevant to this case, and as noted above, in 1995 the President issued Executive Order 12947 under IEEPA designating, inter alia, Hamas as a SDT. See 60 Fed.Reg. 5079 (Jan. 23, 1995). In 2001, in response to the terrorist attacks of September 11, the President issued Executive Order 13224 recognizing a continued threat to the national security, foreign policy, and economy of the United States and declaring a national emergency to deal with that threat. See 66 Fed.Reg. 49079 (Sept. 23, 2001). The Executive Order also found “that because of the pervasiveness and expansiveness of the financial foundation of foreign terrorists, financial sanctions may be appropriate for those foreign persons that support or otherwise associate with these foreign terrorists.” Id. The Executive Order designated various individuals and organizations as specially designated global terrorists (“SDGTs”).33 It further provided for the designation of additional SDGTs if organizations or persons are found to “act for or on behalf of” or are “owned or controlled by” designated terrorists, or if they “assist in, sponsor, or provide ․ support for,” or are “otherwise associated” with them. See id. The Executive Order thereby authorized the Government to freeze or block the assets of organizations or persons that supported or were associated with designated terrorists. The ramifications of being named a SDT subject to a blocking order are significant. Once assets have been blocked, they no longer may be used unless OFAC issues a license authorizing the SDT to engage in transactions involving the blocked assets. See 31 C.F.R. § 501.801. As cogently described by the Ninth Circuit, “[b]y design, a designation by OFAC completely shutters all domestic operations of an entity. All assets are frozen. No person or organization may conduct any business whatsoever with the entity, other than a very narrow category of actions such as legal defense.” Al Haramain Islamic Found. v. U.S. Dep't of the Treasury, 660 F.3d 1019, 1026 (9th Cir.2011). A party subject to a designation may seek administrative reconsideration and limited judicial relief, but the “designation is indefinite” and the limited remedies “take considerable time.” Id.; see also 31 C.F.R. § 501.807. The Treasury Department designated HLF as a SDT and a SDGT on December 3, 2001. On the same day, OFAC issued a blocking notice to HLF stating in relevant part: [A]ll real and personal property of [HLF], including but not limited to all offices, furnishings, equipment and vehicles, as well as funds and accounts in which [HLF] has any interest, are blocked. All assets of [HLF], including but not limited to bank, charge and investment accounts, securities, and safe deposit boxes at any financial institution located in the United States or organized under the laws of the United States, including their overseas branches, are blocked. Blocked property may not be transferred, withdrawn, exported, paid, or otherwise dealt in without prior authorization from OFAC. All transactions involving property in which [HLF] has any interest, including any property of third parties in the possession or control of [HLF], are prohibited without specific authorization from OFAC. As a consequence of this action, activities in, use of, and occupation of [HLF] offices, including this facility and each [HLF] office subject to United States jurisdiction, are hereby prohibited․ No property may be removed from the premises other than property that is clearly the personal property of the individual requesting to remove the property from the premises. Persons who are unable to remove their personal belongings at this time must contact OFAC in writing ․ to make arrangements to secure their belongings at a later date․ Requests for specific licenses for payment of outstanding financial obligations owed by [HLF], such as salary, rent and utility payments, among others, must also be made in writing[.] The notice also advised that if HLF wished to seek a license to engage in any transaction involving blocked property, or to challenge the designation as a SDGT, it should refer to specified regulations for the proper procedure. In order to effectuate the blocking notice, OFAC personnel, accompanied by federal officers, went the next day (December 4, 2001) to the HLF offices in Richardson, Texas; Bridgeview, Illinois; San Diego, California; and Paterson, New Jersey. OFAC served the notices at each location on HLF representatives, who signed the notices and permitted entry into the offices. In Richardson, Defendant Baker signed the notice but initially denied permission to enter. Two hours later, after consulting with counsel and after a televised public announcement revealing HLF's designation, Baker allowed OFAC into the office. Defendant El–Mezain similarly permitted entry into the San Diego office after consulting with counsel. The record shows that at each location independent contractors acting on behalf of OFAC took possession of HLF's assets and moved them to storage. There is no indication that anyone from OFAC or the FBI examined the property at that time. On appeal, the defendants contend that OFAC's warrantless entry into the HLF offices was unconstitutional because nothing in IEEPA allowed the Government to enter private property to effectuate a seizure or search. The Fourth Amendment provides that “[t]he right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated․” U.S. Const. amend. IV. The Supreme Court has recognized that the Fourth Amendment “protects two types of expectations, one involving ‘searches,’ the other ‘seizures.’ ” United States v. Jacobsen, 466 U.S. 109, 113, 104 S.Ct. 1652, 80 L.Ed.2d 85 (1984). “A ‘seizure’ of property occurs when there is some meaningful interference with an individual's possessory interests in that property.” Id. A “search,” on the other hand, “occurs when an expectation of privacy that society is prepared to consider reasonable is infringed.” Id. The defendants argue, consistent with these principles, that the Government's entry into the HLF offices interfered with HLF's possessory interests and infringed the privacy of HLF and its employees. The Government responds, in part, that a warrant is not required before OFAC issues a blocking order under IEEPA. We need not resolve that question, however, because the defendants do not challenge under the Fourth Amendment OFAC's issuance of the blocking order, the scope of the order, or OFAC's ability to issue such an order without a warrant. But see Al Haramain, 660 F.3d at 1043–48 (holding that a warrant was required before OFAC issued a blocking order under IEEPA, and the Government failed to show the applicability of an exception to the warrant requirement). We therefore presume that the blocking order was properly issued. Because the defendants do not challenge the blocking order, OFAC's implementation of it must be assessed by comparing the order's effect on the defendants' privacy interests with any special needs of the Government under IEEPA. We think this balancing of interests does not support suppression of the evidence in this case. “Warrantless searches and seizures are per se unreasonable unless they fall within a few narrowly defined exceptions.” United States v. Kelly, 302 F.3d 291, 293 (5th Cir.2002) (internal quotation marks and citation omitted). The Government contends here that the “special needs” exception to the warrant requirement justified the search and seizure. See, e.g., Griffin v. Wisconsin, 483 U.S. 868, 873, 107 S.Ct. 3164, 97 L.Ed.2d 709 (1987) (recognizing that a warrantless search may be justified “when special needs, beyond the normal need for law enforcement, make the warrant and probable-cause requirement impracticable”) (internal quotation marks and citation omitted). The Supreme Court has applied the special needs exception in a variety of circumstances when the Government performs functions beyond typical law enforcement or crime control and when the intrusion into the privacy interest at stake is minimal. See, e.g., Illinois v. Lidster, 540 U.S. 419, 427–28, 124 S.Ct. 885, 157 L.Ed.2d 843 (2004) (holding that a warrantless highway checkpoint to investigate fatal hit-and-run accident was valid where “stops interfered only minimally with liberty of the sort the Fourth Amendment seeks to protect”); Mich. Dep't of State Police v. Sitz, 496 U.S. 444, 451, 110 S.Ct. 2481, 110 L.Ed.2d 412 (1990) (upholding sobriety checkpoints where intrusion was “slight”); O'Connor v. Ortega, 480 U.S. 709, 725, 107 S.Ct. 1492, 94 L.Ed.2d 714 (1987) (plurality) (permitting warrantless searches of government employee's work area for work-related purposes where employee's privacy interests in office “are far less than those found at home or in some other contexts”); United States v. Martinez–Fuerte, 428 U.S. 543, 565, 96 S.Ct. 3074, 49 L.Ed.2d 1116 (1976) (upholding warrantless fixed Border Patrol checkpoint where stop caused “minor interference” with Fourth Amendment interests). In Al Haramain, the Ninth Circuit held that the special needs exception did not apply in the context of the Government's issuance of a blocking order under IEEPA. The court noted that “[t]he exception requires a weighing of the nature and extent of the privacy interest at hand against the nature and immediacy of the government's concerns and the efficacy of the procedures employed in meeting those concerns.” Al Haramain, 660 F.3d at 1043 (citing Bd. of Educ. v. Earls, 536 U.S. 822, 830–34, 122 S.Ct. 2559, 153 L.Ed.2d 735 (2002)). The court there concluded that the private entity had a substantial privacy interest that was severely restricted by the blocking order because the order effectively shut down all business operations indefinitely, and that the Government failed to show why a warrant should not be required when balanced against that interest. Id. at 1045–46. We agree with the Ninth Circuit's assessment of the debilitating effect of a blocking order, but because the defendants have not challenged the order in this case, our analysis begins at a different point than Al Haramain, and the applicable balancing of interests yields a different result. Here, the unchallenged blocking order gave the Government complete control over both HLF's assets and the premises and reduced the defendants' interests to a minimum. As the Ninth Circuit recognized in Al Haramain, the significant effects of a blocking order are “by design.” Id. at 1045 (“[T]here is no limited scope or scale to the effect of the blocking order.”). Indeed, a “designation [as a SDT] is not a mere inconvenience or burden on certain property interests; designation indefinitely renders a domestic organization financially defunct.” Id. at 1032. Further, “[a] blocking order effectively shuts down the private entity.” Id. at 1045. The text of the blocking order in this case demonstrates the Government's control and the virtual elimination of any possessory and privacy interests held by the defendants in the assets and premises of HLF. The blocking order expressly directed all persons to leave the offices. It prohibited the defendants from engaging in any activity involving HLF's property, and it even prohibited the defendants from occupying the premises without OFAC's prior authorization. The warrantless imposition of these conditions has not been contested here. Unlike in Al Haramain, we are therefore faced with a presumptively valid order that stripped the defendants of any possessory interests in the HLF offices and assets. Any remaining privacy interest that the defendants had was minimal, and, as we discuss below, was protected by the subsequent warrant obtained prior to the Government's search. Balanced against the defendants' significantly diminished privacy interests is the Government's “extremely high” interest in preventing actions that could facilitate terrorism. Al Haramain, 660 F.3d at 1046. An important purpose of a blocking order is to prevent asset flight, which was a genuine concern in this case. The evidence here showed that the defendants had been funneling millions of dollars to organizations associated with Hamas. They were capable of quickly transferring large sums of money by wire transfer to overseas bank accounts controlled by HLF and others. These accounts were in locations such as the West Bank and Gaza, where they were likely to be beyond the reach of a judicial warrant. The Government therefore had a strong interest in moving quickly to prevent the flight of assets that could be used to further terrorist activity. See id. at 1046 (recognizing that “ ‘asset flight’ is a legitimate concern”). In addition to considering the competing interests of the defendants and the Government, we also consider the nature of the Government's intrusion into the defendants' interests. We address here an uncontested blocking order that has comprehensively restricted the defendants' privacy and possessory interests. Viewed objectively, therefore, we believe that the Government's mere transfer of HLF's property from the offices to a storage facility pursuant to the blocking order, without invading the contents of the material, did not intrude into the defendant's privacy or possessory rights any more than was reasonable under the initial blocking order. See Jacobsen, 466 U.S. at 115, 104 S.Ct. 1652 (“The reasonableness of an official invasion of the citizen's privacy must be appraised on the basis of the facts as they existed at the time that invasion occurred.”). We stress the importance of the fact that the Government took custody of the property without searching it and secured it to prevent unauthorized use, loss, or destruction. As we have said, the Government was already permitted by IEEPA and the blocking order to control the property and the premises, and its transfer of the assets to storage did not further circumscribe the defendants' interests. Had the Government actually examined the property before obtaining a warrant, this might be a different case.34 Furthermore, to the extent that the defendants retained any privacy interests in the materials seized by the Government, those interests were adequately protected by the warrant obtained before the Government actually searched the materials. That warrant separated the search of HLF's property from the initial seizure, which we think adds to the overall reasonableness of the Government's action and of the district court's denial of the defendants' suppression motion. The warrant affidavit submitted to the magistrate judge did not rely on, or refer to, evidence seized by OFAC from the HLF offices as a basis for probable cause to search. The warrant affidavit stated only that the investigating officer had reviewed an inventory from the initial seizure and noted that various materials had been seized, such as “desks, files, books, binders, computers, telephones, fax machines, miscellaneous documents, and other items that HLF used to facilitate its activities.” Nothing in the record suggests that the investigating officer misled the magistrate judge when applying for the warrant, and we believe the Government properly relied on the warrant for purposes of the search. See, e.g., United States v. Leon, 468 U.S. 897, 922–23, 104 S.Ct. 3405, 82 L.Ed.2d 677 (1984); United States v. Sibley, 448 F.3d 754, 757 (5th Cir.2006) (police may not rely on a warrant if the affiant misled the magistrate judge with information he knew was false); United States v. Shugart, 117 F.3d 838, 843 (5th Cir.1997) (“ ‘evidence obtained by law enforcement officials acting in objectively reasonable good-faith reliance upon a search warrant is admissible’ ”) (citation omitted). In sum, the Government's broad control over the defendants' premises and property afforded by the blocking order and IEEPA—control which has not been challenged by the defendants—greatly reduced the defendants' possessory and privacy interests. In light of the Government's strong interest in combating terrorism, and the minimal intrusion here to the defendants' diminished interests, we conclude that the Government's movement of HLF's property from the HLF offices into a storage facility until it obtained a judicial warrant to search the materials did not infringe the defendants' Fourth Amendment rights. We therefore affirm the district court's denial of the suppression motion. J. Defendant Elashi's double jeopardy issue We next address a double jeopardy claim by Defendant Elashi, who argues that his conspiracy convictions in the instant case violate the Double Jeopardy Clause of the Fifth Amendment because he was convicted of conspiracy in a separate case in 2006. In the 2006 case, Elashi was convicted in the Northern District of Texas for, inter alia, conspiracy to deal in property of a specially designated terrorist, in violation of IEEPA, 50 U.S.C. §§ 1701–1707, and Executive Order 12947; substantive violations of that prohibition; and conspiracy and substantive money laundering offenses related to the SDT violations. See United States v. Elashyi, 554 F.3d 480, 491 & n. 3 (5th Cir.2008). The defendants in that case were Elashi; four of Elashi's brothers; his cousin, Nadia Elashi; Nadia's husband, Mousa Abu Marzook; and Elashi's Texas-based computer company, Infocom Corporation. Elashi's 2006 conviction stemmed from financial transactions between Marzook and Infocom. In the early 1990s, Marzook made investments in Infocom of several hundred thousand dollars that were designated as loans, and he received interest payments in return. See id. at 490. Infocom later changed its books to reflect that the loans came from Nadia, and interest payments were made to her but deposited in Nadia and Marzook's joint bank account. Id. After Marzook was identified in a newspaper article as a Hamas leader, Infocom recorded a $50,000 check from Marzook as a loan from Nadia. Marzook was subsequently arrested while trying to enter the United States in July 1995, and he was designated as a SDT in August 1995. Thereafter, the interest payments to Nadia and Marzook's joint account stopped for a while but then resumed as deposits in an account solely in Nadia's name. Id. at 491. The payments continued until 2001 when OFAC issued a blocking order instructing Infocom to freeze funds in which OFAC determined that Marzook had an interest. Id. Elashi argues in the instant appeal that his convictions in this case for conspiracy to provide material support to Hamas (count 1), conspiracy to violate IEEPA (count 11), and conspiracy to commit money laundering (count 22) violate the Double Jeopardy Clause because the conspiracies substantially overlap with his conspiracy convictions from the 2006 case. Whether a prosecution violates the Double Jeopardy Clause is a question of law that we review de novo. United States v. Delgado, 256 F.3d 264, 270 (5th Cir.2001). The Fifth Amendment's Double Jeopardy Clause “protects against a second prosecution for the same offense after conviction.” Brown v. Ohio, 432 U.S. 161, 165, 97 S.Ct. 2221, 53 L.Ed.2d 187 (1977) (internal quotation marks and citation omitted); United States v. Levy, 803 F.2d 1390, 1393 (5th Cir.1986). In a conspiracy case, the central issue for double jeopardy purposes is whether there was one agreement and one conspiracy or more than one agreement and more than one conspiracy. United States v. Rabhan, 628 F.3d 200, 204 (5th Cir.2010). “The defendant carries the initial burden of establishing ‘a prima facie nonfrivolous double jeopardy claim’ that the two conspiracies charged are in fact a single conspiracy and therefore charge a single offense.” Id. (citation omitted). “If a defendant comes forward with a prima facie nonfrivolous double jeopardy claim, then the burden of establishing that the indictments charge separate crimes is on the government.” Delgado, 256 F.3d at 270. “To determine whether the alleged conspirators entered into more than one agreement, we evaluate five factors: 1) time; 2) persons acting as co-conspirators; 3) the statutory offenses charged in the indictments; 4) the overt acts charged by the government or any other description of the offense charged that indicates the nature and scope of the activity that the government sought to punish in each case; and 5) places where the events alleged as part of the conspiracy took place.” Id. at 272. Because no single factor is determinative, we must consider all of them. Id. The time period for the conspiracies charged in the 2006 case (August 1995 to July 2001) was wholly contained within the time period charged in the instant case for the IEEPA and money laundering conspiracies (January 1995 to July 2004) and the material support conspiracy (October 1997 to July 2004). “An overlap in time periods between two alleged conspiracies favors a finding of a single conspiracy, especially when that overlap is substantial.” Rabhan, 628 F.3d at 205 (finding that an overlap of twenty-one months was substantial and favored a finding of a single conspiracy). The overlap of nearly four and six years in the two cases is substantial and favors a finding of a single conspiracy. In the 2006 case, Elashi was charged with conspiring with his brothers, his cousin Nadia, Marzook, and Infocom. Those co-conspirators were also named as co-conspirators in the instant case. The Government concedes the overlap but argues that the instant case involves many more conspirators, and that the common co-conspirators played different roles in the conspiracies. An overlap in personnel participating in conspiracies tends to indicate a single conspiracy. Id. at 205. Nevertheless, we agree with the Government that the key co-conspirators—most notably the co-defendants, Baker, El–Mezain, Abdulqader, Odeh, and the corporation, HLF—did not participate in Elashi's first conspiracy. The nature of the overlapping co-conspirators' participation is relevant to finding a single conspiracy, especially when the co-conspirators are the “central characters,” Levy, 803 F.2d at 1395, or the “key personnel” in both cases. Rabhan, 628 F.3d at 205. If the central figures of the cases are different, or if they serve different functions for purposes of the conspiracies, it is less likely that there is a single agreement. See United States v. Guzman, 852 F.2d 1117, 1120–21 (9th Cir.1988) (finding that “the roles performed by Guzman and Serrano in the two conspiracies were quite different” and therefore “do[ ] not compel a finding that a single conspiracy existed”). In the first case, the central characters were Infocom, Nadia Elashi, and Marzook insofar as the conspiracy involved payments from Infocom to Nadia in which the real party in interest was Marzook. Elashi was implicated in the conspiracy in his role at Infocom. Marzook was the designated terrorist whose property made the defendants' actions illegal. In the instant case, the key characters in the conspiracy were those connected to HLF who were involved in raising donations in support of Hamas. Elashi was implicated in the conspiracy for his role as an HLF founder and officer, and Hamas was the designated terrorist. In the 2006 case, there were a limited number of participants in the conspiracy and the purpose of the agreement was confined to dealing in the property of Marzook, whereas the instant conspiracy involved different key participants with the much broader purpose of aiding all of Hamas through HLF. The central characters of the conspiracy in this case are not the same as those in the 2006 case. See Rabhan, 628 F.3d at 207 (“[T]he overlap of central characters” is “more important than the number of overlapping characters.”). We conclude that the presence of some overlap in co-conspirators does not weigh in favor of finding a single conspiracy. 3. Statutory offenses Next, in both prosecutions Elashi was charged with money laundering offenses in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1956. He was also charged in both cases with conspiracy to violate IEEPA. The Government contends that the IEEPA conspiracies were different because the indictment in the 2006 case charged a general conspiracy under 18 U.S.C. § 371,35 while the IEEPA conspiracy in the instant case was charged under IEEPA's specific conspiracy provision in 50 U.S.C. § 1705. We agree with Elashi, however, that the IEEPA conspiracy in the instant case necessarily relied on the general conspiracy statute of § 371 because the specific IEEPA conspiracy provision of § 1705 did not become effective until 2007, after the indictment was returned in this case. See Pub.L. No. 110–96, § 2(a), 121 Stat. 1011, 1011 (Oct. 16, 2007). The Government nevertheless argues that there were two conspiracies because the instant case also charged Elashi with conspiracy to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 2339B, which was not an offense charged in the 2006 case. “Additional charges in one case may still lead to a finding that there is only one conspiracy, particularly when ‘the statutes that do not overlap are related.’ ” Rabhan, 628 F.3d at 207 (quoting Levy, 803 F.2d at 1392). The conspiracies charged under IEEPA, 50 U.S.C. § 1705, and the material support statute, 18 U.S.C. § 2339B, are related insofar as they both prohibit support for designated terrorist organizations. The statutory offenses charged in both the instant case and the 2006 case are therefore the same or similar. While this would militate toward finding a single conspiracy, we must be mindful that “[i]t is possible to have two different conspiracies to commit exactly the same type of crime.” United States v. Thomas, 759 F.2d 659, 666 (8th Cir.1985). We think that is the case here. Elashi was essentially charged in both cases with two similar crimes of aiding a designated terrorist, but the designated terrorist and the purpose of each offense were not the same. See Guzman, 852 F.2d at 1121 (finding two separate conspiracies despite identical statutory charges where “[t]he goals of the two conspiracies ․ were not identical”); see also United States v. Coscarelli, No. 98–21120, 2000 WL 284044, at *3 (5th Cir.2000) (“[W]here the second conspiracy has a different goal than the first, a second prosecution is not barred by double jeopardy.”). The 2006 conspiracy involved Marzook as the designated terrorist, and the goal of the conspiracy was to make payments to him from Infocom as a result of his investment in the company. The payments varied in amount between $1,000 and $15,000. Elashyi, 554 F.3d at 490. In the instant case, the designated terrorist was Hamas, and the goal was to provide material support for Hamas by raising funds through HLF's charitable network and by funneling money to Hamas organizations, like the zakat committees. The jury found that as a result of the conspiracy the defendants provided approximately $12.4 million in support of Hamas. To be sure, Marzook was present in both cases, and evidence of Elashi's transactions in the 2006 case also served as evidence of his intent in the instant case. However, Elashi was convicted of dealing in the property of Marzook in the 2006 case, while he was convicted of the offense of providing support for Hamas in the instant case. We conclude that because the goals of the two offenses differed, the similarity in statutory charges does not compel a finding that there was a single conspiracy. 4. Overt acts Elashi concedes that the overt acts charged in the two cases were different, but he argues that a single conspiracy may be found because the overt acts in both cases span similar time periods and are similar in character. Although he is correct that a single conspiracy may be found even without overlapping acts, the “nature and scope of the allegedly separate conspiracies” must permit a finding that there was a single objective and a single agreement. Rabhan, 628 F.3d at 207 (internal quotation marks and citation omitted). For example, in Rabhan we held that there was a single conspiracy even though the Government charged different overt acts because the defendant had engaged in the multiple acts as part of a course of conduct with a single objective. See id. at 207–08 (holding that defendant's “overall strategy to form a comprehensive integrated catfish growing and processing operation” showed that the fraudulent loans in both Georgia and Mississippi were interrelated and favored a finding of a single conspiracy); see also Levy, 803 F.2d at 1395–96 (finding a single conspiracy where a series of fraudulent loans were obtained in order to hide the fact of another series of fraudulently obtained loans). We disagree with Elashi that the overt acts charged against him in both cases were sufficiently similar in nature to show that there was a single conspiracy. In the 2006 case, the indictment charged Elashi with, inter alia, ten separate check and wire transfers from Infocom's bank accounts to bank accounts held in Nadia's name. In the instant case, the overt acts included specific wire transfers from HLF bank accounts to the seven zakat committees alleged to be operated on behalf, or under the control, of Hamas. The indictment in this case also charged that funds were wired from HLF bank accounts in Texas to the HLF office in the West Bank and Gaza, and then re-distributed to the zakat committees and to the family members of individuals who had been either “martyred” or jailed for terrorist activities. As noted above, the objective in the first case was to deal in the property of the specially designated terrorist Marzook because of his investment in Infocom, whereas the agreement in the instant case was to raise funds through HLF and funnel the money to Hamas, a different designated terrorist, in support of Hamas's social wing. Although Marzook was a Hamas leader, the two conspiracies alleged direct benefits to two different designated terrorists. Cf. United States v. Cihak, 137 F.3d 252, 258 (5th Cir.1998) (finding two separate conspiracies where, inter alia, “the overt acts alleged in the two cases are different and ․ the actions of the separate conspiracies alleged in the other case did not advance the conspiracy alleged in this case and vice versa”) (internal quotation marks and citation omitted). Elashi argues that because the same evidence of financial transactions between Infocom and Marzook was introduced at both the first and second trials, the conspiracies were the same. We are not persuaded. The evidence was admitted in this case solely to show Elashi's intent or state of mind under Federal Rule of Evidence 404(b), and the district court gave a proper limiting instruction. See Fed.R.Evid. 404(b) (Evidence of prior acts is admissible “as proof of motive, opportunity, intent, preparation, plan, knowledge, identity, or absence of mistake or accident․”); cf. United States v. Felix, 503 U.S. 378, 386, 112 S.Ct. 1377, 118 L.Ed.2d 25 (1992) (“[A] mere overlap in proof between two prosecutions does not establish a double jeopardy violation.”). Relying on our decision in Levy, Elashi argues that the introduction, under Rule 404(b), of evidence of acts underlying one conspiracy at the trial for a second conspiracy proves the existence of a single conspiracy. This may be true under some circumstances, but Elashi's statement of the law is too broad. See United States v. Deshaw, 974 F.2d 667, 675 & n. 47 (5th Cir.1992) (recognizing that evidence may be introduced under Rule 404(b) under circumstances that do not implicate double jeopardy). In Levy, 803 F.2d at 1392, the defendants were acquitted in the first trial of conspiracy to misapply funds and to make false statements in connection with loans. They were then prosecuted at a second trial for conspiracy to make false statements to a bank and to defraud the United States and the FDIC. Id. Evidence concerning the overt acts underlying the second trial had previously been offered in the first trial. Id. at 1395. The transactions involved in the two cases were part of a continuing course of fraudulent conduct and were designed to hide the larger scheme. See id. at 1396. For this reason, we held that the Government's prior introduction of the same evidence under Rule 404(b) at the first trial supported a single conspiracy. Id. We found that the transactions from both cases “are related” and that “the record reveals that the acts involved in both alleged conspiracies are the same.” Id.; see also United States v. Nichols, 741 F.2d 767, 772 (5th Cir.1984) (series of nearly identical drug shipments forming basis of three separate conspiracy indictments offered under Rule 404(b) in prosecution for fourth conspiracy to import drugs showed a single conspiracy to commit multiple violations of the drug control law). As explained above, we do not see a similar relationship here indicating a single agreement and a common objective because the transactions in the instant case—wire transfers to zakat committees in support of Hamas's social wing—do not further or advance the conspiracy in the first case to transfer funds to Marzook. Moreover, the acts involved in both cases were not the same. We conclude that this factor does not support a finding of a single conspiracy.36 Finally, both conspiracies were alleged to have occurred in the Dallas Division of the Northern District of Texas. Elashi also points out that the principals of both cases—Infocom and HLF—were located across the street from each other in Richardson, Texas, where all the transactions originated. Although there is a clear overlap of the conspiracies in Texas, the Government argues that the place of the two conspiracies is different because the overt acts in the first case were domestic transfers from Infocom's account to Nadia's account, whereas the instant case is broader geographically and involved international transfers from HLF to the zakat committees in the West Bank. When conspiracies “overlap geographically, it is appropriate to consider where they are based as an indicator of whether the geographic overlap is significant.” Rabhan, 628 F.3d at 208. The Government has not shown that the “base of operations” for both conspiracies was anywhere other than Texas, where both corporate entities and most of the defendants were located. Therefore, the place of decision making in both cases was the same, which militates in favor of finding a single conspiracy.37 Based on our review of the two cases and our consideration of the five relevant factors, we conclude that the indictments charged separate offenses. The time period, place of the conspiracies, and the statutory charges were the same or similar in the two cases, but the goals of the offenses were not the same. There was also some similarity in the co-conspirators, but the key figures in the conspiracies and the roles of those who overlapped were different. The conspiracies also involved two separately designated terrorists, Marzook and Hamas. The five factors are “for the guidance of the court,” and the Government need not “show that each of the factors demonstrates the existence of more than one conspiracy.” United States v. Tammaro, 636 F.2d 100, 104 (5th Cir.1981). We conclude that, on balance, there were two separate agreements, and therefore two conspiracies, to achieve different objectives. Elashi's double jeopardy argument is therefore unavailing.38 K. Defendant El–Mezain's collateral estoppel issue Defendant El–Mezain next raises a collateral estoppel challenge to his conviction on the single conspiracy count for which he was re-tried in this case. He makes two related arguments. First, he contends that because the jury acquitted him of all other charges at the first trial, collateral estoppel precluded the instant conviction. Second, he argues that the district court failed to exclude evidence in the instant trial that was related to the acquitted counts at the first trial. We consider each point separately, applying de novo review. See United States v. Brown, 571 F.3d 492, 497 (5th Cir.2009) (“Whether a prosecution violates the Double Jeopardy Clause or is precluded by collateral estoppel are issues of law that we review de novo.”). 1. Collateral estoppel as a bar to the instant conviction In the first trial in this case, count 1 of the indictment charged El–Mezain with conspiracy to provide material support to a Foreign Terrorist Organization (“FTO”) (i.e., Hamas), in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 2339B (“the count 1 conspiracy” or “§ 2339B conspiracy”). The jury failed to reach a verdict on that count, but it acquitted El–Mezain on thirty-one remaining counts. Those counts charged El–Mezain with substantive offenses for providing material support to a FTO (counts 2–10); conspiracy to provide funds, goods, and services to a Specially Designated Terrorist (“SDT”), in violation of IEEPA (count 11) (“the IEEPA conspiracy” or “count 11 conspiracy”); substantive offenses for providing funds, goods, and services to a SDT (counts 12–21); and conspiracy and substantive money laundering offenses (counts 22–32). At the second trial, El–Mezain was re-tried on only the count 1 conspiracy. A re-trial following a hung jury generally does not violate the Double Jeopardy Clause because the jury's failure to reach a verdict does not terminate the original jeopardy. See Yeager v. United States, 557 U.S. 110, 129 S.Ct. 2360, 2366, 174 L.Ed.2d 78 (2009); Richardson v. United States, 468 U.S. 317, 323–26, 104 S.Ct. 3081, 82 L.Ed.2d 242 (1984). However, the Double Jeopardy Clause also incorporates the collateral estoppel doctrine, which provides that “when an issue of ultimate fact has once been determined by a valid and final judgment, that issue cannot again be litigated between the same parties in any future lawsuit.” Ashe v. Swenson, 397 U.S. 436, 443, 90 S.Ct. 1189, 25 L.Ed.2d 469 (1970). Collateral estoppel may therefore affect successive criminal prosecutions based on what the jury decided in the first prosecution. United States v. Brackett, 113 F.3d 1396, 1398 (5th Cir.1997). A subsequent prosecution will be completely barred “if one of the facts necessarily determined in the former trial is an essential element of the subsequent prosecution.” Id. For example, in Ashe the defendant was charged with but acquitted of armed robbery of one of six participants in a poker game. Ashe, 397 U.S. at 437–38, 90 S.Ct. 1189. The only contested issue at trial was whether the defendant had been one of the robbers. Id. at 438, 90 S.Ct. 1189. The state re-tried the defendant at a second trial for robbing one of the other poker players, and the jury convicted him. Id. at 439–40, 90 S.Ct. 1189. The Supreme Court held that the conviction was impermissible under the collateral estoppel doctrine because the first jury had necessarily found that the defendant had not been one of the robbers, a fact that the state was precluded from relitigating. Id. at 445, 90 S.Ct. 1189. The collateral estoppel doctrine “bars relitigation only of those facts necessarily determined in the first trial.” Brackett, 113 F.3d at 1398 (internal quotation marks and citation omitted). Because the first jury in Ashe could not have acquitted the defendant without finding that he was not involved in the robbery, the second prosecution was barred. When the jury returns a general verdict of acquittal, the facts that it necessarily found are not always obvious. Therefore, to determine what the jury “necessarily decided” following an acquittal by a general verdict, the court must consider “the record of a prior proceeding, taking into account the pleadings, evidence, charge, and other relevant matter, and conclude whether a rational jury could have grounded its verdict upon an issue other than that which the defendant seeks to foreclose from consideration.” Yeager, 129 S.Ct. at 2367 (internal quotation marks and citation omitted); see also Brackett, 113 F.3d at 1399. This is a practical inquiry made “with an eye to all the circumstances of the proceedings.” Yeager, 129 S.Ct. at 2367 (internal quotation marks and citation omitted). In making this determination, the court may not consider the jury's failure to reach a verdict on some counts alleged in the indictment. See id. at 2367–68. The defendant bears the burden of demonstrating that “ ‘the issue whose relitigation he seeks to foreclose was actually decided in the first proceeding.’ ” United States v. Whitfield, 590 F.3d 325, 371 (5th Cir.2009) (quoting Dowling v. United States, 493 U.S. 342, 350, 110 S.Ct. 668, 107 L.Ed.2d 708 (1990)). Based on the above principles, the key to the collateral estoppel analysis is whether an acquittal in a prior trial necessarily determined a fact that the Government sought to prove in the second trial. As relevant to the instant case, collateral estoppel would bar El–Mezain's conviction of the § 2339B conspiracy if, when the jury acquitted him in the first trial of the count 11 IEEPA conspiracy and the other offenses, the jury necessarily decided a fact that was also a required element of the § 2339B conspiracy. See Brackett, 113 F.3d at 1398–99. Put another way, we must “determine whether the jury in the [first] trial rationally could have acquitted [El–Mezain] without determining in his favor the issues crucial to the [§ 2339B] charges.” United States v. Leach, 632 F.2d 1337, 1340 (5th Cir.1980). At the time of the indictment in this case, IEEPA provided: “Whoever willfully violates any license, order, or regulation issued under this chapter shall, upon conviction, be fined not more than $50,000, or, if a natural person, may be imprisoned for not more than ten years, or both; and any officer, director, or agent of any corporation who knowingly participates in such violation may be punished by a like fine, imprisonment, or both.” 50 U.S.C. § 1705(b) (emphasis added) (1996). For purposes of this case, a conviction of the IEEPA conspiracy turns on both willful and knowing conduct. The material support statute, however, does not contain the same willfulness element and requires only that the defendant's conduct be performed “knowingly.” See 18 U.S.C. § 2339B (“Whoever knowingly provides material support or resources to a foreign terrorist organization, or attempts or conspires to do so, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 15 years, or both.”). Focusing on the different levels of intent required under the above provisions, the district court held in this case that the two statutes required the establishment of different facts. It concluded therefore that El–Mezain's acquittal of the IEEPA conspiracy in count 11 did not bar a re-trial of the § 2339B conspiracy in count 1 because the two conspiracies are not functionally equivalent. The district court reasoned that the jury's acquittal did not necessarily establish a fact that was an element of the conspiracy at the second trial because the jury could have found that El–Mezain did not act “willfully” for purposes of count 11 (the acquitted count) but deadlocked on whether he acted “knowingly” for purposes of count 1 (the hung count). El–Mezain argues that the district court erred because the indictment and the Government's theory of prosecution at the first trial did not distinguish between the count 1 and the count 11 offenses, which he argues were identical in nature and relied upon the same factual predicate and overt acts. El–Mezain reasons that “all essential facts” of the count 1 conspiracy upon which the Government sought to re-try him were therefore decided against the Government because the acquittals on all the other counts necessarily established that he neither knew nor intended that donations by HLF to the zakat committees were for the benefit of Hamas. We disagree. At the first trial, the jury was instructed that a guilty verdict on the count 1 conspiracy required it to find the following: First: that two or more persons agreed to provide material support or resources to a foreign terrorist organization, in his case, Hamas; Second: that the defendant under consideration knowingly became a member of the conspiracy with the intent to further its unlawful purpose; Third: that one of the conspirators knowingly committed at least one overt act for the purpose of furthering the conspiracy charged in Count 1; Fourth: that the charged conspiracy existed on or after October 8, 1997, the date that Hamas was designated a Foreign Terrorist Organization, and that the defendant under consideration was a member of the conspiracy on or after that date; and Fifth: that this court has jurisdiction over the offense. (Emphasis added). The above elements are the “essential facts” that El–Mezain sought to foreclose from re-litigation in the second trial, and he must show that the jury's acquittal actually decided them in the first trial. See Whitfield, 590 F.3d at 371. A review of the record and the acquitted counts, however, shows that the jury did not necessarily resolve the above facts against the Government in reaching its verdict. The jury could have acquitted El–Mezain of the count 11 conspiracy by finding only an absence of willfulness, which is not one of the above essential facts for a conviction of the count 1 conspiracy. On the acquitted IEEPA conspiracy charged in count 11, the jury was instructed that to find El–Mezain guilty it had to find the following: First: that two or more persons agreed to violate Executive Order 12947 by contributing funds, goods, and services to, or for the benefit of, a Specially Designated Terrorist, namely, Hamas; Second: that the defendant under consideration knowingly and willfully became a member of the conspiracy with the intent to further its unlawful purpose; Third: that one or more of the conspirators knowingly committed at least one overt act for the purpose of furthering the conspiracy charged in Count 11; and Fourth: that the charged conspiracy existed on or after January 23, 1995—the date Hamas was designated a Specially Designated Terrorist—and that the defendant under consideration was a member of the conspiracy on or after that date. (Emphasis added). Although the jury's general verdict of acquittal “does not specify the facts ‘necessarily decided,’ ” Brackett, 113 F.3d at 1399, the record and the jury charge demonstrate that a rational jury could have based its verdict of acquittal on count 11 on a fact that was not an essential element of the count 1 conspiracy. See Yeager, 129 S.Ct. at 2367 (the court must decide “ ‘whether a rational jury could have grounded its verdict upon an issue other than that which the defendant seeks to foreclose from consideration’ ”) (quoting Ashe, 397 U.S. at 444, 90 S.Ct. 1189). The jury was instructed that “knowingly” means “that the act to which it refers was done voluntarily and intentionally, and not because of mistake or accident.” The district court further instructed the jury that “willfully” means “that the act to which it refers was committed voluntarily and purposely, with the specific intent to do something the law forbids; that is to say, with bad purpose either to disobey or disregard the law.” As part of their defense, the defendants seized on this concept of willfulness by positing that they did not believe it was illegal to support the zakat committees because the committees were never designated as terrorist organizations and they were never told the committees could not receive donations. On cross-examination of Levitt, the defense elicited testimony that a person wanting to know if an organization had been determined to be a SDT would consult the designation list compiled by the Secretary of the Treasury. The defense pointed out at trial that the zakat committees were not on the list. The defense also called as a witness a former congressman, whom HLF had hired purportedly to meet with the Treasury Department on its behalf in order to ensure that HLF's actions complied with the law. The defendants argued that the Government never told the congressman that it considered the zakat committees to be part of Hamas. As further evidence that the defendants had not acted willfully, the defendants pointed out intercepted telephone calls where Baker had said that he needed to see the designation list so that he would know to whom donations were prohibited. The defendants also emphasized this theme of non-willful conduct in closing argument. El–Mezain's counsel asked the jury to think about what HLF “did to make sure it was on the right side of the law.” He specifically argued to the jury that the defendants did not “provide aid to any designated organizations once the law was in effect” and that the Government “didn't tell them” not to deal with the zakat committees. We agree with the Government, therefore, that in light of El–Mezain's defense and how the jury was instructed, the jury could have rationally acquitted El–Mezain on count 11 because it thought he participated in an agreement to support Hamas but did not do so willfully because he was under the belief that donations to the zakat committees were not prohibited, and thus he did not act with the specific intent to willfully disregard the law. This means that the jury's acquittal on count 11 did not necessarily find the essential facts against the Government that comprise the elements of the § 2339B conspiracy in count 1, i.e., whether El–Mezain knowingly became a member of that conspiracy.39 See United States v. Sarabia, 661 F.3d 225, 231 (5th Cir.2011) (holding that retrial for possession of marijuana was not barred by acquittal of conspiracy “[g]iven the evidence presented at trial and the instructions the jury received” because the jury could have found that one element—the existence of an agreement—was not proved but still found that defendant “was the driver of the RV” containing the drugs); Whitfield, 590 F.3d at 372 (finding after review of jury charge and counsel's closing argument that issues sought to be foreclosed were not necessarily found in the first trial); see also Leach, 632 F.2d at 1341 (holding that, although collateral estoppel barred prosecution for receiving illegal campaign contributions following acquittal for “vote buying,” the “case would [have been] resolved differently” had the defendant “presented a defense that he thought the money he paid out was going for legitimate campaign expenditures rather than for vote buying”). Because the first jury could have rationally based its verdict on the count 11 conspiracy on an issue apart from the facts necessary for a determination of guilt on count 1, the retrial was not barred by collateral estoppel. See United States v. Lee, 622 F.2d 787, 790 (5th Cir.1980) (“The doctrine of collateral estoppel precludes the subsequent prosecution only if the jury could not rationally have based its verdict on an issue other than the one the defendant seeks to foreclose.”). Of course, it is possible that, as El–Mezain posits, the jury could have acquitted him of the count 11 conspiracy for other reasons, such as that El–Mezain did not intend to provide support for Hamas or that the entities to which HLF provided assistance were not controlled by Hamas. But the fact that it is possible that the jury could have based its verdict on any number of facts is insufficient to apply the collateral estoppel doctrine. See Sarabia, 661 F.3d at 231; Brackett, 113 F.3d at 1398–99; Lee, 622 F.2d at 790 (“When a fact is not necessarily determined in a former trial, the possibility that it may have been does not prevent re-examination of that issue.”) (internal quotation marks and citation omitted). El–Mezain argues that the above analysis improperly looks at the elements of the offenses as if this were a traditional double jeopardy issue instead of determining what facts were necessarily decided in the first trial. Contrary to El–Mezain's argument, examination of the different intent levels does not inject an improper elements analysis into the issue. Instead, it is consistent with Supreme Court precedent instructing that we decide whether the jury could have based its verdict on an issue other than the issues the defendant seeks to foreclose. See Yeager, 129 S.Ct. at 2367; Ashe, 397 U.S. at 444, 90 S.Ct. 1189; see also Sarabia, 661 F.3d at 230 (“In order to determine what the jury necessarily decided based upon the evidence presented, we must consider the elements of a drug-related conspiracy.”); Bolden v. Warden, W. Tenn. High Sec. Facility, 194 F.3d 579, 584 (5th Cir.1999) (“To determine the facts necessarily decided in [a defendant's] first trial under the first step of the collateral estoppel analysis, [a court] must examine the elements of the statutes under which [the defendant] was charged.”). In this case, we hold that because El–Mezain has not met his burden to show that the jury necessarily decided any of the issues related to the § 2339B conspiracy, including the “knowing” requirement of that statute, the retrial was not barred by collateral estoppel.40 El–Mezain further argues that even if the above analysis is correct, the district court gave a general instruction on conspiracy that incorporated proof of willfulness into all the conspiracy counts. The district court explained in the charge that “[b]efore I instruct you in detail on the specific elements of the crimes charged in the indictment, I first want to instruct you on general principles of conspiracy law.” The court then explained that one element of a conspiracy is “[t]hat the defendant under consideration knew the unlawful purpose of the agreement and joined in it willfully, that is with the intent to further the unlawful purpose.” We do not agree that the district court's reference to the general principles of conspiracy law incorporated a willfulness element into each conspiracy count. Although the court's first instruction gave the general principles of conspiracy law, its second instruction gave the specific definition to be applied to the elements of each of the charged conspiracies. As charged, the § 2339B conspiracy required only knowing conduct, while the IEEPA conspiracy required conduct that was both knowing and willful. The district court specifically instructed the jury to refer to the definitions of knowing and willful that it had previously given for those counts, and we presume that the jury followed those instructions. See Zafiro, 506 U.S. at 540, 113 S.Ct. 933. Furthermore, when the district court gives general instructions but then gives conflicting specific instructions, we have found, reading the charge as a whole, that the specific instructions adequately guide the jury. See, e.g., Jordan v. Watkins, 681 F.2d 1067, 1076 (5th Cir.1982) (“[A]ny prejudice that the general definition could have caused was eviscerated by the specific instruction that immediately followed.”). Finally, El–Mezain raises numerous arguments in his reply brief for why the district court's analysis of his collateral estoppel argument was erroneous, most notably that it improperly relied on the deadlocked count 1 to determine what the jury decided. It is true that consideration of hung counts has no place in the collateral estoppel analysis when determining what the jury necessarily decided at the first trial. See Yeager, 129 S.Ct. at 2368. But we need not rely on the deadlocked count 1, or any inconsistency between the jury's hanging on that count and its conviction on other counts, which Yeager forbids. See id. As already discussed, the defense, the jury charge, and the closing argument, along with the acquittal in count 11, show that the jury's verdict on the acquitted count in the first trial could have been based solely on an issue that was not an element of the re-tried count. This is consistent with Yeager.41 Id. at 2367. Most of El–Mezain's arguments overlook the fact that it is his burden to establish that the issue he seeks to foreclose was actually decided at the first trial. Dowling, 493 U.S. at 350, 110 S.Ct. 668; Brackett, 113 F.3d at 1398. Because we conclude that he has not met that burden, we reject El–Mezain's collateral estoppel argument. 2. Collateral estoppel and the exclusion of evidence El–Mezain next argues that the district court erroneously admitted evidence that related to the counts on which he was acquitted at the first trial and also failed to give a limiting instruction. El–Mezain reasons that the § 2339B conspiracy charged in count 1 allegedly began in 1997, whereas the IEEPA conspiracy charged in count 11 began in January 1995 when Hamas was designated as a SDT. According to El–Mezain, because the jury acquitted him on count 11 but failed to reach a verdict on count 1, he could not have been a member of any conspiracy prior to 1997 because the acquittal absolved him of the only conspiracy that could have existed up to that time. Furthermore, the IEEPA conspiracy was alleged to have run until the time of the indictment in 2004. El–Mezain argues, therefore, that collateral estoppel should have precluded evidence against him that concerned actions before 1997, as well as any other evidence relevant to the IEEPA counts. The challenged evidence at issue included El–Mezain's intercepted telephone calls, videotapes in which he appeared, documentation of his personal financial transactions, and the Elbarasse and Ashqar documents. “Even when a subsequent prosecution is not completely barred, this court has held that collateral estoppel may bar the admission or argumentation of facts necessarily decided in the first trial.” Brackett, 113 F.3d at 1400. Because, as discussed above in the previous section, the IEEPA conspiracy charged in count 11 required the Government to prove that El–Mezain acted both knowingly and willfully, the jury could have acquitted solely on the willfulness element without necessarily determining that El–Mezain was not a member of a conspiratorial agreement prior to 1997. Thus, evidence of facts related to El–Mezain's participation in an agreement to support Hamas was not precluded by collateral estoppel because the jury did not necessarily determine those facts against the Government in the first trial. Furthermore, collateral estoppel does not bar the introduction of “evidence of an alleged criminal act, notwithstanding the fact that the defendant previously has been acquitted of the substantive offense, to prove participation in a conspiracy to commit the substantive offense.” Id. This is because “[o]vert acts in furtherance of a conspiracy need not be criminal; therefore, acquittal for the substantive offense does not bar admission of the same evidence in a subsequent conspiracy trial.” Id.; United States v. Garza, 754 F.2d 1202, 1209–10 (5th Cir.1985). In Brackett, we held that the Government was able to introduce evidence of the defendant's possession of marijuana, for which he had been acquitted, as part of the prosecution for conspiracy. Brackett, 113 F.3d at 1400–01. We reasoned that the evidence of possession was not barred because it was relevant to establish the defendant's voluntary participation in the conspiracy, but it was not required to prove the essential elements of the conspiracy offense. Id. at 1401. The same is true here with respect to the substantive counts. Even though the jury acquitted El–Mezain of being in the IEEPA conspiracy charged in count 11 that began in 1995, and of substantive counts related to both the count 1 and count 11 conspiracies, evidence of substantive acts in furtherance of those conspiracies, including acts from 1995 to 1997 (or earlier), was still relevant to whether he joined in the count 1 conspiracy beginning in 1997. That evidence was not necessarily required as an essential element of the count 1 conspiracy. See id. at 1400 (“ ‘Merely because appellants were acquitted of the substantive ․ charges does not mean that the facts upon which the charges were based cannot later be used as non-criminal overt acts in furtherance of the conspiracy to commit the substantive offenses.’ ”) (citation omitted). The count 1 conspiracy also listed overt acts different from the specific transactions making up the substantive counts of the indictment. Therefore, evidence concerning substantive acts on which El–Mezain was acquitted was not barred by collateral estoppel as long as it was otherwise admissible. See Dowling, 493 U.S. at 348, 110 S.Ct. 668 (declining to extend collateral estoppel “to exclude in all circumstances ․ relevant and probative evidence that is otherwise admissible under the Rules of Evidence simply because it relates to alleged criminal conduct for which a defendant has been acquitted”). El–Mezain does not argue that the challenged evidence was not relevant or probative; he argues only that it was inadmissible because it predated or coincided with the time frame of the conspiracy for which he was acquitted. This argument fails to establish that collateral estoppel barred the evidence. L. Mistrial and double jeopardy The defendants next claim that the district court erroneously denied their motion to dismiss the instant prosecution on double jeopardy grounds because there was no manifest necessity for a mistrial in the first case. The defendants reason that the Government induced the mistrial through prosecutorial misconduct by improperly submitting non-admitted exhibits to the first jury. We hold that the record shows that all defendants validly agreed to the mistrial and that there has been no showing that the Government engaged in intentional misconduct either to induce the defendants' consent to the mistrial or to avoid an acquittal that it believed was likely. Our review of the denial of a double jeopardy claim following declaration of a mistrial is plenary. United States v. Campbell, 544 F.3d 577, 581 (5th Cir.2008). “We review all factual findings underpinning the district court's determination for clear error.” Id. Although the Double Jeopardy Clause prohibits a second prosecution following an acquittal, a “ ‘retrial is not automatically barred when a criminal proceeding is terminated without finally resolving the merits of the charges against the accused.’ ” Id. at 580 (quoting Arizona v. Washington, 434 U.S. 497, 503, 98 S.Ct. 824, 54 L.Ed.2d 717 (1978)). The Double Jeopardy Clause will not preclude a defendant from being retried after the district court declares a mistrial over defense objection if the mistrial was justified by a “manifest necessity.” Id. at 580–81; United States v. Palmer, 122 F.3d 215, 218 (5th Cir.1997). If a defendant consents to a mistrial, however, the “manifest necessity” standard is inapplicable and double jeopardy ordinarily will not bar a reprosecution. See Oregon v. Kennedy, 456 U.S. 667, 672, 102 S.Ct. 2083, 72 L.Ed.2d 416 (1982); Palmer, 122 F.3d at 218. The defendant's consent to a mistrial may be express or implied through a failure to object. Palmer, 122 F.3d at 218. “If a defendant does not timely and explicitly object to a trial court's sua sponte declaration of mistrial, that defendant will be held to have impliedly consented to the mistrial and may be retried in a later proceeding.” Id. The determination of whether a defendant objected to a mistrial is made on a case-by-case basis, and the critical factor is whether a defendant's objection gave the court sufficient notice and opportunity to resolve the defendant's concern. United States v. Fisher, 624 F.3d 713, 717 (5th Cir.2010). In the instant case, the record shows that all defense counsel consented to the mistrial either expressly or impliedly. The jury in the first trial of this case clearly struggled to come to a decision. The jurors had deliberated for nineteen days and had been given an Allen charge by the district court when they indicated that they had reached a partial verdict. The jury acquitted defendant Abdulqader on all counts; acquitted defendant Odeh on all counts except for three conspiracy charges, on which it failed to reach a verdict; acquitted El–Mezain on all counts except for the count 1 conspiracy, on which the jury also hung; and failed to reach a verdict for the other defendants. The district court polled the jury on the court's own motion, and three jurors indicated that they did not agree with the verdict. After being sent back to continue deliberating, the jury indicated that further deliberations would not be helpful. Faced with a partial verdict acquitting some defendants on some counts and one defendant on all counts, and hoping to preserve the acquittals, defense counsel for Abdulqader and El–Mezain requested that the district court poll the jurors a second time to discern whether the jury's disagreement was over the acquitted counts or only the undecided counts. The district court agreed to poll the jurors again about the individual defendants for whom partial verdicts had been reached. The district judge indicated that he intended to declare a mistrial as to the defendants for whom no verdict had been reached, and counsel for Defendants Baker and Elashi expressly agreed to the district court's procedure. On re-polling of the jury, one juror again indicated that he did not agree with the verdict of acquittal as to Abdulqader, and two jurors stated that they did not agree with the acquittal of Odeh. All jurors agreed with the verdict of acquittal of El–Mezain except for count 1. The district court declared a mistrial on all counts for the defendants for whom the jury was unable to return a valid verdict, i.e., HLF, Baker, Elashi, Abdulqader, and Odeh. As to El–Mezain, the court declared a mistrial as to count 1 but accepted the acquittal as to all other counts. The court stated that the Government had the option of bringing the case again on the mistried counts. No one lodged any objection. We think it clear from the above circumstances that all defendants consented to the district court's action. The defendants argue that counsel for Abdulqader did not consent to a mistrial because she “suggested an alternative course” after the first jury poll. But the alternative course was the request for a second poll, which the district court granted. The court declared a mistrial when the jury indicated its continued disagreement with the verdict, and counsel for Abdulqader said nothing more. Because there was no objection, and several defense counsel had already stated their agreement to the mistrial, the consent of all counsel was either express or implied by their silence. See Palmer, 122 F.3d at 218–19; see also United States v. Nichols, 977 F.2d 972, 974 (5th Cir.1992) (consent to a mistrial may be implied from the totality of circumstances surrounding the declaration of the mistrial). The district court so found, and we see no clear error in that finding. The defendants contend, nevertheless, that even if they consented to the mistrial, the consent was invalid because it was induced by Government misconduct, which they contend was the only reason the mistrial occurred.42 In order to resolve this issue, some additional facts are necessary. When the case was submitted to the jury at the first trial, the Government, unbeknownst to the defendants, included demonstrative and non-admitted exhibits along with the evidence that was sent to the jury room. This unintended submission included nineteen exhibits comprised of approximately 100 pages and three videotapes. During the course of deliberations, the jury sent out a note asking about the demonstrative exhibits. Unaware that the jury had been inadvertently given demonstrative exhibits, the district court instructed that all the exhibits that were in evidence were in the jury room.43 The defense learned of the error only prior to the second trial while interviewing jurors from the first trial. Upon discovering this error, the defense moved to dismiss the superseding indictment on double jeopardy grounds. They submitted an affidavit from the first jury's foreperson indicating that there had been disagreement among the jurors about the demonstrative exhibits and whether the exhibits could be considered. The defendants argued that had the Government not given those exhibits to the jury, the jury likely would have acquitted them. They also argued that the Government acted intentionally to avoid an acquittal, and that the prosecutors had misrepresented to the court and counsel that it had not sent improper evidence to the jury. The district court denied the motion, and the defendants renew their arguments on appeal. A retrial caused by prosecutorial misconduct may violate double jeopardy only if “the governmental conduct in question [was] intended to ‘goad’ the defendant into moving for a mistrial․” Kennedy, 456 U.S. at 676, 102 S.Ct. 2083. Gross negligence by the prosecutor, or even intentional conduct that seriously prejudices the defense, is insufficient to apply the double jeopardy bar. United States v. Wharton, 320 F.3d 526, 531–32 (5th Cir.2003); United States v. Singleterry, 683 F.2d 122, 123 & n. 1 (5th Cir.1982). Instead, there must be “ ‘intent on the part of the prosecutor to subvert the protections afforded by the Double Jeopardy Clause.’ ” Wharton, 320 F.3d at 531–32 (emphasis removed) (quoting Kennedy, 456 U.S. at 675–76, 102 S.Ct. 2083); see also Martinez v. Caldwell, 644 F.3d 238, 243 (5th Cir.2011) (“A prosecutor ․ must specifically act in ‘bad faith’ or must intend to goad the defendant ‘into requesting a mistrial or to prejudice the defendant's prospects for an acquittal.’ ”) (citation omitted). Under this narrow standard, the court must examine the “objective facts and circumstances” to determine the prosecutor's intent. Kennedy, 456 U.S. at 675, 102 S.Ct. 2083. The defendants contend that the Government's intent to induce the mistrial is evident from the prosecution's silence in the face of the jury's note asking about demonstrative exhibits. They posit that the Government was put on notice that there was a problem with the evidence in the jury room but assured defense counsel that it had not sent improper exhibits to the jury room. They contend that had the Government informed the court and counsel that it had improperly provided non-admitted exhibits to the jury, the court could have removed those exhibits and given a curative instruction. We are not persuaded. The defendants do not point to any evidence in the record showing that the Government affirmatively knew at the time of the juror's note that improper exhibits had been submitted. As the district court held, it is just as likely that the Government believed it had not submitted anything improper to the jury. Nor do we think that the prosecutor's silence in the face of the jury's note proves the Government's bad intent. As the district court observed, the same note failed to cause the court or any of the eight defense counsel to register a concern on the record. We may not disturb the district court's factual finding that the prosecution did not deliberately submit the non-admitted exhibits to the jury unless that finding was clearly erroneous. See Singleterry, 683 F.2d at 124–25. The exhibits that were properly admitted in this case were extensive, comprising thousands of pages of material in a complicated trial lasting several weeks. It is entirely plausible that the Government could have mistakenly or negligently, rather than intentionally, included 100 pages of non-admitted and demonstrative exhibits in the voluminous matter and then failed to discover the fact. See id. at 123 n. 1 (holding that even “ ‘gross negligence’ is clearly not enough to bar retrial”); United States v. Barcelona, 814 F.2d 165, 168 (5th Cir.1987) (holding that district court did not clearly err by finding prosecutor's failure to disclose information about evidence, resulting in mistrial, was due to inadvertence). The district court's finding was not clearly erroneous. The defendants contend that other circumstances, combined with the juror's note, further demonstrated the bad faith of the prosecution. An individual juror sent a note asking to be removed from the jury. When questioned by the district court, he expressed frustration with the deliberations and also made vague references to the evidence.44 The defendants argue that the Government must have known from the juror's comments that some jury members believed they had demonstrative exhibits, and also that there was a bloc of jurors who favored acquittal. They contend that the Government therefore knew that an acquittal was likely. We disagree. The defendants have to show that the Government acted improperly with the purpose and intent of causing the defense to agree to a mistrial. See Kennedy, 456 U.S. at 676, 102 S.Ct. 2083; see also United States v. Catton, 130 F.3d 805, 807 (7th Cir.1997) (holding that “a defendant who wants ․ to block a retrial on the basis of prosecutorial error must show that the prosecutor committed the error because he thought that otherwise the jury would acquit and he would therefore be barred from retrying the defendant”). At the time the Government submitted the case to the jury along with the improper evidence, it could not have known that there would be an acquittal, and the defendants present no such argument. Instead, they rely on the Government's silence after deliberations began and a juror asked to be dismissed. But that argument is premised on the unsupported belief that the Government knew the improper exhibits had been sent to the jury room. Even if we assume that the jury's notes and comments should have prompted the Government to investigate the matter further, its failure to do so was at most negligent. See Singleterry, 683 F.2d at 123 & n. 1. There is no evidence that the Government knew that the jury had improper exhibits in its possession, and speculation about the prosecutor's knowledge and intent will not support a double jeopardy argument. See Nichols, 977 F.2d at 975 (“Because there is no evidence that the prosecutor intended to terminate the first trial, there is no double jeopardy bar to Nichols' retrial.”); see also United States v. Doyle, 121 F.3d 1078, 1087 (7th Cir.1997) (holding that defendant's belief about the prosecution's intent was, “at best, mere conjecture and speculation” because “[t]here is simply no record evidence that unearths the inner-thoughts of the prosecutors”). Moreover, the dismissed juror's comments, read as a whole, do not unequivocally show that the Government must have known an acquittal was likely and that the only way to avoid that result was to remain silent about submitting the demonstrative exhibits to the jury. During its questioning of the juror, the district court expressed concern about substituting an alternate juror, thereby requiring the jury to begin deliberations anew. The dismissed juror indicated his belief that the deliberations had not progressed very far. He also indicated that opinions, including his own, were subject to change. When read as a whole, the juror's comments do not show that the prosecution necessarily must have apprehended an acquittal. The district court's conclusion that the comments showed, at most, a hung jury and conflict among the jurors was not clearly erroneous. The defendants' double jeopardy argument is based on speculation rather than objective facts showing that the Government deliberately acted to provoke a mistrial with the goal of avoiding an acquittal. We therefore affirm the district court's denial of the motion to dismiss. M. Challenge to FISA applications and intercepts As noted above, the Government conducted widespread surveillance of the defendants that was authorized by court orders issued pursuant to FISA, 50 U.S.C. § 1801 et seq. At trial, the prosecution relied on recorded evidence captured during the surveillance. The Government's FISA applications, affidavits related to the warrant applications, the court orders regarding the applications, and much of the information obtained from the surveillance have been classified.45 The defendants raise two challenges relating to FISA, arguing that the district court erred by (1) refusing to compel the production of the FISA warrant applications and court orders, and (2) refusing to suppress the FISA intercepts. We find no merit in either argument. 1. Disclosure of FISA applications and orders FISA establishes procedures for the Government, acting through the Attorney General, to obtain a judicial warrant for electronic surveillance in the United States “to acquire foreign intelligence information.” 50 U.S.C. § 1802(a)(1). Foreign intelligence information includes, inter alia, information relating to “the ability of the United States to protect against ․ sabotage, international terrorism, or ․ clandestine intelligence activities by ․ a foreign power or by an agent of a foreign power [.]”46 § 1801(e). With limited exceptions not relevant here, the Government may not conduct electronic surveillance without a court-authorized warrant. Application for a FISA warrant is made ex parte to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (“FISC”), which is currently comprised of eleven district court judges designated by the Chief Justice of the United States.47 § 1803(a)(1). The FISC's rulings are subject to review by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review (“FISCR”), which consists of three judges also designated by the Chief Justice. § 1803(b). To obtain FISC approval for surveillance, the Government must show, inter alia, probable cause to believe that “the target of the electronic surveillance is a foreign power or an agent of a foreign power” and that the place of surveillance “is being used, or is about to be used, by a foreign power or an agent of a foreign power.” § 1805(a)(2)(A), (B). This probable cause standard is different from the standard in the typical criminal case because, rather than focusing on probable cause to believe that a person has committed a crime, the FISA standard focuses on the status of the target as a foreign power or an agent of a foreign power. A “foreign power” includes “a group engaged in international terrorism or activities in preparation therefor.”48 § 1801(a)(4); see also United States v. Marzook, 435 F.Supp.2d 778, 780 (N.D.Ill.2006) (noting that Hamas is a foreign power). An “agent of a foreign power” includes any person who “knowingly aids or abets any person” engaged in specified activity, including intelligence gathering, sabotage, or international terrorism.49 § 1801(b)(2)(E). When the Government intends to use information obtained from electronic surveillance authorized under FISA, it must give notice to the person against whom it intends to use that information and to the court where the information will be used. § 1806(c). The aggrieved person50 may seek discovery of the “applications or orders or other materials relating to electronic surveillance,” and he may also seek to suppress evidence obtained from the surveillance if “the information was unlawfully acquired” or if “the surveillance was not made in conformity with an order of authorization or approval.” § 1806(e), (f). If, however, “the Attorney General files an affidavit under oath that disclosure or an adversary hearing would harm the national security of the United States,” the district court must “review in camera and ex parte the application, order, and such other materials relating to the surveillance as may be necessary to determine whether the surveillance of the aggrieved person was lawfully authorized and conducted.” § 1806(f). In the instant case, the Government gave the defendants notice that it intended to use at trial information obtained from surveillance approved under FISA. During the course of discovery in the first trial, the Government inadvertently disclosed some of the FISA materials to the defendants. The district court, upon motion by the Government, ordered the defendants to return the non-discoverable material to the prosecution. The defendants subsequently moved to compel production of the FISA applications and to suppress the evidence obtained from the surveillance, and the Attorney General filed the requisite national security notice to maintain the confidentiality of the FISA materials. The district court refused to order disclosure and denied the suppression motion after conducting an in camera and ex parte review of the documents. Prior to the second trial, the defendants renewed their request for disclosure, which was denied. On appeal, the defendants argue that the district court erred by denying their motion for production of the FISA materials. They contend that, pursuant to the FISA statute and due process, disclosure and the participation of defense counsel were necessary in order for the district court to make an accurate determination of the lawfulness of the surveillance. The defendants specifically contest whether the FISA warrant applications established probable cause to believe that the targets of the investigation were “agents of a foreign power.” They assert their belief that the applications did not meet the probable cause standard because of material misstatements and omissions in the applications. We review for an abuse of discretion the district court's order denying disclosure of applications and other materials related to FISA surveillance. See United States v. Damrah, 412 F.3d 618, 624 (6th Cir.2005). In the course of an in camera review of FISA materials, the district court has discretion to disclose the information to the aggrieved person but “only where such disclosure is necessary to make an accurate determination of the legality of the surveillance.” 50 U.S.C. § 1806(f) (emphasis added). When the district court “determines that the surveillance was lawfully authorized and conducted, it shall deny the motion of the aggrieved person except to the extent that due process requires discovery or disclosure.” § 1806(g). In a very well-reasoned opinion, the district court here closely considered the defendants' arguments for disclosure and determined that it was capable of reviewing the lawfulness of the FISA surveillance without assistance from defense counsel. The court concluded after an extensive in camera review that the FISA surveillance was lawful. The court reasoned as follows: After thoroughly reviewing each of the FISA applications at issue in this prosecution, accompanying affidavits, the FISC's orders and additional materials submitted by the government, the court finds that it does not need the assistance of defense counsel to make an accurate determination of the legality of the surveillance. This conclusion is not unusual among courts that have faced this situation; indeed, the parties agree that no court has ever ordered that FISA materials be disclosed or that an adversarial hearing be conducted to assist the court in determining the legality of FISA surveillance․ Although the defendants argue fervently that this is a unique case because the government made widespread intentional and reckless misrepresentations to obtain FISA warrants from the FISC, ․ evidence from the government has shown that the alleged irregularities have been greatly exaggerated by the defendants [.] ․ The errors in the FISA applications identified by the defendants and documented by the government are not pervasive; nor did the errors materially alter the evidence supporting the FISA warrants involving the defendants․ The court reviewed each of the identified errors and found them to be typographical or clerical in nature. Although the government should have exercised greater care in drafting and editing its applications for FISA warrants before presenting those applications to the FISC, the government acknowledged the errors it made and provided corrected information to the FISC more than six years ago when it discovered the errors․ In addition, the FBI conducted an internal investigation of the special agent whom the defendants allege “was guilty of numerous and repeated falsehoods and inaccuracies in the FISA applications in this case,” ․ and found that allegations of “investigative dereliction” were meritless[.] ․ The court reaches the same conclusion. Because the errors identified by the defendants did not materially alter the evidence outlined in the FISA applications and because the errors were not pervasive enough to confuse the court as to the quantity or quality of the evidence described in the applications, the court does not believe that disclosing the applications and related materials to defense counsel would assist the court in making an accurate determination of the legality of the surveillance. Consequently, it would be inappropriate for the court to provide defense counsel with access to the documents under the terms of 50 U.S.C. § 1806(f). We have undertaken our own independent in camera review of the FISA materials and conclude that the district court was correct. We agree fully with the district court's reasoning and adopt it as our own. “[D]isclosure of FISA materials is the exception and ex parte, in camera determination is the rule.” United States v. Abu–Jihaad, 630 F.3d 102, 129 (2d Cir.2010) (internal quotation marks and citation omitted). We see no abuse of discretion by the district court's refusal to order disclosure of the FISA applications and other material pursuant to § 1806(f). Relying on the balancing test of Mathews v. Eldridge, 424 U.S. 319, 335, 96 S.Ct. 893, 47 L.Ed.2d 18 (1976), the defendants also argue that due process required disclosure because their interest in obtaining the FISA materials outweighed the Government's interest in maintaining its secrecy. Assuming without deciding that the Mathews balancing test is applicable here, but see Damrah, 412 F.3d at 624 (stating that defendant's “reliance on Mathews is misplaced ․ because FISA's requirement that the district court conduct an ex parte, in camera review of FISA materials does not deprive a defendant of due process”), we conclude that there was no due process violation. The Mathews balancing test requires the court to consider (1) the defendants' private interest in disclosure of the FISA materials; (2) the risk that defendants will be erroneously deprived of their right to the materials, and the value of additional or substitute procedural safeguards; and (3) the Government's interest in preventing disclosure. See Mathews, 424 U.S. at 335, 96 S.Ct. 893. The defendants argue that they have a substantial interest in an accurate determination of their claim that the Government's surveillance violated their rights, and that the district court's in camera review of the materials without counsel's input carried a high risk of an erroneous decision. We agree with the district court's assessment of this issue, however, that the in camera and ex parte review by the district court adequately ensured that the defendants' statutory and constitutional rights were not violated. See United States v. Belfield, 692 F.2d 141, 149 n. 38 (D.C.Cir.1982) (disclosure of FISA materials “will not be required when the task is such that in camera procedures will adequately safeguard the ‘aggrieved party's' constitutional rights”). Numerous courts have held that FISA's in camera and ex parte procedures are adequate and withstand constitutional scrutiny. See, e.g., Damrah, 412 F.3d at 624–25; United States v. Isa, 923 F.2d 1300, 1306–07 (8th Cir.1991); United States v. Ott, 827 F.2d 473, 476–77 (9th Cir.1987); Belfield, 692 F.2d at 148–49. Furthermore, we also agree with the district court that, as a matter of national security, the Government has a substantial interest in maintaining the secrecy of the materials. This interest extends not only to the contents of the materials but also to the appearance of confidentiality in the operation of the intelligence services. See, e.g., C.I.A. v. Sims, 471 U.S. 159, 175, 105 S.Ct. 1881, 85 L.Ed.2d 173 (1985) (“If potentially valuable intelligence sources come to think that the Agency will be unable to maintain the confidentiality of its relationship to them, many could well refuse to supply information to the Agency in the first place.”). We are unpersuaded by the defendants' argument that the Government's interest is diminished because defense counsel possess security clearance to review classified material. “Congress has a legitimate interest in authorizing the Attorney General to invoke procedures designed to ensure that sensitive security information is not unnecessarily disseminated to anyone not involved in the surveillance operation in question, whether or not she happens for unrelated reasons to enjoy security clearance.” Ott, 827 F.2d at 477. Furthermore, as noted by the district court, defense counsel do not possess the security clearance to review all of the FISA materials in this case, some of which is classified above counsel's clearance level. Our conclusion that the defendants' due process rights have not been violated is also buttressed by our own in camera consideration of the FISA materials. Based on that review, we are convinced that the district court properly weighed the respective interests of the defendants and the Government along with the sensitivity of the materials. We conclude, therefore, that due process did not require disclosure of the FISA materials, and that the district court properly denied the defendants' motion to compel disclosure. 2. Suppression of FISA intercepts The defendants further argue that the district court erroneously denied their motion to suppress the evidence obtained from the FISA surveillance. First, the defendants argue that the FISA surveillance was improper because the “primary purpose” of the intercepts was a criminal investigation rather than the gathering of foreign intelligence. Second, they contend that the Government failed to establish probable cause that the target of the FISA warrant was “a foreign power or an agent of a foreign power.” Finally, the defendants contend that the district court should have granted them an evidentiary hearing under Franks v. Delaware, 438 U.S. 154, 98 S.Ct. 2674, 57 L.Ed.2d 667 (1978), at which they could challenge the veracity of the information in the FISA warrant applications. We are unpersuaded by these arguments. We review de novo the district court's ruling on the propriety of orders from the FISA court. United States v. Dumeisi, 424 F.3d 566, 578 (7th Cir.2005). “In considering challenges to FISA Court orders, however, ‘the representations and certifications submitted in support of an application for FISA surveillance should be presumed valid’ by a reviewing court absent a showing sufficient to trigger a Franks hearing.” Abu–Jihaad, 630 F.3d at 130 (citation omitted). The defendants' argument that the surveillance was unlawful because the “primary purpose” was a criminal investigation rather than foreign intelligence is misplaced because the test that they advocate is inapplicable. The FISA surveillance in this case began approximately in 1994 and was therefore governed by the pre-amended version of FISA. “As originally enacted [in 1978], FISA required a high-ranking member of the executive branch to certify that ‘the purpose’ for which a warrant was being sought was to obtain ‘foreign intelligence information.’ ” Id. at 119 (quoting 50 U.S.C. § 1804(a)(7)(B) (Supp. V 1981)). Some courts interpreted this provision of FISA as requiring “that foreign intelligence information be ‘the primary objective of the surveillance.’ ” Id. (quoting United States v. Duggan, 743 F.2d 59, 77 (2d Cir.1984)); see also United States v. Johnson, 952 F.2d 565, 572 (1st Cir.1991) (“Although evidence obtained under FISA subsequently may be used in criminal prosecutions, ․ the investigation of criminal activity cannot be the primary purpose of the surveillance. The act is not to be used as an end-run around the Fourth Amendment's prohibition of warrantless searches.”) (citations omitted). Those courts reasoned that the “primary purpose” certification distinguished foreign intelligence gathering from ordinary criminal cases, where unlike FISA, the Fourth Amendment requires probable cause to believe a crime has been committed before the Government may invade individual privacy interests. See United States v. Truong Dinh Hung, 629 F.2d 908, 915 (4th Cir.1980). In 2001, Congress amended FISA when it passed the PATRIOT Act. See Pub.L. No. 107–56, 115 Stat. 271 (2001). Among other things, the amendments authorized FISA surveillance when the Government certifies that foreign intelligence gathering is “a significant purpose” rather than “the purpose.” Id. § 218, 115 Stat. at 291. By these amendments “Congress indicated that it did not, in fact, require foreign intelligence gathering to be the primary purpose of the requested surveillance to obtain a FISA warrant.” Abu–Jihaad, 630 F.3d at 119. The precise question at issue here, whether the pre-amended version of FISA required that the primary purpose of surveillance be gathering foreign intelligence rather than gathering information for a criminal investigation, has been thoroughly addressed by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review. See In re Sealed Case, 310 F.3d 717 (FISCR 2002). After an exhaustive analysis of the statutory text and legislative history, as well as circuit court opinions that had construed FISA to require a primary purpose test, the FISCR held in In re Sealed Case that there had never been a primary purpose requirement. Id. at 723–27. The court reasoned that, because the statute's definition of “foreign intelligence information” necessarily included evidence of crimes, such as espionage, sabotage, and terrorism, it was “virtually impossible to read the 1978 FISA to exclude from its purpose the prosecution of foreign intelligence crimes, most importantly because, as we have noted, the definition of an agent of a foreign power—if he or she is a U.S. person—is grounded on criminal conduct.” Id. at 723. As originally enacted, the court held, FISA had not “even contemplated that the FISA court would inquire into the government's purpose in seeking foreign intelligence information.” Id. The court therefore concluded that “the FISA as passed by Congress in 1978 clearly did not preclude or limit the government's use or proposed use of foreign intelligence information, which included evidence of certain kinds of criminal activity, in a criminal prosecution.” Id. at 727. In light of the above, the defendants' argument that the FISA surveillance was subject to suppression because its primary purpose was a criminal investigation, is unavailing. Like the district court, we need not, and do not, decide that the primary purpose of the surveillance here was a criminal investigation. Instead, we hold that the defendants' argument for application of a primary purpose test is incorrect. Similarly, we reject the defendants' argument that the FISA warrant applications did not establish the requisite probable cause in this case. Upon careful in camera review of the challenged FISA orders and applications, and the classified materials in support of the applications, we conclude that the Government demonstrated the requirements for probable cause, including the belief that the targets of the surveillance were agents of a foreign power and that the place of surveillance was being used, or was about to be used, by an agent of a foreign power. See 50 U.S.C. § 1804(a)(3). For the same reasons, the defendants have also failed to show a basis for a Franks hearing. A defendant, upon a proper preliminary showing, may obtain an evidentiary hearing to challenge the truthfulness of statements made in an affidavit supporting a warrant. Franks, 438 U.S. at 155–56, 98 S.Ct. 2674. A defendant is entitled to a Franks hearing if he shows “that (1) allegations in a supporting affidavit were deliberate falsehoods or made with a reckless disregard for the truth, and (2) the remaining portion of the affidavit is not sufficient to support a finding of probable cause.” United States v. Brown, 298 F.3d 392, 395 (5th Cir.2002). We find no basis to conclude that the statements relied upon by the defendants were made with reckless disregard for the truth. Nor do we find that the statements were necessary to the finding of probable cause. We agree with the district court's conclusion that probable cause was satisfied even absent the erroneous statements. We therefore affirm the district court's denial of the suppression motion. Next, we consider two sentencing issues. The defendants contend that (1) the district court erroneously calculated their offense levels under the Sentencing Guidelines by applying an enhancement under U.S.S.G. § 3A1.4 because their crimes involved terrorism, and (2) the district court erroneously calculated the value of funds involved in the money laundering offenses. We review the district court's interpretation and application of the Sentencing Guidelines de novo and its factual findings for clear error. United States v. Lige, 635 F.3d 668, 670 (5th Cir.2011). A factual finding will be upheld “if it is plausible in the light of the entire record.” United States v. Rubio, 629 F.3d 490, 492 (5th Cir.2010). 1. Terrorism adjustment The presentence report (“PSR”) for each of the individual defendants in this case applied a 12–level sentencing enhancement pursuant to § 3A1.4 of the 2002 version of the Sentencing Guidelines. Section 3A1.4 provides for an offense level enhancement and an automatic increase to criminal history category VI “[i]f the offense is a felony that involved, or was intended to promote, a federal crime of terrorism.” § 3A1.4(a). The application notes cross-reference 18 U.S.C. § 2332b(g)(5) for the definition of a “federal crime of terrorism.” Id., cmt. (n.1). A “federal crime of terrorism” is defined as an offense that “(A) is calculated to influence or affect the conduct of government by intimidation or coercion, or to retaliate against government conduct;” and “(B) is a violation of [any of a list of specific statutes].” § 2332b(g)(5). On appeal, the defendants do not contest that they were convicted of offenses for which the enhancement is applicable, as required by the second prong of the definition of a federal crime of terrorism. The defendants challenge only the application of the first prong of the definition, which requires that their offenses were “calculated to influence or affect the conduct of government by intimidation or coercion.” They argue that there was no evidence that they acted with the requisite intent. The probation department applied the terrorism enhancement in the PSRs because “HLF was involved in sending material support to a SDT in order to rid Palestine of the Jewish people through violent jihad, HAMAS' mission. Since the offense is a felony that was intended to promote a federal crime of terrorism 12 levels are applied.” The defendants objected in the district court that the enhancement did not apply because the Government failed to prove that they acted with the intent to influence or affect the conduct of government. In overruling the objection, the district court found that the evidence established that HLF's purpose was to support Hamas as a fundraising arm, and that videotapes, wiretaps, and seized documents interlinked the defendants, HLF, and Hamas, and demonstrated the defendants' support of Hamas's mission of terrorism. We conclude that the district court did not clearly err. See United States v. Harris, 434 F.3d 767, 772–73 (5th Cir.2005) (reviewing the “influencing government” prong of § 3A1.4 for clear error). As pointed out by the Government, the trial was replete with evidence to satisfy application of the terrorism enhancement because of the defendants' intent to support Hamas. The Hamas charter clearly delineated the goal of meeting the Palestinian/Israeli conflict with violent jihad and the rejection of peace efforts and compromise solutions. The defendants knew that they were supporting Hamas, as there was voluminous evidence showing their close ties to the Hamas movement. The evidence of statements made by the defendants at the Philadelphia meeting and in wire intercepts throughout the course of the investigation demonstrated the defendants' support for Hamas's goal of disrupting the Oslo accords and the peace process, as well as their agreement with Hamas's goals of fighting Israel. To the extent that the defendants knowingly assisted Hamas, their actions benefitted Hamas's terrorist goals and were calculated to promote a terrorist crime that influenced government. See United States v. Jayyousi, 657 F.3d 1085, 1114–15 (11th Cir.2011) (holding that terrorism enhancement under § 3A1.4 applies when purpose of defendants' activity is calculated to promote a terrorism crime regardless of defendants' personal motivations); United States v. Awan, 607 F.3d 306, 316–18 (2d Cir.2010) (holding that for § 3A1.4 enhancement the Government need not show that the defendant was personally motivated to influence government if it shows that he intended to promote a crime calculated to have such an effect). The defendants' reliance on United States v. Chandia, 514 F.3d 365, 375–76 (4th Cir.2008), in support of their argument against the terrorism enhancement is unavailing. In that case, the Fourth Circuit reversed a § 3A1.4 enhancement for a defendant convicted of providing material support to a terrorist organization because the PSR provided no explanation for the adjustment, the district court made no factual findings to justify its application, and the acts underlying the conviction were not violent terrorist acts. See id. In the instant case, although the defendants were not convicted of underlying terrorist acts, the PSRs adequately explained the basis for the enhancement and the district court made explicit factual findings. In light of the evidence showing the ties between the defendants and Hamas and their support of Hamas through HLF, the district court's finding that the defendants intended to influence government through their actions was plausible and not clearly erroneous. 2. Value of laundered funds The individual defendants' PSRs calculated the total amount of the funds laundered from the money laundering offenses to be approximately $16.6 million. The defendants argue on appeal that this determination was incorrect because that amount “represents every penny HLF wired out of the country between 1995 and 2001, regardless of the destination and purpose.” The defendants assert that some portion of the funds was sent to places other than the West Bank and Gaza and served legitimate charitable needs. According to the defendants, the amount of funds laundered should have included, at most, funds sent only to the West Bank and Gaza and the zakat committees that were alleged in the indictment as being controlled by Hamas. We find no merit in this argument. First, in their one-paragraph discussion, the defendants cite no authority and do not explain how the allegedly erroneous calculation of the laundered funds affected their guidelines ranges or sentences. The issue is therefore deemed abandoned due to inadequate briefing. See United States v. Reagan, 596 F.3d 251, 254–55 (5th Cir.2010) (failure to offer further argument or explanation is a failure to brief and constitutes a waiver). Second, even if we consider the issue, it is clear from the PSRs that the amount of laundered funds was not used to calculate the defendants' offense levels and did not factor into the guidelines computations. The guideline for money laundering directs the probation office to apply the base offense level for the underlying offense. See U.S.S.G. § 2S1.1(a)(1). As so directed, the PSRs in this case applied the offense level for the offense of providing material support to a foreign terrorist organization under § 2M5.3. The PSRs made no adjustments to the offense level based on the amount of money laundered. The probation officer noted in response to the defendants' objection in the district court that the only impact that a specific dollar amount of laundered funds could have is on the maximum guideline fine range. However, any potential error is harmless because the district court did not impose a fine on any of the defendants.51 See, e.g., United States v. Johnson, 467 F.3d 559, 564 (6th Cir.2006) (holding that an error is harmless if the Government shows with certainty that an error at sentencing did not cause the defendant to receive a more severe sentence). Finally, the PSR determined that HLF's provision of some funds to legitimate charitable organizations helped to hide its true agenda of supporting Hamas. The district court agreed with the PSR that even if some of the money sent out of the country was for some legitimate purpose, the sole purpose of HLF was to provide financial support for Hamas, and therefore the entire amount was properly included as laundered funds. The district court was entitled to rely on the PSR, see United States v. Rodriguez, 602 F.3d 346, 363 (5th Cir.2010) (holding that the district court may rely on the PSR where it is contradicted only by the defendant's objections), and its finding was not clearly erroneous. The defendants' challenge to their sentences is therefore rejected. O. Appeals of HLF and Nancy Hollander We next address the separate appeals of HLF and Nancy Hollander. HLF contends that its Sixth Amendment right to counsel was violated because it was convicted without representation at trial. Hollander contends that the district court, in deciding issues related to HLF's representation, improperly sanctioned her for professional misconduct. Because the issues in each appeal derive from a common factual background, we first set forth additional facts necessary for our decision before turning to each argument. As we explain, we dismiss both appeals because we conclude that we lack appellate jurisdiction. As noted above, the case against HLF began with an indictment of all defendants in July 2004. On September 7, 2004, Attorney Nancy Hollander, of the law firm Freedman Boyd Daniels Hollander Goldberg & Cline, P.A. (“Freedman Boyd”),52 wrote a letter to OFAC, inquiring whether Freedman Boyd could represent HLF pro bono in the criminal case. In the letter, Hollander stated, “A corporation cannot appear pro se; it must appear only through counsel. HLF clearly has a Sixth Amendment right to counsel; therefore, any conviction against it, including any forfeiture of the frozen funds, will likely be reversed if it is forced to trial without counsel.” (Citations omitted). Hollander sent copies of the letter to the district court, government counsel, and defense counsel. OFAC responded that Freedman Boyd was authorized to represent HLF pro bono, but that no blocked funds could be used to pay for the representation. Freedman Boyd agreed to represent HLF pro bono and entered an appearance on HLF's behalf. Freedman Boyd also filed an entry of appearance on behalf of individual Defendant Baker in September 2004. At a July 2006 status conference, the district court and the parties discussed the potential conflict of interest arising from Freedman Boyd's joint representation of HLF and Baker. Hollander stated that she would obtain conflict waivers from both parties. She also stated, “The other possibility is that we will stop representing [HLF] and it simply won't have a representative in this lawsuit. But I think we can resolve this.” On September 29, 2006, Freedman Boyd filed with the court Baker's and HLF's written waivers of any potential or actual conflict of interest. Defendant Elashi, who was the HLF Board Chairman, signed the conflict waiver on behalf of HLF. The issue of Freedman Boyd's conflict of interest was brought up again just before the start of the first trial. At a hearing on July 13, 2007, Teresa Duncan, another attorney at Freedman Boyd, stated that she represented both Baker and HLF. The district court became concerned about the potential conflict of interest and asked whether, pursuant to Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 44, the defendants understood the risks to joint representation. Duncan replied that Baker and HLF had signed conflict waivers and that she was satisfied that the defendants understood the hazards involved in joint representation. On July 17, 2007, the second day of voir dire, the issue of Freedman Boyd's conflict of interest arose yet again. The Government noted that the court had not yet conducted a Rule 44 oral colloquy with the defendants regarding their waiver of a conflict. District Judge Fish agreed that he should examine each of the defendants pursuant to Rule 44, but he noted that he was not sure whether HLF had a “natural person representative” able to speak on HLF's behalf. The Government told the court that Elashi had signed the conflict waiver, but the Government also noted that this waiver might not be valid because Elashi is also a defendant in the case. Elashi's counsel, John Cline, asked the court for a night to think about the matter, and the court agreed to discuss the issue the following morning. The next day, Cline told the court that “we don't know either of the current status of [HLF], whether it exists even as an entity or Mr. Elashi's status, if it does exist.” Therefore, Cline stated that Elashi “cannot speak for the Holy Land Foundation” regarding a waiver of conflict. The court responded, “I thought we had [HLF] as a represented defendant in this case; that is, represented by counsel. But I'm inferring from what has been said that there is no natural person as the representative of [HLF] who would be the client for the attorney who's representing [HLF].” The court then stated that it would consider the issue further. On July 20, 2007, the fifth day of voir dire, the court again addressed the issue of Freedman Boyd's representation of HLF. Hollander stated that “if there is no one here to represent Holy Land[, and] since we don't know exactly what its status is[,] [Freedman Boyd] can't represent Holy Land.” Hollander explained that Freedman Boyd shared the Government's concern about the validity of the HLF conflict waiver and that there was no HLF representative to answer the court's questions during a Rule 44 colloquy. Therefore, she concluded that Freedman Boyd “can't represent Holy Land under those circumstances.” The Government responded that “[w]ith regard to Holy Land Foundation, I don't know what we do. Maybe remain unrepresented for the trial.” Hollander then stated that Freedman Boyd “will withdraw from representing Holy Land at this time. Ms. Duncan and I will continue to represent Mr. Baker.” The Government did not object to Freedman Boyd's withdrawal, and the court implicitly accepted Hollander's withdrawal. The court moved on to discussing how to introduce the various defense attorneys to the jury and stated, “So I guess on Holy Land, I can simply say that it is unrepresented.” The trial proceeded with HLF being unrepresented by counsel, and the trial ended in a mistrial. On September 22, 2008, the first day of the second trial before District Judge Solis, the issue of HLF's representation arose again. The Government told the court “that the Holy Land Foundation Corporation is a Defendant and that there will be evidence in that regard.” The Government went on to state that HLF “has no employees and no officers and so there is no one to represent it, but it is an essential part of this lawsuit because of the forfeiture provisions and the funds that are being held subject to being forfeited.” Judge Solis entered a plea of not guilty on behalf of HLF. During the second trial, no counsel for HLF made an opening statement, examined witnesses, or gave a closing statement. The jury found HLF guilty on all counts. On May 27, 2009, HLF was sentenced without defense counsel. The court ordered that HLF “be placed on a one-year supervised release” and that all of HLF's frozen assets, including its bank accounts, were forfeited. The court also entered a money judgment in the amount of $12,400,000. On June 5, 2009, Attorney Ranjana Natarajan, Director of the National Security Clinic at the University of Texas School of Law, filed a notice of appearance and a notice of appeal on behalf of HLF. Natarajan had no prior connection to the case. The Government filed a motion to strike both the notice of appearance and the notice of appeal on the ground that HLF had not authorized Natarajan to represent HLF. Natarajan responded in part that the district court had been divested of jurisdiction. The Government then filed with this court a motion for a limited remand so that the district court could make findings regarding Natarajan's authority to represent HLF on appeal. We entered a limited remand order for the district court to address “Ms. Natarajan's authority to represent HLF, whether HLF was represented at trial, and the corporate status of HLF at relevant times.” On January 12, 2010, the district court conducted an evidentiary hearing, in which the court heard argument from Natarajan and the Government and took testimony from Hollander and Cline, among others. The district court subsequently issued an Order (the “Order”), in which the court made its determinations regarding the questions presented in the remand. Regarding the issue of HLF's representation, the district court found that Freedman Boyd represented Baker and HLF from September 2004 until July 20, 2007, and that this joint representation did not violate the defendants' Sixth Amendment right to conflict-free counsel. The court explained that there was no potential or actual conflict of interest, because the defendants' “merger of interests and identities was so clear and pronounced” that “[t]heir defenses had to be one and the same.” Next, the court held that Freedman Boyd effectively withdrew from representing HLF on July 20, 2007, when Hollander stated to Judge Fish that “[w]e will withdraw from representing Holy Land at this time.” The court explained that “[t]he Government acquiesced,” “[n]o one objected to the withdrawal,” and “[t]he Court implicitly accepted the withdrawal.” However, the district court went on to explain in the Order that, during the second trial, “[n]o one informed this Court that Freedman Boyd no longer represented HLF,” and “[n]othing said or done during the second trial alerted the Court to the fact that HLF did not have legal representation.” The court stated, “The only party with certain knowledge of the likely effect of this withdrawal was Ms. Hollander.” The Order then stated: This Court requires attorneys in criminal cases to abide by certain standards of conduct, including owing duties of candor and clarity to the judiciary․ Ms. Hollander's failure to disclose to Judge Fish the potential effect of her firm's withdrawal before the first trial and her failure to disclose to the undersigned the potential effect of HLF being unrepresented during the second trial showed a complete lack of candor and a failure to diligently inform the Court of a material fact. The court next found that HLF, although an unrepresented corporation, was “de facto” represented by the counsel of its co-defendants at trial. The court explained that “these seven attorneys, representing the three individual co-defendants [El–Mezain, Baker, and Elashi]—all with the same defense and defense strategy—are deemed to have adequately represented the interests of the unrepresented corporate entity that was operated by those individual co-defendants.” Next, the court addressed the issue of Natarajan's authority to represent HLF on appeal. The Order stated, “The evidence is undisputed that no HLF representative authorized or directed Ms. Natarajan to file a notice of appeal on HLF's behalf. No one has identified any natural person (other than Co–Defendants) with the necessary authority to direct HLF's appellate representation.” The court noted that “Ms. Natarajan proposes that the Court appoint a third-party ‘trustee’ who can speak and act for HLF and direct Ms. Natarajan as HLF's counsel.” The court concluded that “[t]he unique circumstances of this case require the Court to find a sui generis solution․ Therefore, in the interests of fairness and ensuring justice for HLF, the Court hereby exercises its inherent authority to appoint Ms. Natarajan as HLF's pro bono counsel.” The court explained that “Ms. Natarajan's authority to represent HLF hereby relates back to the date of her initial appearance and notice of appeal—June 5, 2009.” The Order lastly discussed HLF's corporate status, finding that on March 3, 2003, California suspended HLF's powers, rights, and privileges due to nonpayment of franchise taxes.53 2. HLF's appeal HLF54 appeals its conviction and sentence as well as certain findings in the Order. It argues that it was denied its Sixth Amendment right to counsel when it was tried, convicted, and sentenced without the benefit of counsel. To the extent that HLF was “de facto” represented by the counsel of its co-defendants, as the district court found, HLF argues that its Sixth Amendment rights to conflict-free counsel and to effective assistance of counsel were denied. HLF also asserts that its rights under the Confrontation Clause, the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment, and Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 43 were violated when it was tried, convicted, and sentenced without counsel. HLF contends that, due to these violations, we should vacate its conviction and sentence and remand the case to the district court for further proceedings. Before we can address the merits of HLF's appeal, we must first decide whether we have jurisdiction over the appeal. The Government argues that we lack appellate jurisdiction because (1) the district court erred in appointing Natarajan as appellate counsel and (2) Natarajan had no authority to file a notice of appeal on HLF's behalf.55 The Government contends that HLF's notice of appeal was defective and that we must therefore dismiss the appeal. HLF argues that we have jurisdiction because the district court had the inherent authority to appoint Natarajan as appellate counsel and there was sufficient authorization under the circumstances. For the following reasons, we agree with the Government that HLF's notice of appeal was unauthorized and thus invalid, thereby depriving us of jurisdiction. We review the district court's legal conclusions de novo. See, e.g., United States v. Gomez, 623 F.3d 265, 268 (5th Cir.2010); Magallon v. Livingston, 453 F.3d 268, 271 (5th Cir.2006). The district court's factual findings are reviewed for clear error. Gomez, 623 F.3d at 268. “We review de novo a district court's invocation of its inherent power․” F.D.I.C. v. Maxxam, Inc., 523 F.3d 566, 590 (5th Cir.2008); see also Positive Software Solutions, Inc. v. New Century Mortg. Corp., 619 F.3d 458, 460 (5th Cir.2010). “[W]hen these inherent powers are invoked, they must be exercised with ‘restraint and discretion.’ ” Gonzalez v. Trinity Marine Group, Inc., 117 F.3d 894, 898 (5th Cir.1997) (citation omitted). A district court's inherent power “is not a broad reservoir of power, ready at an imperial hand, but a limited source; an implied power squeezed from the need to make the court function.” F.D.I.C., 523 F.3d at 591. In the Order, the district court decided from the unusual circumstances of the case “to find a sui generis solution” and appoint Natarajan as HLF's pro bono counsel, with her representation relating back to the date of her notice of appeal. HLF argues that the district court can exercise its inherent authority to appoint counsel when necessary, and therefore Natarajan's appointment was proper. In support of its argument, though, HLF cites only cases involving a trial court appointing counsel at the trial stage of the proceeding.56 See, e.g., United States v. Bertoli, 994 F.2d 1002, 1016–18 (3d Cir.1993); United States v. Accetturo, 842 F.2d 1408, 1412–15 (3d Cir.1988); United States v. Rivera, 912 F.Supp. 634, 639–40 (D.P.R.1996); United States v. Crosby, 24 F.R.D. 15, 16 (S.D.N.Y.1959). In the instant case, the district court exercised its inherent authority to appoint appellate counsel. We need not address whether it was within the district court's inherent authority to appoint appellate counsel because, even assuming the appointment of Natarajan was within the district court's inherent authority, there remains the issue whether Natarajan had the necessary authorization to file and pursue the appeal on behalf of HLF. It is undisputed that no HLF representative authorized Natarajan to file a notice of appeal on HLF's behalf. Instead, the district court itself appointed Natarajan as HLF's counsel and retroactively authorized HLF's notice of appeal under its inherent authority. It is well established, however, that “the decision to appeal rests with the defendant.” Roe v. Flores–Ortega, 528 U.S. 470, 479, 120 S.Ct. 1029, 145 L.Ed.2d 985 (2000) (emphasis added); see also Legal Ethics, Lawyer's Deskbook on Professional Responsibility § 1.2–2(a) (2011–12 ed.) (“On these significant and central issues, such as the question of ․ whether to appeal, the client should have the final say.”); Restatement (Third) of the Law Governing Lawyers § 22(1) (2000) (“[T]he following and comparable decisions are reserved to the client[:] ․ whether to appeal in a civil proceeding or criminal prosecution.”). A defendant is not required to pursue an appeal at all. Because the decision to appeal belongs exclusively to the defendant, the defendant's counsel may not prosecute an appeal—even if counsel believes it to be in the defendant's best interest—if the defendant chooses to forgo an appeal. For example, in Smith v. Armontrout, 857 F.2d 1228, 1230 (8th Cir.1988), the Eighth Circuit held that a notice of appeal filed by court-appointed counsel on behalf of a capital murder defendant sentenced to death was unauthorized where the defendant indicated that he wanted the appeal dismissed. The court found that the notice of appeal was therefore ineffective and dismissed the appeal. Id. Here, because the important decision whether to appeal is the province of the defendant, not of the district court or of defense counsel, we conclude that the district court erred in assuming that it could authorize the appeal on behalf of HLF. Natarajan lacked authorization from HLF to file an appeal. As an academic with no connection to HLF, Natarajan took it upon herself to file a notice of appeal on HLF's behalf. The district court's decision to appoint Natarajan with purported authority to appeal, although laudable in its intent, does not overcome the deficiency. The notice of appeal was unauthorized and thus invalid. We hold, therefore, that HLF's appeal must be dismissed in light of the defective notice of appeal.57 Our foregoing analysis regarding a district court's authority to authorize a notice of appeal is expressly confined to the facts of this case. We hold only that the district court could not authorize a notice of appeal filed on behalf of an unrepresented defendant corporation by an attorney with no connection to the defendant and where no corporate representative authorized the appeal. For the foregoing reasons, we dismiss HLF's appeal for lack of jurisdiction. 3. Hollander's appeal Hollander separately appeals the Order. Specifically, she argues that we should vacate the following portion of the Order: “Ms. Hollander's failure to disclose to Judge Fish the potential effect of her firm's withdrawal before the first trial and her failure to disclose to the undersigned the potential effect of HLF being unrepresented during the second trial showed a complete lack of candor and a failure to diligently inform the Court of a material fact.” Hollander asserts that the district court erred in finding that she committed professional misconduct. Although Hollander may well be correct that the district court's criticism was undeserved in light of the numerous discussions about HLF's representation by all parties during both trial proceedings, we do not reach the merits of her appeal. We conclude that Hollander's appeal does not present a justiciable case or controversy, and we therefore dismiss the appeal for lack of jurisdiction. Hollander correctly notes that in Walker v. City of Mesquite, 129 F.3d 831 (5th Cir.1997), we set out this circuit's rule as to whether a trial court's sanction of attorney conduct is a reviewable appellate issue. In Walker, we held that “the importance of an attorney's professional reputation, and the imperative to defend it when necessary, obviates the need for a finding of monetary liability or other punishment as a requisite for the appeal of a court order finding professional misconduct.” Id. at 832–33 (emphasis added). Therefore, under Walker, if the Order had contained a finding that Hollander had committed professional misconduct, we would have jurisdiction to review her appeal. We find, however, that the contested language in the Order may have questioned counsel's performance, but it stopped short of an actual finding of professional misconduct. Cf. Walker, 129 F.3d at 832–33 (holding that the trial court's finding that the attorney was “guilty of blatant misconduct” constituted “a blot on [the attorney's] professional record” and presented a reviewable appellate issue). The district court was not engaged in a disciplinary hearing, nor did the court expressly conclude that Hollander violated a legal or ethical duty or rule. Its off-the-cuff remark did not constitute the imposition of a sanction. We think the court's statement is more akin to a “ ‘negative comment or observation from a judge's pen about an attorney's conduct or performance,’ ” which, unlike a finding of professional misconduct, does not present an appealable issue. See Butler v. Biocore Med. Techs., Inc., 348 F.3d 1163, 1168 (10th Cir.2003) (quoting United States v. Gonzales, 344 F.3d 1036, 1047 (10th Cir.2003)) (internal quotation marks omitted); see also Keach v. Cnty. of Schenectady, 593 F.3d 218, 225 (2d Cir.2010) (“An appellate court can reverse an order imposing a sanction or making a finding that an attorney has violated a rule of professional conduct; it has no power to reverse a judge's poor opinion of the skill or trustworthiness of a lawyer who has appeared before him or her.”). Therefore, because the Order did not impose a sanction or make a finding of professional misconduct, we have no jurisdiction over Hollander's appeal, and the appeal is dismissed. For the foregoing reasons, we AFFIRM the judgments of conviction and sentences for the individual defendants, Mohammad El–Mezain, Ghassan Elashi, Shukri Abu Baker, Abdulrahman Odeh, and Mufid Abdulqader. We DISMISS for lack of appellate jurisdiction the separate appeal filed by the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development, and we DISMISS for lack of appellate jurisdiction the appeal filed by Nancy Hollander. 1. The evidence showed that HLF provided the following amounts to zakat committees controlled by Hamas: $366,585 to the Tulkarem Zakat Committee; $1,674,954 to the Islamic Charitable Society of Hebron (“ICS Hebron”); $475,715 to the Nablus Zakat Committee; $554,500 to the Jenin Zakat Committee; $494,252 to the Ramallah Zakat Committee; and $295,187 to the Qalqilia Zakat Committee. In addition, HLF sent $485,468 to the Islamic Science and Culture Committee from May 1991 until the committee was closed in 1996. 2. Hotel records from the meeting's location contained Abdulqader's signature, suggesting that he was present, but the record was also marked as having been voided. 3. Nadia is also the cousin of Defendant Elashi. Marzook was himself named a Specially Designated Terrorist in 1995. 4. Although the defendants mention the Fifth Amendment, their brief addresses only confrontation and does not distinguish the Due Process Clause from the Sixth Amendment's Confrontation Clause. Therefore, we address this issue as a confrontation claim. 5. The defendants also complain that Shorbagi impermissibly identified the following individuals as Hamas leaders: Fuad Abu Zeid from the Jenin Zakat Committee, Abdel Khaleq Natshe from the zakat committee in Hebron, and Jamil Hamami, who Shorbagi stated was from an Islamic center in Jerusalem. The basis for Shorbagi's knowledge about Zeid and Natshe is not clear from the transcript. Shorbagi testified, however, that he met Hamami on separate occasions in 1990 and 1994 when Hamami came to the United States to raise money, which was collected by HLF. He therefore had personal knowledge of Hamami. The effect of any error in Shorbagi's identification of Zeid and Natshe is considered below. 6. The full text of the rule provides as follows:A statement not specifically covered by Rule 803 or 804 but having equivalent circumstantial guarantees of trustworthiness, is not excluded by the hearsay rule, if the court determines that (A) the statement is offered as evidence of a material fact; (B) the statement is more probative on the point for which it is offered than any other evidence which the proponent can procure through reasonable efforts; and (C) the general purposes of these rules and the interests of justice will best be served by admission of the statement into evidence. However, a statement may not be admitted under this exception unless the proponent of it makes known to the adverse party sufficiently in advance of the trial or hearing to provide the adverse party with a fair opportunity to prepare to meet it, the proponent's intention to offer the statement and the particulars of it, including the name and address of the declarant.Fed.R.Evid. 807. Rule 807 was formerly embodied in the residual exceptions of former Rules 803(24) and 804(b)(5), which were consolidated into Rule 807 in 1997 with no intended change in meaning. See United States v. Walker, 410 F.3d 754, 757 (5th Cir.2005) (citing Fed.R.Evid. 803 advisory committee's note). 7. The rule provides that the following evidence is admissible:Records, reports, statements, or data compilations, in any form, of public offices or agencies, setting forth (A) the activities of the office or agency, or (B) matters observed pursuant to duty imposed by law as to which matters there was a duty to report, excluding, however, in criminal cases matters observed by police officers and other law enforcement personnel, or (C) in civil actions and proceedings and against the Government in criminal cases, factual findings resulting from an investigation made pursuant to authority granted by law, unless the sources of information or other circumstances indicate lack of trustworthiness.Fed.R.Evid. 803(8). 8. The defendants contend that if the documents are public records, they fall under subsection (C) and are inadmissible because public records under that subsection may not be used against a defendant in a criminal case. See Fed.R.Evid. 803(8)(C). We do not resolve this issue because the question is not whether the documents are admissible under Rule 803(8), but rather whether they have sufficient indicia of trustworthiness that would permit admission under Rule 807. See Wilson, 249 F.3d at 374 n. 5 (Rule “807 ‘is not limited in availability as to types of evidence not addressed in other exceptions ․ 807 is also available when the proponent fails to meet the standards set forth in the other exceptions.’ ”) (citation omitted); 2 Kenneth S. Broun, McCormick on Evid. § 324 (6th ed.) (“The almost unanimous opinion of the courts is that failing to qualify under an enumerated exception does not disqualify admission under the residual exception.”). The Government promotes Rule 803(8)(A) and (8)(B) as providing circumstantial guarantees of trustworthiness to the PA documents, but as we explain, we are not persuaded by this argument. 9. Similarly, Dr. Levitt also testified that Hamas operates schools as part of its social wing, where it teaches Hamas ideology. To assist the jury in evaluating this testimony, the Government presented a video showing Palestinian children pretending to be suicide bombers at a kindergarten ceremony. The defendants argue that the video was inadmissible under both Rule 403 and Rule 703, but we find that in addition to explaining Levitt's testimony, the video provided rebuttal evidence. The defense spent a good deal of time at trial discussing HLF's charitable support of schools and students by providing backpacks and school supplies. Dr. Levitt testified that school supplies help build goodwill and that the Hamas schools also focus on political ideology. His testimony, along with the video, provided a connection between Hamas and school children and rebutted the defense's efforts. We disagree with the defendants that the probative value of the video in assisting the jury to understand Dr. Levitt's testimony was substantially outweighed by its prejudicial effect. See Fed.R.Evid. 403, 703. 10. The defendants also contend that the videotape with a fragment at the beginning showing demonstrators burning American flags was prejudicial because it showed merely that a videographer hired by HLF recorded over a tape of the demonstration. We are not persuaded. The defendants point to no evidence establishing that an unnamed videographer was responsible for the tape's contents rather than HLF. The testimony at trial showed that the tape was presented exactly as it was found among HLF records and documents, including an attached note that requested two copies of the video and that stated, “There is a demonstration at the beginning. I don't want it.” The jury could determine how much weight the note and the video fragment should receive. 11. Similarly, the defendants complain about questions eliciting the fact that some of the orphans and families that HLF supported had separately received support from Iraq or Saddam Hussein. This information was contained within HLF's own records, however. It was also consistent with the Government's theory that HLF's support was intended to aid the families of martyrs. 12. The defendants objected at trial only to the question about whether the fact that a zakat committee was not designated as a terrorist organization meant that American citizens could donate to the committee; however, they have not argued on appeal that Levitt, who was an expert witness, could not answer the question. 13. In the call at issue, Baker's brother referred to someone becoming “sick” shortly before the call, and defendant Baker described subsequently speaking to that individual's father. Miranda testified that at the time of the call there had been an assassination attempt on Mishal, and the evidence showed that Baker had then phoned Mishal's father. Miranda's interpretation of the call as referring to Mishal was therefore a straightforward conclusion based on his observations in the case. See Riddle, 103 F.3d at 429. 14. “Classified information” is defined in relevant part as “any information or material that has been determined by the United States Government pursuant to an Executive order, statute, or regulation, to require protection against unauthorized disclosure for reasons of national security.” 18 U.S.C. app. 3 § 1. 15. The defendants offer only a conclusory and speculative argument that a “high Department of Justice” official would not assert the privilege because the classification of the intercepts was “patently frivolous” and “calculated to give the government an unfair advantage.” We see no evidence of bad faith by the Government, however. 16. The defendants contend that accepting the Government's rationale for asserting the privilege in this case will encourage the practice of routine classification of all wiretap evidence capturing a defendant's conversations, including Title III wiretaps in domestic cases. We foresee no such abusive practice, however, because the Government's interest in protecting classified information “cannot override the defendant's right to a fair trial.” United States v. Fernandez, 913 F.2d 148, 154 (4th Cir.1990). Thus, as noted above, the asserted privilege will not succeed when the information is helpful to the defense or essential to a fair determination of the cause, but that balancing question is different from whether information should be classified, a determination that is left to the Government. See 18 U.S.C. app. 3 § 1. 17. According to the defendants, their Texas translator lost his clearance and was unable to continue, and the defense abandoned use of the Washington translators because “the process was unwieldly and produced little useful information.” These circumstances were unfortunate, but they were not the fault of the Government. Moreover, the fact that little useful information was discovered when the defense counsel did attempt to use the procedures authorized by the district court tends to suggest a lack of harm to the defendants. 18. Because one would not expect a purported charitable organization like HLF or one of the zakat committees to openly acknowledge its ties to a terrorist group, much of the Government's evidence was circumstantial and required the jury to make logical inferences. Our discussion here is not meant to be an exhaustive list of all the evidence that the Government introduced pertaining to HLF or the zakat committees and their members. Our review of the evidence, however, convinces us of the overwhelming nature of the connection between HLF, the zakat committees, and Hamas. We endeavor here to outline only some of the persuasive evidence of these connections. 19. One video from 1991, HLF Search No. 71, flashed Hamas logos on the screen while the band sang lyrics that included the following: “Long live Hamas, our Islamic Torch. O, Mother, Hamas called for jihad over mosques' loudspeakers, with freedom. Every day it resists with stones and daggers. Tomorrow, with God's help, it will be with a machine gun and a rifle.” 20. The document, which was labeled “The Foundation's Policies & Guidelines,” included comprehensive policies for ensuring the secrecy of the organization's activity. For example, the policies directed that documents should be arranged at meetings so that they could be easily gotten rid of in an emergency; that measures should be taken before a meeting to be sure there is no hidden surveillance equipment; that an alert signal should be given if the location is monitored or if a member of the committee is followed; and that documents should be hidden when traveling and a pretext should be devised in case they are discovered in a search. The possession of such a document by a purportedly charitable organization was clearly suspicious. 21. Siam's name was spelled “Seyam” in the report. 22. In 1992, Israel deported to Lebanon over 400 Palestinians who were thought to be associated with Hamas. The action was condemned by the international community, and the deportees were eventually allowed to return to Palestine. The tent video found in HLF's possession documented remarks by some of the individuals who were deported while they were in Lebanon. 23. HLF documents found in the search of Infocom showed that HLF had been dealing with al-Natsheh since the early 1990s. In a 1994 fax, HLF directed that al-Natsheh be notified about a donation and instructed that funds be delivered to his committee. Other HLF documents showed that al-Natsheh reported back to HLF about the use of grants to the Hebron committee. This evidence further showed HLF's connection to Hamas. 24. Another internal Hamas document was found in the Jenin Zakat Committee in 2004, after HLF was closed. Nevertheless, the document, which mentioned Hamas founder Sheikh Yassin and discussed Hamas's internal contingency plans for responding to an Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, is similar in nature to other political documents found in the committees and demonstrates a connection with Hamas. 25. The defendants argue that Avi relied on the improperly admitted PA documents in his testimony. They are incorrect. Although Avi was questioned about the PA documents, he indicated that he had reviewed “many reports” about the Ramallah Zakat Committee. He also said that the PA documents were “additional to my analysis.” 26. Mosleh also appeared in a video seized from HLF where a young boy in kindergarten is interviewed at an HLF-sponsored event. The boy is questioned about the death of his father, and Mosleh prompts him to answer. The boy is told not to forget when he grows up that his father was killed by the Jews. Multiple video recordings were also seized from the zakat committees and introduced at trial showing kindergarten ceremonies where children pretended to be suicide bombers and sang songs praising Hamas. These videos were consistent with testimony from Levitt and Avi about Hamas's social wing and its indoctrination of children. The presence of these videos at the zakat committees and the participation of committee members like Mosleh in the ceremonies is further evidence of Hamas influence over the purportedly charitable zakat committees. 27. Defendants Baker, El–Mezain, and Odeh have adopted the First Amendment argument in Abdulqader's brief. We conclude, however, that the issue is inadequately briefed as to them, and thus waived, because the brief discusses only Abdulqader's purportedly protected speech. See United States v. Caldwell, 302 F.3d 399, 421 n. 19 (5th Cir.2002) (refusing to consider issue as inadequately briefed where defendant provided no analysis); cf. United States v. Solis, 299 F.3d 420, 458 n. 140 (5th Cir.2002) (holding defendant's attempt to adopt by reference co-defendant's sentencing guidelines issue insufficient where issue was fact-specific). 28. The statute provides, in relevant part: “Whoever knowingly provides material support or resources to a foreign terrorist organization, or attempts or conspires to do so, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 15 years, or both․” 18 U.S.C. § 2339B(a)(1). 29. “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” U.S. Const. amend. I. 30. As noted above, Hamas was designated as a specially designated terrorist organization in January 1995, and it was designated as a foreign terrorist organization in October 1997. 31. Abdulqader also argues that the Government introduced “certain associational evidence” concerning his familial relationship to Hamas leaders, and he asserts that being related to a terrorist leader is not a crime. We see nothing in the district court's jury charge, however, that instructed the jury it could consider familial relationships in its determination of guilt. 32. An amicus brief filed by a diverse group of organizations challenges the district court's jury charge on the substantive violations of § 2339B based on the Fifth Amendment's Due Process Clause. Because none of the defendants has raised this issue, we agree with the Government that it is not properly before us. See United States v. McMillan, 600 F.3d 434, 455 n. 68 (5th Cir.2010). 33. The initial list of SDGTs has since been amended to include Hamas. 34. Relying on G.M. Leasing Corp. v. United States, 429 U.S. 338, 97 S.Ct. 619, 50 L.Ed.2d 530 (1977), the defendants argue that merely because the Government has the power to block its assets does not mean that it may enter private property to seize the assets. In G.M. Leasing, the Supreme Court held that the Government's power to levy taxes and to seize property in satisfaction of tax liens did not give the Government power to enter private property without a warrant to seize the property. Id. at 354, 97 S.Ct. 619. The circumstances of the instant case are distinguishable. G.M. Leasing concerned “the normal enforcement of the tax laws.” Id. The instant case, however, goes beyond the pale of normal law enforcement because IEEPA and the seizure here were designed to prevent the movement of assets that could be used to facilitate terrorist activity and came after a Presidential declaration of a national emergency. See, e.g., Humanitarian Law Project, 130 S.Ct. at 2724 (“[T]he Government's interest in combating terrorism is an urgent objective of the highest order.”); Cassidy v. Chertoff, 471 F.3d 67, 87 (2d Cir.2006) (Sotomayor, J.) (upholding warrantless searches designed “to protect ferry passengers and crew from terrorist acts”); MacWade v. Kelly, 460 F.3d 260, 270–75 (2d Cir.2006) (holding constitutional suspicionless searches of passenger baggage on subway to prevent terrorist attack); In re Sealed Case, 310 F.3d 717, 746 (FISA Ct. Rev.2002) (finding in context of FISA that the “nature of the ‘emergency,’ which is simply another word for threat, takes the matter out of the realm of ordinary crime control”). Moreover, the blocking order in this case, unlike the tax liens in G.M. Leasing, restricted the defendants' privacy rights in their premises. We find G.M. Leasing to be inapposite. 35. “If two or more persons conspire ․ to commit any offense against the United States ․ or any agency thereof in any manner or for any purpose, and one or more of such persons do any act to effect the object of the conspiracy, each shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than five years, or both.” 18 U.S.C. § 371. 36. Elashi also asserts that the Government's argument on appeal that there were two conspiracies conflicts with its position in the district court that the transactions from the first case were intrinsic to the instant case. We disagree. In response to Elashi's double jeopardy objection and alternative request for a limiting instruction in this case, the Government initially argued to the district court that Rule 404(b) was inapplicable, but it abandoned that position after the district court requested further briefing from the parties. After further research, the Government agreed in the district court that the defendants were entitled to a limiting instruction. The Government therefore has not taken an inconsistent position on appeal. 37. HLF also had offices in New Jersey, Illinois, and California, and defendant Odeh was in the New Jersey office. The Government has not argued, however, that decisions of HLF came from anywhere other than its headquarters in Texas. 38. Because we find no double jeopardy violation, we need not address Elashi's argument that such a violation would also require dismissal of the substantive counts against him in light of the district court's Pinkerton instruction and the jury's general verdict. 39. Similarly, we also agree with the Government that El–Mezain's acquittal on the substantive counts in the indictment did not bar the retrial on the conspiracy count because the jury could have rationally found that El–Mezain did not personally participate in the substantive counts. See also Brackett, 113 F.3d at 1400 (holding that a general verdict of acquittal “merely indicates that the government has failed to convince the jury, beyond a reasonable doubt, of at least one essential element of the substantive offense; it does not ‘necessarily determine’ any facts at issue in the conspiracy trial”). 40. In support of his argument that this is an improper “elements” analysis, El–Mezain relies on United States v. Ohayon, 483 F.3d 1281, 1293 (11th Cir.2007). In that case, the court held that the collateral estoppel analysis focuses on whether a fact, rather than a legal element, was shared by the offenses in successive prosecutions. Id. The court was addressing retrial for conspiracy after acquittal of a substantive offense and found that it was improper merely to compare the legal elements of the two offenses there because, if that were the test, the court would never reach the question whether there was any factual identity. We see no conflict with Ohayon in light of our interpretation of Supreme Court precedent in Yeager and Ashe, as we agree that collateral estoppel requires more than a mere difference in the elements of the offenses. But rather than mechanically compare the offense elements here, we examine the entire record, including the charges and the jury instructions on those charges, to decide whether the jury in the first trial could have founded its verdict on a ground other than the ground to be foreclosed in the second trial. A defendant's specific intent is a ground that may or may not have been necessarily determined by a previous jury. See, e.g., United States v. Romeo, 114 F.3d 141, 143 (9th Cir.1997) (examining elements of the acquitted count for knowing possession with intent to distribute drugs and finding that jury could not have acquitted without necessarily deciding the “knowing” element); United States v. Vaughn, 80 F.3d 549, 551–53 (D.C.Cir.1996) (holding that jury's acquittal on two counts of selling crack on different dates based on entrapment defense did not necessarily determine defendant's criminal intent to make sales on two other occasions). 41. Similarly, although El–Mezain is correct that the district court denied his collateral estoppel motion based in part on the Fifth Circuit panel decision that the Supreme Court reversed in Yeager, the district court also specifically held that El–Mezain failed to establish that the facts necessarily established at the first trial precluded the second trial, a principle which is in line with Yeager. See 129 S.Ct. at 2367. 42. We note that the defendants did not properly raise their inducement argument in the district court, which denied the defendants' request to file a reply brief in which the argument was raised for the first time. We would ordinarily review an issue not properly raised in the district court for plain error only. See United States v. Cooks, 589 F.3d 173, 184 (5th Cir.2009). Because the district court ruled on the merits of the issue in the alternative, however, and because we conclude that the defendants' arguments fail even under the usual clearly erroneous standard of review, we discuss the issue in full. 43. The jury's note stated, in relevant part, “a jury member wants to know if the demonstrative exhibits are in the jury room. He does not believe that the power points and some other exhibits are demonstrative and not actual evidence.” With the assent of counsel, the district court instructed the jury: “The demonstrative exhibits are not in the jury room. All of the exhibits in evidence are in the jury room.” 44. When interviewed by the district court, the juror stated, in part:I know the case is based on evidence and testimony. So in the deliberating—And when somebody give they opinion, facts, it's just like evidence—okay. The things we have in the jury room is evidence. And when you bring up the evidence, they talk it down. They got their own opinion. It's like HAMAS. This is not HAMAS. Show where [sic] me where this is stated it's HAMAS, and I'm just going on recollecting of the trial. That's all I'm going on, and if I need to go to some evidence, I do it. But it's like they already got their opinion. They already got their opinion made up, and I don't feel like I could give the defendant justice on that.He continued:And you know when the court reporter come in there and that's when I asked her again, is this all of this evidence. Yeah. You can't do this. This is not evidence. Everything in the boxes, the first day that she came, is all of this evidence. We had a problem over just that. * * *But then it started getting personal. When you go in there and try to make a point and they sit up there and say no, where you going to show that up. They don't even have a clue where HAMAS started from, because they don't even want to hear it. They want to hear nothing about terrorism. They don't want to hear that. But when you got three or four that already has their mind made up, it's not served. 45. Because of the classified and sensitive nature of the materials at issue, this court has conducted an in camera review of the relevant materials, but the opinion does not reveal the classified contents of those documents. 46. The full text of the statute defines “foreign intelligence information” to mean:(1) information that relates to, and if concerning a United States person is necessary to, the ability of the United States to protect against—(A) actual or potential attack or other grave hostile acts of a foreign power or an agent of a foreign power;(B) sabotage, international terrorism, or the international proliferation of weapons of mass destruction by a foreign power or an agent of a foreign power; or(C) clandestine intelligence activities by an intelligence service or network of a foreign power or by an agent of a foreign power; or(2) information with respect to a foreign power or foreign territory that relates to, and if concerning a United States person is necessary to—(A) the national defense or the security of the United States; or(B) the conduct of the foreign affairs of the United States.50 U.S.C. § 1801(e). 47. Prior to amendments to FISA in 2001, the FISC was comprised of seven judges. 48. The statute fully defines a “foreign power” to be:(1) a foreign government or any component thereof, whether or not recognized by the United States;(2) a faction of a foreign nation or nations, not substantially composed of United States persons;(3) an entity that is openly acknowledged by a foreign government or governments to be directed and controlled by such foreign government or governments;(4) a group engaged in international terrorism or activities in preparation therefor;(5) a foreign-based political organization, not substantially composed of United States persons;(6) an entity that is directed and controlled by a foreign government or governments; or(7) an entity not substantially composed of United States persons that is engaged in the international proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.50 U.S.C. § 1801(a). 49. An “agent of a foreign power” is defined to include any person who:(A) knowingly engages in clandestine intelligence gathering activities for or on behalf of a foreign power, which activities involve or may involve a violation of the criminal statutes of the United States;(B) pursuant to the direction of an intelligence service or network of a foreign power, knowingly engages in any other clandestine intelligence activities for or on behalf of such foreign power, which activities involve or are about to involve a violation of the criminal statutes of the United States;(C) knowingly engages in sabotage or international terrorism, or activities that are in preparation therefor, for or on behalf of a foreign power;(D) knowingly enters the United States under a false or fraudulent identity for or on behalf of a foreign power or, while in the United States, knowingly assumes a false or fraudulent identity for or on behalf of a foreign power; or(E) knowingly aids or abets any person in the conduct of activities described in subparagraph (A), (B), or (C) or knowingly conspires with any person to engage in activities described in subparagraph (A), (B), or (C).50 U.S.C. § 1801(b)(2). 50. “ ‘Aggrieved person’ means a person who is the target of an electronic surveillance or any other person whose communications or activities were subject to electronic surveillance.” 50 U.S.C. § 1801(k). 51. The district court did order that the defendants were subject to a forfeiture of approximately $12 million, but no defendant has briefed the forfeiture order or explained how it is related to the calculation of the laundered funds or to the district court's alleged error in applying the sentencing guidelines. In any event, the forfeiture order was based on the charge in the indictment and the corresponding finding by the jury's special verdict that the defendants were subject to a forfeiture of that amount, which represents a portion of the monies that the jury found the defendants sent outside the United States for the purpose of assisting a designated terrorist organization. 52. The current name of the law firm is Freedman Boyd Hollander Goldberg Ives & Duncan, P.A. 53. Natarajan argues on appeal that as of July 2007, due to nonpayment of franchise taxes, HLF was a “defunct” corporation and had no directors or officers bound by fiduciary duty to act on its behalf. She is incorrect. Under California law, a California corporation's failure to pay franchise taxes does not result in the dissolution of the corporation, but merely results in a suspended status. See Cal. Rev. & Tax.Code § 23301; see also Marsh's Cal. Corp. L. § 21.18 (“Where the rights and privileges of a corporation are suspended for failure to pay franchise taxes, it is no longer treated as having been dissolved or its corporate franchise ‘forfeited,’ but it is merely subjected to certain disabilities unless and until it is ‘revived’ by the payment of the back taxes and penalties.”). During suspension, the corporation is prohibited from exercising certain rights, including, inter alia, the right to prosecute or defend against a civil lawsuit and the right to enter into a contract. See Marsh's Cal. Corp.L. § 21.18. Although a suspended corporation is subject to these limitations, the corporation continues to exist as an entity. Furthermore, the corporation can be “revived” to its full powers by the payment of delinquent taxes and penalties and the issuance of a certificate of revivor. See Cal. Rev. & Tax.Code § 23305. A majority of the directors or an officer, among others, can apply for a certificate of revivor on behalf of the corporation. Id. Although we need not decide the issue, this at least suggests that the directors and officers of such a corporation continue in office. 54. Natarajan, as appointed appellate counsel for HLF, made the following arguments in her briefs, purportedly on behalf of HLF. In this section of the opinion, for the sake of clarity, we attribute to HLF all of the arguments made in Natarajan's appellate briefs. 55. The Government presents these arguments on cross-appeal from the district court's appointment of Natarajan, but the Government's arguments are more akin to a jurisdictional challenge to HLF's appeal. Therefore, although we do not consider the Government's arguments in the form of a cross-appeal, we consider them in determining whether we have appellate jurisdiction. 56. We express no opinion on the district court's inherent power to appoint trial counsel for an unrepresented corporation. 57. Natarajan contends that, if we find that the notice of appeal was unauthorized, we should order an equitable remedy to allow HLF to appeal its conviction and sentence. Natarajan posits that we could equitably excuse the insufficient authorization or appoint a third party to serve as HLF's representative to authorize and direct the appeal. The Government responds that HLF is not without procedural avenues to challenge its conviction and sentence, as HLF may collaterally attack its conviction through a petition for a writ of error coram nobis. See United States v. Rad–O–Lite of Philadelphia, Inc., 612 F.2d 740, 744 (3d Cir.1979) (holding that a writ of coram nobis is the mechanism through which “persons not held in custody can attack a conviction for fundamental defects, such as ineffective assistance of counsel” and that “[c]ourts regularly have allowed corporations to petition for coram nobis”). We need not decide this question on appeal, and we therefore decline to impose the equitable remedy urged by Natarajan. KING, Circuit Judge:

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(Learn how and when to remove these template messages)( or discuss these issues on the Learn how and when to remove this template message) English Americans and English Canadians as percent of population by state and province. |17,882,775 (2006; English mother tongue, including multiple responses)| 6,320,085 English ethnicity (including multiple responses) 1,098,930 English ethnicity (single responses only) |Regions with significant populations| |Throughout Canada, minority in Quebec| |Protestant, but also Catholicism and Irreligion| |Related ethnic groups| |English Americans and other English diaspora, Scottish Canadians and other British Canadians, Old Stock Canadians| English Canadians (French: Canadiens anglais or Canadiennes anglaises), or Anglo-Canadians (French: Anglo-Canadiens), refers to either Canadians of English ethnic origin and heritage or to English-speaking or Anglophone Canadians of any ethnic origin; it is used primarily in contrast with French Canadians. Canada is an officially bilingual country, with English and French official language communities. Immigrant cultural groups ostensibly integrate into one or both of these communities, but often retain elements of their original cultures. The term English-speaking Canadian is sometimes used interchangeably with English Canadian. Although many English-speaking Canadians have strong historical roots traceable to England or other parts of the British Isles, the population as a whole belongs to a multitude of ethnic backgrounds. They or their ancestors came from various European, Asian, Caribbean, African, Latin American, and Pacific Island cultures, as well as French Canada and North American Aboriginal groups. As such, although the office of the Governor General is said to alternate between "French" and "English" persons, two recent Governors General (Adrienne Clarkson, an English-speaking Chinese Canadian; and Michaëlle Jean, a French-speaking Haitian Canadian) show that this refers to language and not culture or ethnicity. |Newfoundland and Labrador||37.5%| |Prince Edward Island||28.9%| The following table shows the English-speaking population of Canada's provinces and territories. The data are from Statistics Canada. Figures are given for the number of single responses "English" to the mother tongue question, as well as a total including multiple responses one of which is English. |Province or territory||English, |Canada — Total||25,352,315||58.5%||24,694,835||59.7%||35,859,030| |Prince Edward Island||138,125||93.8%||125,650||94.2%||140,385| |Newfoundland and Labrador||499,755||98.4%||500,405||98.5%||508,080| Notably, 46% of English-speaking Canadians live in Ontario, and 30% in the two western provinces of British Columbia and Alberta. The most monolingual province is Newfoundland and Labrador at 98.5%. English-speakers are in the minority only in Quebec and Nunavut. In the cases of Quebec and New Brunswick, the vast majority of the non-Anglophone population speaks French; in the case of Nunavut, the people speak a non-official language of Canada, Inuktitut. English Canadian history starts with the attempts to establish English settlements in * in the sixteenth century. The first English settlement in present-day Canada was at St. Johns Newfoundland, in 1583. Newfoundland's population was significantly influenced by Irish and English immigration, much of it as a result of the migratory fishery in the decades prior to the Irish Potato famine. Although the location of the earliest English settlement in what would eventually become Canada, Newfoundland itself (now called Newfoundland and Labrador) would be the last province to enter Confederation in 1949. The area that forms the present day province of Nova Scotia was contested by the British and French in the eighteenth century. French settlements at Port Royal, Louisbourg and what is now Prince Edward Island were seized by the British. After the 1713 Treaty of Utrecht ceded the French colony of Acadia (today's mainland Nova Scotia and New Brunswick) to Great Britain, efforts to colonize the province were limited to small settlements in Canso and Annapolis Royal. In 1749 Colonel Edward Cornwallis was given command of an expedition for the settlement of Chebucto by some three thousand persons, many of whom were Cockney. Cornwallis' settlement, Halifax, would become the provincial capital, the primary commercial centre for the Maritime provinces, a strategic British military and naval outpost and an important east coast cultural centre. To offset the Catholic presence of Acadians, foreign Protestants (mainly German) were given land and founded Lunenburg. Nova Scotia itself saw considerable immigration from Scotland, particularly to communities such as Pictou in the northern part of the province and to Cape Breton Island, but this began only with the arrival of the Hector in 1773. The history of English Canadians is bound to the history of English settlement of North America, and particularly New England, because of the resettlement of many Loyalists following the American Revolution in areas that would form part of Canada. Many of the fifty thousand Loyalists who were resettled to the north of the United States after 1783 came from families that had already been settled for several generations in North America and were from prominent families in Boston, New York and other east coast towns. Although largely of British ancestry, these settlers had also intermarried with Huguenot and Dutch colonists and were accompanied by Loyalists of African descent. Dispossessed of their property at the end of the Revolutionary War, the Loyalists arrived as refugees to settle primarily along the shores of southern Nova Scotia, the Bay of Fundy and the Saint John River and in Quebec to the east and southwest of Montreal. The colony of New Brunswick was created from western part of Nova Scotia at the instigation of these new English-speaking settlers. The Loyalist settlements in southwestern Quebec formed the nucleus of what would become the province of Upper Canada and, after 1867, Ontario. Upper Canada was a primary destination for English, Scottish and Scots-Irish settlers to Canada in the nineteenth century, and was on the front lines in the War of 1812 between the British Empire and the United States. The province also received immigrants from non English-speaking sources such as Germans, many of whom settled around Kitchener (formerly called Berlin). Ontario would become the most populous province in the Dominion of Canada at the time of Confederation, and, together with Montreal, formed the country's industrial heartland and emerged as an important cultural and media centre for English Canada. Toronto is today the largest city in Canada, and, largely as a result of changing immigration patterns since the 1960s, is also one of the most multi-cultural cities in the world. After the fall of New France to the British in 1759, a colonial governing class established itself in Quebec City. Larger numbers of English-speaking settlers arrived in the Eastern Townships and Montreal after the American Revolution. English, Scottish, and Irish communities established themselves in Montreal in the 1800s. Montreal would become Canada's largest city and commercial hub in Canada. An Anglo-Scot business elite would control Canadian commerce up until the 1950s, founding a Protestant public school system and hospitals and universities such as McGill University. These immigrants were joined by other Europeans in the early 1900s, including Italians and Jews, who assimilated to a large degree into the anglophone community. Many English-speaking Quebeckers left Quebec following the election of the Parti Québécois in 1976 resulting in a steep decline in the anglophone population; many who have remained have learned French in order to function within the dominant Francophone society. As in much of western Canada, many of the earliest European communities in British Columbia began as outposts of the Hudson's Bay Company, founded in London in 1670 to carry on the fur trade via Hudson Bay. Broader settlement began in earnest with the founding of Fort Victoria in 1843 and the subsequent creation of the Colony of Vancouver Island in 1849. The capital, Victoria developed during the height of the British Empire and long self-identified as being "more English than the English". The Colony of British Columbia was established on the mainland in 1858 by Governor James Douglas as a means of asserting British sovereignty in the face of a massive influx of gold miners, many of whom were American. Despite the enormous distances that separated the Pacific colony from Central Canada, British Columbia joined Confederation in 1871, choosing to become Canadian partly as a means of resisting possible absorption into the United States. Chinese workers, brought in to labour on the construction of the Canadian Pacific Railway, established sizeable populations in many B.C. communities, particularly Vancouver which quickly became the province's economic and cultural centre after the railway's completion in 1886. Like Ontario, British Columbia has received immigrants from a broad range of countries including large numbers of Germans, Scandinavians, Italians, Sikhs from India and Chinese from Hong Kong, Taiwan and in more recent years, the People's Republic, and the ongoing influx of Europeans from Europe continues. However, for many years British Columbia, in contrast to the Prairie Provinces, received a majority of immigrants from Great Britain: over half in 1911 and over 60 percent by 1921. Over half of people with British ancestry in British Columbia have direct family ties within two generations (i.e. grandparent or parent) to the British Isles, rather than via British ethnic stock from Central Canada or the Maritimes (unlike the Prairies where Canadian-British stock is more common). Europeans of non-British stock have been more common, also, in British Columbia than in any other part of Canada, although certain ethnicities such as Ukrainians and Scandinavians are more concentrated in the Prairies. Except for the Italians and more recent European immigrants, earlier waves of Europeans of all origins are near-entirely assimilated, although any number of accents are common in families and communities nearly anywhere in the province, as has also been the case since colonial times. Interethnic and interracial marriages and were also more common in British Columbia than in other provinces since colonial times . The French-English tensions that marked the establishment of the earliest English-speaking settlements in Nova Scotia were echoed on the Prairies in the late nineteenth century. The earliest British settlement in Assiniboia (part of present-day Manitoba) involved some 300 largely Scottish colonists under the sponsorship of Lord Selkirk in 1811. The suppression of the rebellions allowed the government of Canada to proceed with a settlement of Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta that was to create provinces that identified generally with English Canada in culture and outlook, although immigration included large numbers of people from non English-speaking European backgrounds, especially Scandinavians and Ukrainians. Although Canada has long prided itself on its relatively peaceful history, war has played a significant role in the formation of an English Canadian identity. As part of the British Empire, Canada found itself at war against the Central Powers in 1914. In the main, English Canadians enlisted for service with an initial enthusiastic and genuine sense of loyalty and duty. The sacrifices and accomplishments of Canadians at battles such as Vimy Ridge and the Dieppe Raid in France are well known and respected among English Canadians and helped forge a more common sense of nationality. In World War II, Canada made its own separate declaration of war and played a critical role in supporting the Allied war effort. Again, support for the war effort to defend the United Kingdom and liberate continental Europe from Axis domination was particularly strong among English Canadians. In the post war era, although Canada was committed to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, English Canadians took considerable pride in the Nobel Prize for Peace awarded to Lester Pearson for his role in resolving the Suez Crisis and have been determined supporters of the peacekeeping activities of the United Nations. In the late twentieth century, increasing American cultural influence combined with diminishing British influence, and political and constitutional crises driven by the exigencies of dealing with the Quebec sovereignty movement and Western alienation contributed to something of an identity crisis for English Canadians.George Grant's Lament for a Nation is still seen as an important work relating to the stresses and vulnerabilities affecting English Canada. However, the period of the 1960s through to the present have also seen tremendous accomplishments in English Canadian literature. Writers from English-speaking Canada such as Margaret Atwood, Mordecai Richler, Margaret Laurence, Robertson Davies, Timothy Findley, and Carol Shields dissected the experience of English Canadians or of life in English Canadian society. and assumed a place among the world's best-known English-language literary figures. Journalist Pierre Berton wrote a number of books popularizing Canadian history which had a particular resonance among English-speaking Canadians, while critics and philosophers such as Northrop Frye and John Ralston Saul have attempted to analyze the Canadian experience. Still, particularly at the academic level, debate continues as to the nature of English Canada and the extent to which English Canadians exist as an identifiable identity. English-speaking Canadians have not adopted symbols specific to themselves. Although English Canadians are attached to the Canadian Flag, it is the national flag and intended to be a symbol for all Canadians, regardless of ethnicity or language. The flag debate of 1965 revealed a strong attachment to the Canadian Red Ensign, previously flown as the flag of Canada prior to the adoption of the Maple Leaf in 1965. Even today, there is considerable support for use of the Red Ensign in certain specific circumstances, such as the commemoration ceremonies for the Battle of Vimy Ridge. The maple leaf itself, as a symbol, was used as early as 1834 in what is now Quebec as a symbol of the Société St. Jean Baptiste but was adopted for use shortly afterwards by the English-speaking community in Canada. The Maple Leaf Forever, penned in 1867 at the time of Confederation was at one time regarded as an informal anthem for English Canadians, but reaction by English-speaking Canadians to a decision of a New Brunswick school to stop the singing of the anthem are attached to the official national anthem, O Canada, by Calixa Lavallée suggests that the official anthem enjoys considerable support. The beaver is sometimes seen as another Canadian symbol, but is not necessarily specific to English Canadians. It too was used originally in connection with the Société St. Jean Baptiste before coming into currency as a more general Canadian symbol. In the 1973 political satire by Stanley Burke, Frog Fables & Beaver Tales, a spoof on Canadian politics of the Pierre Trudeau era, English Canadians are depicted in the main as well-meaning, but not terribly clever beavers (with other animals such as frogs, sea otters and gophers assigned to represent other linguistic and provincial populations). The historical relevance of the beaver stems from the early fur trade. It has been asserted that "[t]he fur trade in general and the Hudson's Bay Company in particular exercised a profound influence on the sculpting of the Canadian soul." The Crown has historically been an intangible but significant symbol for many English Canadians. Loyalty to Great Britain created the initial fracture lines between the populations of the Thirteen Colonies and the populations of Nova Scotia and Quebec at the time of the American Revolution and forced the flight of the Loyalists after the end of the war. As such English Canada developed in the nineteenth century along lines that continued to emphasize this historical attachment, evident in the naming of cities, parks and even whole provinces after members of the royal family, the retention of flags, badges and provincial mottos expressive of loyalty, and enthusiastic responses to royal visits. While such loyalty is no longer as powerful a unifying force as it once was among English Canadians, it continues to exert a noticeable influence on English Canadian culture. According to the author and political commentator Richard Gwyn while "[t]he British connection has long vanished... it takes only a short dig down to the sedimentary layer once occupied by the Loyalists to locate the sources of a great many contemporary Canadian convictions and conventions." Gwyn considers that the modern equivalent of the once talismanic loyalty is "tolerance": "a quality now accepted almost universally as the feature that makes us a distinct people." The 2001 Census of Canada provides information about the ethnic composition of English-speaking Canadians. This "refers to the ethnic or cultural group(s) to which the respondent's ancestors belong". However, interpretation of data is complicated by two factors. See the definition of "ethnic origin" from the 2001 Census dictionary for further information. The data in the following tables pertain to the population of Canada reporting English as its sole mother tongue, a total of 17,352,315 inhabitants out of 29,639,035. A figure for single ethnic origin responses is provide, as well as a total figure for ethnic origins appearing in single or multiple responses (for groups exceeding 2% of the total English-speaking population). The sum of the percentages for single responses is less than 100%, while the corresponding total for single or multiple responses is greater than 100%. The data are taken from the 2001 Census of Canada. |North American Indian||713,925||4.1%||280,795||1.6%| The remaining ethnic groups (single or multiple responses) forming at least 1% of the English-speaking population are Welsh (2.0%), Swedish (1.5%), Hungarian (1.5%), East Indian (1.4%), Métis (1.4%), Jewish (1.4%), Russian (1.4%), American (1.3%), Jamaican (1.2%) and Chinese (1.1%). The remaining ethnic groups (single response) forming at least 0.5% of the English-speaking population are East Indian (1.0%), Jamaican (0.8%) and Chinese (0.6%). Depending on the principal period of immigration to Canada and other factors, ethnic groups (other than British Isles, French, and Aboriginal ones) vary in their percentage of native speakers of English. For example, while a roughly equal number of Canadians have at least partial Ukrainian and Chinese ancestry, 82% of Ukrainian Canadians speak English as their sole mother tongue, and only 17% of Chinese Canadians do (though this rises to 34% in the 0 to 14 age group). As the number of second and third-generation Chinese Canadians increases, their weight within the English-speaking population can also be expected to increase. It should also be borne in mind that some percentage of any minority ethnic group will adopt French, particularly in Quebec. In the 2001 Canadian census, 17,572,170 Canadians indicated that they were English-speaking. As discussed in the Introduction, however, this does not mean that 17.5 million people in Canada would necessarily self-identify as being 'English Canadian'. Except in Newfoundland and the Maritime provinces, most Canadian English is only subtly different from English spoken in much of the mid-western and western United States. Spoken English in the Maritimes has some resemblance to English of some of the New England states. While Newfoundland speaks a specific Newfoundland English dialect, and so has the most distinct accent and vocabulary, with the spoken language influenced in particular by English and Irish immigration. There are a few pronunciations that are distinctive for most English Canadians, such as 'zed' for the last letter of the alphabet. English Canadian spelling continues to favour most spellings of British English, including 'centre', 'theatre', 'colour' and 'labour', although usage is not universal. Other spellings, such as 'gaol' and 'programme', have disappeared entirely or are in retreat. The principal differences between British and Canadian spelling are twofold: '-ise' and '-yse' words ('organise/organize' and 'analyse' in Britain, 'organize' and 'analyze/analyse' in Canada), and '-e' words ('annexe' and 'grille' in Britain, 'annex' and 'grill' in Canada, but 'axe' in both, 'ax' in the USA). But '-ize' is becoming increasingly common in Britain, bringing British spelling closer to the Canadian standard. Vocabulary of Canadian English contains a few distinctive words and phrases. In British Columbia, for example, the Chinook word 'skookum' for, variously, 'good' or 'great' or 'reliable' or 'durable', has passed into common use, and the French word 'tuque' for a particular type of winter head covering is in quite widespread use throughout the country. Languages besides English are spoken extensively in provinces with English-speaking majorities. Besides French (which is an official language of the province of New Brunswick and in the three territories), indigenous languages, including Inuktitut and Cree are widely spoken and are in some instances influencing the language of English speakers, just as traditional First Nations art forms are influencing public art, architecture and symbology in English Canada. Immigrants to Canada from Asia and parts of Europe in particular have brought languages other than English and French to many communities, particularly Toronto, Vancouver and other larger centres. On the west coast, for example, Chinese and Punjabi are taught in some high schools; while on the east coast efforts have been made to preserve the Scots Gaelic language brought by early settlers to Nova Scotia. In the Prairie provinces, and to a lesser degree elsewhere, there are a large number of second-generation and more Ukrainian Canadians who have retained at least partial fluency in the Ukrainian language. This section may require cleanup to meet Wikipedia's quality standards. The specific problem is: grammar, writing style, clarity (February 2020) (Learn how and when to remove this template message) This section does not cite any sources. (February 2020) (Learn how and when to remove this template message) The population of the provinces other than Quebec in the 2001 Census is some 22,514,455. It is impossible to know with certainty how many of that number would self-identify as 'English Canadians' under the broadest interpretation of the term. Persons self-identifying with 'English' as their primary ethnic origin as part of the 2001 census - Quebec included - totaled slightly less than 6,000,000 persons. However, many Canadians who identify other ethnic origins for the purpose of the census might identify as 'English Canadian' in the broader sense of 'English-speaking Canadians' and possibly share some cultural affinities with the group identifying itself as 'English Canadian' in the more limited sense. Of the total population of the provinces outside Quebec, the following numbers provide an approximation of the two largest religious groupings: *Protestant: 8,329,260; *Roman Catholic: 6,997,190. Those claiming no religious affiliation in 2001 numbered 4,586,900. For comparison purposes, other religious groups in the provinces other than Quebec in 2001: In sum, while the single largest religious affiliation of 'English Canadians' - in the Rest of Canada sense of the term - may for convenience be slotted under the different Christian religions called Protestantism, it still represents a minority of the population at less than 37%. So-called 'English Canadians' include a large segment who do not identify as Christian. Even with a clear majority of almost 73%, English Canadian Christians represent a large diversity of beliefs that makes it exceedingly difficult to accurately portray religion as a defining characteristic. In Survival: A Thematic Guide to Canadian Literature, Margaret Atwood's seminal book on Canadian Literature published in 1973, the author argues that much of Canadian literature in both English and French is linked thematically to the notion of personal and collective survival. This theme continues to reappear in more recent literary works, such as Yann Martel's Life of Pi, winner of the 2002 Booker Prize. In the 1970s authors such as Margaret Laurence in The Stone Angel and Robertson Davies in Fifth Business explored the changing worlds of small town Manitoba and Ontario respectively. Works of fiction such as these gave an entire generation of Canadians access to literature about themselves and helped shape a more general appreciation of the experiences of English-speaking Canadians in that era. In the early years of the twentieth century painters in both central Canada and the west coast began applying post-impressionist style to Canadian landscape paintings. Painters such as Tom Thomson and the Group of Seven, which included painters such as A.Y. Jackson, captured images of the wilderness in ways that forced English Canadians to discard their conservative and traditional views of art. In British Columbia, Emily Carr, born in Victoria in 1871, spent much of her life painting. Her early paintings of northwest coast aboriginal villages were critical to creating awareness and appreciation of First Nations cultures among English Canadians. The Arctic paintings of Lawren Harris, another member of the Group of Seven, are also highly iconic for English Canadians. Cowboy artist and sculptor Earl W. Bascom of Alberta became known as the "dean of Canadian cowboy sculpture" with his depictions of early cowboy and rodeo life. From colonial times the arrival and settlement of the first pioneers, the fur trade empire established by the North West Company and the Hudson's Bay Company - although the fur company histories are more relevant to French Canadians, Métis and Scottish Canadians. - and the mass resettlement of refugee Loyalists are important starting points for some English Canadians. Some have argued that the Loyalist myth, so often accepted without second thought, represents also a collective English Canadian myth-making enterprise The War of 1812 produced one of the earliest national heroes, Laura Secord, who is credited with having made her way through American lines at night to carry a warning to British troops of impending American plans and contributing to the victory at the Battle of Beaver Dams, where the American advance into Upper Canada was turned back. The War of 1812 also saw the capture and burning of Washington, D.C. by the British in August 1814, an event still remembered in English Canada. The War of 1812 itself, to which Canadian and aboriginal militia forces made important contributions, is viewed as the event that ensured the survival of the colonies that would become Canada, or, as termed by the critic Northrop Frye "in many respects a war of independence for Canada." There is an element of the heroic that attaches to Sir John A. Macdonald, the Scottish lawyer from Kingston, Ontario who became Canada's first Prime Minister. His weaknesses (such as an alleged fondness for alcohol, and the multifaceted corruption inherent in the Pacific Scandal) and the controversial events surrounding the rebellions in the west have not erased admiration for his accomplishments in nation building for English Canadians. Macdonald's pragmatism laid the foundation of the national myth of the 'two founding nations' (English and French), which was to endure well into the twentieth century among a strong minority of English Canadians and was eventually reflected in the official government policy that flowed from the Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism in the 1960s. Macdonald was also instrumental in the founding of the North-West Mounted Police in 1875, forerunners of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) Canada's iconic national police force. The RCMP itself, established to "subdue the West", i.e. the newly acquired Northwest Territories, formerly the HBC's Rupert's Land, as declared in the preamble to its charter. The RCMP, long since eulogized into a moral, symbolic image of Canadian authority, far from its true nature as a paramilitary force commissioned with bringing First Nations and Métis to heel, plays a role in English Canada's perception of itself as a nation of essentially law-abiding citizens that confederated in 1867 for the purposes of establishing peace, order and good government. The Klondike Gold Rush of 1898 in the Yukon was another event that resonated in the English Canadian imagination, with its stories of adventure and struggle in a harsh northern environment. The myth of the North itself, the forbidding landscape and difficult climate, peopled by the hardy Inuit is of central importance to English Canadians, from Susanna Moodie (whose 'north' was the 'wilderness' of 1830s southern Ontario) to the present, as the myth of the north is reexamined, challenged and reinvented for an increasingly post-colonial culture. In the twentieth century Tommy Douglas, the politician from Saskatchewan who is credited with the creation of Canada's programme of universal health care has been recognized as the greatest Canadian in a contest sponsored by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, Canada's national public broadcaster. Lester B. Pearson, winner of the Nobel Prize for Peace and Prime Minister of Canada responsible for the adoption of the maple leaf flag, is widely regarded as an English Canadian figure. Another person who had an enormous impact on English Canadians was British Columbian Terry Fox whose 1981 attempt to run across Canada from St. John's, Newfoundland to the Pacific to raise money for cancer research. Although forced to discontinue the run near Thunder Bay due to a recurrence of his cancer, Terry Fox captured the imagination of millions of Canadians, particularly in the English-speaking provinces. This feat was followed by British Columbian Rick Hansen's successful Man in Motion tour shortly afterwards. Sports heroes include, among many others, the legendary Wayne Gretzky from Ontario who led the Edmonton Oilers to successive Stanley Cup victories in the 1980s; the women's Olympic hockey team that won the Gold Medal in the 1992 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City and Team Canada that won the famed Canada-Russia hockey series in 1972. Rodeo is a popular sport in Canada. One of the great legends of Canadian rodeo is Ray Knight, known as the "Father of Canadian Professional Rodeo" having produced Canada's first professional rodeo in 1903. Another Canadian rodeo legend is Earl Bascom. Bascom, is known as the "Father of Modern Rodeo" for his rodeo equipment inventions and innovations, was the first rodeo champion to be inducted into Canada's Sports Hall of Fame. Other significant figures include Nellie McClung (activist in politics and women's rights), Emily Carr (post-impressionist artist),Billy Bishop (World War I airman), Dr. Frederick Banting (co-discover of insulin) and Dr. Norman Bethune (doctor in China).Alexander Graham Bell, inventor of the telephone, is often claimed by English Canada because of his residence on Cape Breton Island, although he was born in Scotland and later moved to the United States. At the same time, historian and author Charlotte Gray has described Canadians as people who do not do heroes or hero-worship well, preferring instead to celebrate the collective rather than the individual: "[t]he qualities that are celebrated in our national life today are collective virtues - the bravery of our peace-keepers, the compassion of all Canadians for Manitoba's flood victims...individualism has never been celebrated in Canada. It is not a useful quality for a loose federation perched on a magnificent and inhospitable landscape..." The contribution of French-speaking Canadians to the culture of English Canada is significant. Many popular Canadian symbols such as the maple leaf and the beaver were first adopted by Francophones. Francophone sports figures (particularly in hockey and figure-skating) have always been highly regarded. Sir Wilfrid Laurier, Prime Minister in the early 20th century, is viewed as an important statesman in English Canada. A more controversial figure is Pierre Trudeau, who is often praised for his handling of the October Crisis (also known as the FLQ Crisis) and the process of constitutional reform that implemented the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms but who also caused considerable Western Alienation and has been criticised for the critical failure to bring Quebec into the 1982 agreement on constitutional reform. Trudeau was nevertheless ranked 3rd in the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's contest to choose The Greatest Canadian. Most recently, Haitian-born Francophone Michaëlle Jean, the current Governor-General, has overcome some initial misgivings regarding her appointment. The motto chosen for her arms, Briser les solitudes (break down the solitudes), echoes one of the significant works of early English Canadian fiction, Hugh MacLennan's Two Solitudes which describes the sometimes painful separateness dividing Canada's English and French-speaking populations. Canada's role in the First and Second World Wars played a large part in the political evolution of Canada and the identity of English Canadians. After the fall of France in 1940 and prior to the entry of the United States into the war in 1942, Canada saw itself as Britain's principal ally against Adolf Hitler. The well-known poem In Flanders Fields, written during the First World War by John McCrae of Guelph, Ontario, is associated with Remembrance Day. The RCMP "Mountie" has become a figure associated with Canada in the popular imagination of not only Canada, but other countries as well. Although it has many Francophone officers, in popular culture the mountie has been typically represented by an anglophone, such as Dudley Do-Right, Benton Fraser or Sergeant Preston of the Yukon. The myth of the stalwart (if somewhat rustic) heroic Canadian also appeared in the form of Johnny Canuck, a comic book figure of the mid-twentieth century. Anne of Green Gables by Lucy Maud Montgomery of Prince Edward Island is one of English Canada's best known contribution to general popular culture. The themes of gentle slapstick and ironic but affectionate observation of small-town Canadian life that appeared in the work of Stephen Leacock carried forward into the later part of the twentieth century to reappear in successful television sitcoms such as The Beachcombers, Corner Gas and Little Mosque on the Prairie. Traditional music in much of English-speaking Canada has sources in the music of Scotland and Ireland, brought to Newfoundland and the Maritime provinces in the 19th century. In the late 20th Century, Maritime artists, particularly musicians from Cape Breton Island such as Rita MacNeil, the Rankin Family, Natalie MacMaster and Ashley MacIsaac and Great Big Sea from Newfoundland achieved substantial popularity and influence throughout English Canada. A Celtic influence is similarly felt in the work of musicians from other parts of Canada, such as Spirit of the West, from British Columbia, Ontarian Stan Rogers, or Manitoba-born Loreena McKennitt. ... a Canadian of English ancestry or whose principal language is English, especially as opposed to French. Mr. Lévesque's judgment was not shared by many. As in the rest of Canada, opinion polls showed overwhelming support in Quebec for the War Measures Act.

My first point is a Jewish one. Marriage does not equal Kiddushin. It is a civil concept. Were it not a civil requirement for certain privileges, many Jews would simply not be involved in secular marriage. Kiddushin is well defined. It is JEWISH marriage. On that front, there is no compromise and there can not be a change. The Torah is explicit. Those who find an opening can call it what they like, but it’s not KIDDUSHIN, and anyone who calls it Kiddushin belongs to the Reform movement and is not considered part of mainstream Judaism. How should Jews then react to the Civil contract of Marriage? I look at these issues through the eyes of Halacha. The Halacha which is germane, is that of B’nei Noach. The reality is that we cannot be seen to be supporting something contrary to the Noachide laws. Those people, however, have free choice. When they live in a union, which they already do, without the civil contract, they are technically in breach, although one wonders whether Tinok Shenishba applies 🙂 I do not think the Jewish vote classifies as Mesayea Lidvar Aveyra or that this even applies because they already do it without the contract. So, what would I say if asked? I would say that Judaism does not support same gender marriage contracts. Judaism doesn’t proselytise, and whilst we have our views we recognise that the non Judaic world are governed by the laws of that land. We adhere to the laws of the land, but our personal stance as a religion is that there should be no change. At the same time, we do not support making someone an outcast because of their proclivities. Those are personal matters. We also feel that should the civil concept be legalised, all groupings based on gender preference should dissipate as this only causes animosity.

Prophecy Update Featured Article Yesterday's Prophecies - Today's Headlines Red Storm - By Matt Ward - http://www.raptureready.com/soap2/ward31.html Three weeks ago President Vladimir Putin contacted Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and made an offer he believed couldn’t be refused. Putin offered to guarantee the safety of Israel’s newly discovered Leviathan gas fields using the full might of the Russian military. Netanyahu politely declined. The very next week on the direct orders of Vladimir Putin fighter jets, tanks, sophisticated battlefield communications equipment and Special Forces began landing in Syria. It has become an open secret that many thousands of elite marines will follow shortly after. After just one week the widely held belief is that Russian forces are already engaged in real combat operations in Syria, carving out a safe zone from which they can operate. Russian troops have already engaged in active combat is an assumed reality because Russian R-166-0.5 (ultra) high-frequency signals (HF/VHF) vehicles were spotted on Syria's Highway 4 just a few days ago. This highway links Homs and Aleppo. These vehicles, called “mobile war rooms” by Western armies, were accompanied by BTR-82 troop carriers transporting Russian marines. These mobile communication centers provide up to the minute communication relays to troops engaged in live combat operations up to 1000 kilometers away. They are a crucial part of Russia’s war machine, strongly indicating Russia is already actively involved inside Syria. “Boots” are already on the ground. Even more alarmingly, Russia has also deployed advanced S-300 anti-aircraft missile batteries to bolster their force. The question though, is against whom exactly are these highly advanced missile deployed? ISIS does not have an Air Force so who are they meant to deter? These missiles are clearly to deter Israel and they will seriously impact upon the IAF’s ability to act in Syrian and Lebanese air space should they so desire. This impressive Russian arsenal is further augmented by the ominous presence of a Russia nuclear submarine, off Syria’s coast in the Mediterranean. This provides Russia with the ultimate deterrence, if it were needed. Clearly Russia are in Syria for the long game, not the short. Russia’s aims in Syria seem to be threefold. Firstly, defend the Syrian naval port of Tartus. Although ostensibly a Syrian port, as Al-Assad is a client ruler of Putin, the port is in effect Russian and it is through this port that Russia has the absolutely crucial access it requires to the Mediterranean. This sea port is at the centre of Russian aspirations for this region as it remains a key strategic goal for Putin to dominate the entire Mediterranean basin area militarily. Without a functioning deep sea port this is impossible. The second aim is to maintain the power of Bashir Al-Assad. Assad is a proxy ruler of Syria on behalf of Putin's Russia. Assad effectively rules Syria on Putin's behalf. This might not have been so a decade ago, but it certainly is now. Assad knows full well that the only reason he and his family are still alive today is because of Vladimir Putin. Assad’s government continues to exist because Russia have bolstered them against ISIS; that is the only reason it still stands. Recently, Putin has been taken aback by ISIS, their string of stinging victories over Assad’s forces and now recognizes the genuine possibility that without direct Russian intervention, Assad and Syria will fall to ISIS. If Assad falls Putin’s hold over Syria will fail and his influence over the entire Middle East will have suffered a devastating blow. Russia's real access to the Middle East is through Syria, therefore Putin will not let Assad fall. The final Russian objective relates to Israel and regards the “hook” that God Himself will place in Gog’s jaw. At some point Gog will have an “evil thought” and will determine to invade the beautiful land to “take a spoil.” It seems increasingly likely that this “evil thought” centers on the Leviathan gas fields of Israel, an oil field so vast it could dwarf the existing Saudi and Iraqi fields making Israel, or whoever owns them, the richest nation on planet Earth. These oil fields also sit easily within what Russia perceives as their legitimate sphere of influence. It is within their grasp. To this aim Putin has allowed the establishment of a separate front to open against Israel in the Golan Heights. Under the cover of the Syrian army their ally Iran is trying to “build a second terrorist front against us,” or so Benjamin Netanyahu has complained. Iran is occupying Syria along with Russia. We truly live in days of awe. We are blessed to see what we see today. We are witness to the real time build-up of the horde that will seek to vanquish Gods very own inheritance, as described in Ezekiel 38 and 39. Multitudes past have gazed at these days from afar through the lens of scripture yet we are privileged to see these events in real time as our present day reality. ISIS and the abject horrors they have wrought have forced the mass migration of entire people groups clearing vast swathes of Syria before them. This will make the Russian take over all the more simple. Iran, now a legitimate player in the region because of Obama’s absence of any form of Middle Eastern leadership, now enjoy a meaningful presence in Iraq and Syria. The fruits of “leading from behind.” At the very same time Israel have discovered a gas field that potentially dwarfs all others in the Middle East, the Leviathan gas field. In his vision Ezekiel saw a horde led by Gog attacking Israel so that they may, "...take a spoil." This is that horde forming now. The alliances necessary for Ezekiel 38 and 39 to come to pass are in place, and functioning well. Russia and Iran are very close. Turkey have become natural allies to Iran due to a hatred for Israel. Indeed, Recap Ergogan, President of Turkey openly despises Israel, he is a vicious hater of Israel who talks often of the need to free Al-Quds from the hands of the Jews. Al-Quds is known in Arabic as Jerusalem. Gog is taking up military positions right on Israel’s border and has already expressed an interest in Israel’s “spoil.” Gog is also bringing with him all the allies named in Ezekiel 38 and 39. We will now witness the full and rapid militarization of Syria by Russia and Iran. Israel must look tantalizing to Vladimir Putin. In the White House sits a president who is openly hostile to Israel, a man well known for his utter loathing of Benjamin Netanyahu, a president who does not care one jot for the tiny Jewish State. The Middle East stands in ruins because of the Arab spring, ISIS and failed military intervention from the West. European nations that would stand against Gog if he were to move against Israel are becoming swamped by their own crisis of humanity, threatening their very way of life. These same European nations have also had their stomach for a fight ripped out of them by more than a decade of failed military intervention in this same region. The world-wide economy is teetering on the brink of collapse and because of this all Western NATO nations have significantly cut back on their armed forces spending. The exception of course being NATO’s old foe Russia, who have instead injected billions into their military machine, completely revitalizing it and igniting a renewed militaristic optimism within the Russian military apparatus. Then there is little Israel, sitting all alone in the Middle East. Little Israel sitting on an oil field of immense size and almost incalculable value. Little Israel, hated and scorned by all nations of the world, openly despised, seemingly without a true friend or a real protector. Little Israel, isolated, alone, very exposed. Or so Gog thinks. Blessed be the Lord God, who has revealed these things to his servants! He has not left us alone but has revealed to us what is shortly to come to pass. Though the world will look on these things in days to come with fear and dread we should not. We know the end from the beginning! Israel is rapidly approaching her appointment with destiny and it will not be man who comes to her aid in her hour of desperate need. God Himself on that day will stand up and fight on her behalf, and woe to Gog and his allies, for mighty is the Lord God who will save her. Ezekiel 38: 3-12 “And say, Thus saith the Lord God; Behold, I am against thee, O Gog, the chief prince of Meshech and Tubal: And I will turn thee back, and put hooks into thy jaws, and I will bring thee forth, and all thine army, horses and horsemen, all of them clothed with all sorts of armour, even a great company with bucklers and shields, all of them handling swords: Persia, Ethiopia, and Libya with them; all of them with shield and helmet: Gomer, and all his bands; the house of Togarmah of the north quarters, and all his bands: and many people with thee. Be thou prepared, and prepare for thyself, thou, and all thy company that are assembled unto thee, and be thou a guard unto them. After many days thou shalt be visited: in the latter years thou shalt come into the land that is brought back from the sword, and is gathered out of many people, against the mountains of Israel, which have been always waste: but it is brought forth out of the nations, and they shall dwell safely all of them. Thou shalt ascend and come like a storm, thou shalt be like a cloud to cover the land, thou, and all thy bands, and many people with thee. Thus saith the Lord God; It shall also come to pass, that at the same time shall things come into thy mind, and thou shalt think an evil thought: And thou shalt say, I will go up to the land of unwalled villages; I will go to them that are at rest, that dwell safely, all of them dwelling without walls, and having neither bars nor gates, to take a spoil, and to take a prey; to turn thine hand upon the desolate places that are now inhabited, and upon the people that are gathered out of the nations, which have gotten cattle and goods, that dwell in the midst of the land.”

Posted by Noga Gur-Arieh I just so happened to watch To Rome with Love the very same day I read that Woody Allen said he is not ruling out the possibility to film in Israel. I am not a big Allen fan, and accordingly, I had a bit of a difficulty to connect to the somewhat strange plot. But in spite of the fact I wasn’t sympathetic towards any of the characters or continued thinking about the plot at home, I had this urge to book a flight to Rome. This is the second time a movie attracted me to a city in such an intense level. The first time was after I watched Vicky, Christina, Barcelona- another Allen film. What can I say? Allen’s got a magical touch. He makes the location the main character, and the absence of one human main character in his ensemble films makes the location even more emphasized. It is something you cannot miss, even if you are hooked to the plot. It is something you feel inside, this admiration for a breathtaking city where all those mysterious people live. A place that even the characters take some time off of their daily routine to admire. “Location, location, location” seems to be a phrase Allen often keeps in mind lately. It’s not a new rule in cinema, for we’ve seen it before in many Hollywood films putting yet another American city on the tourists’ maps. But Allen’s different. First of all, because he takes a financial risk as he chooses a foreign location, which combines a use of a foreign language, which can easily make his films somewhat “niche”. And secondly, because he doesn’t just make the viewers think to themselves that next time they go to Europe they might pay a visit to this certain city; he makes the viewers think of the city, and not stop until they either book a flight or tragically realize they can’t afford a vacation right now. When I watched To Rome with Love, I saw myself there, walking among the Piazzas, smelling a fresh-from-the-oven Pizza and drinking espresso. I saw myself having a candlelight dinner under the moonlight with my loved one, and walking, hand in hand, through the enchanting European streets, listening to Italian music and breathing Italian air. When I opened my eyes, the light went on and the audience was leaving the theater. I can hardly remember the plot right now, but I know I must visit Rome and feel all of what Allen made me feel through the screen. I didn’t think about the Italian promiscuous former Prime-minister, or about Italy’s financial difficulties; all I read about in the papers meant nothing to me after watching To Rome with Love- I just wanted to be there. It’s not a wild dream to believe Allen will film in Israel someday: lately, more and more filmmakers and television productions choose to add Israel as one of their locations. You Don’t Mess with the Zohan, the Debt, and Homeland‘s second season is just a shortlist of big productions filmed in Israel in the past couple of years. I wish Allen decides to film here, because an Allen Israeli film would give the audience what all of the other Allen films give: a genuine point of view on the place. It is very easy to rule out a vacation location because of what we read in the papers, especially when it comes to Europe. That’s why I thank the lord for Woody Allen’s filmmaking, which shows that all that we read in the papers doesn’t reflect what truly matters: the streets, the scenery, the atmosphere, the people. This is the real Rome, and this is the real Israel. I know for sure that an Allen movie featuring Israel would do justice to this magnificent place that many find it difficult to see through the headlines. This is the magic of the movies: they can take you anywhere and make it feel like you are in a parallel universe. But the best part is that it’s real. It’s all real. All we have to do is leave the theater and book a flight. 5.23.13 at 12:33 pm | Israel is not perfect. It has great people,. . . 5.21.13 at 12:22 pm | Muhammad al-Durrah, the little boy who became the. . . 5.20.13 at 12:39 pm | Ashton Kutcher, archeology, Palestinian reality. . . 5.17.13 at 12:33 pm | Since I live in Israel and am very passionate. . . 5.14.13 at 2:22 pm | On March 11, first time MK (Member of the. . . 5.13.13 at 12:22 pm | Hollywood in Israel, Wolf Prize winners, Wagner's. . . 5.21.13 at 12:22 pm | Muhammad al-Durrah, the little boy who became the. . . (271) 5.17.13 at 12:33 pm | Since I live in Israel and am very passionate. . . (256) 5.14.13 at 2:22 pm | On March 11, first time MK (Member of the. . . (99) July 15, 2012 | 11:52 am Posted by Noga Gur-Arieh •David Siegel, the Consul General of Israel in Los Angeles, decided to give Israel a small piece of advice on to how attract big Hollywood productions its way. According to Siegel, there is an increasing interest from Hollywood producers to film in Israel thanks to the diverse scenery, comfortable weather, and English speaking locals. However, in order to get more productions to choose Israel as their main location, Israel needs to provide more financial benefits for the producers who choose to do so, Siegel says. •The Israeli mind proves itself once again: an Israeli team from Ramat-Gan, Israel, won the 16th “RoboCup Junior” contest. “RoboCup” is an international contest where homemade robots compete in three categories: soccer, dance and rescue. This year, the robotic dancer, Angel, made by a group of young Israelis from Ohel-Shem Junior High, took over the dance floor and ranked first at the dancing section of the contest. •Mechaye Hamethim (Revival of the Dead), a musical creation composed by the Israeli composer and conductor, Noam Sheriff, will play at the 2012 Salzburg Festival. Mechaye Hamethim, which tells the story of the European Jews who were murdered in the Holocaust, was heard for the very first time in 1987 in Amsterdam. It combines classical European music with some oriental touch and has four parts: The first part tells the story of the European Jews; The second part is dedicated to the arrival of the Nazis; the third is the Yizkor and the Kadish; and the forth is an optimistic ending which tells of the revival of the Jewish people and the state of Israel. The creation will be the opening number performed by the Israeli Philharmonic orchestra in the Festival this summer, and will be conducted by the famous Zubin Mehta. •Hemi and Oksana Zemach, from Kadesh-Barnea, Israel, decided that Israel’s lack of proper PR skills will not get in the way of helping the world understand the real Israel. Two years ago, the couple, along with their three daughters Gali, Tamar and Michal, went on a seven-month trip through Europe and the U.S and told the locals the stories they never get to hear on the media. It cost them about 600,000NIS, and in spite of their attempts to raise money from organizations and businessmen, they wound up paying for this entire journey, which did nothing but helping Israel. Now, they want to go for a second round, this time in Russia, China, Australia, and the area, but since they ran out of money, they are looking for the financial aid that can help them continue to do good. July 13, 2012 | 3:49 pm Posted by Noga Gur-Arieh Ha Chov (The Debt), is a 2007 Israeli drama-thriller film directed by Assaf Bernstein, starring Gila Almagor, Neta Garty, Itay Tiran, Oded Teomi, Yuriy Chepurnov, and Oleg Drach. In the center of the plot there is an Israeli Mossad team who in captured a notorious Nazi doctor who had performed human experimentation in a German extermination camp. When he escapes from them, on the way from Germany to Israel, they report him as being shot in the head and killed during his attempted escape. In the following years, the agents receives numerous accolades for their actions, with none suspecting the truth, but in the late 1990’s, the three, now 60 year old agents, find out he may be alive, and gather once again in attempt of capturing him once and for all . They decide to take the law into their hands by completing their old assignment to eliminate “the Surgeon of Birkenau”, before the big lie will come out to the open. Three years after the movie’s release in Israel, Hollywood made its own quality version for the film, starring the amazing Helen Mirren. However, there is never anything like the original, and the amazing Israeli cast, which combines the very best of our actors and actresses, tell the most breathtaking story ever told. I watched it in the theater, and I believe that there is still a scratch mark on one of the chairs there, made by yours truly. The heart-stopping, breath-taking trailer (in English) for the Israeli version And for those of you who insist on watching the Hollywood version (because honestly, this is a must see Israeli creation, even if it’s not in Hebrew…) July 10, 2012 | 6:00 am Posted by Noga Gur-Arieh My co-blogger, Shmuel Rosner, mentioned in one of his latest posts, that the Israeli settlements are legal. “A judiciary committee has concluded that Israeli settlements in the West Bank are in fact legal. The West Bank, the committee believes, is not occupied territory and therefore Israel has the legal right to settle it.” On the surface, it seems like a great deal, since the matter of the legality of the settlements has been occupying Israeli and non-Israeli minds. The settlements are one of the subjects which divide Israelis since the early days of Israel, and are also a winning argument for our haters, who enjoy calling us “conquerors”. Now, so it seems, no one can claim “occupation”- we won! Unfortunately, this legal victory will cause no change in those “occupation” conversations. The simple reason is, just like Rosner claimed, that the discussion about settlements and occupation is not legal, but rather political. I read the paper every day, and it seems like a headline- worthy announcement. However, in got almost zero recognition and the reason is that no one cares. It may cause a withdrawal of several lawsuits by Arabs claiming the territories, but when it comes to what really matters, and it is the people’s agenda, the argument involving the settlements is not going anywhere. I study Communication and Political Science, which means I get to take part in conversations/arguments/violent arguments on a daily basis, and on every subject which concerns Israel. Since 1948, the matter of the settlements has been one of the few causes for the rift between left-wing and right-wing in Israel. Settlements, the treatment for the Palestinians, and the Ultra-Orthodox’s status are the three major conflicts which concern Israeli governments for 64 years, in one way or another. The first two also help fuel the fires of Israel’s haters, as they were used for claims against Israel’s policy as a “violator of Human Rights”, “a conqueror”, and so on. While the arguments considering the settlements (both in and out of Israel) were legal-based, mentioning Israel’s “violent and illegal conquest” or “theft”, the meaning was always political. The proof for the real intentions behind this argument is the simple fact the announcement of the legality of the settlements failed to attract anyone’s attention, and the arguments remained the same, and will continue to remain the same. Left-wingers will continue to call for clearing the settlements, and right-wingers will continue to struggle for their spread. Bottom line is, the conversation regarding settlements, like any other political topic, relies on the heart, not on the mind. It relies on beliefs and traditions, not on legal documents. The legality of the settlements will not change the minds of those who believe they should be cleared, as has never been the issue. July 8, 2012 | 11:20 am Posted by Noga Gur-Arieh •The Israel native and Hollywood’s sensational star, Sacha Baron Cohen, arrived in Israel last Wednesday. The Dictator star stayed in a hotel in Tel-Aviv, along with his wife, actress Isla Fisher, and two daughters. This is not his first visit in Israel. Noam (his Hebrew name), comes here every once in a while to visit his 89 year old Grandmother. This was an unofficial visit, and the actor did his best trying to avoid the paparazzi, which managed to track him down, in spite of his very Israeli look. •Conflict? What conflict? This Friday, a small delegation of teenage girls from the Hebrew settlement: Kfar Etzion, arrived in a Palestinian village Khirbet Zechariah. The girls, along with the head of the settlement’s council, came to thank Asharf Sadat, who saved their lives in a fire that broke in the settlement a while back. The members of the delegation handed Sadat a lovely bouquet of flowers, and expressed their deepest appreciation. During the fire, Dadat inhaled a great amount of smoke, and risked his life while fighting the flames. •The Israeli Tirosh Shapira is the Israeli Avatar. No, this is not a Hebrew version of James Cameron’s movie, this is the real deal. Israeli and French scientists have succeeded in making a robot in France move according to the thoughts of a researcher staying in Israel. The Israeli researcher sat inside a fMRI (Functional magnetic resonance imaging),thought of a movement to the left or to the right, and a small robot in France received these orders and moved accordingly. When Shapira thought of legs, the robot moves forward; when he thought of the left hand, the robot moved to the left; when he thought of the right hand, the robot moved to the right. This was enabled without any mediation: from the researcher’s mind straight to the robot’s “legs”. •For the tenth year, a special flight of American-Jews will land in Israel. No less than 60 singles in the search for love will land in Ben- Gurion Airport this Thursday, in the first round of the “singles flight”. During this summer, 450 single American-Jews are expected to make Aliya while searching for their Israeli soul-mate as a part of this unique and self-proven, Jewish matchmaking service. The “singles flights” are a shared project of “Nefesh be Nefesh” organization, together with the Jewish Agency and the Ministry of Immigrant Absorption. Thanks to this project, many American Jews shared their Aliya process with a native “special someone”. Since the project started ten years ago, 640 American singles and native Israelis got to stand under the Hupah. •After failing to pass the Israeli Olympic criteria to join the delegation to London, high jumper Dima Kroyter, judoka Tommy Arshansky and archer Guy Matzkin appealed to the Israel Olympic Committee, requesting to include the three young athletes who have recorded very impressive achievements in their fields, in the Israeli delegation to London. The three passed the International criteria, yet failed to pass the Israeli one. The committee accepted two of the three appeals, and both Kroyter and Arshansky will try and conquer London this summer. Matzkin’s appeal was denied, in spite of a massive Facebook campaign calling the IOC to allow the talented archer to compete. July 6, 2012 | 7:40 am Posted by Noga Gur-Arieh Shotei Ha’nevua (“The Fools of Prophecy”) was an Israeli band, who broke up in 2007, but their music still have a major part in Israel’s music scene. Their music is a fusion of Dub-Raggae with Hip-Hop and Dance music, with an addition of a Mediterranean flavor. Shotei Ha’nevua even had a short international career when they toured the U.S in 2005. After their separation, their lead singer, Avraham Tal, went on a solo career and nowadays performs with the band’s songs as well as with original songs of his own. What makes them one of my favorite bands is the fact I can enjoy their music when I am looking for relaxation and also when I want to party and have a good time, thanks to their variety of songs. Here are two of my favorite songs of Shotei Ha’nevua: Kol Galgal (“The voice of a wheel”) July 4, 2012 | 1:12 pm Posted by Noga Gur-Arieh Last year, the world entered a new phase of protests calling for social justice. It probably existed earlier, that longing for equality in the society, but last summer, the entire world felt it simultaneously. Israel, of course, took a meaningful part in the summer of protests. I am all in favor of the freedom of speech. This is one of the most significant human rights and is an essential component of Democracy. But the thing about freedom of speech is that it should be done right, and by “right” I mean with putting our minds into it. Lately, it seems like people in Israel protest just to protest. Like this is some sort of a fashion trend- everybody do it! Equal rights for the Gay community, recruitment for Haredi, lower real estate prices- they are all very important issues we currently have in Israel, but there is a point when fighting for justice turns to fighting just for a fight. When a country reaches this point- everything worth fighting for loses its value. Last year’s protest was the biggest Israel’s ever seen. The streets were filled with tents, as people of the middle class gathered to demand social justice. This protest swirled everybody’s heads and got us all carried away. It took a governmental committee that accomplish nothing to realize this protest was unfocused and demanded too big of a change. Ever since, it seemed like the idea of protest really turned on people here. Soon, every subject concerning anyone was accompanied by a protest: subjects such as the prices of chocolate bars. Every struggle seemed to have a need for a protest for decoration. The outcome, I’m afraid, was a really bad Sukkah- too much decoration and no space to breathe. Now it is summer again, and my Facebook wall is starting to fill with invitations for protests. People are calling me to place a tent in the streets of Tel Aviv and shout important phrases, such as “the people demand social justice.” “Going out to the streets” became a common phrase that no one knows what it means. Is there a concrete plan with an outcome the protests arrangers wish to accomplish? Because let’s face it- social justice is something we all wish to get, but none of us really knows how to get it. This takes deep thought and right usage of freedom of speech. A couple of weeks ago I found out I was not alone with my thoughts. Protest leaders worldwide landed in Israel for a special convention, where they dealt with issues regarding social protests, and discussed the right way to throw a protest. Stav Shaffir, one of the notable figures during the protests last summer, took part in that convention, along with protest leaders from Russia, Greece, Spain and many more. Some made a difference, some are still waiting, and some saw in the Israeli protest a great inspiration. On one thing they all agreed: the outcomes of a true revolution take time. A meaningful change can be accomplished only by hard, consistent work, guided by a clear agenda. The issues which lead to all those protests were major, profound issues (at least most of them). And this kind of change is important for every democracy. Last week, some protestors started to use violence, as well as some policemen. A protestor was quoted saying: “We learned that setting tents accomplished nothing, so the police better watch out this summer.” Is this how we want to use our freedom of speech? Is violence really the way to make a difference? Some may believe it is, but not me. This is exactly why we shouldn’t let the true solutions be replaced by a fog of signs and shouts. The struggle for social justice cannot be reached by simply stepping outside. It is an important part of the making of a change, but fighting with the government until one side starts to bleed will get us nowhere. I really hope this summer will be the true “worldwide spring.” I hope lessons from previous mistakes, along with the conclusions from the convention, will show our fierce protest leaders, as well as our governments, the right way. Governments worldwide should try and listen to the voice of the people instead of ignoring their voters, but the people should be willing to sit and talk, instead of shouting. History has proven to us all that great minds think alike, and that leaders work best together. This is our chance. Our time is now. July 1, 2012 | 11:57 am Posted by Noga Gur-Arieh • A German court has ruled that circumcising male infants for religious reasons is a crime. A long debate regarding the subject has ended when a regional court in Cologne said last week that circumcision, which is common both in Judaism and in Islam, inflicts serious bodily harm on those who had not consented to it. “A child’s body is irreparably and permanently changed by a circumcision,” German media quoted the ruling as saying. “This change contravenes the interests of the child to decide later about his own religious affiliation.” • Anti-Semitism refuses to rest in Europe. After the killing in France, and the violence in Ukraine, Austrian authorities are investigating the desecration of 43 Jewish graves at Vienna’s main cemetery. A police statement on Friday said that tomb stones and slabs were found vandalized and damaged. The police are still investigating. • Thousands of immigrant students may face cuts in scholarships given to them by Israel’s Student Authority. Due to financial difficulty and many cutbacks faced by the Treasury as well as the Jewish Agency, the Absorption Ministry stated that there is no choice, but to freeze Olim students’ funding of preparatory courses, Hebrew Ulpan and all academic studies. The freeze will take effect starting in July. Later this week, students from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem plan to protest outside of the Knesset building in Jerusalem. • Now it’s official! After cancelling their concert in Israel at the last minute ten years ago, the Red Hot Chili Peppers are ready to make amends. On September 10th they will land in Israel and rock Tel Aviv for the first time. In their recent official announcement, the band members couldn’t hold their excitement from their upcoming show. They invited their Israeli fans of all ages to come to the concert. They also mentioned their first guitarist, Hilel Slovack, who was an Israeli.

The following is adapted from Taylor Marshall's new book: The Eternal City: Rome & and Origins of Catholic Christianity. The Catholic Church, from at least the second century, has claimed that Christ was born on December 25. However, it is commonly alleged that our Lord Jesus Christ was not born on December 25. For the sake of simplicity, let us set out the usual objections to the date of December 25 and counter each of them. Objection 1: December 25 was chosen in order to replace the pagan Roman festival of Saturnalia. Saturnalia was a popular winter festival and so the Catholic Church prudently substituted Christmas in its place. Reply to Objection 1: Saturnalia commemorated the winter solstice. Yet the winter solstice falls on December 22. It is true that Saturnalia celebrations began as early as December 17 and extended till December 23. Still, the dates don’t match up. Objection 2: December 25 was chosen to replace the pagan Roman holiday Natalis Solis Invicti which means “Birthday of the Unconquered Sun.” Reply to Objection 2: Let us examine first the cult of the Unconquered Sun. The Emperor Aurelian introduced the cult of the Sol Invictus or Unconquered Sun to Rome in A.D. 274. Aurelian found political traction with this cult, because his own name Aurelian derives from the Latin word aurora denoting “sunrise.” Coins reveal that Emperor Aurelian called himself the Pontifex Solis or Pontiff of the Sun. Thus, Aurelian simply accommodated a generic solar cult and identified his name with it at the end of the third century. Most importantly, there is no historical record for a celebration Natalis Sol Invictus on December 25 prior to A.D. 354. Within an illuminated manuscript for the year A.D. 354, there is an entry for December 25 reading “N INVICTI CM XXX.” Here N means “nativity.” INVICTI means “of the Unconquered.” CM signifies “circenses missus” or “games ordered.” The Roman numeral XXX equals thirty. Thus, the inscription means that thirty games were order for the nativity of the Unconquered for December 25th. Note that the word “sun” is not present. Moreover, the very same codex also lists “natus Christus in Betleem Iudeae” for the day of December 25. The phrase is translated as “birth of Christ in Bethlehem of Judea.”[i] The date of December 25th only became the “Birthday of the Unconquered Sun” under the Emperor Julian the Apostate. Julian the Apostate had been a Christian but who had apostatized and returned to Roman paganism. History reveals that it was the hateful former Christian Emperor that erected a pagan holiday on December 25. Think about that for a moment. What was he trying to replace? These historical facts reveal that the Unconquered Sun was not likely a popular deity in the Roman Empire. The Roman people did not need to be weaned off of a so-called ancient holiday. Moreover, the tradition of a December 25th celebration does not find a place on the Roman calendar until after the Christianization of Rome. The “Birthday of the Unconquered Sun” holiday was scarcely traditional and hardly popular. Saturnalia (mentioned above) was much more popular, traditional, and fun. It seems, rather, that Julian the Apostate had attempted to introduce a pagan holiday in order to replace the Christian one! Objection 3: Christ could not have been born in December since Saint Luke describes shepherds herding in the neighboring fields of Bethlehem. Shepherds do not herd during the winter. Thus, Christ was not born in winter. Reply to Objection 3: Recall that Palestine is not England, Russia, or Alaska. Bethlehem is situated at the latitude of 31.7. My city of Dallas, Texas has the latitude of 32.8, and it’s still rather comfortable outside in December. As the great Cornelius a Lapide remarks during his lifetime, one could still see shepherds and sheep in the fields of Italy during late December, and Italy is at higher latitude than Bethlehem. Now we move on to establishing the birthday of Christ from Sacred Scripture in two steps. The first step is to use Scripture to determine the birthday of Saint John the Baptist. The next step is using Saint John the Baptist’s birthday as the key for finding Christ’s birthday. We can discover that Christ was born in late December by observing first the time of year in which Saint Luke describes Saint Zacharias in the temple. This provides us with the approximate conception date of Saint John the Baptist. From there we can follow the chronology that Saint Luke gives, and that lands us at the end of December. Saint Luke reports that Zacharias served in the “course of Abias” (Lk 1:5) which Scripture records as the eighth course among the twenty-four priestly courses (Neh 12:17). Each shift of priests served one week in the temple for two times each year. The course of Abias served during the eighth week and the thirty-second week in the annual cycle.[ii] However, when did the cycle of courses begin? Josef Heinrich Friedlieb has convincingly established that the first priestly course of Jojarib was on duty during the destruction of Jerusalem on the ninth day of the Jewish month of Av.[iii] Thus the priestly course of Jojarib was on duty during the second week of Av. Consequently, the priestly course of Abias (the course of Saint Zacharias) was undoubtedly serving during the second week of the Jewish month of Tishri—the very week of the Day of Atonement on the tenth day of Tishri. In our calendar, the Day of Atonement would land anywhere from September 22 to October 8. Zacharias and Elizabeth conceived John the Baptist immediately after Zacharias served his course. This entails that Saint John the Baptist would have been conceived somewhere around the end of September, placing John’s birth at the end of June, confirming the Catholic Church’s celebration of the Nativity of Saint John the Baptist on June 24. The second-century Protoevangelium of Saint James also confirms a late September conception of the Baptist since the work depicts Saint Zacharias as High Priest and as entering the Holy of Holies—not merely the holy place with the altar of incense. This is a factual mistake because Zacharias was not the high priest, but one of the chief priests.[iv] Still, the Protoevangelium regards Zacharias as a high priest and this associates him with the Day of Atonement, which lands on the tenth day of the Hebrew month of Tishri (roughly the end of our September). Immediately after this entry into the temple and message of the Archangel Gabriel, Zacharias and Elizabeth conceive John the Baptist. Allowing for forty weeks of gestation, this places the birth of John the Baptist at the end of June—once again confirming the Catholic date for the Nativity of Saint John the Baptist on June 24. The rest of the dating is rather simple. We read that just after the Immaculate Virgin Mary conceived Christ, she went to visit her cousin Elizabeth who was six months pregnant with John the Baptist. This means that John the Baptist was six months older that our Lord Jesus Christ (Lk 1:24-27, 36). If you add six months to June 24 you get December 24-25 as the birthday of Christ. Then, if you subtract nine months from December 25 you get that the Annunciation was March 25. All the dates match up perfectly. So then, if John the Baptist was conceived shortly after the Jewish Day of the Atonement, then the traditional Catholic dates are essentially correct. The birth of Christ would be about or on December 25. Sacred Tradition also confirms December 25 as the birthday of the Son of God. The source of this ancient tradition is the Blessed Virgin Mary herself. Ask any mother about the birth of her children. She will not only give you the date of the birth, but she will be able to rattle off the time, the location, the weather, the weight of the baby, the length of the baby, and a number of other details. I’m the father of six blessed children, and while I sometimes forget these details—mea maxima culpa—my wife never does. You see, mothers never forget the details surrounding the births of their babies. Now ask yourself: Would the Blessed Virgin Mary ever forget the birth of her Son Jesus Christ who was conceived without human seed, proclaimed by angels, born in a miraculous way, and visited by Magi? She knew from the moment of His incarnation in her stainless womb that He was the Son of God and Messiah. Would she ever forget that day?[v] Next, ask yourself: Would the Apostles be interested in hearing Mary tell the story? Of course they would. Do you think the holy Apostle who wrote, “And the Word was made flesh,” was not interested in the minute details of His birth? Even when I walk around with our seven-month-old son, people always ask “How old is he?” or “When was he born?” Don’t you think people asked this question of Mary? So the exact birth date (December 25) and the time (midnight) would have been known in the first century. Moreover, the Apostles would have asked about it and would have, no doubt, commemorated the blessed event that both Saint Matthew and Saint Luke chronicle for us. In summary, it is completely reasonable to state that the early Christians both knew and commemorated the birth of Christ. Their source would have been His Immaculate Mother. Further testimony reveals that the Church Fathers claimed December 25 as the Birthday of Christ prior to the conversion of Constantine and the Roman Empire. The earliest record of this is that Pope Saint Telesphorus (reigned A.D. 126-137) instituted the tradition of Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve. Although the Liber Pontificalis does not give us the date of Christmas, it assumes that the Pope was already celebrating Christmas and that a Mass at midnight was added. During this time, we also read the following words of Theophilus (A.D. 115-181), Catholic bishop of Caesarea in Palestine: “We ought to celebrate the birthday of Our Lord on what day soever the 25th of December shall happen.”[vi] Shortly thereafter in the second century, Saint Hippolytus (A.D. 170-240) wrote in passing that the birth of Christ occurred on December 25: The First Advent of our Lord in the flesh occurred when He was born in Bethlehem, was December 25th, a Wednesday, while Augustus was in his forty-second year, which is five thousand and five hundred years from Adam. He suffered in the thirty-third year, March 25th, Friday, the eighteenth year of Tiberius Caesar, while Rufus and Roubellion were Consuls.[vii] Also note in the quote above the special significance of March 25, which marks the death of Christ (March 25 was assumed to corresponded to the Hebrew month Nisan 14 - the traditional date of crucifixion).[viii] Christ, as the perfect man, was believed to have been conceived and died on the same day—March 25. In his Chronicon, Saint Hippolytus states that the earth was created on March 25, 5500 B.C. Thus, March 25 was identified by the Church Fathers as the Creation date of the universe, as the date of the Annunciation and Incarnation of Christ, and also as the date of the Death of Christ our Savior. In the Syrian Church, March 25 or the Feast of the Annunciation was seen as one of the most important feasts of the entire year. It denoted the day that God took up his abode in the womb of the Virgin. In fact, if the Annunciation and Good Friday came into conflict on the calendar, the Annunciation trumped it, so important was the day in Syrian tradition. It goes without saying that the Syrian Church preserved some of the most ancient Christian traditions and had a sweet and profound devotion for Mary and the Incarnation of Christ. Now then, March 25 was enshrined in the early Christian tradition, and from this date it is easy to discern the date of Christ’s birth. March 25 (Christ conceived by the Holy Ghost) plus nine months brings us to December 25 (the birth of Christ at Bethlehem). Saint Augustine confirms this tradition of March 25 as the Messianic conception and December 25 as His birth: For Christ is believed to have been conceived on the 25th of March, upon which day also he suffered; so the womb of the Virgin, in which he was conceived, where no one of mortals was begotten, corresponds to the new grave in which he was buried, wherein was never man laid, neither before him nor since. But he was born, according to tradition, upon December the 25th.[ix] In about A.D. 400, Saint Augustine also noted how the schismatic Donatists celebrated December 25 as the birth of Christ, but that the schismatics refused to celebrate Epiphany on January 6, since they regarded Epiphany as a new feast without a basis in Apostolic Tradition. The Donatist schism originated in A.D. 311 which may indicate that the Latin Church was celebrating a December 25 Christmas (but not a January 6 Epiphany) before A.D. 311. Whichever is the case, the liturgical celebration of Christ’s birth was commemorated in Rome on December 25 long before Christianity became legalized and long before our earliest record of a pagan feast for the birthday of the Unconquered Sun. For these reasons, it is reasonable and right to hold that Christ was born on December 25 in 1 B.C. and that he died and rose again in March of A.D. 33. Taylor's new book The Eternal City also makes an argument in defense of the traditional BC/AD dating as being 100% accurate. [i] The Chronography of AD 354. Part 12: Commemorations of the Martyrs. MGH Chronica Minora I (1892), pp. 71-2. [ii] I realize that there are two courses of Abias. This theory only works if Zacharias and Elizabeth conceived John the Baptist after Zacharias' second course - the course in September. If Saint Luke refers to the first course, this then would place the birth of John the Baptist in late Fall and the birth of Christ in late Spring. However, I think tradition and the Protoevangelium substantiate that the Baptist was conceived in late September. [iii] Josef Heinrich Friedlieb’s Leben J. Christi des Erlösers. Münster, 1887, p. 312. [iv] The Greek tradition especially celebrates Saint Zacharias as "high priest." Nevertheless, Acts 5:24 reveals that there were several “chief priests” (ἀρχιερεῖς), and thus the claim that Zacharias was a “high priest” may not indicate a contradiction. The Greek tradition identifies Zacharias as an archpriest and martyr based on the narrative of the Protoevangelium of James and Matthew 23:35: “That upon you may come all the just blood that hath been shed upon the earth, from the blood of Abel the just, even unto the blood of Zacharias the son of Barachias, whom you killed between the temple and the altar.” (Matthew 23:35) [v] A special thanks to the Reverend Father Phil Wolfe, FSSP for bringing the “memory of Mary” argument to my attention. [vi] Magdeburgenses, Cent. 2. c. 6. Hospinian, De origine Festorum Chirstianorum. [vii] Saint Hippolytus of Rome, Commentary on Daniel. [viii] There is some discrepancy in the Fathers as to whether Nisan 14/March 25 marked the death of Christ or his resurrection. [ix] Saint Augustine, De trinitate, 4, 5. Do you enjoy reading Canterbury Tales by Taylor Marshall? Make it easier to receive daily posts. It's free. Please click here to sign up by Feed or here to sign up by Email. Please also explore Taylor's books about Catholicism at amazon.com.

Yoshi's San Francisco Live Music & Restaurant, San FranciscoFollowing the success of The O'Jays, The Spinners and The Delfonics, the City of Brotherly Love has just enough room for another highly successful soul group... Danville christmas in san francisco events Friday, Jul 19 8:00p Monday, Dec 2 4:00p The RRazz Room, San FranciscoBanish the Bah-Humbug and get yourself into the Holiday spirit with this Rrazz Room holiday favorite! The incomparable Connie Champagne transforms the stage into a Winter Wonderland with Garland cl... Wednesday, Dec 25 8:00p The RRazz Room, San FranciscoThe Fabulous Bud E. Luv Bud is back! With his loyal band-mates Mikey Luv and Markey Luv, Bud is a bona fide Las Vegas performer... Sunday, Jun 23 10:30a The Writing Salon (San Francisco), San FranciscoHave you always wanted to write about your crazy family? What about an accident that changed the course of your life? A discovery that changed your perception of the past? A mysterious neighbor who... Danville christmas in san francisco Related Topics arts & crafts | community | business & tech | dance | fairs & festivals | food & dining | music | performing arts | sports & outdoors | visual arts | other | comedy | shopping | education/campus | holiday | christmas show | san francisco christmas s | christmas event | festival | christmas event san francisco | christmas arts events | christmas show in san francisco Don't Miss This The John & Marcia Goldman Foundation Lecture – Khaled Hosseini in Conversation with Judson True at Jewish Community Center of San FranciscoMon 6/24 7:00p David Copperfield at MGM Grand Las Vegas at MGM Hollywood TheatreThu 6/20 7:00p

Published — Sunday 25 November 2012 Last update 25 November 2012 6:57 am RAMALLAH: The body of the Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat will be exhumed on Tuesday, eight years after his death, in an investigation to establish if he was murdered, a Palestinian official said yesterday. A French court opened a murder inquiry in August into Arafat’s death in Paris after a Swiss institute said it had discovered high levels of radioactive polonium on his clothing, which was supplied by his widow, Suha. Tawfiq Al-Tirawi, in charge of the Palestinian committee overseeing the investigation, told reporters in Ramallah yesterday “it is a painful necessity” to exhume the body. Tirawi said the Palestinians had “evidence which suggests Arafat was assassinated by Israelis.” The exhumation and renewed allegations of Israeli involvement could stir further tension between the Palestinians and Israel, which are observing a truce after a week of fierce fighting in Gaza. Any positive results for polonium could rekindle Palestinian hostility toward Israel and suspicions that a local collaborator may have poisoned him under directions from the Jewish state. Rumors and speculation have surrounded Arafat’s death ever since a quick deterioration of his condition saw him pass away at the Percy military hospital in suburban Paris in November 2004 at the age of 75.

Let’s get the dirt out of the way, and then move on to the good stuff. Those who study Christology tend to study what later writers said about Jesus, and then try to find some way through the maze to arrive at an understanding of what Jesus thought about Jesus. I am prone to agree with Käsemann who showed that there is a historical barrier between us and the historical Jesus. I think its fun and occasionally worthwhile to consider “the historical Jesus,” but, in reality, the interpretations are far too varied. Everyone comes out with the Jesus that they wanted. The biggest flaw in Wright’s argument is his assumption that we can say anything about Jesus’ self-understanding. As he correctly points out, we can’t psychoanalyze a figure that lived 2000 years ago. So what do we do? In light of the fact that we can’t get into a first century Jew’s mind (though, Wright seems to think we can), what does “self-understanding” mean? The beauty of Wright’s argument can be summed up in one sentence: “[W]hat was thinkable for the early Jewish church must have been thinkable for the early Jewish Jesus” (p. 55). This is a stunningly simple, yet important concept. Wright notes that so much of this quest for the historical Jesus has been focused on the Jewish-ness of Jesus. If it was possible for an early, mostly Jewish Jesus movement to conceive of Jesus in a way that we would characterize as “high Christology,” why is it difficult for us to believe that Jesus could have thought in this way? It’s (un)common sense. From here Wright launches into a discussion of Jesus in light of Temple and Torah. I am onboard with this direction. Wright’s analysis of Jesus’ movement as anti-Temple is quite interesting, and I am inclined to agree. He refers to Jesus as the “Tabernacling Presence,” meaning that Jesus was “acting as a one-man Temple substitute” (p. 57) by offering the forgiveness of sins and restoration—Temple functions. Wright’s discussion of Jesus in light of Torah/Wisdom is a bit more nebulous, shorter, and seemingly out of focus by comparison. N. T. Wright makes a much-needed, simple statement—Jesus’ humble roots do not preclude Him from a higher christology. Further, moving in the direction of Jesus’ self-understanding being rooted in Temple and Torah feels like the way to go. However, the question of how we can really talk about a historical figure’s self-understanding is still open for discussion.

For Paterson and Democrats, a week of close shaves Published 1:00 am, Friday, September 25, 2009 It's easy to become excessively Freudian when contemplating Gov. David Paterson's decision this week to give up on facial hair entirely. But imagine what it must feel like to have the world — or at least the leader of the free world — turning away from you. How many among us wouldn't think about changing our appearance? It's been an up-and-waaay-down week for Paterson's political fortunes. The plunge began last weekend with the revelation that White House political operatives were telling Paterson that President Barack Obama was, well, a bit concerned with the governor's poll numbers, and the possible negative effect that his presence on the ticket could have on New York's Democratic candidates in 2010. The descent continued on Monday during Obama's visit to Hudson Valley Community College, where Paterson ended up looking a little like Charlie Brown in "Peanuts," the earnest but overlooked striver whose kite is always being eaten by a tree. (This is not a putdown: Charlie Brown was, after all, the hero of the comic strip.) By Wednesday, the barrage of questions about his status had taken a toll on Paterson, who intimated that supporters of Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, a likely gubernatorial contender, had encouraged the revelations about the White House's nudging. Cuomo expressly denied it, and Paterson took him at his word. Meanwhile, Paterson's wife said she found it especially painful that the nation's first African-American president was the one suggesting an end to the career of the state's first African-American governor. I'm not sure it would be any less painful if a white, female, Jewish or Chinese-American president were the one trying to ease Paterson out of the picture. But I know it would probably be a lot more damaging to the state Democratic party if a certain white attorney general was the one making the argument. The irony here is that Cuomo keenly understands the roil of emotions Paterson must be experiencing because something very similar happened to the attorney general during his own gubernatorial run in 2002. After initially rejecting the advice of party officials who told him it wasn't his year, Cuomo mounted a primary challenge against Carl McCall, the African-American former comptroller. Facing rotten poll numbers and risking long-lasting alienation from party leaders, Cuomo dropped out a week before the primary. "I will not close a gap in an election by opening one in the body politic," Cuomo said as he left the race. As exit lines go, that's a keeper. For Paterson, the week's not-insignificant up was his long-shot win in the state Court of Appeals, where the judges in a 4-3 ruling on Tuesday upheld the governor's right to name Richard Ravitch as the state's first-ever appointed lieutenant governor. But even that victory turned bitter after commentators began noting that the court had provided Paterson with a safer path to resignation. Now, I'm no longer surprised by anything that happens at the state Capitol — it's like a soap opera with a much higher budget — but the idea that Paterson would voluntarily resign and hand over the ship of state to Ravitch seems beyond the pale. Whatever Paterson is enduring now, the opprobrium that would fall on his head for subjecting the state to its second executive resignation in as many years would cover him like shroud for the rest of his life. The only winner in that scenario would be Sarah Palin, who would no longer be seen as the nation's biggest gubernatorial quitter. On Wednesday, a newly clean-shaven Paterson held a relatively placid and quasi-productive meeting with Ravitch and legislative leaders to lay the groundwork for midyear budget cuts, which are shaping up to be this fall's agonizing political narrative. "I didn't appoint Lieutenant Governor Ravitch so I could resign and he wouldn't have a lieutenant governor," Paterson told reporters after the meeting ended. As no-exit lines go, that's a keeper. Last week's column on the death of local barber Alessandro DiMeo brought in dozens of e-mails and phone calls from people who had been patrons of his shop. I passed a number of these messages along to the family, who also received dozens of comments on our Web site's online memory book. The response from readers meant a great deal to the family. And, as many of you might have read in Thursday's paper, starting Oct. 9 I will be joining my Capitol colleague Irene Jay Liu and WMHT-TV producer Matt Ryan on "New York Now," our public broadcaster's weekly look at state government and politics. If you'll allow a shameless plug: It airs at 7:30 p.m. Friday and 11 a.m. and 11 p.m. Sundays. Please tell your friends. Alas, because of the time demands of these new duties and my regular role as the paper's state editor — plus my desire to see my family every now and then — this will be my last Friday column. I hope you'll keep reading my work on Sunday in our Perspective section. Reach Casey Seiler at 454-5619 or firstname.lastname@example.org.

An educational and cultural institution, the Museum of Mazovian Jews is dedicated to the history of Jewish settlement in Poland. The exhibition space is divided into the following three parts: vestibule, Holocaust room and main exhibition hall. The vestibule is where the history of Mazovian Jews is presented by means of statistical documents and the most important information about Jewish settlement in Poland from its very beginning up to the recent revival of Jewish culture in Poland. Equipped with multimedia tools, the main exhibition hall is where the visitors can become familiar with Jewish culture through samples of Jewish cuisine, music, religious holidays, customs and architecture. The exhibition room devoted to the Holocaust is based on a book entitled Kartki z pozogi (Leaves From the Flame) by Symcha Guterman, who was an eyewitness of the destruction of the world of Plock Jews, and archive photographs taken by Mazovian Jews. The exhibition is complemented with a multimedia presentation based on Jewish paper-cuts. Apart from housing exhibitions, the Museum of Mazovian Jews organises concerts, literary soirees, lectures, theatrical performances, temporary exhibitions, lessons, film shows, slide shows, Jewish cuisine tastings, visual art workshops and dance workshops. By doing so, the museum aims at presenting Jewish culture, securing communication between Poles and Jews, fighting prejudice and challenging stereotypes. Also, it is one of the institutions which promote the region of Mazovia, including Plock itself, through attracting tourists from both home and abroad.

|Bishop and Martyr| |Born||Galilee, Judaea Province| |Died||c. 107 or 117 AD Jerusalem, Iudaea Province |Venerated in||Roman Catholic Church Eastern Orthodox Church |Feast||February 18 (Western Christianity) April 27 (Eastern Christianity) |Part of a series on| Eusebius of Caesarea gives the list of these bishops. According to a universal tradition the first bishop of Jerusalem was Saint James the Just, the "brother of the Lord," who according to Eusebius said that he was appointed bishop by the Apostles Peter, St. James (whom Eusebius identifies with James, son of Zebedee), and John. According to Eusebius, Saint Simeon of Jerusalem was selected as James' successor after the conquest of Jerusalem which took place immediately after the martyrdom of James (i.e. no earlier than 70 AD) which puts the account in conflict with that of Flavius Josephus who puts James death in 63 AD: After the martyrdom of James and the conquest of Jerusalem which immediately followed, it is said that those of the apostles and disciples of the Lord that were still living came together from all directions with those that were related to the Lord according to the flesh (for the majority of them also were still alive) to take counsel as to who was worthy to succeed James. They all with one consent pronounced Symeon, the son of Clopas, of whom the Gospel also makes mention; to be worthy of the episcopal throne of that parish. He was a cousin, as they say, of the Saviour. For Hegesippus records that Clopas was a brother of Joseph. According to Hegesippus, Simeon prevailed against Thebutis, whom the church fathers deemed a Judaizing heresiarch, and led most of the Christians to Pella before the outbreak of the Jewish War in 66 and the destruction of Herod's Temple in 70. About the year 107 or 117 he was crucified under Trajan by the proconsul Tiberius Claudius Atticus Herodes in Jerusalem or the vicinity.However,this must be a mistake because the Roman province of Judea the Roman administrator (Legate) of the day at the time of the Crucifixion was a Quintus Pompeius Falco (between 105-107 AD) and Tiberius Claudius Atticus Herodes was there much earlier from 99-102 AD. - Simeon of Jerusalem is identified with one of the prophets and teachers in Antioch named "Simeon, who was called Niger" in Acts 13:1. - Simeon is sometimes identified with Simon, the "brother of the Lord", who is mentioned in passing in the Bible (Matthew 13:55, Mark 6:3) (although Aramaic had no term for "cousin") and pointing to Hegesippus referring to him as the "second cousin" as bishop of Jerusalem. Other exegetes consider the brothers to be actual brothers and Hegesippus' wording as subsuming both James and Simeon under a more general term. - He has also been identified with the Apostle Simon the Zealot. - Historia Ecclesiastica, IV, v." - "Historia Ecclesiastica, II, i." - Eddy, Paul R. and Boyd, Gregory A. (2007) The Jesus Legend: A Case for the Historical Reliability of the Synoptic Jesus Tradition. Baker Academic, pg 189 - See also Flavius Josephus, Jewish Antiquities XX, ix, 1. - Eusebius of Caesarea, Church History, Book III, ch. 11. - Catholic Encyclopedia: Schism - Eusebius, Eusebius, Historia Ecclesiastica, III, xxxii. - "The Brethren of the Lord". Catholic Encyclopedia. - Franz Georg Untergaßmair (1995). "Simeon, Bischof von Jerusalem". In Bautz, Traugott. Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon (BBKL) (in German) 10. Herzberg: Bautz. cols. 363–364. ISBN 3-88309-062-X. - St. Simon the Apostle, from the Catholic Encyclopedia - Appendix to the Works of Hippolytus 49.11

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * - We proudly offer more New England art news and reviews than anyone else. - Contact our researchers. - Disconcerting evidence concerning the nature of our existence. - Learn more about our founder and his Invisible Museum. - Search our extensive research archive. - “Rembrandt’s People,” Wadsworth Atheneum, Oct. 10, 2009, to Jan. 24, 2010. - Brian Knep “Exempla,” Tufts, Sept. 10 to Nov. 15, 2009. Also Brain Knep, Rotenberg Gallery, Nov. 19 to Dec. 23, 2009. - “Drawings That Work: 21st Drawing Show,” Boston Center for the Arts, Sept. 11 to Oct. 25, 2009. - Kirsten Hassenfeld, Brown’s Bell Gallery, Aug. 29 to Nov. 1, 2009. Also at Cade Tompkins Editions/Projects, Sept. 25 to Nov. 14, 2009. - “First Hand: Civil War Era Drawings from the Becker Collection,” Boston College’s McMullen Museum, Sept. 5 to Dec. 13, 2009. - Alec Soth “Dog Days Bogota,” Massachusetts College of Art and Design, Sept. 9 to Nov. 28, 2009. - “Sacred Monsters: Everyday Animism in Contemporary Japanese Art and Anime,” Tufts, Sept. 10 to Nov. 22, 2009. - “The Brilliant Line: Following the Early Modern Engraver, 1480 – 1650,” RISD Museum, Sept. 18, 2009, to Jan. 3, 2010. - “Pixilerations [V.6]: New Media Art,” RISD and 5 Traverse, Sept. 24 to Oct. 10, 2009. - “Platform 1: Andrew Mowbray,” DeCordova, Sept. 26, 2009, to Jan. 3, 2010. - “Work by Women Billboard,” Hive Archive, October 2009 to June 2010. - “Brett Weston: Out of the Shadow,” Currier Museum of Art, Oct. 10, 2009, to Jan. 3, 2010. - “Act Up New York: Activism, Art and the AIDS Crisis, 1987-1993,” Harvard’s Carpenter Center, Oct. 15 to Dec. 24, 2009. - “Rare Bird of Fashion: The Irreverent Iris Apfel,” Peabody Essex Museum, Oct. 17, 2009, to Feb. 7, 2010. - “Secrets of the Tomb 10A: Egypt 2000 BC,” MFA, Oct. 18, 2009, to May 16 (originally was Jan. 10), 2010. - “Focus on Four: Rhode Island Photographs by Gertrude Käsebier, Lewis Hine, Charlotte Estey and Aaron Siskind,” Newport Art Museum, Oct. 24, 2009, to Jan. 24, 2010. - “Harry Potter: The Exhibition,” Museum of Science, opens Oct. 25, 2009. - Iron Guild’s Halloween Iron Pour, Steel Yard, Oct. 30, 2009. - “Krysztof Wodiczko: The Veterans Project,” ICA, Nov. 4, 2009, to March 7, 2010. - Gerry Bergstein & Henry Schwartz; David Aronson, Boston Expressionists at Danforth Museum, Nov. 18, 2009, to March 14, 2010. - “Albrecht Durer: Virtuoso Printmaker,” 45 prints from MFA collection, MFA, Nov. 21, 2009, to July 3, 2010. - “Harry Callahan: American Photographer,” MFA, Nov. 21, 2009, to July 3, 2010. - “Golden Legacy: Original Art from 65 Years of Golden Books,” Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art, Nov. 24, 2009, to Feb. 28, 2010. - “Andy Warhol: A Recent Acquisition Exhibition,” Bannister Gallery at Rhode Island College, Dec. 9, 2009, to Jan. 8, 2010. - “Robert Indiana and the Star of Hope,” Farnsworth Art Museum, June 20 to Oct. 25, 2009. - “Contemporary Outlook: Seeing Songs,” MFA, July 1, 2009, to Feb. 21, 2010. - “Viva Mexico! Edward Weston and His Contempraries” and “Vida y Drama: Modern Mexican Prints,” MFA, May 30 to Nov. 2, 2009. - Fawcett’s Antique Toy & Art Museum, Waldoboro, Maine, ongoing. - Maine Arts Commission Good Idea Grant Programs. - Massachusetts Cultural Council. - New Hampshire State Council on the Arts. - Rhode Island State Council on the Arts grants, deadlines: April 1 and Oct. 1. - Vermont Arts Council: artist development grants, deadline: 60 days prior to activity. - Yokelist Manifesto Number 1: Boston lacks alternative spaces? - Yokelism at the 2008 Boston Art Awards. - Yokelist Manifesto Number 2: Montreal case study. - Yokelist Manifesto Number 3: Hire locally. - Yokelist Manifesto Number 4: We need coverage of our living artists. - Yokelist Manifesto Number 5: We need local retrospectives. - Yokelism update: Coverage of our living artists: Sebastian Smee responds. - Yokelism update: Dangers of Provincialism. - Yokelism update: Re: Dangers of Provincialism. - Yokelist Manifesto Number 6: Could the CIA help? - Yokelism at the 2009 New England Art Awards. - Fawcett’s Antique Toy & Art Museum, Waldoboro, Maine. - Gropius House in Lincoln, Massachusetts. - Frank Lloyd Wright's Zimmerman House in Manchester, New Hampshire. The New England Journal of Aesthetic Research New England Art AwardsThe winners of the 2009 New England Art Awards will be announced at the New England Art Awards Ball at 7 p.m. Feb. 8 at the Burren in Somerville, Massachusetts. And you are invited. Details here. Check it out PhotosOrder photos by The New England Journal of Aesthetic Research of the Honk Parade, Boston Caribbean Carnival (above), Salem’s Haunted Happenings Grand Parade, Bread and Puppet Theater, St. Peter’s Fiesta in Gloucester, and more. Grants and competitions New England treasures Seeing art for free Always free:Addison Gallery, Phillips Academy, Andover, Massachusetts. AS220, Providence, Rhode Island. Boston Center for the Arts. Boston College's McMullen Museum. Brown University's Bell Gallery, Providence, Rhode Island. Davis Museum, Wellesley College, Wellesley, Massachusetts. Harvard’s Carpenter Center, Cambridge, Massachusetts. Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire. MassArt Galleries, Boston, Massachusetts. MIT's List Visual Arts Center, Cambridge, Massachusetts. Montserrat College of Art, Beverly, Massachusetts. Musee Patamecanique, Bristol, Rhode Island. National Heritage Museum, Lexington, Massachusetts. Rhode Island College's Bannister Gallery, Providence, Rhode Island. Simmons College's Trustman Art Gallery, Boston, Massachusetts. Tufts University Art Gallery, Medford, Massachusetts. Williams College Museum of Art, Williamstown, Massachusetts. Most commercial galleries are also always free. Sometimes free:Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts, daily from Nov. 1 to May 31. Harvard Art Museum, Cambridge, 10 a.m. to noon Saturday, after 4:30 p.m. everyday (but they're only open until 5 p.m.). Harvard's Peabody Museum, Cambridge, free to Massachusetts residents from 9 a.m. to noon every Sunday, and from 3 to 5 p.m. Wednesdays from September to May. Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, 5 to 8 p.m. every Thursday; free to families (meaning children accompanied by as many as two adults) the last Saturday of each month. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 4 to 9:45 p.m. Wednesdays (but charge for special exhibitions). New Bedford Art Museum, 5 to 9 p.m. second Thursday of each month. Also 5 to 7 p.m. Thursdays "donate what you can." Photographic Resource Center, Boston University, Thursdays and the last weekend of each month. Portland Museum of Art, Maine, 5 to 9 p.m. Fridays. RISD Museum, Providence, 12 to 1:30 p.m. Fridays, 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. Sundays, 5 to 9 p.m. third Thursday of each month, all day of the last Saturday of each month. Worcester Art Museum, 10 a.m. to noon Saturdays. Note: Public libraries often have free passes to museums. Additional sites of New England inquiryZoom, Cambridge. Vermont Art Zine, Vermont. Truth and Beauty, Beverly, Mass. Tiny Showcase, Providence. The Steel Yard Blog, Providence. Speak Clearly, Brandeis University, Waltham, Mass. School of the Museum of Fine Arts Animation crew blog, Boston. Rhode Island State Council on the Arts, Rhode Island. Portland Museum of Art blog, Maine. Our RISD, Providence. North Shore Art Throb, greater Boston. New Urban Arts, Providence. New Bodgea, Boston, etc. My Love for You Is a Stampede of Horses, Boston and national. Modern Kicks, undisclosed location in southern New England. Mass MoCA Blog, western Massachusetts. Making the Art Seen, Malden, Mass. Maine College of Art, Maine. Maine Arts Commission, Maine. Maine Art Scene, Maine. Keepers of Tradition, Massachusetts. Just Looking, Maine. The Hub Review, Boston. The Girl in the Green Dress, Boston. A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Internet, New Hampshire. Cultural Productions, greater Boston. Connecticut Art Scene, Connecticut. Leslie K. Brown, Boston. Boston Photography Focus, Boston. Blog Addison, greater Boston. Big Red & Shiny, Boston. The Big Picture, Boston. The Biggest Little, Providence. The Berkshire Review, western Massachusetts. Berkshire Fine Arts, western Massachusetts. The Arts Fuse, Massachusetts. Art in Ruins, Providence. Art Espirit, New Hampshire. New media investigationsRhizome The Second Life Herald Friday, December 15, 2006 * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * - Brandeis student laments: “I was hugely proud to be afforded the opportunity to graduate with a degree that would help me get into graduate school or give me a leg up while finding a job. Now when I tell people I go to Brandeis, their only response is, ‘Oh, the school that wanted to close the Rose Art Museum?’” - Stephen Huneck of Vermont, famed for his folksy carvings of dogs, took his own life on Jan. 7. He was apparently despondent over having to lay off most of his employees because his art business was hurting. - NH native Colin Ford makes surreal art from live fish tank creatures in Miami. - Boston museum construction projects go green. - New Rhode Island Museum of Science and Art proposed. - Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford relaunches its Matrix contemporary art program. Also unveils the reinstallation of its superb collection of Hudson River School paintings. - Amazing bubble-maker Keith Michael Johnson of Warwick, RI, recalls his beginnings: “There were very few people working with serious bubbles at the time. Just a couple of people.” - RI marine salvage Captain Ed Hughes’s brush with cancer inspires him to take up nature photography: "Animals don't run away from me. They should. But they don't. They let me get close." - Joyce Amend of York, Maine, makes sailors’ valentines. - Will Sofrin of RI is making prints of classic Nathanael Green Herreshoff sailing yacht designs. - Pam Sawyer of Somersworth, NH, honors local families of Iraq and Afghanistan war dead with needlepoint memorials. - Essex sculptor Chris Williams’s 1,800-pound bronze rhino wanders around town. - Arshile Gorky was in Providence, then taught Mark Rothko in Boston. - “NEH chief preaches the art of manners.” - Jane Smaldone - Dave Cole - Steve Hollinger - Deb Todd Wheeler - Chris Armstrong - Amy Cutler’s Grim Fairy Tales - Lynda Barry, Oct. 2, 2008. - Eleanor Callahan and Barbara, Nov. 11, 2008. Nick Cave, Oct. 8, 2007. - Brian Chippendale, May 16, 2008, part one and two. - Christo and Jeanne-Claude, Sept. 23, 2008. - Chuck Close, Nov. 1, 2007. - Gregory Crewdson, Oct. 29, 2008. - Lynda Hartigan of the Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, July 16, 2008. - Anish Kapoor, May 27, 2008. - Dennis Kois, director of DeCordova Museum, June 9, 2008. - Ernest Morin, July 21, 2008. - Dan Moynihan, Brookline cartoonist and illustrator Oct. 8, 2009. - Damián Ortega, Sept. 15,2009. - Gary Panter, April 11, 2008, and Sept. 20, 2006. - Martha Rosler, Nov. 21, 2008. - Stefan Sagmeister, April 25, 2008. - Neil Salley of the Musée Patamécanique in Bristol, Rhode Island, Aug. 16, 2007. - Jon Sarkin, July 31, 2008. - Peter Schumann of Bread and Puppet Theater (pictured above), Aug. 12, 2008, part one, two and three; Jan 23, 2008, part one and two. - Richard Serra, June 1, 2008. - Rachel Whiteread, Oct. 14, 2008. - Boston Globe: The New England Journal of Aesthetic Research is one of “The best of the (local) web.” - Edgar Allen Beem of Yankee Magazine: "Indispensable ... Probably the best regional art site in the country." - Art Connect: “Cook covers so much ground that you get the feeling that he must be aware of everything that goes on in the New England art scene.” - Wikipedia: One of the “Notable art blogs.” - Drawn & Quarterly blog: The New England Journal of Aesthetic Research is “the best coverage of the New England area art scene out there.” - Modern Kicks: “When it comes to art in New England, the man sees everything. I don't even want to know what the mileage on his car is.” - Joel Brown of HubArts: “Cook has been a veritable Woodward and Bernstein on the Rose.” - Art Fag City: "The most detailed report [on the Rose Art Museum that] I’ve read thus far." - Online University Reviews: One of the "100 Best Scholarly Art Blogs." - Sara Agniel: “The Journal is worth adding to your regular reading list.” - Caleb Neelon: "The best regional arts news source out there." - Yankee Magazine blog: The New England Journal of Aesthetic Research is one of the "Best Art Blogs in New England." - Ethan Ham: “Excellent.” - Thomas Garvey of The Hub Review: "Thoughtful." - Geoff Edgers of the Exhibitionist: “Always compelling.” - Boston Photography Focus: “Excellent overview and coverage of the breaking gallery news since the spring as it happened.” - ArtSake: “Incisive analysis of the New England art scene.” - Modern Kicks: “Greg Cook has continued to be on top of the story.” - Anne Elizabeth Moore: “Has excellent taste, and is tracking the SHIT outta the local arts scene.” - Boston Lowbrow: "Who would've thought Cook's unrivalled thoroughness of local gallery coverage would translate so well to investigative journalism." - Newcritics: “Cook gets it right.” - Robert Castagna: Cook and The New England Journal of Aesthetic Research are the cause of, and solution to, all of Boston art criticism's problems. - Jon Petro: “Cook's review reads like a sophomoric attempt at art criticism.” - Also our favorite footnote (see 32). - Shepard Fairey admits he lied, faked evidence and destroyed evidence to conceal which Associated Press photo he, uh, appropriated for his famous Obama “Hope” poster. The AP, which has sued the RISD alum for copyright infringement, notes that “Fairey’s attorneys, led by Anthony Falzone, executive director of the Fair Use Project at Stanford University, have informed the AP that they are withdrawing.” Fairey insists that “regardless of which of the two images was used, the fair use issue should be the same.” - Wall Street Journal: “There is something uniquely depressing about the fact that the National Portrait Gallery's version of the Barack Obama "Hope" poster [by Shepard Fairey] previously belonged to a pair of lobbyists.” - Boston Greenway fails to attract people. Globe: “Call it the Emptyway.” - Egypt wants back “a bust of pyramid builder Ankhaf from the Boston Museum of Fine Art.” - World Monuments Fund warns that farm system that has survived in Hadley, Mass., since 17th century is now endangered. - Did Bostonians transplanted to California fake theft of Rembrandt, Van Gogh, Renoir and Miro? San Francisco Chronicle, Sept. 30: “Pebble Beach Men report art theft.” Boston Globe, Oct. 2: “Ransom asked in theft.” Monterey County Herald, Oct. 4: “Art heist puts collectors in spotlight.” San Jose Mercury News, Oct. 5: “A curious case of art theft.” San Francisco Chronicle, Oct. 7: “’Art theft’ smells fishy, investigators say.” Boston Herald, Oct. 8: “Art ‘heist’ suspect: I have proof.” San Francisco Chronicle, Oct. 10: “List of art stolen in Pebble Beach raises doubt.” Boston Herald, Oct. 11: “Art experts ‘smell a rat.’” - Farnsworth Museum tightens belt, despite 30 percent attendance growth. - Salary cuts for a third of US museum directors, including Gardner, MFA, and a little at ICA. - Onion: NY’s Met aims to boost attendance by “allowing patrons to touch paintings.” - Boston sculptor Matthew Hincman – of screwy park bench fame – mints his own money. - Daily Beast says Boston is third smartest city in U.S. Take that number 13 New York. The “city” of Hartford-New Haven ranks sixth. Providence is number 22. - Women to turn 41-acre oceanfront estate in York, Maine, into art colony. - Bill would create Massachusetts poet laureate. - Boston native Ann Philbin behind Hammer Museum’s “striking rise.” - Portsmouth unveils statue honoring firefighters. - Massachusetts artist Mikyoung Kim fills Washington, D.C., bridge tower with kaleidoscope. - City finally finds a use for art: “Boston recruits local artists to help ward off graffiti.” (By the bye: If you use the cliche “outside the box” you are by definition thinking inside the box.) - Profile of Richard Silliboy, a Micmac basketmaker in Maine. - RISD dropout John Baizley makes awesome heavy metal art. - Profile of Gallery XIV’s Will Kerr. - Disney animator Lon Smart, who grew up in East Providence, speaks to students in Warwick, R.I. - Profile of artist, designer and MIT teacher Richard Filipowski, who died last November. - People mad about removal of mural from old Verizon building in Boston. - New England carpenters union installs the “highest-resolution transparent LED display in the world” on its Carpenters Center in South Boston. (Via Universal Hub.) - New Greater Boston Food Bank building facade includes hidden picture. - Students paint murals across front of burned Boston restaurants. (Via Universal Hub.) - Providence’s downtown building boom ends with a whimper. - RISD is one of the most dang neighborly schools in the U.S., according to some guy. - Mystic Seaport mills “centuries-old live oaks” from Texas to restore 1841 whaling ship. - Maine furniture craftsman Wayne Hall honored by Center for Maine Contemporary Art. - Jimmy Sampas of Holliston produces film about his uncle Jack Kerouac. - Exhibit of Mexican Christian art, organized by Michael Komanecky, currently interim director of the Farnsworth Art Museum in Rockland, Maine, opens in San Antonio. - Julie Feingold of Harwich makes “Lost Heroes Art Quilt,” honoring post 9-11 military dead. - David Brigham, former director of Worcester Art Museum, named president of Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. - Harvard acquires John Updike archives. - Giant puppets rampage in Berlin celebration of the 20th anniversary of fall of the Berlin Wall. - Another Case Western prof makes crazy Jackson Pollock claims. Previously. - Norman Rockwell Museum launches award to honor artists … who have served on its board. - Brown U is Hogwarts for Harry Potter’s Emma Watson. - Providence artist/rocker Brian Chippendale on his artwork for Lightning Bolt’s new album: “I’m actually very excited about the artwork for this one. I think it’s the best stuff I’ve ever done for one of the records. My stuff tends to be really full of color, no white space at all, but the new one has a lot of white space, which makes it feel really energized. I’ve been kind of getting into white space suddenly, out of the blue.” - Boston Police sketch artist Robert Neville: “Usually when you’re nearing the end, that’s when you start to realize you’ve really hit a chord. … You know when they react they’re not just saying it to make you feel good because you’re the artist. You did a good job. You start to realize, ‘That’s the guy .’” - Harvard Book Store getting magic book making machine that will allow it to conjure up books on demand. - Boston Dynamics, the folks behind the super creepy/amazing BigDog robot, to produce military robot that can leap over 25-foot obstacles and keep going. - Phil Bissell, creator of New England Patriots’ logo “Pat Patriot,” says, "People just like Pat. They seem to know this guy is getting down to business. He's going to give it all. Flying Elvis [the newish Patriots logo] is just going around the field pointing to the sky. It just isn't the same." - South End Boston photographer Peter Urban dies at age 61. - Concord tries to save house built in 1780s by town’s first freed slave. - Harvard prof exercises his right to have cow at his retirement party. - Boston Museum School alum David Lynch has an art show. - Mass. Governor Deval Patrick: "The digital gaming industry is on fire in Massachusetts - one of the fastest growing sectors in technology and entertainment in the country.” Also, gaming site says: “Video gaming as we know it today can trace its birthplace to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.” - Tours of Gloucester City Hall's Depression-era Works Progress Administration murals. - Portland artist Joe Kievitt installs glass tile mural at UMaine’s Collins Center for the Arts. - RI sculptor Robin Mandel exhibits kinetic works in Pennsylvania. - Mary McFadden, whose fashion designs are on view at MassArt, interviewed. - MFA’s “World of the Pharaohs” Egyptian artifacts go on view at Arkansas Art Center. - Illustrator Jessica Shea opens art gallery in Georgetown. - Jim Drain, former Providence Fort Thunderite, exhibits at UTexas. - UMass Amherst shows off its gift of Warhol photos. - Florence Griswold Museum to present “Wee Faerie Village.” - “Three sculptures have been stolen and a sculpted bench badly damaged while on display as part of the Prescott Park New Hampshire Sculpture in the Park exhibition.” - Former RISD Provost Jay Coogan hired as president of Minneapolis College of Art and Design. - Farnsworth Museum launches $12 million campaign to remember Andrew Wyeth – in particular to create an endowment to fund maintenance and operations of its four Wyeth-related properties. - Shep Abbott’s “String Castle Theory” in Gloucester’s Dogtown. - Piscataqua Fine Arts closes in Portsmouth, opens in Gloucester. - Peter Diepenbrock of Jamestown, RI, unveils sculpture at URI. - Peggy Fogelman named chairman of education at NY’s Met, leaving her post as director of education and interpretation Salem’s Peabody Essex Museum. - Mass. artist Matt Charros walking 3,444 miles across U.S. to raise awareness about disease affecting his sister, multiple sclerosis. - Art association in Newfields, NH, to turn old post office into community art center. - Boston Comics Roundtable is part of a “a thriving comic book culture in Somerville and throughout greater Boston. No longer ‘underground,’ it's definitely a sub-culture that's rapidly breaching the boundaries of pop culture.” - New Bedford community cultural collaborative AHA! marks 10th anniversary of promoting arts there. - Brian Fox of Somerset, Mass., paints baseball stars at All Star Game. - Painting stolen in Florida, recovered in New Hampshire after it was discovered for sale on Craigslist. - Vermont judge orders $100,000 restitution for 23 metal sculptures stolen from artists studio. - Cambridge artist Doug Kornfeld installs boring but big stick-figure sculpture at DeCordova. Coincidentally Kornfeld installs a 23-foot-tall stainless steel stick-figure outside Indiana State University’s new Student Recreation Center. - New book about late decoy carver George H. Boyd of Seabrook, N.H. - “Cash-strapped Boston zoo may be forced to close doors, euthanize animals.” - Yale fights for ownership of Van Gogh’s “Night Café” with great-grandson of Russian guy who had it before Bolshevik government “nationalized” his collection. - Patty Martucci began work as program director in May at the newly renovated Warwick Museum of Art in R.I. - New PhotoPlace gallery opens at Vermont Photography Workplace in Middlebury. - Hive gallery opens in Rockport, MA, with show of robots. - Somerville artist David Omar White, who painted the murals at Casablanca Restaurant in Cambridge, dies at 82. - Barre, Vermont, quarried granite used nation-wide, while at home locals used it to erect monuments to their loved ones. - MassArt students design, build bus shelter for disabled kids of Boston school. - Vermont Arts Council tries to promote art by giving out 9,500 wood puzzle pieces and 51,000 paper puzzle pieces for people to decorate. - Remembering artist Sarah Wyman Whitman of Beverly, Mass., a pal of James, Lowell, Sarah Orne Jewett, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Charles Eliot Norton and Isabella Stewart Gardner. - Woburn artist Gina Johnson gives portraits of soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan to their families. - Jamie Wyeth depicts seven deadly sins, using sea gulls. - Preservation society documenting history of mills in Warren, R.I. - Damon Rich’s map of New York foreclosures, which began its life at MIT, opens at Queens Museum of Art after MIT curator Larissa Harris gets a job there. - New Walker curator studied at Bates and Williams College, then was a fellow at Harvard. - Bay State Banner suspends publication. - Neko Case records on eight pianos at her Vermont farm. - Vermont “author-goat farmer's memoir a surprise delight.” - Hubub in Portland over “very weak, very amateurish piece of sculpture” commissioned by Portland Sea Dogs owner. - Plan to revitalize Pittsfield with a new carousel attracts dozens of volunteer carousel animal carvers. - Mainers Josh Farr and Mikhela Stinson build “Palace” of stones and junk along Burlington, Vermont’s shore of Lake Champlain. Also people apparently are stacking stones all across New England. - Mysterious petroglyphs appear in riverside rocks of Bellows Falls, Vermont. - Ruthie Tredwell founds Portsmouth Museum of Art. - Connecticut governor proposes $30 million in cuts to state arts and tourism grants over the next two fiscal years. - Wadsworth Atheneum director Chick Austin made awesome avant-garde art happen in Hartford during the Great Depression. May this be a lesson to you no good lazy depressed layabouts. - Worcester Art Museum plans to convert existing studio into a 130-seat public lecture hall, improve access to the lobby and make upgrades to the museum café with help from $310,000 grant from the Massachusetts Cultural Facilities Fund. - Everybody in North Adams Loves Mass MoCA, except for Vinny Patel, the owner of Corner Market convenience store: “I’m expecting more, put it that way.” - Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, Mass., turns 40. - Official portrait of former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney by New Hampshire artist Richard Whitney unveiled at State House. Says Mitt: “You'll note that one thing this painting has in common with real life is that, in the painting, my hair doesn't move either.” - Over the hill Globe columnist Sam Allis discovers – OMG – art in Boston’s Jamaica Plain. Owner and curator Brent “Refsland, tall and 27, was holding the fort, a straw pork pie hat on his head from the local funky shop, Salamagundi. You assume when you meet him that he’s hopped up on something because of the energy he emits and the machine gun bursts in which he speaks. Maybe some Ritalin would help this overactive child, I say to myself.” Bingo! - Paint Pens in Purses transforms vacant Allston storefronts. - Late conceptual artist David Ireland lives on in his curious Edward E. Elson artist-in-residence apartment at Andover’s Addison Gallery. - Providence Mayor David Cicilline unveils plans to boost city’s arts. - Commercial photographer Clint Clemens uses 3D imaging to help rebuild his historic Newport firehouse. - Photos stolen from Concord, New Hampshire, exhibit. - Brockton artist Fritz Ducheine's paintings about violence in society featured at Boston’s National Center of Afro-American Artists. - Did you know that Ben Shattuck’s show at 5 Traverse in Providence last year “sold out - in an hour”? The painter recalls thinking: “"Good Lord, maybe I'm onto something.” - “Retirement from a life in banking prompts sculptor Claude O’Donnell of Holden [Maine] to unleash the creative hippie hidden in the gray flannel suit.” - Sculptural bust of Broadway musical songwriter – and Providence native – George M. Cohan unveiled in Providence. - First-grader Paul Taraszuk of Georgetown, Mass., is the awesomest drawer of ideal schools, according to the Massachusetts School Building Authority. - Needham artist Rachel Perry Welty’s Facebook performance included in New Haven exhibit of art inspired by the rapacious social-networking site TM. - Architect magazine names Boston’s William Rawn Associates the top architectural firm in the country. - Burlington hospital unveils Kat Clear's 40-foot-tall sculpture “Fabric of Life" depicting sewing machine and quilt. - Boston native Sophie Matisse – granddaughter of thee Matisse – makes “five uniquely painted chess sets.” - Real Art Ways commissions four public sculpture projects for Hartford. - They love the ICA’s Tara Donovan show in Des Moines. - The Davis Square Tile Project is trying to track down the kids who painted the tiles in the Davis Square T station back in the late 1970s “to better understand the history of Somerville.” - Glastonbury, Connecticut, artist Harry White collages landscape scenes from the flowers in his garden. - New Philadelphia Museum of Art director Timothy Rub got his start with a bachelor’s degree in art history from Vermont’s Middlebury College. - “Some airports have removed public art for advertising,” though report provides no details. - Massachusetts artist George Sherwood’s “Orchid” is one of 16 pieces of art scattered in the heart of Albany, for the latest edition of the city’s “Sculpture in the Streets” series. - Did you know Jonathan Lethem has a part-time residence in Maine? - Elephants paint at Providence zoo. Previously: Gorilla art at Boston zoo. Also, Rhode Island dog exhibits his paintings: “I just decided to put some paint on his tail and paper beneath it. I was amazed with what I saw – beautiful configurations.” - Nantucket antiques dealer David L. Place charged by Feds with illegally importing and illegally trafficking in sperm whale teeth. Previously: Nantucket scrimshaw artist charged with dealing in black market whale teeth. - Renegade knitters “tag” Boston bike rack. - Brown University breaks ground on new arts center in Providence. - Rockporter Erik Ronnberg Jr.’s model of a factory trawler to be featured in Smithsonian’s “On the Water: Stories from Maritime America” exhibit. - Federal judge rules that Kokoschka painting – allegedly sold under duress in Nazi-occupied 1939 Vienna – legally belongs to Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts. Because, for one, “the three-year statue of limitations period on such claims has passed.” - Addison Gallery staff begins planning to move back into the renovated and expanded building – which is expected to reopen in spring 2010. - Arson destroys Maine topless coffee shop. - Portland introduced art tax increment financing in November 2009. It taxes construction in the city’s arts district, raising some $50,000 to date. - Profile of John Maeda after his first year as president of RISD. - A visit to New England Sculpture Service in Chelsea, Massachusetts, the folks who repair the “Make Way for Ducklings” statues at Boston’s Public Garden when they are damaged. - Oliver Brothers of Boston restores 65 artworks damaged in fire at Yaddo more than a year ago. - A video visit with Jamie Wyeth at Tenants Harbor, Maine, on the occasion of his new show of paintings at the Farnsworth Museum in Rockland: “Maine ... it's really of no fault of Maine, but it has produced more bad art than any state in the union. Maine is very emblematic. But what interests me is to go deeper, to go beyond cuteness and prettiness, to get to the angst, of which there is a lot in Maine.” - AS220 in Providence, with help from federal stimulus money, offers 32 art jobs for young people. - C.D. Wright of Barrington, Rhode Island, wins $50,000 (a bit less in U.S. dollars) Griffin Prize for poetry. The Brown English professor won the $500,000 MacArthur “genius” grant in 2004. - Massachusetts-born artist Dan Nelson follows up his book “All Known Metal Bands” with project to raise $1 million. So far he’s collected $60. - “For the first time in its history, Mass MoCA is close to breaking even without a desperate round of fund-raising.” - Belcourt Castle in Newport, Rhode Island, goes on sale. It was a “birthing ground” for the Newport Jazz Festival. Also maybe haunted. Yours for $7.2 million. - Zsuzsanna Szegedi, artist in residence at the Fruitlands Museum in Harvard, Massachusetts: “"I wasn't planning to paint this many trees. But every painting gave me a new idea for the next one. Trees are easy to work with. They don't talk back.” - Documentary on John Marin to begin filming in Maine. - Derrick Cartwright, former director of the Hood Museum in Hanover, New Hamsphire, to lead Seattle Art Museum. - Six public art projects in Maine funded by $60,755 from the Maine Arts Commission – thanks to the Harry Faust Art Fund. - Public art transforms Boston street. - Boston’s Bren Batclan to be featured on CBS Evening News with Katie Couric. This follows reports that he leaves his paintings around San Francisco for Free: “"The economy is so bad now. People are losing their jobs, so this is how I can help.” Also Batclan planned “to leave 50 paintings of colorful creatures in random spots around [Chicago] with notes saying they're free.” - Profile of Michelle Wojcik, owner of Galeria Cubana in Boston and Provincetown. - Polaroid lovers try to revive its instant film. - Lego debuts Frank Lloyd Wright building sets. Build your very own Falling Water. - MFA’s Monets in Australia: “Monet on the walls is money in the bank.” - Cambridge psychiatrist Karen Norberg “knits anatomically correct woolly brain.” - Sanford Robinson Gifford’s 1859 painting of “Mount Mansfield, Vermont” is “one of two works recently sold by the National Academy, sparking a controversy in the art world.” - Martin Luther King Jr. monument project in Boston stalled: “Almost nothing has been done.” - “By most accounts, the history of modern camouflage begins with Alfred Thayer, a prominent Boston artist.” - Andrew Wyeth of Maine and Pennsylvania dies at 91. - Art student Myja A. Parviainen killed by wrong-way driver on Route 495 in Massachusetts. - Hopkinton artist Michael Alfano sculpts Barack Obama: "Like Obama, Alfano was not the most likely candidate for success in his chosen career.” - “Local doctor uses Clark Art Institute as part of training for med students.” - “Somerville's first community arts center at the final stretch.” - Sculptor Adio diBiccari of Arlington and Chelmsford dies at 94. - Steve Carell buys Marshfield general store. - “Rhode Island Leads US Into Deep Recession.” - “Disney Is No Mickey Mouse Figure in the World of Art.” - “New safety law may prohibit children under 12 from libraries – or make many books illegal.” - Retired Falmouth attorney Robert R. Mardirosian sentenced to 7 years in prison plus $100,000 fine following conviction “in a case arising from the theft of a Cezanne and other pieces of art from a Stockbridge home in 1978 – “the largest burglary from a private residence in Massachusetts history.” - “LeWitt exhibit prompts 50 percent attendance spike” at Mass MoCA. - “Roger Mandle’s journey from RISD to Qatar.” - Maine artist T. Allen Lawson paints White House Christmas card. “He doesn't get paid for the work, and the White House gets to keep the original. But Lawson figures that's OK.” - Major profile of Gloucester’s Jon Sarkin in New Jersey’s Star Ledger. Also interview of the “Medical Mystery and Artist Savant” in Vanity Fair. - Cheryl Brutvan, formerly of MFA, arrives in Florida to be curator at Norton Museum. - Vermont cartoonist Jason Lutes, creator of “Berlin,” interviewed. - RISD blogger-in-chief John Maeda profiled. Again. - Dorchester artist Greg Rogers paints with his feet. - Somerville cartoonist Tim Fish, creator of “Cavalcade of Boys,” interviewed. - Former Salem News cartoonist Scott Allie now edits comics for Dark Horse. - Exhibit by self-taught artist Joseph Sorel, a Providence native who “really began to explore art in earnest when he was incarcerated for about seven years following his time in the service during the Vietnam War.” - Artists fight for the future of Piano Factory gallery in Boston. - OCD therapy fuels art of Jeffrey Sparr of Pawtucket. - Central Maine art galleries begin collaborative promotion. - Providence Journal to sell its downtown home. - Vermont wildlife painter John C. Pitcher exhibits in Manchester, Vermont. - “Artists answer the call for portraits of pets that capture quirks and charm.” - Newburyport artist fashions glass fish. - Ethan Bond-Watts of Burlington creates glass sculpture for University of Vermont center. - News flash: Women can tattoo too. - Warren M. Robbins, Worcester-born collector of African art, dies. - “Steven Wright Named First Inductee of Boston Comedy Hall of Fame.” - Boston City Hall declared ugliest building in the world. - Aubrey Beardsley illustration “recently discovered hanging on a bathroom wall in a Boston-area home” sets auction record. - Boston’s “WGBH files suit over repairs for video wall.” - Out of Town News in Harvard Square to close. - “Attendance numbers for the Nasher Museum of Art's 'El Greco to Velazquez: Art During the Reign of Philip III' did not meet an ambitious goal set one year ago. … The show also appeared at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, where it also fell approximately 30,000 visitors short of its target.” And the Nasher may have to cut costs as a result. - Boston gun-violence memorial bus “may be headed for scrap yard.” - Was Boston Globe’s “g” logo swiped from Griffin Museum? - Minneapolis Institute of Arts hires MFA Boston's Thomas Rassieur as its new prints and drawings curator. - William Rudolph will become curator of American art at the Worcester Art Museum in January after four years as the Dallas Museum of Art’s associate curator of American art. - Farnsworth Art Museum Director Lora Urbanelli leaves. - London Independent: Boston MFA Director Malcolm Rogers is “the maverick with the Midas touch.” - “A federal appeals panel ruled … that a painting owned by a German baroness that long hung on her walls in Rhode Island had, in effect, been stolen from a Jewish art collector during the Holocaust.” - What was the art project that a UMaine senior did to collect food and raise money for needy? He “spent 19 hours riding a seesaw on the Campus Green last week dressed as Marie Antoinette. … While Berry planned for a 24-hour event, the cold and fatigue convinced him to end it after 19 hours.” - Joe Cote, whose cartoons appeared in the Fitchburg Sentinel and Townsend Common, has died. - Marylin Hafner of Cambridge, who illustrated more than 100 children’s books as well as the comic strip “Molly and Emmett” for Lady Bug magazine and later Cricket magazine, has died after being hit by car. - Late Brown U prof Hugh Townley remembered in “The Wizard with Wood” exhibit at Wheaton College. - “Movies on Exchange Street” moves to Portland Museum of Art. - “The Vermont Arts Council has declared 20 artists finalists to present proposals in January to take part in 'Art in Action: Shaping Vermont’s Future Through Art.' This art project will fund work to reflect and respond to issues and challenges facing Vermont.” - New Hampshire cartoonists profiled. - New clues on masterpieces stolen from Boston’s Gardner Museum in 1990? ‘In ‘The Gardner Heist,’ which is to be published in February, author Ulrich Boser posits that the art may be closer at hand – as he puts it, in a retired crook’s beach house in Marshfield or Plymouth, a storage shed in Brockton, or a farm building in western Massachusetts.” - “Defy Shepard Fairey.” - Slovak artist’s interactive sound installation featured in Providence. - Bangor unveils steel deer sculpture by New Yorker Wendy Klemperer. - Public art project? Ballot measure that would have named San Francisco sewer plant after George W. Bush fails. - “Frank Cieciorka, a graphic artist, art director and watercolorist whose woodcut rendering of a clenched-fist salute was a model for the New Left’s most ubiquitous emblem, died on Monday at his home in Alderpoint, Calif. He was 69.” - Suffolk University "College Republicans come under fire with 'racist' [anti-Obama] flyer" - "The economy's swoon and Wall Street's woes are taking a particularly specific and tough toll on art museums." - Meetings on Art Institute of Boston’s move from Boston’s Kenmore Square to Cambridge’s Porter Square. - Shepard Fairey, formerly of Providence, posters Cambridge and San Francisco. - Providence Phoenix celebrates 30th anniversary. - Jaime Gili, a Venezuela-born artist living in London, picked to public-artify South Portland, ME, gas tanks. - Portland’s mad toymaker Randy Regier wins one of four $13,000 Maine Arts Commission 2009 Artists’ Fellowship Awards. - “[Worcester] 13-year-old Keenan Cassidy’s edgy style earns him praise — and a solo show opening Sat.” - Edgar Allen Beem: “I'd put my money on Lauren Fensterstock [of Portland, ME] to make it big one of these days.” - Profile of Gordon Lankton’s 2-year-old Museum of Russian Icons in Clinton, MA. - Peter Zonis, who grew up outside Boston and studied at RISD, sells his oil pastels on NYC streets. - Profile of Providence’s What Cheer? Brigade. - Old RI State House portraits being restored. - RI sculptor Donald Gerola unveils 23-foot tall wind sculpture in Barnstable, MA. - Bowdoin College Museum of Art renovation wins architecture honor. - Tufts Daily hates on Tara Donovan: “the work does not have much significance for the viewer. And, like much of modern art, the works leave a befuddled observer desperately searching for a purpose and clinging to the belief that art must have some sort of underlying motivation.” - Pinta — the Modern and contemporary Latin American Art fair — offers $150,000 to eight museums, including the Harvard Art Museum, to encourage them to collect Latin American art. - Profile of designers Pete Cardoso and Darren Johnson’s Ghost-Town Studio in Pawtucket, RI. - 17 artists picked for 2009 Portland Museum of Art Biennial. - Portland Museum of Art debuts blog. And new online culture mag Maine Art Scene debuts. - Interview with San Francisco Chronicle critic Kenneth Baker, who got his start in Boston. - RISD grad Megan Rye paints Iraq. - Virgin Mary spotted in window of Mercy Medical Center in Springfield, Massachusetts. - New Yorker suspected of Boston graffiti held on $10,000 bail. - Paragon Carousel in Hull turns 80. - WaterFire in Providence marks 200th anniversary of the abolition of the trans-Atlantic slave trade. - John Maeda, new RISD president, interviewed. - How did so many Monets end up in Boston? - Vermont’s David Macaulay has a new book, “The Way We Work,” out, and a new show at RISD. - Crafty New York artist detained at Maine-Canada border because US customs agent found her sketches suspicious. - Edgers: “Arts organizations across the state say they're bracing to hear from more donors like Nash: generous and loyal givers squeezed by the economy. To prepare, they've been making lists of potential cuts, enacting hiring freezes, and shifting reserve funds so they're better protected and easier to get at.” - Red Sox groundskeeper is still king of grass artistry. A previous report. - Where Boston artist Maria Magdelena Campos-Pons gets her rad clothes. - Francine Carraro, director of Abbe Museum in Maine, becomes head of Texas’ Grace Museum after its director moves to DeCordova in Massachusetts. - Parkour comes to BC. - Kidspace at Mass MoCA to expand. - Maine College of Art in Portland marks next step in renovations with opening of new admission center. - Umass art department marks 50th anniversary with art show. - Building the museum audience. - “Early 1900s mausoleum boom brought riches to [Vermont] granite industry.” - Exhibit features new media art that Stan VanDerBeek made at MIT in 1970s, or thereabouts. - Maine’s John Bisbee opening show in New York. - Russian cartoonist Boris Efimovich Efimov, who is featured in show at Brown, dies. - Emile Gruppé show in Rockport, Massachusetts. - “Airport 'X-ray art' courts TSA trouble” - Star Simpson a year after Logan Airport art-terrorism confusion: “I was waiting on the traffic island for the next shuttle bus to get on the subway when all of a sudden my hands were grabbed from behind me. … It turned out to be the state police. They have this magic trick where 40 of them can appear all at once out of nowhere.” - Police investigate theft from St. Johnsbury, Vermont, gallery: “someone took life size wooden sculptures of a golden retriever, a black and white cat, white Scottie dog and a black pug.” - Mass-produced moose sculptures plague Manchester, N.H. - Giant ant sculpture must be moved from Portsmouth, N.H., square. - Boston science museum curator: “Porcupines have a very pleasant and easy-going personality and are very endearing.” - “In the rural woods of Vermont, Benichou gets naked and captures double exposures of himself in a dance with nature.” - Hartford artist “said he hopes by giving his art away, people will talk about it.” - RISD grads grow art in Camden, Maine, storefront. - Patrick Dougherty sculpts stickwork “Twisted Sisters” at Wheaton College in Norton. Brown University to remove another Dougherty sculpture which was partly destroyed when an elm fell on it in March. - Boston electrical engineer creates “Latte Art” printer. - Late New Hampshire painter George de Forest Brush’s Parisians and Indians on view at National Gallery. - UMass Amherst dedicates studio arts building. - Brit romance columnist loves Providence’s WaterFire: “a living ritual in which fire, water, sound and smell all play a part to reduce you to awestruck silence and (in my case) tears of joy.” - Reviews of RISD’s new Chace Center. ProJo’s Bill Van Siclen: “the Chace Center, which officially opens on Saturday, is a gem — a compact yet powerfully sculpted building that pays its respects to its historic College Hill neighbors while remaining proudly and recognizably contemporary. It may even be the best building its designer.” Another ProJo columnist: “Moneo’s Chace Center is boxy and unimaginative.” Boston Globe: “bold and stunningly executed.” - Providence Mayor David Cicilline announces “Creative Providence” plan: “The cultural plan will focus on stimulating economic development, building links with the creative economy, developing a strong network of arts learning opportunities and enhancing the quality of life through civic engagement in the arts.” - In Indianapolis art talk, Providence Police Chief Dean Esserman “transcended the usual message on the importance of art in society to discuss basic principles he'd learned growing up and being in law enforcement. Children thrive in environments of support and love, not fear, pain or punishment. He said it is the community's responsibility to create that supportive atmosphere where the arts can play a role.” - Shepard Fairey, formerly of Providence and soon at Boston’s ICA, has show in San Francisco: “When asked why he picked the Tenderloin gallery as the appropriate venue for his work, Fairey adjusts his blue velour collar and flashes a toothy smirk, ‘because it’s punk as fuck.’” - Jane Portal named chair of MFA’s Art of Asia, Oceania, and Africa department. - Providence’s Jonathan Bonner is finalist for Florida public art project. - Boston artists to redecorate city electrical boxes. - Boston native Lorraine O’Grady’s NY show reviewed. - Marian Cannon Schlesinger’s ‘1970s and ‘80s paintings of New England mill towns on view at New Hampshire Historical Society. - MassArt teacher Kianga Ford shows in Baltimore. - Brockton artist Barry Julius paints critters for Massachusetts hunting stamps. - Portland, Maine’s Strategic Productions will make you the star of your own animated cartoon. - Montpelier pulls out of proposed art park. - “AS220 teams with MIT on new Fab Lab.” - Maine’s Robert Indiana makes “Hope” icon to support Barack Obama. - The South Porland oil tanks mural project. - Curator Anja Chávez leaving Wellesley’s Davis Museum to be contemporary art curator at Syracuse University’s art galleries. - “Suffolk University filed plans with Boston officials for a new 10-story, $68 million building to house the school’s art school.” - The Onion: “National Endowment for the Arts Funds Construction of $1.3 Billion Poem.” - “A notorious international graffiti queen - accused of tagging trains and buildings from Chicago to New York to the capitals of Europe - will be hauled to the Hub to face charges she caused millions in damages to [Boston] Back Bay brownstones.” - Bowdoin College Museum of Art Director Katy Kline leaving in October. And an earlier report. - Wall Street Journal: “Cities are being swept up in a wave of inane pranks. … Prankster groups are sprouting up around the country. Boston-based Banditos Misteriosos says its mailing list has doubled to more than 2,000 people since the start of the year.” - California sculptor Tina Allen who made statue at Boston's Back Bay Station of union organizer Asa Philip Randolph has died. - Interview with New York artist Joan Snyder whose work is currently on view at Framingham’s Danforth Museum. - From critic Peter Plagens’ novel “The Art Critic”: “New York was still the default city for ambitious artists … Boston didn’t count. - Updates on Addison renovation and expansion. - Providence artist Mark Tribe’s lefty political speech reenactment series goes to LA. - Connecticut is tracking down WPA art. - Thomas Bruhn named interim director of Benton Museum of Art at University of Connecticut. - Rhode Island artists “Giftcycle” across U.S. - Paintings stolen from a Massachusetts home three decades ago ordered returned. - Vermont sculptor Charles Ginnever’s 4-ton sculpture “Protagoras” at federal courthouse in St. Paul, Minnesota, is restored. - Nave of 60-year-old New York cathedral – designed by New Hampshire native Ralph Adams Cram – reopens after cleaning and renovation. - Westport Arts Center restructures management team. - Five-year restoration of Gettysburg Civil War cyclorama mural nearly complete. It premiered at what is now Boston’s BCA in 1884 and we want it back. - Former MIT prof Wellington Reiter named next president of School of the Art Institute of Chicago. - Globe: Rose Kennedy Greenway’s “Not-so-green acres.” This is a disappointment that we need to fix. - Look at this awesome paperback books chair at Providence’s Myopic Books. - Globe argues for better Boston public art. As did Thomas Garvey. Here’s our rambling take. All of this attention follows Radio Boston’s May 27 program on public art, so they deserve some credit for bringing this to people’s attention. - Profile of MFA jewelry curator Yvonne Markowitz. - Boston Museum of Science cuts staff by 10 percent. But potential $3 million budget deficit not the driving factor, president says – "Regardless of the budget, we would have made cuts.” - Police seek painting – that could be by 15th century Italian master – which was stolen from Hopedale home in 2006. - RI lawmakers mull cuts to public art program. - Hartford debuts riverfront sculpture park with Abraham Lincoln theme – thanks to more than $500,000 in donations from Lincoln Financial Group. - Globe’s Robert Campbell looks at major architectural problems at Harvard’s Busch Reisinger Museum: “Its exterior walls have deteriorated so badly that Harvard says the only way to repair them would be to take them off and start over." - Providence’s Lydia Stein plans to paint mural of Fall River’s Quequechan River with young artists. - Mass Horticultural Society lays off half staff due to financial woes. - Former Rose Museum director Joseph Ketner resigns curator job at Milwaukee Art Museum to teach at Emerson. - Caroll Spinney of Woodstock, Connecticut, on playing Big Bird: "You have to not be claustrophobic. You have to be willing to walk, not seeing anything in front of you." - DA drops “hoax device” charge against MIT student Star Simpson who freaked out Logan Airport security with her LED shirt. She apologizes and is placed on pretrial probation on disorderly person charge. - Head of planned New Center for Arts and Culture is leaving after less than 2 years. - Rose Museum director Michael Rush gives eulogy for Patrick Ireland: “Has the passing of a life ever caused more joy?” - Salem artist Terry Bastian makes sea serpent sculptures that “guzzle up hazardous waste from the ocean and soil.” - 30th anniversary of heartrending news photo of father tossing infant twin out window of burning Boston building. The kid survived. - Harvard Book Store is for sale. - Boston theater companies struggling financially. - Luxury retailer Louis Boston to abandon Newbury Street in 2010. - Profile of George Kinghorn, who was recently named director of UMaine art museum. - Lynda Barry is the best artist evah. - Architectural proposals for Boston’s Dudley Square. - Proposed Roxbury art complex – including a new home for the Museum of the National Center of Afro-American Artists – is stalled. - $1 billion in MFA art, including 30 Monets, going on exhibit in New Zealand next year. - Profile of exiting RISD chief Roger Mandle. - Credit crisis causes MFA to line up bank credit, refinance. - Edith Wharton’s Lenox estate, The Mount, facing foreclosure.

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Each year, I’m taken with the arrangement of the church calendar, that the First Day of Christmas, we remember and celebrate the Incarnation of God, followed by the the Second Day of Christmas (Dec 26), the Feast of Stephen, the first Christian to be martyred for his faith in scripture. It’s as if to say, here is God in the flesh, and here is just how fragile flesh is. But perhaps I get ahead of myself. I just reread the account of Stephen in Acts 6-7. It’s a short time to get to know him and what we know of him is mostly short phrases. He was “a man full of faith and the Holy Spirit,” and also “full of grace and power, [and] did great wonders and signs among the people.” As with Jesus and the prophets before him, this seldom goes over well the religious leaders. Most of what we know about Stephen is in a long speech he gives before a Jewish council, and what he tells us is that he knows his scripture. He knows the history of the Hebrew faith to that point, and he highlights the way that all the patriarchs were denied their authority along the way, and how Kings David and Solomon decided to move God from a tent into a temple, but that despite such a great house, God does live indoors. In so doing, Stephen indicts the council as being part of the tradition that endlessly works to limit God. As I say, this does not go well for Stephen. According to the law, he is dragged outside the city as a blasphemer and stoned to death. Echoing Jesus on the cross, Stephen remains secure in faith and prays for the ones who stone him. As a gay man, I read this story with a modern eye to where the religious authorities and councils continue to learn the scriptures but fail to see the wideness of God’s mercy. We who are LGB or T and have heard the call of Christ have stood before similar authorities and councils, have asserted our faithfulness, have shown ourselves in the history of salvation, and we have been met with violence. This call to follow Jesus is not something to be taken lightly, neither is it something to be received with fear. Stephen showed us that as well. The call to follow Jesus is the call to enter the Beloved Community, the Body of Christ, where we are not ourselves alone, but part of something much bigger than we ourselves could ever be. Can it be scary? Yes. We probably all have stories of holding back a prophetic word for fear of persecution. Sometimes it means letting go of old ideas we might have had about ourselves and the world within which we would move. There may be grief. There may be sadness, hunger, want. But also love. Remember always the love of this life in Christ. Rejected, condemned, and shamed, we know a Love that is greater than all that and in fact we proclaim it is a Love that casts out fear. What’s at stake is this: The Good News that all are welcome in the Household of God, which is not in any one house made by human hands and ingenuity, but lives among us, sanctifying our flesh by taking on that same flesh. What’s at stake is our freedom, our forgiveness, our redemption, our very abundant lives. Originally posted on Neil’s blog, Crumbs at the Feast. NEIL ELLIS ORTS is an author, playwright, and freelance writer, interested in the arts, religion, where those intersect, and where they don’t. He has a BFA in theater (Texas State University), an M.Div, (Lutheran Seminary Program in the Southwest), and an MA in interdisciplinary arts (Columbia College Chicago). He’s written for OutSmart Magazine, Dance Studio Life, Dance Source Houston, The Christian Century, Gay and Lesbian Review Worldwide, and Living Lutheran. His novella, Cary and John, is available at parsonsporch.com or Amazon.com.

Jesus wants us to be as clever as serpents and as gentle as doves. In the first reading, Amos warned the rich and those who take advantage of the less privileged in our society. He said that the Lord will judge them and punish them for cheating the poor in our society. The Psalm said we should praise the Lord who lifts up the poor. This means God is the defender and protector of the poor people. In the second reading St. Paul encouraged us to pray for one another especially for those in authority. This will enable us obtain peace and joy in society. Furthermore, he instructed us to ensure that everyone gets to know about the good news in order to be saved. In the gospel we read the story of a dishonest steward who misused his master’s property and the master decided to terminate his work. Though, the master commended the dishonest steward for acting prudently in planning for his future so that he will not be stranded and be without a place to go after he had been laid off. He is praised for being wise with worldly things. But we children of light, Christians do not possess such kind of wisdom in spiritual matters. We do not prepare for the future especially spiritually for death. We do not prepare ourselves for heaven, our future and eternal home the way we prepare for our earth home. Today we are being called to be wise as this steward and prepare for the future, heaven, using our resources here on earth. ‘’Make friends for yourselves with dishonest wealth, so that when it fails, you will be welcomed into eternal dwellings.’’ This means we should be generous with our possessions so that we can gain more blessings from and be with God. If you are not trustworthy with dishonest wealth, worldly things, who will trust you with true wealth, eternal wealth? If you are not trustworthy with what belongs to another, the excess wealth you have which belong to others, who will give you what is yours, your inheritance in heaven? This means, if we cannot be generous with our material possessions, especially the excess which technically belongs to the poor, you will not get to heaven and see God. He said that no servant can serve two masters. He will either hate one and love the other, or be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and mammon. Therefore, use your resources to serve the Lord and the less privilege people around you. Do we use money to further the kingdom of God? Do we try to see the good in people, their potentials? We should be prudent in managing our resources in order to get rewarded and gain salvation. We should use them to store up treasure for ourselves in heaven. As servants of God we should not be dishonest in our dealings with God and his people. Rather be sincere stewards and use whatever God has given you to serve him and humanity. We should use our resources and position to help others and gain rewards in heaven. Do not use your position and resources to oppress or take advantage of the less privileged in society. We have been called to be good stewards in our families and communities. Please ensure that you are an honest and a good steward before God in order to receive an excellent reward in heaven from him. TWENTY FIFTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME YEAR C THE PARABLE OF THE UNJUST STEWARD Our God is full of compassion and mercy to his people. In the first reading God told Moses to go down from the mountain because the people had made for themselves a god, a molten calf to worship and offer sacrifice to it. By so doing, the people were rejecting the God that brought them out of the land of Egypt, the land of slavery and bondage. The Lord was angry with them and wanted to destroy them and make a great nation from Moses instead. But Moses on the other hand pleaded with the Lord not to destroy the people and reminded the Lord of his promise to the people, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob to make their descendants as many as the stars in sky. The Lord listened to Moses and demonstrated his mercy to them and he did not destroy the people. The Psalm said, ‘’I will rise and go to my father.’’ It is a song of repentance to the Lord for our sins. In this song, we ask the Lord to forgive us and not to destroy us. In the second reading, St. Paul gave thanks to God for forgiving him and calling him into his ministry in spite of what he had done to the church (persecution). The Lord was merciful to him and gave him the opportunity to minister to his people. In the same way, Christ came to call us, sinners, to repentance and to participate in his mission of evangelization of the world. In the Gospel, Christ was accused of eating with tax-collectors and sinners by the Pharisees and Scribes. This was a taboo then in the Jewish tradition for a rabbi to interact with sinner and tax-collectors. Jesus replied to them using the following parables. First, is the parable of the lost sheep in which the shepherd left 99 sheep to go in search of one missing sheep and when he found it he called his friends and neighbors to celebrate with him. Second, is the parable of the lost coin in which the woman who lost one out of ten coins, light her lamp and swept the floor of the house until she found it, then, she celebrated with her neighbors. Last, is the parable of the prodigal son who collected his own share of the father’s property and left for a distant country where he squandered everything and later became so hungry that he wanted to eat with pigs in order to survive. Then he realized his mistake and decided to go back to his father and ask for forgiveness and to be accepted not as a son but a slave instead. But on his return home, his father saw him from a far and ran to welcome him home. The father decided to celebrate his return in special way. The elder son was not happy with the father’s love, mercy, and lavish celebration of his younger brother who was wasteful and deserved to be punished. On top of that the father gave the younger son new clothes, shoes, and ring to symbolize that his position, rights and privileges as his son has been reinstated. All these readings and parables demonstrated the compassion and mercy of God to his people. He does not judge nor condemn the sinners but celebrates their return and repentance to him. Likewise the angels and saints in heaven they celebrate each time we repent of our sins. If this is how our God is why do we delay coming back to him and repent of our sins? No matter how many or terrible our sins are, the Lord is ready to forgive us and use us for his mission here on earth. All we need do is to make up our minds and return/repent. There are no any jail terms or death sentence on us if we come back to him, instead we shall receive joy and peace. We will be release from the shackles of the devil and be made clean of our iniquities. We are guilty of so many sins just like the people of Israel. For example, pride, idolatry, doubt, persecuting others, Ignorant, in fact we are lost like the prodigal son and have gone far away from God. Living in sin is slavery to the devil. Remember the devil was an angel who disobeyed God and is undergoing punishment. Therefore, he is looking for disciples to join him in the kingdom of darkness. Please do not succumb to his tricks or temptations. Stand strong and resist him by all means. Let us take advantage of the compassion and mercy of the Lord and gain our freedom from the devil so that we can enjoy peace and love from God the father. Also remember to pray and come for forgiveness of your sins and pray for others just as Moses did, forgive others just like God does to sinners. The sacrament of reconciliation is there to help us come back to God. Please know that repentance and forgiveness are the secrets of happy life in a family and a community. Please learn and know how to confess your sins to the priest. Wait for appropriate time to go for confession. Do not feel guilty whenever you remember past sins that you did not confess because they were forgiven already at your last confession. Never make reference to the sins that you confessed last time because they have been forgiven and are not to be remembered. Begin to count your sins for next confession from the moment you leave the confessional. Be honest, specific and call your sins by their names and not by numbers or symbols. Confession time is not time for long counselling or for story telling because others are waiting to confess as well. TWENTY FOURTH SUNDAY OF ORDINARY TIME YEAR C GOD IS COMPASSIONATE AND MERCIFUL TO HIS CHILDREN In the first reading, the Lord said he will gather all nations to come and see his glory. This he will achieve by his open invitation to everyone and by using us, his disciples to reach out to those who have not heard or seen his glory and bring them like offerings to the Lord and the Lord will use them as well for his work and to manifest his glory in the world. The Psalm instructs us to go out to the entire world and tell the good news. This mean everyone is invited into the kingdom of God. And no one should be an obstacle to anyone else’s opportunity to enter the kingdom of God. We are all invited and instructed to invite others to come into the kingdom of God. We can do this by proclaiming the good news to the world by our words and deeds. Second reading talks about discipline of the Lord. It says for whom the Lord loves he disciplines. Endure your trials as discipline. The word discipline has the same root with the word disciple. A disciple is one who is being disciplined or undergoing some training for a goal. Therefore, discipline should not be seen as a punishment or a curse, rather as a source of strength and stamina that brings about great achievements and successes in the life of the disciples. As a result of discipline, we can grow in righteousness. Discipline is a training and attitude that helps us to achieve our goals in life and salvation. When you discipline yourself you will be organized, successful and as a result experience peace, joy, and happiness here on earth and eventually in heaven with the Lord. The gospel teaches us to enter through the narrow gate, the kingdom of God. Only those who have disciplined themselves can enter this gate. If you are not disciplined, the gate of heaven will not be open for you to enter. The key to success and any achievement is discipline and hard work. To achieve heaven we must discipline ourselves by listening and keeping to the teachings of our Lord. If you do not discipline yourself and work hard, you will surely regret it in future. Therefore, if we do not discipline ourselves and pass through the narrow/difficult gate, we shall be rejected on the last day. And we will see others come from behind, pass us, and achieve salvation while we will be thrown to the place where there is wailing and grinding of teeth with the devil. Therefore, the criteria for entering heaven are discipline, hard work, and entering through the narrow or difficult gate. This means having faith in God, listening to, and doing the will of God in your life and avoiding evil. Everyone has been invited to enter the kingdom through this narrow gate. There are no short cuts or any other ways other than that. No one has advantage over others because of race, color, nationality, family background or gifts but everyone has the opportunity to get to heaven if they follow through the narrow gate. But only your faith and good works will take you to the kingdom of God. TWENTY FIRST-SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME YEAR C THE NARROW GATE IS THE ONLY WAY TO THE KINGDOM OF GOD In the first reading, we are told that the people of Israel had faith in God to fulfill his promises to them and deliver them from their enemies. The Psalm said that blessed are the people the Lord has chosen to be his own. The second reading said that faith is the realization of what is hoped for and evidence of things not seen. And reference was made to Abraham who demonstrated his faith by obedience to the call to go out to an unknown place to receive his inheritance. He journeyed into the unknown in a foreign land but with great hope for the fulfillment of God’s promise in his life. Even though himself and Sarah, his wife, had past the age of child birth and Sarah was sterile, he trusted in the fulfillment of the Lord’s promise to him anyway. The fulfilment of God’s promised to give him numerous descendants as the stars in the sky and as countless as the sand on the sea shore started with the birth of Isaac, their only son. And shortly afterward his faith was tested again, he was asked to offer his only son, Isaac, the fulfilment of God’s promise, as a burnt offering to the Lord. Abraham again, full of faith agreed and went to offer Isaac as requested by the Lord. He trusted God could still fulfil his promise anyway. In the gospel, Jesus said to his disciples not to be afraid anymore for their father is willing to give them the kingdom. He urged them to give away their possessions as alms to others and acquire great treasures in heaven that cannot be destroyed or stolen by thieves because where your treasure is that is where your heart will be. Get ready and be awake as servants waiting for the coming of their master to open the door for him. Those servants who are found ready and awake to open the door for the master shall receive a beautiful reward and enter the kingdom of God. This means we should prepare for the second coming of the Lord at any time by being pure and holy in our words and deeds. Keep doing good works as good stewards and bear good fruits in your lives for when the Lord comes he shall reward you greatly. Do not be discouraged and distracted by anything for he will surely come but at a time you do not know. Remain strong in faith and work hard so that you are not found wanting on the arrival of the master and thrown in a place together with the evil one where there is everlasting pain. He also said for those of us who know more about his teaching and refuse to live accordingly, we shall be more severely punish than others who knew little or nothing about it. Many of us take things for granted, thinking we still have plenty time left to live on earth. We all know that death can come or strike at any time at our door steps. Some of us rebel against God and refuse to live good lives because God has not given us what we wanted or some misfortunes have befallen us. We need to know that God is a mystery, difficult to understand by humans. His ways are different from ours. He has a way of doing things that is beyond our understanding. He has a way of answering our prayers either positively or negatively for our own good but we cannot understand it. Sometimes he allows us to go through pain and suffering just as he did to his son Jesus Christ on the cross. Why he does that is known to him alone. Therefore, no matter what situation we find ourselves let us not give up on him but remain vigilant and strong in faith because he is capable of fulfilling his promises to us as he did to Abraham. Let us not give room for the devil to use us and lead us astray from God’s will. Just keep doing God’s will always and his promises shall be fulfilled in your life. Avoid all kinds of evils such as: malice, greed, jealousy, selfishness, cheating and wickedness and show love to your neighbors. Begin now to live the kind of life that you will like death to find you living, a life that will merit you heaven. Love God with all your strength and love your neighbor as yourself. NINETEEN SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME YEAR C BE VIGILANT AND STRONG IN FAITH Last week we reflected on the story of the Good Samaritan which reminded us to see those in need as our neighbors and assist them. This week we are reflecting on the story of Martha and Mary, the two sisters that received Jesus in their house as guest. We are called upon today to keep a balance between our activities and prayers. Martha was involved in activities while Mary was seated and listening to Jesus. Both actions are needed and required for us to become good Christians/disciples. In the first reading we saw how Abraham welcomed three men who were passing by his house. He insisted that they stop by for him to entertain them before they proceeded on their journey. As a result of his beautiful and kind gesture, he got the promise of a child as a blessing from God. In the second, St. Paul rejoiced over the opportunity given him to suffer while rendering service to God and his people. He saw himself as an instrument of God’s mercy, goodness, and teaching to the people. While in the gospel, Martha asked Jesus and said, ‘’Lord do you not care that my sister has left me by myself to do the serving? And Jesus replied her saying, ‘’ Martha, Martha, you are anxious and worried about many things. There is need of only one thing. Mary has chosen the better part and it must not be taken from her.’’ This sounds ridiculous to Martha and many of us today. Why should Jesus say that to her? As Christians we are encouraged to practice the virtue of hospitality and be charitable to our neighbors especially those in need. Abraham gave us a perfect example in the first reading of today. And he was rewarded for that. Martha did good job as well by providing service to Jesus during his visit to their house. This represents and encompasses all the corporal works of mercy that we are encouraged to practice such as: feeding the hungry, giving drink to the thirsty, clothing the naked, providing home to the homeless, visiting the prisoners and the sick, and burying the dead. Mary on the other hand sat down listening to his words. Her action represented the dimension of prayer and contemplation in our lives as Christians. It is important for us to sit and listen to Jesus just as you are doing right now reflecting and savoring the sweetness of his words and his company in our lives as Mary did. This dimension encompasses all the spiritual works of mercy that we are encouraged to practice such as: admonishing sinners, instructing the ignorant, counseling the doubt, comforting the sorrowful, bearing wrong patiently, forgiving all injuries, and praying for both the living and the dead. Both Martha and Mary; service and contemplation are two dimension that constitute true discipleship and are inseparable in the life of a Christian. They are meant to be integrated and not to be contrasted in our Christian lives. These dimensions enable us to practice the commandment of love to God in prayer and contemplation, and love of neighbor as ourselves in doing service to them. Therefore, Jesus’ reply to Martha’s question was to caution her not to be distracted from her service and to allow Mary to do what she was doing because it was equally important. When he said Mary chose the better part is to emphases the importance of seeking God’s will first in prayers before embarking on any service that we may want to do. You have to listen to your master’s or teacher’s instruction first before you can carry out the assignment or task given you to do. If you do not do the work according to his instructions you will not get the desired reward or credit for it. Jesus said only one thing is needed but Martha worry about so many things. That one thing and most important thing is our salvation or going to heaven and be with the Lord. So everything we do as Christian should be geared toward salvation and heaven which is our final destination and ultimate goal. And do not do so in order to impress people rather do them so that God who sees and knows every human mind and intention will reward you accordingly. This one thing is seeking the kingdom of God first and placing God above all things in your life. And do not be distracted by any other thing else especially worldly things. Psalm 27:4 says: ‘’I ask the Lord, one thing I seek, to live in the house of the Lord.’’ In another way we could say listening to the word is much more important than preparing a banquet. Just as it is said that it is better to go where people are mourning than to go where people are celebrating; there you gain more spiritually and have the opportunity to reflect over your life. We also need to be careful not to be carried away by too much work and forget to prayer to the God that gives strength for the work. Have a blessed week. SIXTEEN SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME YEAR C Forty days after the resurrection of Jesus he ascended to heaven. Forty days is significant number in the scripture. Moses went up to the mountain to seek the face of God for forty days in prayer and fasting. The people of Israel were in the wilderness for forty years in preparation for their entry into the promise land. Elijah fasted for forty days as he journeyed in the wilderness to the mountain of the Lord. And for forty days after the resurrection Jesus appeared several times to his disciples to prove to them that he was truly raised from the dead and to prepare them for the mission of bearing witness to the world. The departure of Jesus was like an end and a beginning at the same for the disciples. It was the end because that was the last time they will see him physically. It was the beginning because they will begin to experience him in a different way going forth. Jesus promised to be there for his disciples always to the end of time. As he ascended into heaven, he promised to send them the Holy Spirit who would empower them and teach them more on how to preach and be his witnesses to the world. Therefore, his departure did not leave them in sorrow but in joy because they were filled with the expectation of the coming of the Holy Spirit that will give them strength. Through the Holy Spirit, the Lord empowers us to bear witness to the world. The risen Lord is in heaven on his throne reigning over the earth and heaven as king. There, he intercedes for us and empowers us with the help of the Holy Spirit to bear witness to him in the world. This is so that the world will hear from us the message of his gospel and be saved from condemnation. How can we become effective witnesses of Christ Jesus? When we receive the Holy Spirit it will empower us to be his witnesses to the world. The gospel is the power of God that releases people from the burden of the devil and brings healing and restoration to us all. We are his ambassadors in the world, to represent him and bear his witness. That is the great commissioning given to us as his disciples. And all who believe in him share in this responsibility of spreading the good news. We are to wait on and receive the gifts of the Holy Spirit that will empower us to be able to be his witnesses to in the world. We are to bring joy, love, and peace to the world as his disciples. When we receive power from the Holy Spirit we shall bear his witness to the world. We have to dispose and open ourselves for the Holy Spirit to come into our lives and strengthen us to do his will. Have faith in him and allow him to come into your life and take possession of you and use you for his work in his kingdom. We are depressed, sick, unhappy, confuse, and in difficulty because we have not allow the Holy Spirit to take control of our lives. We rely on human wisdom so much today in our world that is why we cannot be happy and peaceful. Seek the will of God and allow him access into your life to take charge and your life will be wonderful. Discard your pride, selfishness and evil desires and allow God a space in your life and see how happy you will be. Our world is full of all kinds of distractions: noise, pleasure, power, freedom, additions and so on. That is making us confused and leads us to destruction. We need to have faith in God and allow him to use us for his mission and glory in the world. His ascension is to allow the Holy Spirit to come take control of us and empower us to do his will here on earth. We must be willing and ready for the spirit to manifest in our lives and enable us do his will. Therefore, prepare yourself for the coming of the Holy Spirit to empower you for his mission. At baptism we receive the gift of the Holy Spirit and it was strengthen during confirmation. Now, you must open up to the Holy Spirit to empower you do his will on earth. Last weekend, we were called upon to decide to either serve the living God or some other gods; whether to be with Christ or to leave him like some of the disciples did after he said they must eat his body and drink his blood. Today, our Lord Jesus is concerned about the health of our spirit; what makes our souls sick and makes a person unclean. He said that the root cause of uncleanliness in a person is not from outside but from the heart. And that we need to wash clean ourselves from the inside; to make sure our hearts and minds are clean. The heart and mind are the control centers in each of us; the source of all thoughts, desires, decisions and values. So once you are sick from there, you become unclean and sick. Jesus also warned against the disregard for God’s law and clinging to human laws and traditions. In the first reading, Moses instructed the people of Israel to observe the commandments of God as it is and not to add to it or subtract from it. The Psalm said that whoever observes these commandments of God shall never be disturbed, which means you shall have peace and joy that comes from God alone. The second reading encourages us to be doers of the word and not hearers only. God gave the people of Israel his laws through Moses as we can find in the books of Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. But with time, their leaders created more laws to regulate certain aspect of their lives. This could be referred to as, ‘’man-made laws’’ for instance, the law of washing hands up to the elbow before eating. This was a mere ritual washing and not for hygiene purpose, just like the Muslims do before their prayers. Furthermore, as time went on, the religious leaders, the Scribes and the Pharisees started to respect these man-made laws and traditions more than the laws given by God to them. These man-made laws were mere external observances and not for internal disposition of the people. That is to say, not purify the heart and mind. For example, a person is considered good if he/she is able to carry out these external observances like washing of hands before eating. Even if the person is guilty of sins such as adultery, stealing, malice, deceit and so on, in as much as it is not seen or known by people, the person is considered good. This means disobeying God’s laws which make you clean from within, but obeying man-made laws and traditions that make look good from the outside. That is a misplacement of priorities. Even today the Church has enacted some laws to regulate certain aspects of our lives and activities. However, these laws must not supersede the laws giving by God because God’s laws are superior to man-made laws. Human beings cannot tamper with God’s laws. You take them as they are or leave them. Our civil society too has enacted some laws to regulate our activities and to maintain peace and order in society. Nevertheless, these laws must not be place above God’s laws. Human made laws are important but they must not be in conflict with God’s laws. Any man-made laws that are in conflict with God’s laws are misleading us; encouraging us to disobey God but encouraging us to obey man-made laws and traditions. Today, we see how human beings are creating and promoting laws that are in conflict with God’s laws. And they want people to respect these laws more than God’s laws. Today, we want to follow our desires and do what we want instead of what God wants us to do. In our world today, we are seeking happiness and joy in worldly things such as money, food, drink, pleasure etc. All of these will rather give us misery and pain. Obeying God’s laws is the only way that we can be truly happy and peaceful in our lives. Many of us are like the Scribes and Pharisees. We are mere external observers of rules, but never clean from within. Many of us are just sacramental Catholic, but not true disciples of Lord. We have all the sacraments but are not truly converted from the heart. Many cradle Catholic take their faith for granted; they are always cold and do not allow the spirit of God to flourish in them. The sacraments, prayers, retreats and rituals worship that we have are only channels of grace that lead us to an encounter God and enable us establish a relationship with him. Church laws and regulations are meant to assist us obey God’s laws but not to disobey them. But because we do not open up our hearts and minds for the spirit of God to enter and use us, we remain cold as if nothing has happened to us. If you have an encounter with God, there is no way you will remain cold or the same; you must be on fire by the Holy Spirit to do great things for God and his people. Those who have allowed the spirit into their lives, you will see them doing deeds of kindness, mercy and all kinds of good works for people and in the Church. Therefore, I challenge you today to be open to the spirit of God and allow him use you for the glory of his name. And when you allow the spirit of God into your life then you will experience true peace and happiness. Stop being a slave to the devil and be converted from your heart and serve the living God. As a true child of God you do not live in sin, rather a child of God in the spirit, loving and dong good to people and God our creator. 22 SUNDAY 2015 In our first reading today, we are told Ezekiel was sent to the people of Israel who had rebelled against God to let them know there was a prophet among them. In the second reading St. Paul was assured of sufficient grace to overcome his weaknesses in his effort to preach and live out the gospel of Christ. In the gospel, we saw how Jesus was rejected by his own people because he told them the truth. Many of us have rebelled against God by committing sin. Some of us have rejected the words of the prophets sent to us by God to teach us about the truth. Our world today is going against God’s teaching. Instead of asking for God’s sufficient grace to help us overcome our weaknesses, we are asking for approval of our weaknesses. Please do not get me wrong. I want to express and teach what we believe as Christians. And to explain the response of the Bishops as regards the Supreme Court ruling on same sex marriage. The church is not in any way attacking anyone or rejecting anybody but just proclaiming what we believe and teach. The Church loves and welcomes everyone and at the same time has the mandate to teach us how to live according to the standard of God given us in the Bible. What we believe and teach comes from the Bible, the word of God. The Bible is the word of God and not the word of human beings, and so no people or government has the power to change it. The Bishops in their response said that the same constitution that has legalized same sex marriages protects the church’s right to carry on with her historic teaching regarding marriage as a sacrament and between a man and a woman. In May this year, Ireland voted for same sex marriage, in June this year, the US Supreme Court voted for same sex marriage. I also read from the internet that adultery has been legalized in South Africa, that in Germany, their National Ethics Council has called for an end to criminalization of incest between siblings after examining the case of a man who had four children with his sister, and that in Japan, the court rules that adultery is ok if it’s for business purpose. Furthermore, I read somewhere that some people are also claiming right that, relationships between adults and minors should be legalized; and marriage between humans and animal should be legalized because that is their own sexual orientation too. Where is the world heading to for God sake? Surely, the devil is at work and he is succeeding quite fast in turning things around in his favor. If God and the devil were to stand in for an election in the world today, God will lose the election to the devil because he has more followers. We see moral cases that have been known for ages to be sinful are being accepted and declared legal in our society today. People are now rejecting the natural way God design things to be and are now accepting what is unnatural. Someone said that there are no gay genes and that God created Adam and Eve and not Adam and Steve. Another person said that even the devil who is the king of all evils was attracted to the nakedness of Eve and not Adam. How come you were born that way? When no one in your family was like that all these years, until now. I think after redefining marriage, the next thing to do is to redesign the human body parts to enable same sex couples to be able to give birth to their own children without adoption. Because, adoption of children by same sex couples, is denying those children the right to grow and benefit from the natural family of man and woman. We are only thinking of our own rights as adults, what about the children’s rights. We kill some of them in the womb in the name of choice, now we are denying them the right to a natural family and giving them wrong sexual orientation all for our selfish interest. We call the attitudes of Islamic extremists and dictators barbaric but we call gay relationship civilization. All of these changes are done in the name of modernism and civilization. God is older than time itself and he is the same at all times and civilizations. Whatever was wrong in the past is still and will remain wrong forever. Whatever is sin is always sin no matter what you call it. The Bible forbids all kinds of evil including: Adultery, stealing, killing, cheating, false witnessing, injustice, incest, same sex relationship and many others. Remember legality is not the same as morality. Slavery is evil even though it was legal, abortion and euthanasia are evils even though they are legal, and same sex union is morally wrong even though it has been legalized. According to the standard of God in the Bible, all these are evil. The Church does not condemn anyone, but she calls all of us to repentance of our sins. The Church has no right or power to change anything in the Bible because it is God’s word. Christianity is not democracy where you vote for what you want and the majority wins. The founding fathers of this nation said it is a nation created under God. In our currency, it is written, ‘’in God we trust.’’ We are no longer under God but above him and no longer trust God to rule our lives. Are we now telling God that he does not have the right to tell us how to live the life that he gave us? Are we saying that what people say is more important than what God said? Where is the supremacy and sovereignty of God in our lives? Are we now backing down from what we believe from the Bible because other people will be offended? Are we now accepting and making legal what the Bible forbid? Remember what Jesus Christ said, ‘’ if you deny me before people, I will also deny you before my father in heaven.’’ The apostles said to the government of their time that they will rather obey God than to obey men. Are we going to deny Jesus because we are afraid to offend people by expressing our faith? The gospel today tells us how Jesus was disrespected by his own people because they knew his background. And because of that reason, he could not teach and perform miracles among his people like he had done in other places. And Jesus said, ‘’ a prophet is only despised in his own country, among his people.’’ This means, familiarity breeds contempt. Many of us are guilty just as the people at the time of Jesus. For instance, many cradle Catholics Christians take their faith for granted and are not committed like adult converts to the faith. It happens in marriages and family life as well, where members get familiar to each other and begin to disrespect one another. This often leads to crisis and division in a family. In the same way, when we get use to sin, we loss the sense of guilt and see sin as a normal way of life. That is exactly what is happening in our world today with the legalization of evil practices by various governments. We have become too familiar with God that we no long see him as the God who can direct our lives. And so we want to decide how to live our lives. We are making decisions and voting against the commandments of God. The gospel is meant to change the sinner. Not for the sinners to change the gospel to suit their sins. We are voting God out of our lives. Can we survive without God? As Christians, we must remain firm in our faith and proclaim the teachings of God, the truth of the gospel and nothing else. We must stand on the side of God and his gospel and not what society said is acceptable moral conduct. Obedience must be to God and not to man. May God grant us the grace to be committed in proclaiming and living out his gospel truth. FOUTHEEN SUNDAY 2015 Geese fly in a V shape formation to ease their movement. You can hear the beat of their wings whistling through the air in unison. That is the secret of their strength: lead goose cuts through the air resistance, which create a helping uplift for the birds behind it. In turn, their flapping makes it easier for the birds behind them, and so on. Each bird takes its turn at being the leader. The tired bird goes back to the edges of the V shape for rest, and the rested ones come forward to the point of the V to drive the flock onward. If a goose becomes too exhausted or ill and has to drop out of the flock, it is never abandoned. A strong member of the flock will follow the weak one to its resting place and wait until the bird is well and strong enough to fly again. Together, they cooperate as a flock, and can fly at a 71% longer range, with up to 60% less work. After the resurrection, the disciples were overjoyed to see Jesus alive again. This made a very wonderful impression on them. It confirmed to them what Jesus had told them about his resurrection. From that moment on, they based their preaching on the resurrection of Jesus; and they continued to testify to his resurrection with great power. This resurrection determined their way of life. They became united in mind, heart, and soul. Everything they did and owned in common: they lived a community life sharing everything they had as brothers and sister of one family. That is the kind of life we are called to live as Christians; And to bear witness to his divine love, mercy, and peace to the world. But what we are doing instead is individual, selfish, and greedy, disunited, and lack of sharing in our lives’ styles. We are conforming to the pattern of the world instead of making the world conform to God’s pattern. One of the Bishops from Africa at the synod on marriage and family said that the clamor for the change in church teaching in favor of same sex marriage and divorce is an effort to make the world change the church instead of the church changing the world. He said the mandate of the church is to change and convert the world and not the other way round. Unfortunately, many of us are adopting this pattern of life and accepting these worldly ideas. We doubt God’s power and teaching from the Bible instead we want to do our own will. We want proof and immediate answers or else we will not believe. For instance, today we read that he breathed on his disciples and gave them the gift of the Holy Spirit so whose sin they forgive is forgiven and whose sin they do not forgive is not forgiven. Yet many people doubt the sacrament of reconciliation. You hear people asking why go confess to a human being like you? But God is the one who is using the human beings to reach out to his people. The story of the geese demonstrates exactly what is expected of us Christians. We are called to live a community life of cooperating and sharing our material, intellectual, emotional, and spiritual possessions with one another. Community life in which we cooperate and share has many advantages: save time, money, energy and provide support for each other, and people can easily overcome challenges and progress faster. But individual way of life has lots of disadvantages: waste more time, money, energy and no support for one another, and people can easily come lonely, depressed and frustrated in life. Mother Teresa of blessed memory once said that poverty is not created by God; it is created by you and me when we do not share what we have. We thank God for the gift of these children who will begin receiving communion with us today, and pray that God will continue to strengthen the bonds of our union with him and with one another. This is our family meal, covenant meal, and the meal of our salvation. SECOND SUNDAY OF EASTER 2015 Today we celebrate the baptism of our Lord, Jesus Christ. This Sunday marks the end of Christmas season, and the beginning of the ordinary season in the Church’s calendar. As we all know, Christmas is the celebration of the incarnation of our Lord in the person of Jesus Christ. That is, God’s self-revelation to humanity. This revelation was to the Jews first, and second, to the gentile (non-Jews), which we celebrated as epiphany, and then today at the baptism, to repentant sinners. This also means, from 25th of December till this day, we have been celebrating God’s revelation to humanity. Baptism is the washing and cleansing of individuals, and empowering them for mission. Christ wanted to fulfil this ritual for righteousness sake, and not because he was a sinner, before the beginning of his public ministry. At his baptism, the heavens were opened, a voice spoke, and a dove descended on him. All of this happened in order to introduce him, identify him, confirm him and anoint him as the savior of the world. By his baptism, he identified with our humanity and was able to carry the burdens of our sins. This baptism was very important to Jesus because: 1. It was a moment of decision to begin his public ministry, and submit to the will of God the father. 2. It was to infuse his divine essence into the water and ceremony of baptism to enable it to have the power to wash us clean from our sins. 3. It was a moment of approval, introduction, and assurance of his identity and mission. 4. It was a moment of conviction. 5. It was a time to equip and empower him by the Holy Spirit to begin his mission. The implication of his baptism to us is as follows: It gives us new life in Christ Jesus; makes us sharers in his mission (priestly, prophetic, and kingly roles); it enables us to renew our baptismal promises to God, which is to reject doing evil, but accept doing good always; it opens the gates of heaven for us to enter; it empowers us for ministry in the kingdom of God; through it, we are welcomed and accepted into the kingdom of God. Therefore, by virtue of our baptism, we have been made children of God and sharers in his mission to proclaiming the good news to the world. As we celebrate his baptism today, it reminds us of our baptism and that we are his children. Children have rights as well as responsibilities in the family. The father loves and cares for them. They too should appreciate and contribute to the welfare of the family. We share in the love and mission of our father. Baptism empowers us for this mission to love, forgive, heal, console, support one another, and to proclaim his good news. Just as Jesus was empowered for mission at his baptism, we too have been empowered to carry on with his mission. Therefore, go spread the good news to the whole world. THE BAPTISM OF OUR LORD

The Passion of St. Mark makes specific references to time, with events occurring at 9:00 AM (Jesus’ actual crucifixion), 12 PM (a great darkness falling across the countryside) and mid-afternoon or 3 PM when Jesus dies after uttering a loud cry. Scripture scholars conjecture that these times may correspond to an actual prayer observance in the early Christian Church at the time Mark composed his Gospel, shortly before 70 AD. The Passion of St. Matthew includes perhaps the most dramatic scenario of the crucifixion account. Matthew 27: 51-54 records that at the moment of Jesus’ death “the earth quaked, boulders split, tombs opened. Many bodies of saints who had fallen asleep were raised. After Jesus’ resurrection they came forth from their tombs and entered the holy city and appeared to many.” This extraordinary account appears only in Matthew. The other evangelists report nothing of this sort. One would think that had this actually happened, secular historians of the time would have noted it, particularly the Jewish historian Josephus, our best independent source for these years. The best scholarship today indicates that Matthew constructed his dramatic account from at least five sources of the Hebrew Scripture: Joel 2:10; Ezekiel 37:12; Isaiah 26:19; Nahum 1:5-6; and Daniel 12:2. The common thread is apocalyptic: when the Lord comes, he will create a cosmic disturbance and raise from their graves those who died faithful to his word. This is a teaching tour-de-force from Matthew. In today’s account of the Passion, written by St. John, note the theological/catechetical richness of Jesus last moments on the cross. Jesus entrusts the care of his mother to the one disciple who remained. This is more than a domestic arrangement; Jesus is in essence establishing his first “church family,” so to speak. Then, at his dying moment, Jesus “handed over his spirit.” This is a true Pentecost moment, one of several in John’s Gospel. Mary and John are thus marked by the Holy Spirit. Shortly after his death a soldier lances his side (a deviation from the common practice of leg breaking.) John has arranged for this to occur at the moment the lambs in the temple were being slaughtered (lanced) for families celebrating the Passover that night. When Jesus’ body was lanced, an outpouring of blood and water occurs, presumably splashing the onlookers at the foot of the cross. The symbolism of the water (Baptism) and the blood (Eucharist) are unmistakable. In today’s Good Friday service, the seventh of the Great Intercessions is made on behalf of the Jews. I was twenty-two years old when Pope Paul VI ordered that this prayer speak kindly of our Jewish brethren. For nearly all of my youthful life, unfortunately, I worshipped and used the official term in the Roman Missal, “perfidious Jews.” A history of the term and its usage can be found here. This year, at our Good Friday worship, let us pray for the safety of Jesus’ own people. In addition, as catechists and evangelists, may we devote ourselves to the inestimable riches of the Hebrew Scripture, without which an understanding of our Savior in the Gospels is nigh impossible. I will pray for each of you this afternoon.

Yesterday we learned that Representative Allen West (R-FL) was disinvited from an NAACP fundraiser in his home state of Florida. Last week, West had commented that “I believe there’s about 78 to 81 members of the Democratic Party that are members of the Communist Party.” West, who came under fire for his controversial comments, responded by penning a piece in The Hill: My colleagues in the Congressional Progressive Caucus have taken umbrage with my equation of their ideals with those of communists. Why? Why shouldn’t we have this discussion? What part of their agenda are they trying to hide? We must be able to openly discuss how our fundamental freedoms are being slowly chipped away by an over-reaching nanny state that has bit by bit slipped its tentacles into every aspect of our lives, from the types of light bulbs we can use to the size of our toilet tanks. In a follow-up interview with TheStreetTV, West commented that “…when you look at the history of the Communist Party, when it came to the United States of America, back at the turn of the century, they rebranded themselves and called themselves ‘Progressives'”: In response, elements of the Left from Rep. Barney Frank to Rolling Stone Magazine and the Progressive Caucus wrote off his comments as “McCarthyite” and worse than McCarthy. Soledad O’Brien–the CNN host who notably fumbled over the definition of Critical Race Theory—applied her now-signature sarcastic style to her coverage. Does West’s assertion that today’s Progressive brand is simply an evolution of yesterday’s Communist label hold up? It helps to take a look at the Congressional Progressive Caucus. The Progressive Caucus includes Democratic party luminaries like Rep. Charlie Rangel, Rep. Dennis Kucinich, Rep. Jared Polis, Sen. Bernie Sanders, Rep. Jan Schakowsky, Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr., and Rep. Danny Davis. The Progressive Caucus also shares several board members in common with Progressive Democrats of America (PDAmerica), which has explicitly stated its support for Occupy Wall Street becoming a permanent encampment. Progressive Caucus member Schakowsky, profiled in 2011 on Progressive.org, has repeatedly come under fire from her Jewish constituents for her connection with the Progressive Caucus and the Progressive Democrats of America, which supported the Hamas-led flotilla into Gaza. The Progressive brand supports this action against Israel, and for a member of the Caucus it is difficult to walk the line between defending Israel and being affiliated with Hamas’s flotilla. Danny Davis, who sits on the House Homeland Security Committee, was recently exposed receiving a lifetime achievement award from the Communist Party USA headquarters in Chicago. This is the same congressman whom President Barack Obama had introduced by saying “he shares our values.” While Allen West’s assertion may have been met with derision and some uneasiness on both the Left and the Right, his questions as to the origins of the Progressive brand and whether members of the Progressive Caucus share values with communism is worth exploring. When I was studying for my two master’s degrees in political science at Kansas State University and at the U.S. Army Command and General Staff Officer College, the very best professors were those who would begin each lecture with a challenging assertion. It engaged discussion and analysis, and was the best way to uncover the essence of the particular subject of the day. Time for some due diligence.DONATE Donations tax deductible to the full extent allowed by law.

This week, Joshua Cohen and Justin Taylor exchange ideas around book promotion, materials of writing, and the devolution of the author. Today, Joshua begins the conversation. I hope you’re doing well. I’m looking forward to the lamb spines, certainly. Sunday would be good. They’re on me, of course, of course. I owe you as much plus drinks for your help with this—this—I don’t know what this is. The Jewish Book Council has apparently read and enjoyed this new book of mine, Four New Messages—now that, after Citizens United v. FEC, a for-profit corporation can be considered a person, I feel comfortable saying that a nonprofit corporation can at least read my fiction and enjoy it enough to ask me to write a series of posts for their blog, gratis. Rather the recompense is contained in the idea that these emails-to-blogposts—a medium perhaps appropriate for the book, because the book is set, partially, on the internet—would help publicize the book, would help sell the book to the Jewish bookbuying public (who buys books? Jews, women, Jewish women). I didn’t know what to write, so I roped you out of Park Slope and into public. Which will be, essentially, our subject. Now I’ve read a lot of your writing—I’d guess about 4x what’s been published—and you’ve read a lot of mine—let’s agree on the same random ratio(cination). Though most of the writing we’ve sent each other hasn’t been writing-writing, but this: emails. Stuff about what, where, when, a sliver of how—the why’s always implied. In fact, if this were an email only to you and not an open crier type bellringer I wouldn’t have to explain all these facts. We’ve already discussed this exchange. We’ve agreed that you’ll be remunerated for this interlocution in lamb spines at Xi’an Famous Foods. On Sunday. Time and which among the East Broadway, Bayard, St. Marks locations (not Flushing!!), TBD. We’ve discussed, we have, the Jewish Book Council. Their cattlecall auditions that offer Jewish or Jewishish writers slots in various book or bookish events throughout the country. Their general—let’s say shepherding or herding, to continue the metaphor—of the Jewish(ish) (and Jewish[ish] female) reading public(s). We know all this. We also know what it’s like to publish and promote books—to have to promote books—and God knows you’ve given gracious audience to my own whisk(e)y philosophizing over the necessary evil of this promowork, my barstool history take on how writers even just a generation older than us never had to care much about this, really actually didn’t feel it necessary to care much about this because the book advances and criticism gigs paid high enough and living costs were lower. Also there’s the pride or pride in art issue. Writers were either dignified or Norman Mailer (which was another form of dignity, perhaps). But the purpose of this email isn’t to ask you to articulate your feelings about the devolution of authorship/authority via the devolution of PR responsibilities (though if you’re so inclined, go ahead), rather the purpose is to ask you how you feel, specifically, about my writing—our writing—this. We spend most of our days writing words, some written for an intimation of eternity that to my mind has been projected from the purview of fantasy or dream to that of technology (our writing might last forever—not because it deserves to but because of the bytes), but others written to communicate South of Union Square Chinatown food options/rescheduling due to mass transit malfunction. Yet we write them on the same platform: the computer (to be sure: I use the computer only for journalism and to edit—all fiction’s drafted by hand). I guess I’m not asking about your process (again, unless you’re inclined to address that)—or about if/how you consider those two types of writing differently (again, again, etc.)—I’m not asking about anything that might be answered better with a sneer at preciousness or, best, the offer of a singleride Metrocard to Maturityville—rather I’m asking about registers, valences, casualness/formality, Truth. How honest should I be about my attitude toward publicity? Should my attitude change and why? What are the uses of distance and estrangement and obfuscation and plain old lying—in life? in fiction? Lastly, until you give me your lastly: Omniscient narration and dialogue in fiction are often delightful when delivered in the same “tone,” and often delightful when delivered in different “tones.” But so many books I’ve read lately—contemporary books—fail to find a convincing similarity (everything overassumes in the vernacular, or bores back to the nineteenth century) OR convincing difference (the narrations stately like Henry James but the dialogues like a scatological Hank Jim). Why is this? Do people—which is to say “nonwriters”—have the same problem “in life”? Answer those and I’ll spring for the ribs.

Lire ce livre Nombre de pages - 26 Find other books like this one in the library The book consists of 2 stories. In the first story, "A lively family," a father, who works in a toy factory, is trying to invent a walking doll. He thinks about it day and night. His wife and children are very unhappy because he thinks too much about his work and doesn't take care of the family. Eventually, the father manages to make a walking doll and becomes very famous. The whole family is very proud of him. Date de Publication YIVO Institute for Jewish Research - United States Children's publishing house at the Central Commitee of the Leninist Young Communist League - Ukraine L'œuvre n'est plus sous copyright et est donc dans le domaine public. Yiddish Children's Books from the Collection of the YIVO Library Le lien pour ce livre

A married Jewish Congressman from New York has been left red-faced and a political punch bag after it emerged that he had sent a lewd photograph of himself to a woman he met online. Anthony Weiner, a seven-term Democrat representative for Brooklyn and Queens, has now apologised for sending the photo of himself wearing bulging underpants and for "inappropriate" internet and telephone exchanges with six women. The scandal, dubbed "Weinergate" by the American press, began last month, when it was claimed Mr Weiner had Tweeted a photo of his crotch to a female college student. At first, the 46-year-old said his Twitter account had been hacked. When the scandal continued to grow, an aide said the congressman was seeking legal advice. Then came perhaps the least convincing denial in the history of such scandals, when Mr Weiner said he could not say "with certitude" that he was not the one pictured. He dismissed the need to investigate the matter further with the comment: "I'm not really sure it rises, no pun intended, to that level." But the media interest continued, with many pundits questioning why the supposedly guiltless politician was not present at Sunday's Celebrate Israel Parade in New York, an event he has always attended in the past. More than 30,000 people attended the march, including Mayor Michael Bloomberg, making the absence of one of Israel's strongest congressional supporters the subject of great debate. On Monday Mr Weiner cracked. "To be clear, the picture was of me, and I sent it," he said. "This was me doing a dumb thing, and doing it repeatedly, and lying about it," he said. He said he had intended to send the woman a jokey private message and once he realised he had exposed the photograph to the world, he panicked. He said that although he had "exchanged messages and photos of an explicit nature with about six women over the last three years", including after he got married last year, he had never had any physical contact with the women. "I'm deeply ashamed of my terrible judgment and actions," he said. Mr Weiner said he would not resign, although House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said she would seek an investigation by the House Ethics committee. Another Jewish politician, also once considered a rising star of the Democrats, stopped short of calling for Mr Weiner to resign but said it was "cringeworthy" and not a moment he should be proud of. "Believe me, I know, I've been there," added former New York governor Eliot Spitzer, whose involvement with a $1,000-an-hour callgirl cost him his political career. This is not the first time Mr Weiner has made headlines by posting a photograph on Twitter. In February, when he reached 10,000 followers on the site, he showed them a snapshot of himself from his barmitzvah in 1977.

Have you ever been to a Sefardi shul – or a Sefardi simcha of any kind? There’s something special about the Sefardi personality, something which Ashkenazim don’t quite possess. I recently spent an entire Shabbos, davening all three tefilos in a Sefardi shul. And I loved it. What exactly was enthralling about the davening? I sensed a real, sincere passion for Hashem and for prayer in general. When the people in shul said amen to a bracha or a kaddish, they said it with feeling and enthusiasm. When the Torah was taken out from the Aron Kodesh, the people almost ran to greet her and to see the holy letters. Each person who was called up for an aliya seemed to recite the bracha with emotion. After the aliya, the rest of the shul almost attacked the oleh – in a good way – wishing him “yirbu yamecha – your years should be increased.” The love for shul and tefillah was typified for me in a brief conversation I overheard between a father and son. I had just finished davening at an earlier Shacharis minyan and they were arriving for the next one. Said the child, “I went into the shul and I can’t find a seat.” The father responded, ”Baruch Hashem, there are so many people in the beit knesset today!” Do we Ashkenazim have the same passion for shul and tefilos as our Sefardi brothers and sisters? Do I have the same deep connection to the words of davening as they do? Are our shuls as warm and welcoming; are our tefillos said with as much love – or do ours sometimes “suffer” from a bit of dryness? What does all this have to do with the Haftorah? Take a look at the differences between the Sefardi and Ashkenazi haftoros this week. Of course, the link from the Parsha to the Haftorah is Shiras HaYam, the Song sang after the splitting of the sea. The Sefardi haftorah begins with Shiras Devorah, (Shoftim perek 5) the song Devorah and Klal Yisrael sang after their miraculous victory over Sisera and his 900 iron chariots. Hashem caused confusion and fear to enter into the mind’s of Sisera’s army, enabling Barak to kill every last solider (5:16). Sefardim do not read the story, only the song sang after the victory. The Ashkenazi haftorah is much longer as we read the 4th perek of Shoftim, which contains the battle and the 5th perek which is Shiras Devorah. A Sefardi friend once explained the reason for the difference this way: “You Ashkenazim, are all dry and intellectual and not so emotional. For you to sing a song to Hashem you need to hear the entire story beforehand, otherwise you can’t sing. We Sefardim are always wanting to sing. We don’t need much to get us in the mood. We don’t need to read the story of Devorah and Barak’s victory. All we need is the basic info saying that we won and we are ready to a sing shira to Hashem!” My friend was only half-joking. There may be a lot of truth in what he said. The song of Devorah gives us an opportunity to discuss the role of song, music and dance in Torah thought. Music is powerful and profoundly affects the soul. This is why a visit to the Beis HaMikdash involved much song and symphony (see Rambam in Hilchos Klei HaMikdash, 3:2-6). Music has the potential to bring one closer to Hashem. The strength of music seems to lie in its ability to influence our emotions. At times we understand a concept intellectually, but it fails to penetrate our souls. We aren’t truly inspired to improve and grow. But then we hear the same idea illustrated in a song and we are moved to action. Our emotions are touched and we come closer to HaKadosh Baruch Hu. This phenomenon seems to be the meaning of a phrase in the Hoshanos prayers (page 748 in the standard Artscroll English Siddur) we say on Hoshannah Rabbah. We mention that Dovid HaMelech was “melamed Torah b’kol klei shir – taught Torah with all types of musical instruments.” How did he teach Torah with music? Do our rabbis need to sing and play the guitar in their shiurim? No, the reference here to Dovid’s musical Torah teachings was that it penetrated the soul and the emotions. His focus was not on intellectual study alone; Dovid HaMelech, at times, utilized music to touch the senses and the soul. This helps us understand a Medrash Shocher Tov (1:2) which states that just as Moshe Rabbeinu gave us Five Books of the Torah, Dovid HaMelech gave us Five Books of Tehillim. The Medrash is not merely making a connection of “fives.” More likely, the Medrash is teaching that just as Moshe taught us the intellectual aspects of Torah, Dovid gave us the emotional growth we can experience in Torah. Dovid did this through the power of Tehillim, which was composed as music. Music often leads to dance. Almost everyone likes to dance. Most cultures use dancing as part of rituals to express happiness. Dancing is also something done for recreation and to bring an individual joy. Why were we created this way? Let’s think about what dancing actually is. When we dance, we move our bodies more rapidly and quickly than normal. Dancing is essentially the same kind of activity as exercise. Scientific studies have proven that when we exercise, stress hormones are decreased and endorphins are increased. What are endorphins? They are the body’s natural “feel good” chemicals, and when they are released we experience a natural mood boost. Exercise also releases adrenaline and other natural chemicals which work together to make us feel good. This is what dancing and exercise does. But why? Why is it that we get happier the more we move our bodies? Movement equals life. The more you move, the more you really live. HaKadosh Baruch Hu created us with a need to move our bodies, to exercise, to get our heart rates up, in order to maintain good health. He gave us life, but He wants us to add more life with movement. Movement gets the blood flowing and the heart rate up. The body becomes more alive. This is why we dance we when are happy. When feeling joy, we feel the need to experience life more intensely – and so we dance. Dancing and exercise releases those endorphins because we are injecting ourselves with movement and life. This is why dancing is called rikud, from the word meraked, to sift. When we dance we are sifting life from the world around us and injecting it into ourselves. Shiras Devorah reminds us of the power and importance of music and dance in Jewish life. And these are some of the happenings in this week’s haftorah.Rabbi Boruch Leff About the Author: If you don't see your comment after publishing it, refresh the page. 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Five Minutes for Israel is a site for people who want to advocate for Israel on the Public Diplomacy battle field. If you don’t support the continued prosperity of the State of Israel; have doubts about the justice of its cause or want Israel to be anything but a Jewish state, this is not the place for you. Look elsewhere! When we are up and running we plan: - 24/7 around the world monitoring of the world, English online press about Israel, Judaism and related subjects. Our aims are to achieve 10 out of the first 15 comments (the first page) on articles we focus on for either brickbats or bouquets and to swamp every online poll. - A place for original pro-Israel material, especially graphics and videos, to be freely distributed, localized and adapted according to need. - Material for translation. We know that producing in English discriminates against other languages so we encourage translators to take material and adapt it to other societies. This is especially true for subtitling videos and relabeling graphics. Similarly we hope to collect Hebrew language material for translation to a wider non-Hebrew speaking audience. - Interviews with established Israel advocates with the aim of encouraging new advocates to contribute. There is work to be done even if Israel is not at war, today or you only have five minutes to spare. - A blog where Israel advocates can chat, swap tips and stories, ideas for this site, etc. If you are interested, please comment.

Givat Shaul — The Mezuzah of Yerushalayim Givat Shaul is today a prominent residential neighborhood and busy industrial and economic hub at the entrance of Yerushalayim. Upon entering the city from the Jerusalem-Tel Aviv Highway (Kvish Echad), there is a broad road that one can turn onto with almost a full U-turn, which is the gateway to the Givat Shaul neighborhood and the residential area’s main thoroughfare of the same name. Coming from the direction of the city center, the road curves off Sderot Weitzman — which becomes Kvish Echad — and all the buses going to the neighborhood travel the road from early morning till late at night. It wasn’t always that way. There is a modest road below, whose first part runs parallel with the current Rechov Givat Shaul. Until 1960 that street below was the area’s main road; the No. 11 bus from the Ha’mekasher Company (Egged’s predecessor) used it and it was called Givat Shaul. Today this quite unpretentious, shaded street is called Rechov Ksav Sofer. The reason for the switch was that the section around the upper street was developed first, and so buses and other vehicles preferred it. Walking along the original Givat Shaul Street, one still encounters a few old Arab homes. Once upon a time (not that long ago) the whole area consisted of empty fields full of kalaniyot (crown anemone) and rakefet (cyclamen) flowers. Dotted here and there were the Arab structures surrounded by vineyards. One will also see a makolet, grocery store, that has been serving the neighborhood for the past 45 years and is run by Mr. Sinai. The street then curves left, where it intersects with the new Rechov Givat Shaul. A little further up, across the road, is Rechov Amram Gaon, which has a very precipitous incline … that used to be twice as steep. The building seen at the top of the slope is now the Ner Moshe yeshivah. It used to be a therapeutic community home called Rosental. At the end of the street is a playground called Ha’bor (the Pit). Originally, there was a large pit in which the park was situated. Today the pit has been filled in, making a sweet, little, round recreational area, but the name still stuck. On the corner of Amram Gaon Street and the “new” Rechov Givat Shaul is a long, brown residential building with no balconies. A twin of the first building is found further back. On Sukkos, the courtyard between the two is transformed into what looks like one large sukkah. The name Givat Shaul is first mentioned in the passuk (Shmuel I 15:34) as the home, and apparently the center of government, of Shaul Hamelech. As a result, many people erroneously think the neighborhood is named for and is the approximate location of the Biblical Givat Shaul. In fact, his capital was probably located on Tel el-Ful (literally Hill of Beans), the site of Gibeah, near Pisgat Ze’ev. Givat Shaul (the modern neighborhood) was named as a tribute to Harav Yaakov Shaul Elyashar, who served as the Rishon LeTzion (Sephardic Chief Rabbi) from 1893 to1906. He authored the sefer Yisa Brachah (the word Yisa in Hebrew spells the initials of his name) and was the father of one of the founders of the suburb, Rav Nissim Elyashar. Givat Shaul stands 820 meters above sea level. Its land was purchased from the Arab villages of Deir Yassin and Lifta by a society headed by Rav Nissim Elyashar, Rav Arieh Leib Dayan and Rav Moshe Kopel Kantrovitz in 1906. The society wanted to provide homes for some of the destitute of Yerushalayim. Their plan was that these paupers would eventually be able to support themselves. Each family was sold a plot of 200 square meters and was required to commit itself to farming the land to grow fresh produce that was to be marketed in the city. About 160 plots were sold. In 1912, an embroidery and sewing workshop opened with the help of a Jewish philanthropist, Rabbi Slutzkin. The first settlers were mainly Yemenite Jews who were later joined by others from Meah She’arim and the Old City. Starting out as an agricultural village, Givat Shaul passed through many phases. Today it has metamorphasized into a wonderful makom Torah, with numerous yeshivos and other places of learning. The sound of Torah has replaced the mooing of cows and cackling of chickens. This was achieved with much hardship. Chazal’s teaching that “Eretz Yisrael nikneis b’yesurim — Eretz Yisrael is acquired with suffering” was experienced every step of the way. The vibrant pulsating neighborhood that has emerged despite all the difficulties, shows the Siyata De’ Shmayah that HaShem gives to those that build His city Yerushalayim. An inherent disadvantage to the shchunah was the fact that the organizers of the place did not have the funds to draw up the basic plan needed to set up a neighborhood properly, and so things were built haphazardly. Also no plots had been set aside for schools and public use. From its inception in 1906 until about 1958/1960 Givat Shaul seemed stagnant with a bare minimum of development. Approximately from 1958 onwards new buildings and homes started being built. The whole locale was considered a failing place. The many industries based in Givat Shaul (the Froumine biscuit factory, a factory for kerosene heaters that manufactured arms for the British army during the British Mandate, a matza factory, Angel’s Bakery, Berman’s Bakery, ect, ect) were noisy and polluting. The residents of the area waiting for the bus would watch and count sometimes up to 11 busses going by full of workmen (this was a daily occurrence). The eleven homes for the mentally deficient in the area did not do much to improve the image of neighborhood. In the early eighties the municipality decided to invest in improving the area and in about 1988 the roads were improved and new bus routes were added. Since the late 1980’s, ageing industrial plants have been replaced by housing projects in Givat Shaul Bet. The 1990’s saw the growth and improvement of the conditions in the vicinity, making Givat Shaul the desirable and requested place it is today.A mezuzah is to one’s right on the upper part of the doorway as one enters a place. Givat Shaul can be analogized as the mezuzah of Yerushalyim as it is to one right higher up as one enters the city on Highway One. Standing in Givat Shaul itself beneath Migdalah Saul on Givat HaZofim a panoramic view of the whole of the Holy city and its surroundings are viewed. Just as a mezuzah protects, so too does Givat Shaul at the gateway of Yerushalyim, - overlooking it -, protect the whole vicinity that is seen from Givat HaZofim, with the constant Torah learned and observed within the neighborhood in the many educational intuitions, shuls and homes therein.

Architecture under the Nervan-Antonines The emperors Trajan and Hadrian were the two most prolific emperors who constructed buildings during the Nervan-Antonine dynasty. Discuss Trajan’s Forum, Trajan’s Markets, Hadrian’s Pantheon, and Hadrian’s Villa at Tivoli - Trajan’s Forum was built from 106 to 113 CE from the spoils of the conquest of Dacia , and it celebrates Trajan’s military power. The forum provided much-needed public space for law courts and other political and administrative meetings. - The Markets of Trajan were built into the Quirinal Hill. The vaulted halls provided rooms for administrative offices, shops, and perhaps even apartments. - Apollodorus of Damascus was Trajan’s court architect who designed and built many of Trajan’s architectural projects. He was dismissed by Hadrian, because he did not appreciate Hadrian’s architectural inspirations. - Hadrian rebuilt the Pantheon of Agrippa in 118–125 CE. The Pantheon is an architectural innovation with a magnificent unreinforced concrete dome . - Hadrian’s villa at Tivoli demonstrates his interest in the eclectic cultural styles he saw during his travels around the empire, as well as his own innovative spirit toward architecture. - coffered: Having an ornamental sunken panel in a ceiling or dome. - quadriga: A Roman chariot drawn by four horses abreast. - exedra: A semicircular recess, with stone benches, used as a place for discussion. - forum: A public square in an ancient Roman city. - oculus: A window or other opening that has an oval or circular shape (as of an eye). Public Building Programs Public building programs were prevalent under the emperors of the Nervan-Antonine dynasty . During this period of peace, stability, and an expansion of the empire’s borders, many of the emperors sought to cast themselves in the image of the first imperial builder, Augustus. The projects these emperors conducted around the empire included the building and restoration of roads, bridges, and aqueducts . In Rome , these imperial building projects strengthened the image of the emperor and directly addressed the needs of the citizens of the city. Trajan’s Forum was the last of the imperial fora to be built in the city. The forum’s main entrance was accessed from the south, near to the Forum of Augustus as well as the Forum of Caesar (which Trajan also renovated). The Forum of Augustus might have been the model for the Forum of Trajan, even though the latter was much larger. Both fora were rectangular in shape with a temple at one end. Both appear to have a set of exedra on either side. Trajan built his forum with the spoils from his conquest of Dacia. The visual elements within the forum speak of his military prowess and Rome’s victory. A triumphal arch mounted with an image of the emperor in a six-horse chariot greeted patrons at the southern entrance. In the center of the large courtyard stood an equestrian statue of Trajan, and additional bronze statues of him in a quadriga lined the roof of the Basilica Ulpia, which transected the forum in the northern end. This large civic building served as a meeting place for the commerce and law courts. It was lavishly furnished with marble floors, facades , and the hall was filled with tall marble columns . The Basilica Ulpia also separated the arcaded courtyard from two libraries (one for Greek texts, the other for Latin), the Column of Trajan, and a temple dedicated to the Divine Trajan. Trajan’s markets were an additional public building that the emperor built at the same time as his forum. The markets were built on top of and into the Quirinal Hill. They consisted of a series of multi-leveled halls lined with rooms for either shops, administrative offices, or apartments. The markets follow the shape of the Trajan’s forum. A portion of them are shaped into a large exedra, framing one of the exedra of the forum. Like Trajan’s forum, the markets were elaborately decorated with marble floors and revetment, as well as decorative columns to frame the doorways. Apollodorus of Damascus Many of Trajan’s architectural achievements were designed by his architect, Apollodorus of Damascus. Apollodorus was a Greek engineer from Damascus, Syria. He designed Trajan’s forums and markets, the Arch of Trajan at Benevento, and an important bridge across the Danube during the campaigns against the Dacians. Unfortunately for Apollodorus, Trajan’s heir Hadrian also took an interest in architecture. According to Roman biographers, Apollodorus did not appreciate Hadrian’s interests or architectural drawings and often discredited them. Upon the succession of the new emperor, Apollodorus was dismissed from court. Hadrian’s most famous contribution to the city of Rome was his rebuilding of the Pantheon, a temple to all the gods, that was first built by Agrippa during the reign of Augustus. Agrippa’s Pantheon burned down in the 80s CE, was rebuilt by Domitian, and burned down again in 110 CE. Hadrian’s Pantheon still remains standing today, a great testament of Roman engineering and ingenuity. The Pantheon was consecrated as a church during the medieval period and was later used a burial site. The most unusual aspect of the Pantheon is its magnificent coffered dome, which was originally gilded in bronze. The concrete dome, which provided inspiration to numerous Renaissance and Neoclassical architects, spans over 142 feet and remains the largest unreinforced dome today. It stands due to a series of relieving arches and because the supportive base of the building is nearly twenty feet thick. The cylindrical drum on which the dome rests consists of hollowed-out brick filled with concrete for extra reinforcement. At the center of the dome is a large oculus that lets in light, fresh air, and even rain. Both the oculus and the coffered ceiling lighten the weight of the dome, allowing it to stand without additional supports. The Pantheon takes its shape from Greek circular temples, however it is faced by a Roman rectangular portico and a triangular pediment supported by monolithic granite columns imported from Egypt. The portico, which originally included a flight of stairs to a podium, acts as a visual trick, preparing viewers to enter a typical rectangular temple when they would instead be walking into a circular one. A dedicatory inscription is carved in the entablature under the pediment. The inscription reads as the original inscription would have read when the Pantheon was first built by Agrippa. Hadrian’s decision to use the original inscription links him to the original imperial builders of Rome. Hadrian’s Villa at Tivoli Hadrian traveled extensively during his reign and was frequently exposed to a variety of local architectural styles. His villa at Tivoli (built during the second and third decades of the second century CE) reflects the influence of styles found in locations such as Greece and Egypt. Among the designs he borrowed are caryatids and statues beside them that depict the Egyptian dwarf and fertility god Bes. A Greek Maritime Theater exhibits classical Ionic style, whereas the domes of the main buildings, as well as the Corinthian arches of the Canopus (a pool) and Serapeum (an artificial grotto), clearly show the influence of Roman architecture. One structure in the villa is the so-called Maritime Theater. It consists of a round portico with a barrel vault supported by pillars . Inside the portico was a ring-shaped pool with a central island. Inside the outer wall and surrounding the moat are a ring of unfluted Ionic columns. The Maritime Theater includes a lounge, a library, heated baths, three suites with heated floors, washbasin, an art gallery, and a large fountain. During the ancient times, the island was connected to the portico by two wooden drawbridges. On the island sits a small Roman house complete with an atrium , a library, a triclinium , and small baths. The area was probably used by the emperor as a retreat from the busy life at the court. The villa utilizes numerous architectural styles and innovations. The domes of the steam baths have circular holes on the apex to allow steam to escape. This is reminiscent of the Pantheon. The area has a network of underground tunnels. The tunnels were mostly used to transport servants and goods from one area to another. In total, the villa’s structures demonstrate the emperor’s innovative spirit in the field of architecture. Imperial Sculpture under the Nervan-Antonines The imperial portraiture of men and women in the early- to mid-second century reflects an increasing austerity and interest in the Greeks. Contrast male and female imperial portraiture during this time period from that of the Flavian dynasty - The portraiture of Nerva and Trajan display a militaristic look. - Hadrian changed the Roman portrait style to reflect the Greek style and he mimicked the hair and beard style of ancient Greek politicians. Antoninus Pius continued this style, while Marcus Aurelius modeled his appearance after Greek philosophers. - Commodus believed himself to be the reincarnation of Hercules and commissioned portraits of himself as Hercules, complete with attributes associated with the hero and his deeds. - Imperial women set the style and fashion for elite hair styles. The styles of Trajan’s wife Pompeia Plotina and his niece Matidia demonstrate a simplified abstract vertical form based on the earlier curly, extravagant Flavian style. - Both Hadrian and Marcus Aurelius’s wives chose to follow their respective husband’s choice of style, and are depicted with hairstyles that derive from Greece, though they are notably more subdued than the styles of their predecessors. - Hercules: The son of Jupiter and Alcmene, he is a celebrated hero who possessed exceptional strength. Most famous for his 12 labors performed to redeem himself after killing his family. - Pericles: A prominent and influential Greek statesman, orator, and a general of Athens during the city’s Golden Age—specifically, the time between the Persian and Peloponnesian wars. Imperial portraiture under the Flavians first depicted the emperors as mature, older men. Nerva, who only reigned for two years before his natural death in 98 CE, was declared emperor by the Senate following Domitian’s assassination. Since he had no natural sons of his own, Nerva adopted a young and popular general, Trajan, to be his successor. Nerva’s portraiture followed the style of imperial portraiture during the Flavian era. The few portraits that remain from the two years of his rule depict a man with a receding hairline and small mouth. The portraiture of Nerva and later of Trajan display an increasing militaristic look. Nerva’s successor and adopted son Trajan was a much more successful emperor who was well liked by both the Senate and the people of Rome . He reigned for nearly twenty years (98–117 CE), and expanded the empire’s borders while implementing extensive public building and social welfare programs. Trajan’s portraits depict him as aging, but always with a full head of hair and a typical Roman hairstyle that is reminiscent of, although not identical to, those of Augustus and Alexander the Great . Hadrian, Trajan’s adopted son and heir, peacefully became emperor in 117 CE. He was a great lover of Greek culture and wore a closely trimmed beard in the style of Classical Greek statesmen, such as the Athenian Pericles . Hadrian set a fashion for beards among Romans, and most emperors after him also wore a beard. Prior to Hadrian nearly all Roman men were clean shaven. Antoninus Pius, Hadrian’s adopted heir and successor, mimics his predecessor’s appearance in his official portraits—thick curly hair and a curly, closely-trimmed beard. By having his own portraits copy those of Hadrian, Antoninus Pius forged a visual link between himself and his predecessor. Antonius Pius’s adoptive sons Lucius Verus and Marcus Aurelius are also identified by the beards they wore. Both men are depicted with heads of thick, curly hair and a long, curly beards. Unlike the closely trimmed beard style of Greek statesmen, this style was more akin to the preferred style of the Greek philosophers. Marcus Aurelius admired the Greeks and was himself a philosopher. This style matched his personality and interests. Unlike the rest of the emperors of the Nervan-Antonine line , Marcus Aurelius fathered a son who became his heir. Commodus’s portrait style followed that of his father and of preceding emperors. Commodus was egotistical and even had the head of the Colossus of Nero (now an image of the god Sol) recast in his own likeness. Commodus also believed he was the reincarnation of Hercules and claimed power from Hercules’s father, Jupiter. He even commissioned portraits of himself as Hercules. These portraits show him with the now-traditional imperial style of thick, curly hair and a curly beard. Hercules’s lion skin is draped over his head and around his shoulders and he often carries a club and sometimes the apples of the Hesperides. Imperial Female Portraiture The women of imperial families set the standards of fashion and beauty during the reigns of their husbands or other male family members. These women also established the hairstyles of the period, which are so distinctive that busts and statues are easily dated to specific decades in accordance with the hairstyle of the woman depicted. During the Nervan-Antonine period, the portraits of imperial women and their hairstyles kept some Flavian flavor but were simpler than they had been. The fashionable style among women during the reign of the Flavians involved hairpieces and wigs to create a stack of curls on the crown of the head. Trajan’s wife Pompeia Plotina and his niece Matidia established a new style that was almost an abstraction of the Flavian style. Their hairstyles still involved a vertical element, but the curls were simplified on the crown of the head. Matidia’s natural hair was gathered above nape of the neck, while Pompeia Plotina wore a braid at the back of her head. Just as Hadrian chose to wear his hair and beard in a Greek style, his wife Sabina also chose a Greek hair style, helping to promote Hadrian’s Panhellenic agenda. Sabina is depicted with simplified facial features, and her style is comparable that worn by Praxitiles’s sculpture Aphrodite of Knidos. Her hair is held back by a band and carefully woven around the back of the head. A similar style was promoted by Marcus Aurelius’s wife, Faustina the Younger, who is depicted with carefully crimped hair worn close the head. Victory Columns under the Nervan-Antonines The monuments dedicated to the reigns of Trajan, Antoninus Pius, and Marcus Aurelius emphasize their military achievements, divinity, and public works. Describe the monuments dedicated to the reigns of Trajan, Antoninus Pius, and Marcus Aurelius and what they emphasized - The Emperor Trajan continued an era of peace and stability that saw the fullest expansion of the empire, as well as the execution of numerous public works, ranging from building programs to social welfare. - The Column of Trajan is an artistic feat that depicts Trajan’s military conquest over the Dacians (101 CE–102 CE and 105 CE–16 CE), through a series of more than 150 episodes that show over 2,500 figures . - The Antonine dynasty consists of four emperors, who ruled from 132 to 192 CE. Antoninus Pius and Marcus Aurelius are considered the last two of the Five Good Emperors who reigned consecutively during the second century CE. - The pedestal for the Column of Antoninus Pius, erected by his adopted sons and heirs, depict both a conservative Classical artistic style as well as a new artistic style that was previously only seen in plebeian art. - Despite sharing several attributes with the Column of Trajan, the Column of Marcus Aurelius features higher reliefs , stockier figures, distorted proportions, and emphasis on military strength. These new elements point to the changing priorities and social-political attitudes of the period. - apotheosis: The fact or action of becoming or making into a god; deification. - decursio: A Roman military exercise that involves the cavalry riding in a circle. - Dacia: An ancient kingdom located in the area now known as Romania. The Dacian kingdom was conquered by the Romans and later named Romania after them. - frieze: Any sculptured or richly ornamented band in a building or, by extension, in rich pieces of furniture. Trajan was born in Spain and rose to prominence in the Roman army during the reign of Domitian. He was a popular general who was adopted by the Emperor Nerva as his son and heir after Nerva realized he needed chose a successor who was liked by the people. During Trajan’s reign of nearly twenty years, from 98 CE to 117 CE, the Roman Empire reached its greatest territorial range. Trajan established large building programs both in Rome and throughout the empire. Column of Trajan Trajan and his architect Apollodorus of Damascus designed and built a large forum complex in the center of Rome. Standing between the libraries of the Forum of Trajan is a 128 foot tall victory column, known as the Column of Trajan. It stands on top of a large pedestal carved with a relief of the spoils of war. The pedestal later served as a tomb for Trajan’s ashes upon his death and deification. He is the first emperor to be buried inside the pomerium , the religious boundary around the city of Rome. A 625-foot frieze that depicts Trajan’s two military campaigns against the Dacians is sculpted in a spiral relief that wraps around the column, from its bottom to its top. The frieze depicts over 150 episodes with more than 2,500 figures. The scenes show the Roman army preparing for war, including scenes of moving the army, building fortifications, Emperor Trajan addressing the troops, battles, and the eventual surrender by the Dacians. Only one quarter of the narration depicts battles, while the remaining panels depict scenes of preparation and other activities. The heavy emphasis on preparation, instead of battle, emphasizes the Romans’ organization and the power behind the army. The visual narration is depicted in low relief (bas relief) and relies little on naturalistic detail, preferring to show some scenes in multiple perspectives and with figures on different ground lines . Important characters, such as Trajan, reappear throughout the frieze and are easily identified. Trajan himself appears 59 times, leading his troops as the head of the army and the empire. With the exception of the appearance of a few Victory figures and a river god, the Romans and Trajan are shown conquering the Dacians under their own power, through their own superiority over their enemy, without the help of divine intervention. Trajan’s victory column was originally topped by an eagle and later with a statue of Trajan. The statue of Trajan eventually disappeared and was replaced in the sixteenth century by a bronze statue of St. Peter. Scholars have recently called the legibility of the figures into question. Because of the column’s location, nestled between the libraries and the basilica of the Trajan’s Forum, the scenes, which are carved in low relief, are small and hard to read. It is uncertain how much of the column’s relief Romans would have been able to see. There is some speculation whether knowledge of the idea of the narrative was more important than being physically able to read the narrative. The Column of Antoninus Pius Antoninus Pius (r. 138–161 CE), the first of the Antonine emperors, was the adopted son of Hadrian. His heirs, Lucius Verus and Marcus Aurelius, had a column erected to him on the Campus Martius, the base of which survives today. On two of its sides is an identical scene of a military decursio depicting cavalry men parading around soldiers, two of whom hold standards. The relief carvings are high enough to protrude from the sides and be visible when viewing the non-decursio side of the pedestal. It depicts each figure from a ground-level perspective while showing the circular parade from a bird’s eye view. On one of the other two sides is a dedicatory inscription. On the opposite panel is a scene of the apotheosis of Antoninus Pius and Faustina. The scene depicts a large winged figure named Aion (Eternity) carrying the couple, surrounded by two eagles, to heaven. Two figures look on from the ground. One is a personification of the Campus Martius, lounging on the ground with an arm around Augustus’ sundial obelisk , the location where the ritual of deification occurred. The other is a personification of Rome, who appears as a woman wearing armor. She salutes the emperor and empress during their apotheosis, while leaning on a shield depicting the she-wolf suckling Romulus and Remus. The Column of Marcus Aurelius A victory column was also erected for Marcus Aurelius (r. 161–180 CE). This column is modeled on Trajan’s column and was originally erected on the Campus Martius between the Temple of Divine Hadrian and the Temple of Divine Marcus Aurelius. A relief frieze encircles the column and depicts Marcus Aurelius’s military campaigns at the end of his life in Germania. Despite the similar military scenes, the artistic style of the Column of Marcus Aurelius differs greatly from the Column of Trajan. The figures in this column are stockier and their proportions are distorted. The extra-large heads and deep relief carving were utilized so that the figures were easier to see from the ground than those on Trajan’s column. The military strength of the empire is emphasized more so than on the Column of Trajan, where the majority of the scenes depict the preparation for battle, instead of the battles themselves. The new style, high relief , and military emphasis demonstrates the changing priorities and social-political attitudes of the period. Architecture under Hadrian Hadrian was a great lover of architecture and the buildings he designed reflect attributes of his character. Name the defining characteristics of Hadrian’s building projects - Hadrian reigned from 117 to 138 CE. Under his reign, the port city of Ostia grew significantly, with its population inhabiting apartment blocks called insulae . - Hadrian’s general religious tolerance is reflected in the diversity of religious temples and even a Jewish synagogue in Ostia. - The Arch of Trajan at Benevento depicts scenes often seen on triumphal arches , including scenes of military conquest, imperial piety and divinity, as well programs of building and social works that Trajan implemented. - Hadrian built a mausoleum for himself and his family that became an imperial mausoleum over the next several generations. - cardo: A north-south street in Ancient Roman cities. - insula: The Latin term for Roman apartment-style housing. - triumphal arch: A monumental arch that commemorates a victory. - decumanus: An east–west-oriented road in a Roman city. - engaged column: A column embedded in a wall and partly projecting from the surface of the wall, sometimes defined as semi- or three-quarter detached. - mausoleum: A large, stately tomb or a building that houses such a tomb or several tombs. Like Trajan before him, the emperor Hadrian had a long and successful career as an emperor of Rome , reigning from 117 to 138 CE. Hadrian’s time as emperor was marked with peace and relative stability throughout the empire. He was an active general in the military, both before and after becoming emperor, despite a lull in military conflicts during his reign. He worked to strengthen Rome’s borders by building fortifications, outposts, and walls. The most famous of these is Hadrian’s Wall in Britainnia that marked the northern boundary of the empire on the isle. Hadrian also traveled extensively, enjoying new cultures , inspecting troops, and promoting military readiness. During Hadrian’s reign, the port city of Ostia grew significantly, reaching over 75,000 inhabitants by the third century CE. Located at the mouth of the Tiber on the Tyrrhenian Sea, Ostia was the main port city of Rome. The city was first founded during the third century BCE, as one of Rome’s earliest colonies. The ruins of Ostia are from the city’s imperial period when it was at the height of its prosperity. Since Rome was settled inland, Ostia was always an important component to the capital city, especially as the empire expanded and relied on its provinces for survival. Merchant vessels and large ships filled with grains, building materials, and other goods to sell in Rome docked at Ostia, where the goods were eventually transferred upriver. Ostia was a typical of a Roman city, including a large central forum , bath houses, temples, a theatre, barracks for firemen, and apartment buildings. The two central streets of the city, the cardo and decumanus , ran north–south and east–west through the city, intersecting at the forum—the center of the city’s civic and religious activities. The citizens of Ostia lived in apartment houses or insulae, which stood six or seven stories high. The insulae of Ostia demonstrate the cramped and noisy living style that was common in Roman cities. Shops, known as tabernae, occupied the ground level of the insulae, while the upper stories housed apartments. Roman apartments varied in size from larger homes located on the lower floors with private dining and cooking areas, as well as private toilets, to small, cramped rooms with communal cooking areas and toilets on the upper floors. Excavations at Ostia reveal a variety of temples and meeting sites for cults and rituals . This reflects the relative religious diversity within the Roman Empire. Common features throughout the Empire include the Capitolium, the temple dedicated to Jupiter, Juno, and Minerva, in the forum at the center of the city. Across from the Capitolium in the forum stands a temple dedicated to Augustus and Roma. Within close proximity is the Temple to Hercules , and throughout the city are temples dedicated to gods related to shipping and commerce, as well temples built by guilds , such as the ship builders or the rope makers, for their patron gods. On the city’s outskirts, there is also a large sanctuary to the goddess Cybele or Magna Mater, attesting to her popularity in the city. The god Mithras was also popular among the Ostians and worshiped solely by men in the form of a mystery cult. Over 15 mithraea have been discovered in the city. These mithraea are nearly all built underground to replicate the cave central to the myths of Mithras. Hadrian’s general religious tolerance is reflected in this religious diversity, including the presence of a Jewish synagogue. The Arch of Trajan at Benevento The Arch of Trajan in Benevento draws visual cues from the Arch of Titus at Rome. This arch, built between 114 and 117 CE, was erected over the Via Appia, one of Rome’s most ancient roads through southern Italy, as the road entered Beneventum. Like the Arch of Titus, the Arch of Trajan is ornately decorated with scenes of conquest and the deeds completed by Trajan. On both sides of the arch is a dedicatory inscription. The exterior is decorated with engaged columns and reliefs of Trajan’s military conquest of Dacia , the extent of the Roman empire, and allegorical scenes of imperial power, as well as Trajan’s good deeds as both a builder of public works and as the founder of a charitable institution for children in Roman Italy. The two interior relief panels depict the religious activity of Trajan. One shows him making a sacrifice in one of Rome’s oldest fora, the Forum Boarium, which was home of some of the city’s oldest temples. The other panel depicts Trajan being welcomed after his apotheosis by the Capitoline Triad. These two scenes depict Trajan’s piety as well as the approval given him by the three most important gods in the Roman pantheon . Hadrian also built a large mausoleum for himself and his family on the right bank of the Tiber River in Rome. Its original design seems to have purposely recalled the Mausoleum of Augustus, located across the river on the Campus Martius. The Mausoleum of Hadrian was a large cylinder topped by a garden and quadriga statue. A central room housed the ashes of Hadrian and his family, as well as several of the emperors who succeeded him. While Hadrian’s Mausoleum still stands today, it was later converted into a residence and fortress under the Roman popes and now serves as a museum.

Check out the State Department’s new report on global anti-Semitism. (Download it here.) …it rejects the purported distinction between anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism: Denying the Jewish people its right of national self-determination (the essence of Zionism) is a sort of anti-Semitism. Describing anti-Zionism as “the new anti-Semitism,” the report states that it “has the effect of promoting prejudice against all Jews by demonizing Israel and Israelis and attributing Israel’s perceived faults to its Jewish character.” Kujawsky criticizes the report because it remains relatively silent on Palestinian anti-Semitism. I haven’t had a chance to read the report yet, so I’ll just state the glaringly obvious: to even begin to have a conversation about alarming acts of anti-Semitism, anywhere in the world, while rendering completely invisible Israel’s human rights record, as a self-identified Jewish state, is pathological. Rather than blaming and pathologizing everyone else, Israel and the US could just once have a conversation about how they feed the problem and fuel anti-Semitism through their actions. The photo on the cover of the State Department report reminded me of the graffiti throughout Hebron in the West Bank, as shown in the image above, where extremist Jewish settlers have taken over the old city and harass Palestinians with impunity, thanks to the protection of the IDF (I and thousands of others have seen this with our own eyes, Israeli soldiers with Breaking the Silence have written about their devastating service there.) This needs to be part of the discussion rather than denied. Cancellation of Occupation 101 film at Canadian University The Windsor Star reports about the cancellation of a well-known anti-occupation film, which incidentally features a number of Jewish critics of occupation, amidst charges that it is anti-Semitic.(You can watch the film here, or the trailer.) An event meant to shed light on the “crisis in Palestine” was cancelled at the University of Windsor on Tuesday following complaints that it would incite anti-Jewish and anti-Israeli bigotry. Despite the controversy, leaders of Muslim and Jewish student groups said the cancelled event became a positive thing by inspiring dialogue. “Our goal was in no way to intimidate or to scare or to make anyone uncomfortable,” said Osama Iqbal, president of the Muslim Students Association. Organized by the MSA, the event was to feature the screening of a film called Occupation 101: Voices of the Silenced Majority. The documentary film depicts Palestinians recounting abuse at the hands of Israeli soldiers. Posters promoting the event included the sentence: “Say NO to these atrocities NOW and learn the FACTS.” In responding to charges that the film is anti-Semitic, and feeds anti-Jewish stereotypes by showing the victimization of Palestinians at the hands of Israel soldiers: Iqbal said he wasn’t aware the film was so problematic, and the MSA wasn’t trying to inflame political or religious differences. He said the intent of the event was to focus on the humanitarian aspects of the situation in Palestine. “It was basically anti-occupation, and not anti-Israel,” Iqbal said. “Actually, we were going to have an introduction, a briefing emphasizing that.” Along with the film, the event was to include a lecture by Abdel Qadir Tayebi of the Windsor Islamic Association — described by Iqbal as the MSA’s chaplain or spiritual adviser. On the day of the event, Iqbal said he was approached by the university’s international students adviser, and he made the decision to cancel once he realized how Jewish students felt. New Yorker’s Jane Kramer has in-depth piece on the campaign against Barnard anthrolpologist Nadia Abu El-Haj We covered this story extensively at Muzzlewatch. It’s great to see the New Yorker do its typically thorough in-depth reporting on the phenomenon of outside, ideological intervention in academia in the context of Israel-Palestine politics. Richard Silverstein of Tikun Olam, who is mentioned in Kramer’s article, has a copy here . Kramer begins: Like other American anthropologists of her generation, she was interested in epistemology; she wanted to examine knowledge as a social construct, strongly connected to time, place, politics, and identity, and she wanted to do it in a culture where the status of common knowledge was being contested, even violently contested. She considered working on Palestine—her father was born there—but she ended up in Israel, learning Hebrew, poring over British-mandate and Israeli archives, and eventually moving into the ?eld to document, and in many ways challenge, the claims and practices of Israeli archeology in the creation of the country’s historical imagination and its contemporary self-description. She was not the ?rst anthropologist to do this. Israeli social scientists had been debating the politics of archeology for years. But she was arguably the ?rst with a name like Abu El-Haj. You can guess the rest, or read about it here. And in the end, by the way, El-Haj did get tenure. There are a lot of benefits of a wholesome lifestyle. But can medicines help us? In fact, it is not so easy to find trusted web-site. Choosing the best treatment option for a racy disease can get really confusing considering the merits and demerits of the existing treatment methodologies. 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This is not a complete list of potential side effects and others may occur. Even if this preparation is not for use in women, this medicine is not expected to be harmful to an unborn baby.

It’s December! Are you slowing down or gearing up? Are you taking inventory of what you’ve accomplished this year or what you’ve neglected? I’d say that amidst the cookies and presents, it’s time to (at the very least) remember that there are many ways to meet (or exceed) writing goals. Sometimes one good, solid paragraph is a major accomplishment. Sometimes it’s a word count. Sometimes it’s simply untangling a plot knot in your head. No matter what, it’s always good to get a little inspiration—and that’s what I offer you today with the introduction of author Sonia Taitz, and her interesting road to the publication of her three novels. Sonia is honest and funny—key components of author sanity in my opinion. Please welcome Sonia to Women’s Fiction Writers! When the Going Gets Ridiculous, the Writing Gets Sublime by Sonia Taitz I started out young. My first novel, IN THE KING’S ARMS, was written in my 20s – a decade so far away as to now seem mythical. Unless you’re actually in your 20s, in which case you’re probably deeply upset about something, this decade seems like a fairy tale where anything is possible. Every phone call (in my 20s, there were phone calls) and letter (and there were letters) could bring the news that would change the world. Forever. So there I was, shopping a novel, ready for that phone call or that letter. IN THE KING’S ARMS was, like most first novels, entirely based on my own story. But it was a pretty good story, with a romance at its heart. A child of Holocaust survivors (me, disguised as a girl with different coloring) gets into Oxford University. And although her war-traumatized parents fear her going away, not to mention exceeding them by miles in education, what they dread most is the chance that she’ll fall for a non-Jew. Guess what she does (guess what I did)? In my book, I make the young man an aristocrat from a haughtily anti-Semitic family. On top of which, he wants to be an actor – hardly a Jewish mother’s dreamboat. He’s not even taking pre-med (or optometry) on the side, just in case. No, he’s a rogue, a dropout; he’s not even an Oxford student but the raffish brother of one. And he wants to be a theatre actor, a traveler, part of a troupe. Does this Romeo and Juliet pair end up together? You’d have to read the book to find out. And I’d have to be published for you to read the book. A goal that remained in the air for a while, as you’ll see. Throughout my 20s, and into my 30s, I discovered that getting published is as fraught with drama as (but far less sexy than) star-crossed love. I even managed to get an agent, a good one – who dropped me after trying three or four publishers. After much struggle, I got another, less prestigious but more persistent agent. This one found me a wonderful independent press. A senior editor at the publishing house, an elegant man in his 60s, announced that I — and my fledgling book –were about to become “a literary event.” A promised cover review in The Washington Post was one detail I recall. I began musing about how many pairs of shades I’d need as I rode the limo from bookstore to bookstore for signings. Then the deal fell through – the publisher told my editor that he’d already acquired a similar book. Goodbye, second agent. Cut to 25 years later. Let’s call it a quarter century — that sounds even longer and more portentous. At this point, I have actually published a book about mothering, acquired and disappointed a few more agents, and have completed a memoir, THE WATCHMAKER’S DAUGHTER, about growing up as the child of immigrant concentration camp survivors. After one year of dogged searching, I land a big agent. This lady is the best of the best. Her clients are household names, and those that aren’t have the consolation of Pulitzer Prizes and National Book Awards. I remember toasting my luck with a friend. Never toast to the mere fact of getting an agent. Though this luminary loved my memoir, in the end she failed to close a deal. Two promising houses fell through, after taking me agonizingly close to literary consummation. Then this agent, too, sent me on my not-so-merry way. I went away more slowly than I used to. I was older, after all. A manatee streaked with scars, as it were, drifting into the open seas. At this point, I began looking at small publishers, academic publishers, anyone with a printing press (or a stamp pad). I finally found a tiny publisher, an infinitesimal but good house, run by a husband and wife, who fell in love with THE WATCHMAKER’S DAUGHTER. I meekly asked if they would begin our collaboration with the publication of my novel, that 25-year old bearer of broken dreams, which had fictionalized the memoir story. I had to ask. IN THE KING’S ARMS was my forlorn child. It lived in a dark drawer, but I’d never forgotten it. The editors miraculously fell in love with the novel as well. Without changing a word, it went to press – and came into the world in 2011. Not only did this once discarded manuscript make it to print — it made it into New York Times print; the fiction editors gave it a wonderful review. A year later, THE WATCHMAKER’S DAUGHTER emerged from the same tiny press, garnering praise from Vanity Fair, People, The Reader’s Digest, NPR and more. Both books, fiction and non, were nominated for prizes (the memoir won a medal from ForeWord, that champion of indie presses). Finally, I felt I had arrived. Two years later, I am typing on my laptop, addressing my colleagues, my friends, my buddies in the trenches and the margins. I mean you. My new book, DOWN UNDER, was published a few weeks ago, and I hope you’ll read it. It’s not about the Holocaust, but it does have that star-crossed lovers theme. You’d know it was the same author. This time, however, my subconscious carried me along to stranger climes. The story is inspired by famous movie star who went a little crazy and started cursing out Jews, women, and gays. I used to love this guy, so I’ve taken that downturn personally (not to mention the fact that he filmed two movies on my block). The title – DOWN UNDER– gives you a clue as to who it is. OK, he’s Australian, but not Hugh Jackman. His initials are MG. Did you know that MG was born and bred in America? That fact formed the kernel of my tale. The character based on him, a black sheep Irish-American boy, falls into deep teen love with a prim Jewish girl who breaks his heart. Years later, his star in decline, he journeys back to the U.S. to rekindle the flame and/or settle the score. My little press, sadly, is closing this year. DOWN UNDER will be our last book together. But because of this platform, I’ve had the confidence to go on and look for yet another agent for my next novel. After four years flying solo, I’ve now found one, and she loves the new manuscript I’m polishing for submission. This one (GREAT WITH CHILD) is about an ambitious law associate who gets pregnant by accident. No Holocaust AND no Romeo and Juliet. But sex and love, per usual (including motherhood)? Check. There’s no telling what will happen in the future. Bigger publication? A little fame flare-up? Disappointment? Some familiar mixture of all of the above? I can’t control the world. I can’t see the path ahead to make sure it’s free of pebbles and sinkholes. Nor can I control agents, publishers, reviewers, or the literary marketplace. There is just one little thing I can control. It’s actually a huge thing. I can keep on writing no matter what. And I hope you’ll do the same. Sonia Taitz is the author of DOWN UNDER, recently published by McWitty Press. Her website is http://www.soniataitz.com.

(Natural News) A shocking number of liberals, many of them Jewish, have convinced themselves that the best way to deal with societal gun violence is to simply take away all guns from law-abiding citizens. But it would seem as though these folks are forgetting what happened to them the last time the government took away everybody’s guns in the name of creating a safe and secure society. In the aftermath of the New Zealand massacre, as a most recent example, many a Jewish media pundit, congressman, and even religious leader decided to push for various iterations of gun control legislation to be passed, claiming that infringing upon the Second Amendment will somehow fix the problem of gun violence. But remember: This been tried before – and the consequences were absolutely devastating. A certain leader in 1930s Germany, it turns out, rose to power on a platform that included mass gun confiscation, which he claimed would make everything better – and the people as a whole fell for it. And not long after, as the history books show, the resultant unarmed populace was powerless to defend against this same German leader’s endgame of mass murder against Jews and others whom he deemed a threat. It wasn’t until years later, after millions were slaughtered, that the United States and other opposing powers put a stop to it – once again reminding the world why Americans should treasure their Second Amendment rights as a priceless gift, and one that prevents the type of mass genocide that was employed by Adolph Hitler. In other words, instead of pushing for more restrictions on guns every time there’s a tragic mass shooting, Americans should instead push for more education on the proper use of guns. It’s also not a bad idea post-shooting to remind the public that, the more guns held by law-abiding citizens, the less likely it is that a mass shooting will even occur at all. “Following a mass murder, calls should increase for universal self-defense training, discounts and sales on firearms, range time, ammunition, classes for men, women, children and families as groups, and new gun-safety and marksmanship curricula for schools,” contends Ammoland.com. “Unfortunately, leading the charge to disarm the public and make people helpless in the face of known dire threats that are clear and present dangers, are Jews for the confiscation of firearms.” “These misguided brethren of ours have been misled and have forgotten the lesson of the Holocaust: ‘Never Again!'” Ammoland.com adds. “If they remembered, there would be no way to attack us and get away with it. We would bring a barrage down upon the attackers that would forever give them pause before such an attempt were ever made. Never Again! Wake up and smell the muzzles pointed at you.” One of the groups leading the charge against the often Jewish-led calls for more gun control are Jewish members of a group known as Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership (JPFO), which openly condemns all such demands for the Second Amendment to be trampled. Described as America’s “most aggressive civil-rights organization,” JPFO sees no place for gun control in the American paradigm, urging more gun ownership to help fight back against gun violence. “So-called ‘gun control’ does not control guns and doesn’t control criminal behavior,” the group points out, pointing to situations like the one in Brazil where gun violence has plummeted as restrictions on gun ownership have been lifted. “What [gun control] does do is disarm the innocent, leaving them helpless in the face of criminals, tyrannical governments and genocide. History repeatedly proves this fact,” the group adds, pointing out that, unfortunately, all four main branches of Judaism currently and misguidedly support more gun control measures. For more related news about gun control, be sure to check out GunControl.Fetch.news. Sources for this article include:

It’s getting hot in more ways than one. After an unusually cool beginning to our summer, the Ottawa area, where I live, is about to be engulfed by a significant heat wave. The anticipated temperature for our national holiday, Canada Day, this Sunday, July 1, is 36 degrees Celsius (96.8 Fahrenheit). That’s high enough. But with the humidity, it may feel more like an all-time record-breaking 47 C (116.6 F)! Such heat can be very oppressive. No energy. No motivation. It’s nearly impossible to think. Also oppressively hot is the current social environmental condition. With yet another setback against religious freedom in Canada earlier this month when our supreme court decided against Trinity Western University, the heat of secularization continues to melt the traditional values that undergirds Canadian society. Certainly, a liberal culture claiming to celebrate diversity would have even a bit of room for an excellent, well-established and distinctly Christian educational institution to train lawyers. But no, a different kind of diversity prevails. One that enforces a new morality of sexual expression intolerant of biblical values. The normal response to a heat way is escape. Hunker down. Stay cool until it passes. But is this how God wants us to respond to the growing encroachment of government forces? Just wait for the weather to change? And they went and woke him, saying, “Save us, Lord; we are perishing.” And he said to them, “Why are you afraid, O you of little faith?” Then he rose and rebuked the winds and the sea, and there was a great calm. (Matthew 8:25-26; ESV) What would you think if I told you that God calls us to be weather changers? Am I stretching the metaphor beyond reasonable limits? Think about it. Are we not followers of the great Weather Changer himself? Remember the disciples in the boat, thinking they are about to die by drowning due to a massive storm, while the Master was asleep in the back? Several of them were weather experts, being fishermen. Based on conventional wisdom, they weren’t overreacting. They were finished as far as they were concerned. But that’s not the end of the story. Jesus (or “Yeshua” as they would have called him) completely changed their environment. He didn’t simply hold off the devastating effects of the extreme weather event. The result was a complete positive transformation – “a great calm” (Matthew 8:26). This story is designed to encourage us to confront extreme weather – not so much about the impending heat wave. Better than that! We are reminded that when we are in the boat of life with the Messiah, we are not to view ourselves as victims of our environment, praying for nothing more than survival. We are to be weather changers. Following Simon Peter’s confident declaration of Yeshua’s messianic identity, Yeshua said “I will build my kehillah (English: assembly, congregation, church) , and the gates of Hell shall not prevail against it” (Matthew 16:18). Gets pretty hot the closer you get to Hell. But once we are assured that Hell won’t win, we can relentlessly storm its gates. If we are overwhelmed by the heat, we may find ourselves like the disciples in the boat, thinking it’s all over. Yeshua may not be sleeping, but he may as well be, given how things are going. But when was the last time you sought to arouse him, allowing him to size up the situation, and watch him do the impossible? That won’t happen as long as you think Hell is winning. While I am not looking forward to the weekend weather, it will pass. As for the current social climate, that’s another thing. Hell’s heat isn’t going to dissipate on its own. By prayer and his Word, God has given us what we need to refresh a sweltering oppressive culture. Want to help me change the weather? Be a weather changer by partnering with me. Click here to donate now. Never before have we been fed so much information in such condensed packages. At one time soundbites dwelt solely in the domain of radio and tv news. These audible quotes served the purpose of supporting or illustrating the main points of a story. For example, News anchor: Mayor Jones reserved special praise for his team of volunteers after winning his third term. (Cut to Mayor Jones soundbite) “I want to thank each and every one of you from the bottom of my heart for your tireless and sacrificial service without which we wouldn’t be here today!” (Boisterous applause and cheers) The soundbite in this fictional account doesn’t add much in the way of information, rather it draws the listener or viewer into the mood of the occasion that mere description tends to lack. Soundbites continue to be used this way, which is fine. I have no issue with the soundbite itself, it’s that it has become all too common as the culture’s chief communication medium. This is not to say that the traditional soundbite hasn’t been misused. It is all too easy to isolate a comment or part of a comment to create a false narrative. Quotes taken out of context are no different from outright lying, especially when done intentionally. But even apart from intention the soundbite as an information nugget is always somewhat dangerous because for it to effectively represent reality it must be presented within its original context. Otherwise there is no control on how it might be taken. Soundbites and context We are not normally conscious of how context controls even the simplest of communication. When you walk down the street you don’t abruptly stop at the corner because the red octagonal sign tells you to. Neither do drivers of vehicles require a “go” sign. Stop signs don’t state, “Vehicles stop here before proceeding when safe.” They simply display the word “STOP.” The humans are expected to understand the intent of the command, which we do most of the time. We are not conscious of the vast amount of prior knowledge that is assumed for the stop sign to be effective. Soundbites function in a similar manner. As long as their context is sufficiently grasped, they can communicate effectively and truthfully. Without that context, they are meaningless at best and misleading at worst. We live in a soundbite culture. Not that it is due to the soundbite itself, but that most of the information we consume today is presented in very small bits. Technically these are not all soundbites. They are headlines, memes, short clichés, scripted and non-scripted talking points, and brief portions of larger items. How many of us simply peruse social media without taking the time to thoroughly read the accompanying article when there is one. We watch clips of interviews, not the whole interview. Even then, entire interviews are rarely available. Instead we are given edited versions tailored to suit the agenda of the information provider. The soundbite culture feeds on itself. We have easy access to more information and a greater variety of information resources as at no other time in history. It isn’t possible to take it all in, however, and so we scan and skim, thinking we are in the know. But there is no way to retain all the bits of information we scan, and due to the soundbite nature of the information, we are acquiring impressions not content. After all, soundbites provide mood and illustration, not information. That we also tend to engage information sources solely according to our own ideological preferences further skews our perception of reality. Truth and reality Truth is the word we use to describe reality. If someone says it is raining, then they are creating an image in our minds of a weather condition that has the potential of affecting how we might prepare to go out. Either it is indeed raining, confirming that the statement “it is raining” is true, or it is not, thus rendering the statement false. This illustrates what truth is. Much of life is far more complicated than whether or not it is raining. As in the case of the stop sign, even a simple example assumes a very complex context, but the essence of the nature of truth is clear. Truth requires matching what is being communicated to reality. Traditional soundbites, quotes, headlines, and other examples of concise communication by their very nature cannot convey truth. They can potentially highlight it, illustrate it, even summarize it. But as standalone isolated phenomena they are not sufficiently capable of being a vehicle of truth. Reality by its very nature is complex. Even the smallest cell is an intricately complex system. How much more are human affairs. Yet we seem to be satisfied with boxing up complex issues into supposedly manageable simplistic categories. It’s far easier to define people with terms like “left” and “right,” for example, than to take the time and energy to unpack who they really are and what they are truly saying. Complexity cannot be captured in soundbites. The only way to effectively communicate truth is to give it the time and energy it deserves. Anyone interested in communicating truth needs to accept the reality of our soundbite culture. But accepting it as the overwhelming driving force it is needn’t mean we have to play by its rules. And how can we? If truth can’t be conveyed in a soundbite culture, truth providers have to play by a different set of rules altogether. Building a culture of truth Some of the most successful players within new media aren’t playing the soundbite game. Who would have thought that some of the most popular YouTube videos would be in the form of three-hour-long, in-depth political analysis shows? If the trend continues, it’s likely that traditional media companies will get on board and provide similar long-format shows. This is not to say that long-form communication always equals truth. Inaccuracy and deception aren’t dependent on format. On the other hand, long-form is necessary for truth, because truth is dependent on context which is always larger than a soundbite container. Recently a Facebook friend posted an image of a very nasty message on a religious organization’s outdoor sign. The sign was taken as evidence of the alleged nefarious nature of this type of group. The problem is both the sign and the organization were faked. All it took on my part was a quick web search. It turns out that there is a website that allows users to create realistic photos of various signs by adding your own wording. This is potentially damaging stuff. But it can only do damage within a soundbite culture. I posted a correction along with a suggestion to delete the post, which they did. This is one way we can work to restore truth in a soundbite culture. However, no one person can analyze and respond to every soundbite. But if more of us insist that information be provided with supporting context, then perhaps others will become more sensitive to this need. What we expect from others, we need to demand from ourselves. To be part of the solution and not the problem requires that we no longer give in to soundbite culture’s lure. We should make sure we do the necessary factchecking before posting something, and, even better, draw people into the necessary depths of real information by only sharing within broader context. This likely would entail sharing less often, but then what we do share will be that much more accurate and effective. The Bible’s role in building truth culture As God’s only authoritative inspired revelation, the Bible is the remedy for any form of information breakdown, soundbite culture included. But in order to effectively communicate God’s written Truth in a soundbite culture, we need to do so on the Bible’s own terms. The Bible isn’t a collection of soundbites, but rather a complex, profound, and remarkably cohesive collection of diverse writings. Understanding the Bible requires great sensitivity to context. Because of the lack of biblical literacy in our society, something that was taken for granted not that long ago, we can’t broadcast quotes, memes, and pithy sayings based on Scripture and expect them to be understood. That some people are courageous enough to bear the stigma of flashing “John 3:16” at a large public gathering is commendable. But who today knows what John 3:16 means, let alone grasp the depths of biblical truth within this verse. I expect that there are some people who, deep down in their hearts, have retained the genuine meaning of such a Bible verse, and who when encountering such signs may be awakened to its ancient Truth, but these people are quickly disappearing. An adequate defense Peter reminds us to be “prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and respect” (1 Peter 3:15). A simple “I believe in Jesus” doesn’t cut it today. To give a reason for our hope requires a careful and sensitive unpacking of biblical truth. That might be difficult at a bus stop, but quite possible if you continue the conversation on the bus. Years ago, I heard Edith Schaeffer, wife of Francis Schaeffer, speak on one of her favorites subjects, “Christianity Is Jewish.” She even wrote a book on it. As she related stories of discussing this subject with interested folks, she would say how she would resist giving quick answers on this topic. Instead she would arrange another time to sit down and explain in detail. Quick answers, such as “Jesus was Jewish,” or “the early Christians were Jewish” accomplishes little. So much misunderstanding has occurred on this essential biblical topic that it takes time and patience to properly unpack it. It’s the same for almost any biblical topic today. We do no one a favor by shortchanging them on Truth with soundbite theology. Does this mean that biblically based soundbites (Bible verses, pithy sayings, etc.) have absolutely no place today? Not necessarily, as long as you make sure to also provide their broader context. Putting up a stop sign where needed and understood is helpful. Traffic signs that do nothing but confuse, kill people. Before sharing a soundbite, think carefully of how it will be taken. Use soundbites to point to a well-thought-out article or book. You can lead people directly to the Bible as long as you don’t create an expectation that it, too, is an expression of soundbite culture by being nothing more than a collection of heart-warming sayings. The biblical context How you yourself read the Bible makes all the difference. The soundbite culture drives you to mine the Bible for soundbites. We might call it reading, but how many of us who read the Bible with any measure of regularity don’t actually read it at all. Instead we skim a chapter or part of a chapter hoping to find a nugget that might warm our hearts. But didn’t Yeshua (Jesus) quote Bible verses? Yes, but he understood them within context. It would have been common for Jewish men like himself in those days, regardless of his being the Son of God, to have at least the Torah (the Five Books of Moses) memorized. Insisting we read the Bible within context is the first step to overcoming the control of soundbite culture. Almost every statement of Scripture is related somehow to its immediate and broader context. Think of how the Bible opens with “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth” (Genesis 1:1). To some extent this is an introductory statement, but it actually assumes prior knowledge of the concepts therein. God is not explained. Besides the fact that he is never fully explained in Scripture, the only way to gain a reasonable grasp of God’s identity and character is to keep on reading. It isn’t until early in Genesis chapter twelve that the reader is given sufficient information to identify God. This is when he first associates himself with Abraham and the Promised Land, which is the primary context of almost all the rest of Scripture. Considering context when reading and studying the Bible must be done on several levels and all at the same time. This needn’t be as daunting as it might sound, especially if we are patient with the process. Words need to be understood within the context of the phrases and paragraphs they are in. Just because a word means something in one context doesn’t mean it means that in all contexts. Every sentence or paragraph is also part of a sectional context which in turn is an essential part of its book. Each book needs to be read within the scope of the overall unfolding of the entire Scripture. Paul’s letters, for example, would make no sense unless they are read knowing that the long-awaited Messiah has come. The older books of Nehemiah and Esther are meaningless unless one understands the Babylonian Exile. Finally, in order to grasp how the historical scope of Scripture functions, one must also be aware of the overall storyline. God’s epic story Tragically, many attempts to describe the storyline of the Bible is through a collection of soundbites. Instead of highlighting the actual story elements of Scripture, it has been all too common to exclusively focus on its Messianic highlights. Messianic expectation and fulfillment is an absolutely essential aspect of Scripture. Without it we are all lost. Even so, the messianic component of Scripture is a theme of the story, not the story itself. Yet by focusing almost solely on the messianic theme, we are reinforcing the soundbite culture not confronting it. But if the messianic component is not the story, what is? The Bible is God’s epic story of his rescue of his creation through Abraham and his descendants. Paul’s soundbite on this is found in the book of Galatians (remember, there is nothing wrong with soundbites in and of themselves. Within context, they can be most helpful). Paul writes, “And the Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham, saying, ‘In you shall all the nations be blessed’” (Galatians 3:8). This greatly packed statement is a wonderful summary of the biblical narrative. And yet soundbite culture has skewed its meaning. The common assumption that the term “gospel” is code for “Jesus died for your sins,” collapses this inspired summary of the plans and purposes of God as revealed in the Bible into a prooftext of overly individualized disconnected spirituality. If the gospel (good news) is no more than a reference to what Jesus did, then mining the Bible for messianic soundbites is in order. But the good news is much bigger than that. The sacrificial death of the Messiah is core to the Bible’s story, but it isn’t the whole story. Paul’s soundbite summarizes how the nations are included within God’s rescue operation of the creation. The good news is since Jesus is now King, the curse that has oppressed the creation and its inhabitants since Adam and Eve’s initial disobedience has been broken, thus providing the opportunity for every tribe, nation, and language to experience the blessing first promised to Abraham. Experiencing and being the instrument of God’s blessing requires we confront the soundbite culture. Attempting to reduce truth into bite-sized digestibles, robs it of its fullness. Thus, the soundbite culture misrepresents reality. Through Scripture we have been entrusted with the only divinely authorized resource that can break the destructive nonsense derived from oversimplification. Let’s not buy into soundbite culture any longer. Instead, let’s embark on the long and sometimes difficult journey of complex truth. It may be challenging at times, but well worth it, not only for ourselves, but for others as well. Scriptures taken from the English Standard Version Something most unusual happened as I was getting back to Ottawa from my Vancouver Island trip Monday night. As the passengers on my flight disembarked, the door at the end of the Jetway leading to the terminal building was locked with no airport personnel in sight. It was so strange after being cooped up in an airplane for over four and a half hours to feel trapped like that. You can’t correctly perceive the number of people via the photo above, since I was near the front. But facing this obstacle in itself was not the most unusual part. It was how this group of mainly Canadians (myself included) handled it. It was virtually silent. We just stood there until someone came along to let us out. Perhaps a passenger went back to the plane and said something. I have no idea. But, however long we stood there, it was calm and quiet. I would guess that in many other places in the world, a near riot would have broken out. But not in Canada’s capital! I suspect that most of you would regard how we handled this situation as exemplary. There was no need to panic, not that there ever is. Yet, I wonder what was going on inside people’s hearts. The silence may have been due to a slight case of shock, since it was so unexpected. And we were tired after the flight. But wouldn’t a little bit of verbal processing have been therapeutic, not to mention get the door unlocked sooner? I have often wondered how much Canadian politeness is actually unhealthy fear of exposing our true thoughts and feelings. I know that in spite of our apparent self-control, much complaining goes on. But perhaps that too stems from our inability to properly deal with truth and reality. Canadians are often viewed as some of the nicest humans on Planet Earth. Much of that is genuine, I am sure, and yet our most popular sport, hockey, is one of the most violent activities outside of war that has ever existed. Great sport, but I wouldn’t call it “nice.” Might we Canadians possess an inordinate amount of unresolved aggression? Just asking. How much help of all kinds isn’t being received, because too many people resist being fully honest with themselves and others. The good news of the Messiah in its fullest expression includes infinite resources to heal and help with every kind of need there is. But until we give ourselves permission to express what is really going on with our lives, the door to God’s provision will remain shut to us. Who has heard such a thing? Who has seen such things? Shall a land be born in one day? Shall a nation be brought forth in one moment? For as soon as Zion was in labor she brought forth her children. (Isaiah 66:8) I just returned from a very fruitful time teaching to a wide variety of groups on Vancouver Island. I was primarily in the Victoria area, but also presented my “God’s Epic Story” seminar in Ladysmith about an hour north of there. Being in one of the most beautiful regions on this planet during a very gorgeous time of year wasn’t lost on me. The Lord provided all sorts of wonderful surprises along the way, both in terms of delightful scenic spots and in spending time with old and new friends. But a week ago Monday was especially difficult for me as it marked 70 years since the birth of the modern state of Israel (according to the Gregorian calendar) and the U.S. became the first country to move its embassy to the capital, Jerusalem. That wasn’t the difficult part,however. What was difficult was the time I spent scanning major Canadian news sources only to discover that they buried the story and/or portrayed it as a Palestinian tragedy. That was a day of Palestinian tragedy is clear, but none of these news outlets provided the kind of complex coverage needed to paint an accurate picture of the whole situation. The entire world would do well to applaud the achievements of the State of Israel in spite of – even because of -all its challenges. That we have lived to see this day is a great privilege. For 2000 years the Jewish people were relegated to the fringes of both history and the world community. Only a few, first among Christians and only later Jews, aligned themselves with God’s promises in the Bible, and began to envision the return to Zion. Against all odds, from the early Jewish settlers until now, Israel has not only survived, but thrived, and has become a blessing to the world through its advancements in all kinds of technology, all the while facing an existential threat each and every day. To miss this great accomplishment is to be blind to a miracle of God. Those who can’t accept Israel’s existence, but rather believe they have a claim on the Jewish people’s divine inheritance understandably cannot join in the celebration. I do believe that the bulk of responsibility for the plight of the Palestinians falls on the shoulders of their own leadership. The refusal to negotiate in good faith and to work toward a compromise agreeable to both parties has been the cause of ongoing strife and unnecessary suffering. That the media in Canada and elsewhere allows the arrogance and nearsightedness of the Palestinian leadership to define the narrative is absolutely irresponsible and fuels the deception and destruction. Israel cannot compete for media attention when groups like Hamas allow civilians, including children, to purposely be in harm’s way. Such tactics must be condemned. We should insist that all terrorist activity stop, and not be given a public platform in the meantime. The establishment, survival, and thriving of Israel is a key component of the grand epic story of God as it demonstrates in such practical terms his enduring faithfulness to the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. That all is not well shouldn’t distract us from celebrating this great milestone. At the same time, let us pray for the region that peace may come, and that King Messiah will reign over all. Scriptures taken from the English Standard Version You may have heard of Jordan Peterson, the Canadian university professor and psychologist, who first caught the public’s attention by posting a series of YouTube videos on why he would not submit to government-imposed compelled speech. Then a few months ago his extraordinary interview on British television with Channel 4’s Cathie Newman went viral. The occasion was the promotion of his latest book, “12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos” what has been #1 or thereabouts on Amazon for some time. One of the most unusual things about Peterson’s teaching is his love for the Bible in spite of his own uncertainties about God. Last year he did a twelve-part public lecture series in Toronto called, “The Psychological Significance of the Biblical Stories,” where he endeavored to analyze several stories from the Book of Genesis within a strict psychological framework. His appreciation for Scripture isn’t isolated to talking about Bible stories. Biblical references are strewn throughout his “12 Rules” book. We must keep in mind that Peterson doesn’t come to the Bible as a believer in its divine authorship. While not discounting the reality of a spiritual or mystical dynamic to Scripture, he treats the Bible as the product of higher consciousness, the result of billions of years of evolution. For him, that the Bible stories are no more than a fruit of human achievement doesn’t take away how incredibly profound they are. He continually marvels at the biblical narrative, saying such things as “this is something really worth thinking about for a very long time!” As someone who is driven by a desire to (in his words) “get to the bottom of things,” he proposes that in one case at least, the story of Cain and Abel, this may be a story with no bottom, in other words: infinitely profound. Peterson’s awe of the Bible is refreshing, especially in a day when the mainstream regards it as irrelevant at best and dangerous at worst. It helps that he apparently tries to approach Scripture at face value without being burdened by theological and religious interests. He has no need to fit this or that into his own or anyone else’s theological or ideological systems, freeing him to fully ponder and to expound. He does have a particular perspective, however, which I will discuss below. Peterson has certainly given us something to think about with regard to the depths of Scripture. The tendency among so many true believers is to overly simplify the Bible, as if the goal of God’s written Word is to make it as easy to understand as possible. There’s also the popular misconception that every passage only has one meaning. While it is appropriate to encourage people not to run wild with the text – a common occurrence throughout history, we cannot and should not diminish its depth. Since the Bible’s origins are in God, should we not assume that its depth of meaning would be virtually infinite? Not that it can mean anything we want it to, but what it does mean is of such a complexity that we may never fully plunge its depths. I am not implying that it’s inappropriate to simplify it for children, for example. Part of the Bible’s ingenious complexity is that it can be engaged at every level of intelligence by every culture. Just because a child can appreciate a great classical symphony or novel doesn’t mean that such great works don’t also contain overly complex meaning to mine for generations. If scholars and others can wax eloquent over a Beethoven symphony, a Shakespearean play, or a da Vinci painting, how much more the divinely inspired written Word of God! Peterson through an authentic biblical lens Peterson’s apparent lack of theological bias doesn’t mean he doesn’t bring a particular perspective to Scripture. Apart from his evolutionary presuppositions, he views the unusual profundity of the Bible through the teaching of the highly influential psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Carl Jung. Peterson understands many of the Bible stories in terms of “archetypes.” In generic, non-Jungian, terms, an archetype is a most basic, original, or best example of something. While the Jungian understanding of archetype includes the generic meaning, for Jung (and Peterson), archetypes are an expression of collective human consciousness. This is how they account for similarities found in ancient stories, biblical or otherwise. It is why certain themes in literature and film resonate so strongly across time and cultures. So, according to this way of thinking, at its core, the origin of archetypical stories emerged out of human imagination. As Peterson explains in his biblical lecture series, he understands God himself as a projection of human imagination. That doesn’t lead Peterson (at least in his own estimation) to diminish the concept of God or the benefits of belief. Yet combining a Jungian perspective with his passion for the Bible is potentially a dangerous path. Hereon in I will use prototype to refer to the generic, non-Jungian understanding of archetype to avoid associating it with the Jungian version. Instead of accepting the Bible’s assertion that human beings are the creation of God, Peterson’s god finds his origin in human consciousness. This is where his take on Scripture collapses. On one hand, Peterson demonstrates a level of respect for the Bible that puts many believers to shame. But he doesn’t, at least at this time as far as I know, accept what the Bible actually says about the God who is at the center of the very stories he is enraptured with. On one hand, he is wonderfully overwhelmed that humans could have reached such a level of consciousness to come up with such profound stories, yet this necessarily implies that these same people were totally off base in their understanding of God, the Bible’s most central character. Moreover, the Bible also clearly views its own origins as being inspired by God (see 2 Timothy 3:16-17; 2 Peter 1:20-21). Peterson would have to say that they either knew their claiming of divine inspiration wasn’t true or they were mistaken. If the former, then the Bible lacks integrity. If the latter, so much for higher consciousness! Claiming that the stories are the result of highly developed imagination means they are made up. However, the Bible doesn’t present its narrative sections as expressions of imagination. Most of the most profound scriptural narratives, including describing the supernatural, are presented as occurring within normal everyday life. The Bible, for the most part, lacks the normal literary clues of fiction. So again, we face the integrity issue. Can we highly value a collection of writing that presents fiction as fact? Is it reasonable to conclude that stories such as these could be the result of imagination? I am continually struck by how truth is stranger than fiction. The most unusual, interesting, encouraging, troubling, profound stories are the ones that really happened. Key to the belief in archetypical stories is that they reflect reality extremely accurately, not only as a record of fact, but due their impact on minds and hearts. That’s why great fiction draws upon classical themes. Attempts at fiction which are not rooted in reality and truth tend not to endure. Therefore, is it not more reasonable to assume that the power of the Bible’s stories is rooted in their actually happening instead of being fanciful projections of the mind? The Bible’s inspiration is not solely found in its recording of actual events, but in how it presents its contents. The Bible doesn’t simply tell us what happened, it also provides insight into God’s involvement. For example, we are not only told that God created people, but that we are made in his image. We don’t just read about wild disasters endured by the Egyptians, but that they were initiated by God as an expression of love for his people. King Saul didn’t just slip into dysfunction, God gave him over to evil spirits because of his arrogance and insubordination. Yeshua didn’t just die an unjust death. He gave himself for our sins. That there were other interpretations of these events at the time is likely. God’s interpretation is what the Bible is all about. A most profound book Yet, in spite of Peterson’s Jungian misunderstandings, he is still correct about the profound nature of Scripture. Years ago, I knew someone who was enamored with the stars to the point that he knew all their names. He was an atheist, and yet gazing at the stars filled him with not only awe and wonder but appreciation as well. That he had no one to whom to express that appreciation didn’t prevent him from such a sensation. His rejecting the stars’ divine origin didn’t prevent him from regarding them as profound. Astronomy is worthy of human investment whether or not God is explicitly acknowledged. I assert that knowing the Creator puts that sphere of study on its best footing and increases the potential for understanding. Still, as God’s creation, they themselves are worthy of awe. A person needn’t know the painter of a great painting to appreciate it. It’s the same with the Bible. What makes Peterson so unique is that he hasn’t given into the prevailing political correct view of this book, which has provided the foundation for what’s good in Western Civilization. He is able to appreciate it on a great many levels regardless of its origin. If Peterson is in awe of the Bible, how much more should we who accept its divine origins be in awe? That these narratives reveal God shouldn’t lead us to acknowledge that and nothing more. It’s not as if giving him credit for the Bible’s creation is its only objective. That God is at the core of Scripture should lead us further into its depths, not keep us in superficiality. God chose Scriptural narrative as his fundamental teaching tool. That’s why there is more to learn from a very brief Bible story than volumes of abstract explanations. We learn about the value of marriage from Adam’s reaction to seeing Eve for the first time. We are confronted with the loneliness and challenge of being faithful to God through Noah building an ark for years and years. We are encouraged that we can be useful at any stage of life by God’s call of an elderly, childless man to be a blessing to the entire world. We are invited into grappling with life’s utter confusion when that same man is directed to sacrifice his miracle son. We learn about the pain of character transformation through Jacob’s wrestling with God. We are given the gift of how to be free from the trap of bitterness through Joseph’s forgiving his murderous brothers. We discover that God can use us in spite or great wrong by his choosing of Moses. We are exposed to the reality of becoming a leader the hard way through David’s hiding from jealous Saul. I am not saying that these are the only things that can be gleaned from these stories. We can pick any of these or others and make long lists of additional helpful insights, not to mention that each item on these lists may be further expounded virtually forever. The Messiah: fulfillment & illumination A word about how the Messiah functions within the Scriptural narrative: Yeshua’s unique role is often misdirected to eclipse, rather than illumine, the rest of the Bible. While it is right to emphasize his person and work as “fulfilling” the Hebrew Scriptures, the New Covenant’s sense of fulfillment doesn’t mean “to finish off something” or “to put an end to something.” Rather it means “to bring it to the full,” thus providing all sorts of color and texture to the older stories that were not as clear before. Far from diminishing and devaluing the Old Testament stories, Messiah’s coming allows us to delve even deeper into the Bible’s depths. Not only does Yeshua brings fuller meaning to Scripture, under the New Covenant we are also offered the gift of the Holy Spirit, freely given to believers both as God’s agent of Scriptural illumination and the one who enables us to live out the Scriptures effectively. Yeshua is the Bible’s central prototypical character. The way he embodies the Hebrew Scriptures is uncanny. This leads some scholars to deem the earlier writings as unnecessary. But that misses the point. Instead, Yeshua’s unique character gives greater meaning and integrity to the grand narrative. Is it not reasonable that when the God who revealed Scripture, embodies himself that even the smallest detail of his written revelation would be found in him? The ways Yeshua incorporates the Scripture should send us back to these stories over and over again to discover more and more of the treasures of knowledge and wisdom they contain. Delving into the Bible’s depths The Bible is indeed full of prototypical stories. What Paul writes regarding Israel’s wilderness wanderings is true for all scriptural narrative: “Now these things took place as examples for us, that we might not desire evil as they did” (1 Corinthians 10:6). These stories are not simple moral tales or allegorical pictures of otherwise lofty spiritual principles. There is something about these real-world events that reflect the truth of God and life in a way no other stories can. Other stories may or may not echo biblical truth, but the authentic prototype for those truths is only to be found in the Bible. And that these stories really happened to real people just like us in real places and times invites us to not only engage these stories but share in similar experiences today. What prevents us from being in a state of rapturous awe worthy of the Bible’s divinely inspired depth? I have already mentioned the tendency to overly simplify or be limited by strict theological categories. The former keeps us superficial. The latter blinds us from unfamiliar and unexpected insights. In addition, misunderstanding the grand narrative of the Bible undermines the richness of its overarching story. Neglecting its story reduces it to a collection of disconnected moralistic principles. Spiritualizing Israel, for example, skews the concrete aspects of Scripture into overly interpretive abstract concepts. This all results in a theological and philosophical commentary overlaid upon the pages of Scripture, thus fooling us into thinking we are reading the Bible when we are actually rehashing our preconceived ideas. What can be more boring than that! But the Bible isn’t boring. If we allow ourselves to be overwhelmed by its depths as we grapple with how to live godly lives in these difficult times, we will discover fresh heavenly nourishment each and every day. And most importantly, unlike the great classic works, the Bible’s author is alive and available for consultation. Therefore, we needn’t be intimidated by the challenge of delving into Scriptures’ depths. God will be our guide. Scriptures taken from the English Standard Version “Job and his Friends.” Painting by Ilya Repin (1844–1930). Public domain I know that you can do all things, and that no purpose of yours can be thwarted. “Who is this that hides counsel without knowledge?” Therefore I have uttered what I did not understand, things too wonderful for me, which I did not know. (Job 42:2-3; ESV) In my desire to more fully understand and teach the Bible, I am keen to unearth the ways we approach Scripture that undermine its effectiveness. There are all sorts of popular misconceptions that stand in our way of being fully exposed to God’s Truth. I list nine of them in my first publication, “Undermining Forces” (book information available here). One reader asked me to write a fuller version outlining antidotes to each one. Good advice. Maybe I will one day, but I keep finding more, including this really big one I want to share with you now (and its antidote). I don’t know how familiar you are with the Book of Job (pronounced like “robe” not “lob”). It’s part of the Old Testament’s wisdom literature. It is written primarily in poetical form, except for its introduction and conclusion, which are narrative (story-style). Job the man is very rich and genuinely pious, a quality God himself boasts about in his heavenly court. The Accuser (Hebrew: the satan) challenges God, claiming that Job’s piety is exclusively due to his wealth. Take his stuff away and he would certainly curse God to his face. God grants permission to the Accuser to wreak havoc upon Job’s life, as long as he doesn’t touch the man himself. Job then experiences a series of devastating disasters and is left destitute and childless. Yet he responds with humility and faith. The Accuser is not satisfied, however, and makes a case that as long as Job’s life itself is intact, then his continuing to love God is no big deal. God responds to this second challenge by allowing the Accuser to strike Job as long as he doesn’t kill him. Job’s suffering is the stage upon which the rest of the story is told. Job’s body is in anguish, covered in boils, but he still refuses to curse God. Note that he doesn’t know about the heavenly contest that is at stake. All he knows is that he is suffering badly and for no apparent reason. Three friends of his come to sit with him. A whole week goes by in silence, and then Job finally speaks. He claims his plight is unjust. His friends don’t agree and take him to task. The latter arrival of a fourth friend bridges the debate away from Job and the others to God himself. God’s subsequent lengthy speech puts everyone in their place, but never explains what was going on behind the scenes. In the end, Job’s fortunes are restored. The most common understanding of the Book of Job is that it is a treatment of the theological and philosophical problem, “Why do good people suffer?” That theme is certainly in the book. It’s an important and difficult question that the book handles ingeniously. But if Job is simply about unjust suffering, why all the speeches? Does it really serve this purpose to have the suffering virtuous man go on and on about his innocence? And then for him (and us) to hear his supposed friends also go on and on about why Job is wrong, that he must have done something to deserve this. Their accusations grow increasingly arrogant and misguided. Certainly, God’s appearance towards the end is a highlight, and the need to trust him in spite of appearances, no matter how dismal, is an essential lesson for all of us to learn. But is that it? The real problem that Job and his friends have is one of the most common for both believers and non-believers today. And it seriously undermines any attempt to truly grasp Scripture in its fullness. The issue of unjust suffering in the story is functioning as an example of a much more encompassing problem. What is it? Our unwillingness to properly relate to things we don’t understand. What everyone, except for the heavenly gathering, didn’t know was what was going on. Job and the others, while dealing with the situation in different ways all had this in common. They believed that the world worked a certain way. For Job’s friends the only conceivable reason for what was happening to Job was that he was a bad guy. Even though they knew about his good reputation, and they had no evidence to the contrary, Job’s suffering could only mean he had seriously sinned. They had no room whatsoever to even consider that something outside their understanding was remotely possible. That’s why the more Job claimed innocence, the more they demonized him. Job’s friends were in a philosophical box which they couldn’t get out of. Whether they understood the dynamics of this or not, they were deeply committed to a particular understanding of how life worked. It included a permanent filter through which to interpret human suffering that allowed no exceptions. The only way for them to cope with the pitiful sight before them was to continue to spout their ideology. An ideology is “a comprehensive set of normative beliefs, conscious and unconscious ideas, that an individual, group or society has” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ideology). In this regard, Job wasn’t all that different from his friends. He also believed that people suffer because of wrongdoing. However, a couple of factors were at play to release him from this ill-informed ideology. First, his integrity enabled him to not doubt himself. If he would have allowed the prevailing ideology to continue to determine his understanding of life, he may have forced himself to confess something – a twisted version of reality or something completely imaginary. If he would have done so, the ideology would have remained intact and the tension with his friends reduced. Second, he was indeed a faithful man of God. So, in spite of the confusion, he knew to go to God for answers. That he challenged God to a court battle he thought he could win, while misguided in some ways, at least demonstrated that in spite of his ideology, he knew deep down who was the only one who could rectify this terrible situation. So much of the culture clash of today is a clash of ideologies. Don’t think for a second that Bible believers are immune. Far from it! I am not saying that Jesus followers are necessarily left- or right-wing ideologues, though that might be. It’s far more prevalent than we might think. However it might be said, it seems to me that many, if not most, believers define their faith, not in terms of Bible, but some sort of comprehensive theological, denominational, or philosophical set of principles, an ideology in other words. But isn’t biblical Christianity an ideology – God’s ideology? Doesn’t God’s Word provide us with a comprehensive set of principles and a divinely oriented philosophy of life? Yes and no. Biblical truth is indeed sufficiently comprehensive. It provides us with everything necessary to live effective, godly lives. It sufficiently addresses every area of life. It establishes priorities, focus, and meaning. But is it an ideology? A book that’s daring enough to include Job is no ideology. Instead it undermines ideology. It reminds us that our systems of thought, no matter how comprehensive, supposedly helpful, and apparently biblical, have significant gaps. We often don’t know what those gaps are until we find ourselves in crisis. But when crisis comes, the Bible is clear – and not just based on the Book of Job – relying on our principles should never come before relying on God. If our Bible understanding doesn’t continually lead to us to dependency upon the Master of the Universe, it is seriously deficient. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t attempt to understand the Bible or avoid making theological assertions. It also doesn’t mean that we must avoid giving definition to our particular faith communities and affiliations. Definitions, clarifications, and policies need not be ideologies. If the Bible is our authority for faith and practice as it should be, then we need to allow it to challenge our convictions and preferences. Molding Scripture into our particular ideologies, however they came to be, however precious they are to us, blinds us to its truth. If we don’t approach it with the level of humility exemplified by Job, we will become more and more like his good-for-nothing, so-called friends. The example of Job’s humility is not solely found in his repentant state near the end of the book but is demonstrated throughout his ordeal. Like Jacob, he too wrestled with God, refusing to let him go until he blessed him. Allowing ourselves to engage God on core issues can be very painful. Of those things we hold dear it isn’t always easy to discern what is of God and what is of ourselves. We shouldn’t shift and adjust our thinking every time a new idea in the name of the Lord comes along. But at the same time, do we need to wait for a Job-like experience before we submit our ideologies to God and his Word? It can be scary to lay down our ideologies, but the deepening reality of God that will be ours if we do is more than worth it. Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body. (1 Corinthians 6:19-20) I was pleasantly surprised at the level of interest I received in last month’s article, Hiding in the Shadows. Many of us need to hear God’s call to emerge from the shadows of our shame and be the people he made us to be. I imagine a good many of us could identify the source of those things in our lives that restrict us from experiencing the “abundant life” Yeshua offers (see John 10:10). While we may struggle to be free, we understand, at least in our heads, that “the Lamb who takes away the sin of the world” (John 1:29) has done everything necessary to release us from shame’s oppression. That being the case, why do we continue to struggle? How could it be the “redeemed of the Lord” (Psalm 107:2) often find themselves pulled back into the shadows. Is the power of darkness stronger than we care to admit? I would like to propose what I think is one of the main causes for our lack of freedom. It’s something underlying much of what I shared last month but didn’t take the time to explore. As I discussed in last month’s article, responding to God’s call is a call to reject misdirected shame. That’s the shame you or others put on you. These might be societal standards of beauty or success or the expectations of parents. You might even be suffering under impossible standards put in place by none other than yourself. Until we allow our lives to be seen through the lens of God’s standards alone, we will be manipulated by the harshest of taskmasters. I think most of us get that. We know we shouldn’t compare ourselves to others, feeling depressed because of our physical condition, level of intelligence, work position, who our friends are – the list goes on and on. We know we shouldn’t, but we do it anyway. But this is still not the root of unnecessary shame. Beneath the surface of much or our unnecessary shame is a deep-seated suspicion about our humanness. We doubt our validity as human beings. This is the case for believer and unbeliever alike. The atheist’s and agnostic’s naturalistic, evolutionary sense of being is based on impersonal chance. While unbelievers may not identify their discomfort with self as shame per se, this profound lack tells them they are nothing more than cosmic accidents. Many believers don’t fare much better. What makes our shame of self so insidious is we don’t know we are doing it. This is because we have accepted the phony distinction between an ideal, supposedly real self and a substandard earthly, supposedly not-so-real, perhaps illusionary, physical self. When God created human beings, making us in his image, what did he create? He didn’t create intangible, so-called souls, and stick them in disposable packages called bodies. He made people. And people are comprised of physical and spiritual aspects. And these aspects were not designed to be in tension. The problem with human physicality is not that it exists, but that it is tainted by sin, doomed to die due to the curse. But sin and the curse don’t only affect our bodies. The unseen aspects of our humanness are equally affected. And what aspects of our existence have been rescued and redeemed by the Messiah? Every aspect, including our bodies, will be transformed at the resurrection. In spite of the grief our bodies give us and will continue to give us until Yeshua returns, they are part of God’s ingenious, intentional design. The human body is not a mistake. It is not substandard. It is not even a nuisance (or doesn’t have to be). Our physicality is our God-given interface with the real world. You may have never thought of this, but we engage the spiritual aspects of life through our bodies. We read and hear Scripture with our eyes and ears, we come to God through other human beings with whom we engage with our five physical senses. Even the activity that brings us into existence in the first place is a grand and good wonderous reflection of God’s grand design. Human physicality, including sexuality, is not something to endure, but to celebrate, as long as it is expressed within the boundaries of God’s Word. The reason why sexual sin is so serious and destructive is because it is a sin against our own body, which is to be the residence of God’s Holy Spirit. The only way to glorify God in our bodies is to stop rejecting our physicality as a substandard, contra-spiritual, abnormality. Instead, accepting our whole self as God’s intentional design, our sin nature notwithstanding, we can begin to live out our lives to their greatest extent, free from unnecessary shame. Sayings such as “Life is a journey, not a destination” are very appealing to those who value quality over quantity, process over accomplishment, and character over ability. These are people who remind us to “stop and smell the roses,” and we are human beings not human doings. You might think that’s exactly the Bible’s perspective. Doesn’t God care more about who you are than what you do? We may go as so far to conclude the Bible doesn’t value external, quantitative results at all. But is that true? King David didn’t seem to think so. He was determined to take Goliath down. Noah before him didn’t think so either. In both cases, we know that their quality of life was foundational to the tasks at hand. David was called a “man after God’s own heart” (1 Samuel 13:14). Noah “was a righteous man, blameless in his generation” (Genesis 6:9) Their character proceeded their God-given objectives. But it is an extreme and unhelpful overemphasis to claim that their lives were about the journey as opposed to the destination. The Messiah understood this as well. He said, “My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to accomplish his work” (John 4:34). Yeshua was keenly aware of his life goals. He, like David and Noah, as well as almost every other godly example in the Bible, had a mission to accomplish. There are certainly times for a reminder to not neglect internal, character issues and to learn how to appreciate process. In fact, there may be something in the fragrance of roses that is essential to your achieving your goals. We need to learn God’s life rhythms, which include time to study his Word, pray, rest, sleep, spend quality time with family and friends, and so on. It is right to remember that without godly character we will not likely achieve the kind of success that God prefers. But he does want success. God’s written revelation addresses both the journey and the destination – the destination being more than our eternal future. While the Bible won’t tell you what your specific vocation is to be or where best to acquire your training, it clearly reveals God’s design for human activity. The better we understand his plans and purposes for people in general, the sooner we will be able to discern what our particular objectives should be. The Bible is also clear that we are not on our own as we search for our life’s mission. Our heavenly Father longs to personally engage us and is more concerned than we are that we would discover what our objectives should be. What you do with your life matters. It matters to God; it should matter to you. The journey to your destination may not be straightforward. In fact, I can almost guarantee that if you walk with God, you will experience all sorts of interesting twists and turns along the way. Learn your lessons as you travel on, but don’t forget the destination to which you are called. Some time ago, I was reflecting on the futility of living life without direction or goals. The result was The Traveler, which I am presenting here in a multimedia format: In many ways the Bible is God’s map for our lives. Actually, it is more like a real-time GPS, since it equips us to not only reach our life’s destination successfully, but how to negotiate the pitfalls we encounter along the way. God’s written Word is not only concerned about the so-called spiritual aspects of your life, but every aspect of your life. You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden. Nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a stand, and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven. (Matthew 5:14-16; ESV) I was doing my fatherly duty to my sixteen-year-old daughter during the holidays by taking her to see the movie “The Greatest Showman,” a musical based on the life of P.T. Barnum. Some time before, I had seen enough of the trailer to know I wasn’t interested. One of my older daughters told me she liked it, but didn’t say much else, except the music was contemporary, which I thought was pretty strange given that the story takes place in the mid-19th century. Strange or not, a dad’s gotta do what a dad’s gotta do; so off to the movie we went. I am not sure when it happened – it may have been during the third musical number (“Come Alive”) – I began to see the special something of this film. By the time it was over, I concluded I had just witnessed a leap in the evolution of movie entertainment for the 21st century. The makers of “The Greatest Showman” had accomplished the convergence of compelling story-telling and superb talent as expressed via extraordinary songs and choreography, all the while upholding family values, in such a way so as to instill hope and joy in the audience. And they did it at a time that may be the most cynical in all of history. Regarded as the movie’s anthem, “This Is Me,” recently won the best original song at the Golden Globe Awards. It captures the fundamental theme of the film, which on the surface may be taken as the overdone “follow your dreams.” While the movie is laced with a good dose of the typical “you can be whatever you want to be as long as you want it badly enough,” it goes much deeper than that. It reaches out to the hearts of those who, for one reason or another, don’t allow themselves to have dreams in the first place. There are two levels of human oppression. The first is typified by the people of Israel in bondage in Egypt. Trapped against their will, they hold on to the great promises of the past as they cry out to their God for deliverance. In no way should we diminish the difficulty of such a state. Yet the second level of oppression is a lot worse. This is when we either do not know we are oppressed or if we do, we simply accept it. The power of this second level of oppression is chiefly derived from self. Without our cooperation, there would be hope for change. But hope can be too painful. It is a lot easier simply to accept our plight as it is, thinking we are making the best of an impossible situation. Surprisingly, the second level isn’t often realized until sometime after being rescued from the first. We see this in Israel after the exodus. It isn’t until the people face the challenges of freedom that the depths of their internal oppression become clear. Even though they are no longer slaves to Pharaoh, it is evident they are still entrapped in their own fear and faithlessness. Unable to rise up to their high calling in God, they eventually yearn to return to their house of bondage in Egypt, where they feel more at home. How many Yeshua followers experience something similar? Our initial encounter with the Lord is glorious as we discover freedom and a power to live beyond our wildest dreams. But it isn’t too long before “reality” sets in and we begin to wrestle with the specters of the past, not to mention new challenges and problems we never had before. That’s when we, like Israel of old, are tempted to return to our old predictable lives, preferring our former taskmasters to the scary unknown that’s ahead. “This Is Me” is the refusal to give into that temptation. It is a call to embrace the reality of who we really are and not give in to the manipulative deception of shame designed to push us back into the shadows of disengagement. Having tasted freedom; we will not be enslaved again. Reflecting on this song from a biblical perspective demands at least a couple of considerations. First, I am aware the film and this song in particular is being framed by many as a celebration of “diversity,” which in our day has come to take on a technical meaning in society, especially in relationship to individuals who embrace certain lifestyle choices. Tragically, more and more people regard all forms of shame as oppressive as if morality itself is the problem needing to be eradicated. But while there may be a tendency to leverage “The Greatest Showman” in this way, that’s a metaphorical stretch. The coming out of circus “freaks” Barnum provides is not a green light for the pursuit of unrestricted human desire, but a true celebration of the humanity intrinsic in the image of God embedded in all of us. The second consideration is of particular concern to me personally. I understand the power of shame calling me into the shadows. That might surprise those of you who are only familiar with me as a speaker and writer, but for now just take my word for it. Because of my tendency to hide away, I love songs and stories that call us out to face our giants or climb the mountain – to be whatever it is we are meant to be against all odds. “This Is Me” is definitely one of those songs. In the context of the film, the song challenges the notion of “You don’t belong here.” The temptation for many is to agree and go back into hiding. The song rejects that, asserting the opinions of others will no longer get in the way of one’s contribution to the world. But isn’t expressing this so aggressively as in “bursting through the barricades” or “gonna send a flood, gonna drown them out” arrogant? There’s a part of me that thinks so and would rather return to the shadows. In the film, however, these are metaphors to insist we be fully present in the situations we find ourselves in, not allowing others to diminish us. Yet many believers, including myself at times, think it is godly to be diminished as if that is the essence of true humility. Some justify hiding away through an oft-misused Scripture which relates the words of John the Baptist as he neared the end of his public ministry (see John 3:22-30). When John’s disciples mentioned to him that people were beginning to flock to Yeshua, he said, “He must increase, but I must decrease” (John 3:30). I can’t tell you the number of times I have heard people use this in prayer, asking God to demonstrate his power, while keeping themselves from being noticed. Sounds humble, I know. But that has nothing to do at all with what John the Baptist was saying or with true humility. John was explaining that his task of introducing the Messiah was nearing completion, which was why more people were going to Yeshua than to him at this stage. Now that his job was almost done, it was time for him to fade into the background, so to speak. Prior to this, he had an essential part to play in which taking center stage was required. Hiding away is not humility, but fear due to shame. The aggressive posture of “This Is Me” is not really toward others, but toward ourselves. In spite of the freedom secured by Yeshua on our behalf, we remain our own brutal taskmaster, standing in the way of all God wants us to be both in and through us. We don’t oppress ourselves completely on our own. We leverage the impressions and opinions of others, past and present, to justify our continued imprisonment. But we are no longer slaves, we are fearless children of God (see John 1:12; Romans 8:15; Galatians 4:6-7). Far from hiding in the shadows, we are to let our light shine for the world to see. Yet many of us have been intimidated into the shadows, shamed into silence, agreeing that we don’t belong. But we do! The song declares “I’m not scared to be seen; I make no apologies.” Apologies are appropriate when we have wronged God or others. But we are not to apologize for being “me” as if we have no God-given place in the world. We have nothing to be ashamed of. How can we be when we have the very help the world is desperate for? That they don’t know it is beside the point. That we don’t know it undermines what God wants to do in the world. God wants to do great things through his people, but he can’t use us if we are hiding away. Sure, we are weak and wounded. We make mistakes – sometimes big ones – but he can handle that, especially if we cooperate with him. Nothing is going to happen if we hide in the shadows. It’s time to come out and let ourselves be seen for who we really are. * * * This early presentation of “This Is Me,” sung by Keala Settle at a workshop session, illustrates the challenge of coming out of the shadows. The Jewish festival of Hanukkah begins this evening, Tuesday, December 12, and lasts eight days. It commemorates the Jewish victory over the occupying Seleucids in the second century before Yeshua. After the reign of Alexander the Great, his empire was split into four, with the Seleucid Empire encompassing much of Alexander’s near-eastern territories, including Israel. Antiochus Epiphanes was king of the Seleucid Empire from 174-164 BC and sought to consolidate his kingdom through assimilation, by forcing Hellenistic (Greek) culture and religion upon the diverse peoples of his domain, including the Jews. Antiochus outlawed Judaism, erected an altar to Zeus in the Temple in Jerusalem, and defiled the Jewish altar by sacrificing pigs on it. Antiochus’s plan was working as many Jews acquiesced to his assimilation program. Things began to change, however, when a kohen (English: priest) named Mattityahu from the small town of Modi’in sparked a revolt when he killed both a fellow Jew who was willing to comply with the demand to sacrifice to Zeus and the Greek official who issued the demand. Leadership passed to Mattityahu’s son Judah, nicknamed Maccabee, the name also associated with those who joined the rebellion. The revolt soon led to the cleansing of the Temple and the rededication of the altar on the 25th of Kislev on the Jewish calendar, which coincides with late November/December. Hanukkah means “dedication,” and is a reference to the restoration of the altar. The most popular feature of the festival is most likely based on legend. It is said that when the Temple was cleansed, there was found only a day’s worth of holy oil for the menorah (the seven-branched lampstand). Apparently it took eight days to make a new batch of oil, but a miracle happened, and the small amount of oil lasted eight days. This is commemorated by the lighting of a special Hanukkah menorah (Hebrew: hanukiah) for eight nights. We also indulge in delicious items fried in oil: latkes (potato pancakes) and sufganiyot (jellied donuts). While the oil provides much of the symbol and fun of the festival, the actual miracle is wrapped up in the victory itself, as recounted in the traditional prayer, Al Hanissim which include these words: You delivered the mighty into the hands of the weak, the many into the hands of the few, the impure into the hands of the pure, the wicked into the hands of the righteous, and the wanton sinners into the hands of those who occupy themselves with Your Torah. The theme of God’s miraculous deliverance is certainly not unique in Israel’s history. Hanukkah’s recounting of great victory over the Seleucids joins earlier ones over the Egyptians at Passover and Persia at Purim, not to mention all sorts of other sensational victories recorded in Scripture. But at the same time each of these provides different aspects of the outworking of God’s faithfulness toward his ancient covenant people. The rescue from Egypt is about bondage, redemption, and the revelation of his Word. Purim demonstrates the providential work of God against the blind hatred of Israel’s enemies. Hanukkah is about the need to resist the insidious nature of the dominant culture and what a few faithful believers can accomplish if only they would take a stand. While there is much to learn from everything that God has done for Israel in the past, the lessons of Hanukkah illumine some of today’s greatest challenges. Assimilation forces attempting to eradicate biblical faith will eventually fail. But Yeshua’s triumph over evil will not occur apart from his followers. He pledged to build a community against which the very gates of hell will not prevail (see Matthew 16:18). His kingdom will work through the world just as leaven permeates a clump of dough (Matthew 13:33). And the movement that began small in his day will grow into a gigantic tree (Matthew 13:31-32). The growth of his everlasting kingdom (Daniel 2:44) was not and will never be dependent on the cultural climate. Yet it requires the tenacity of the Maccabees, willing to take a stand for God’s ways, no matter the cost. Unlike the Maccabees, this is not a military battle (Ephesians 6:12) but a life and death struggle nonetheless. One that will be opposed and criticized; its adherents misunderstood and ostracized (Matthew 10:22). Yet the victory is guaranteed (Revelation 11:15). The Maccabean victory was not simply another win for God’s people. It was a necessary stand to ensure the ongoing nature of God’s plans and purposes. The divine destiny of Israel and Messiah depended on their sacrifice. Not alone as crucial players in God’s rescue operation of the creation rooted in Abraham, they certainly were true to God’s call on their lives. May the same be said about us. It is time to stop giving in to the prevailing mood of moral and spiritual decline in our day and allow Yeshua’s kingdom power to be displayed through us. To do that requires, like the Maccabees of old, standing against the current cultural pressures to conform. But more than simply resist, we must also, like the Maccabees, engage the great powers of our day and demonstrate the superior nature of the earth’s true king.

Sosua Beach has a long history dating back to the early twentieth century, (1903 ) when the United Fruit Company established a banana plantation in the lands surrounding Sosua. There was also a shipping dock in what is now the Sosua Bellamar Resort ( still the pier mooring foundation pillars –the pilotillos– are visible, if only the top of one buried in the sand ). About 17 ships a year would dock and carry the precious cargo to Europe and the U.S. from Sosua bay, an operation that ended in 1916. The beach by then had a hotel called Garden City, barracks and some 20 houses and facilities that were left from the UFC operations. During the 1920`s, several families from Santiago used the homes as vacation getaways when visiting the beach. A few years later, Nazi Europe was persecuting the Jewish people, and the only country in the world that was willing to take them as refugees was the small island of Dominican Republic, by then ruled by Dictator Rafael Trujillo. A New York based Jewish foundation named DORSA agreed to buy land from Trujillo, the same land that was once used by the United Fruit Company ( see history of Sosua ). VIDEO: Sosua, haven in the Caribbean Once settled, The Jews had to overcome the hardships of land and cattle chores under tropical weather (most of the refugees were educated intellectuals, no farmers ). Eventually they prospered into an exemplary community of successful businesses, specially in the dairy industry. During the early 1980`s, the Dominican Republic began to designate coastal beach areas to promote the island to international tourism, and Puerto Plata was the first to develop the infrastructure of beach resorts. Soon Sosua beach evolved into a high valued beach destination that would be considered a top choice in the DR and the Caribbean.

Editor’s Note: This letter was published in our print issue on Friday, March 11, which was signed by Jewish Students of SFP. SFP refrains from actions or letters on Jewish students’ behalf, given that it is a Palestine solidarity organization. To the Editors: As current Oberlin students and anti-Zionist Jews affiliated with many organizations on campus, we are writing to add our voices to the conversation about anti-Semitism and Professor Joy Karega. We see the level and form of condemnation as unproductive, polarizing and reinforcing oppressive anti-Black and anti-BDS [Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Movement] narratives on campus. We unequivocally oppose the responses by the College, which suggest punitive measures and leave no room for collective accountability. We strongly believe that Professor Karega should not be fired nor removed from tenure consideration. In recent days, a chorus of pro-Israel Jewish alumni, outside voices and a few vocal students have monopolized Jewish opinion on this issue. These voices do not represent us. This campus should exist for its current students and not for the political agendas of alumni and Zionist voices against BDS or Palestinian solidarity. Though there have been isolated instances of anti-Semitism, we do not feel that they indicate a systemic presence of anti-Semitism within the administration or the student body. We recognize that the attacks on Professor Karega are not occurring in a vacuum. The original article from The Tower, a right-wing Zionist periodical, links Professor Karega’s Facebook posts to the anti-BDS letter from Oberlin alumni released in January 2016. This is a pattern we have seen before. Across the country, pro-Israel organizations and voices, intent on discrediting the BDS movement, are loudly and falsely insisting that college campuses are hotbeds of anti-Semitism and are unsafe spaces for Jewish students because of pro-Palestine activism. The false charges of anti-Semitism in the alumni letter and the media at large about BDS and anti-Zionism make it difficult to confront anti-Semitism when we experience it. The official statements from the College reveal the double standard in its responses to instances of anti-Semitism versus anti-Blackness. It concerns us that administrators and faculty members who have vocalized their condemnation of anti- Semitism have remained relatively silent when incidents of racism, such as the defacement and death threats on the ABUSUA demands or the March 4, 2013 events, have merited serious response. We are deeply troubled by the persistent conflation of anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism, which is not only ahistorical and unfounded but also plays a central ideological role in the attempt to undermine legitimate criticism of the state of Israel. This conflation leaves us, as anti-Zionist Jews, without a community to turn to when we do experience anti-Semitism. We agree with the definition of anti-Semitism laid out by Aurora Levins Morales, a Jewish pro-Palestinian activist; she writes that anti-Semitism — writing about European Jewry under Christianity — functions by creating “a vulnerable buffer group that can be bribed with some privileges into managing the exploitation of others, and then, when social pressure builds, be blamed and scapegoated, distracting those at the bottom from the crimes of those at the top.” In this way, singling out the Rothschilds as masterminds of global capitalism, as Karega did in her posts, has historically worked to blame and scapegoat Jews while distracting attention from broader systems of capitalist exploitation and imperialism. We want to call in Professor Karega, whom we greatly admire as a professor and activist and are confident that productive dialogue about collective liberation can occur without vitriolic attack or Zionist apologetics. We believe that “never again for anyone” means that anti-Jewish oppression must be fought alongside anti-Black racism, anti-Arab racism, Islamophobia and other forms of oppression. In this spirit, we are troubled by the implicit and explicit cur- rents of anti-Black racism prevalent in the mass defamation of Professor Karega. We urge all Jewish students concerned about anti-Semitism to fight with equal passion for Palestinian liberation, Black liberation and an end to all forms of oppression, on and off campus. – Sophie Weinstein – Sylvie Rosenkalt — Jacob Firman — Galen Lansberg

Today I review chapter 7 of John Piper's new book: The Future of Justification: A Response to N. T. Wright. Chapter 7 is titled: "The Place of Our Works in Justification." I have found the chapters in Piper's book thus far to be of varying value. A couple I have felt were without merit. On the other hand, a couple have presented good scholarly cases for a dissenting view from Wright. This is one of those chapters. Although I come down on the side of Wright, Piper has made a good case for his interpretation of Romans 2. He loads his gun with the likes of Moo and Schreiner. I would divide this chapter into two parts. The first deals with the interpretation of Romans 2. The second shows the consistent Reformed expectation that works must follow as a result of justification (though certainly not as a ground or basis for it). 1. Every attempt to create a biblical theology must come to grips with certain passages that, either superficially or substantially, seem to conflict with the final conclusion for which one is arguing. For the Protestant view of justification by faith, Romans 2:5-10 are such verses: "According to your (sg) hardness and unrepentant heart you are storing up for yourself (sg) wrath on the Day of Wrath and the revelation of the righteous judgment of God, who will repay to each person according to his works-- a) on the one hand, to those who seek glory and honor and immortality with the endurance of a good work, eternal life; b) on the other hand, to those who both disobey the truth out of selfishness and obey unrighteousness, wrath and rage; b') tribulation and hardship on every living human who does the evil, both Jew first and Greek, a') and glory and honor and peace to everyone who does the good, both Jew first and Greek. Piper, following the traditional interpretation, and bolstered by commentators like Douglas Moo and Thomas Schreiner, argues that before Paul is done, he will argue that no one, Jew or Greek, actually fall into the "a" category--at least not at the point where Paul's argument is in Romans 2. In the traditional approach to Romans 2, Paul is setting up his argument. There is no impartiality with God. Either Jew or Gentile could in theory be right with God on the basis of their deeds. We will all be judged on the Day according to our works. But when we get to chapter 3, we realize that no one actually can. In that sense, Romans 2 is about the plight of humanity, a humanity that will have to stand before God and give an account--but none of us have a good account to give! The real crux of the disagreement between Wright and others like Moo and Schreiner comes when we get to Romans 2:13-16: "For the hearers of the law are not righteous before God, but the doers of the law will be justified. For whenever Gentiles--those who by nature do not have the law--do the things of the law, these are the law for themselves, although they do not have it, who demonstrate the work of the law written on their hearts, with their conscience at the same time witnessing and either accusing or even excusing between each of their thoughts on the Day when God will judge the hidden things of mortals..." Wright, among others, takes the Gentiles in question here to be Christians. In other words, they demonstrate the law written on their hearts in the manner of Jeremiah 31--"I will write my laws upon their hearts." Piper disagrees and makes a cogent argument that these are unbelievers who like Romans 1:20 know the invisible truth of God. Piper notes that "or even excusing" seems to reflect a less than optimistic attitude about their chances at the judgment. This is a good argument and one that I once accepted. It was the similarity of Romans 2:15 to Jeremiah 31:33 that changed my mind. I note two things about this passage: a) Any law that Gentiles might keep must, de facto, be some core law rather than the full Jewish law. I say this because a Gentile by definition is uncircumcised and, thus, by definition cannot keep the law. The examples Paul gives are stealing, committing adultery, and idol worship, things Paul certainly expected his Gentile converts not to do. b) Given that 2:5 refers to Judgment Day, Paul does consider works as a necessary element in the (final) justification equation. If they're not there, judgment ensues. In 2:15, Paul is speaking about Gentiles who will have those works like not stealing and not committing adultery. They will have those works because the law will be written on their hearts. And they will have those works because of the Holy Spirit--an element in the equation that Paul does not mention here but that is clear given things Paul says elsewhere and given the parallel tradition we find in Hebrews. 2. The second concern Piper has in this chapter is to diss something Wright said at a 2003 conference in Edinburgh, namely, about the silence of Protestants regarding the importance of works in final justification. He then proceeds to quote the Lutheran Augsburg Confession (1530), the First Helvetic Confession in Switzerland (1536), the Thirty-Nine Articles of the Church of England, what Piper calls an "expression of Anglican Reformed faith" (1571), then finally the Westminster Confession (1647). All of these indicate that works are a necessary consequence of justification by faith. It is of course when one looks at such things that one is reminded that Wesley was just a "hair's breadth from Calvinism." That hair on this subject largely had to do with his optimism with regard to just how many works might follow justification by faith. Let me step outside the bounds of both Wesley and Calvin (and Luther) to speak for Paul, however, who really didn't get so bent out of shape over these nuances. Piper is right that the phrase Paul uses in 2:6 is different from when he is contrasting justification by works from justification by faith. 2:6 uses the phrase "according to works" while elsewhere, such as in 3:28, it is "on the basis of works." But wait, let me finish the phrase, "on the basis of works of law." Oh, and let me finish the other phrase too, "faith of Jesus Christ." Piper will get to these debates later in the book I know, but the phrase "works of law" seems to be more than a reference to mere human effort, the Protestant way of taking the phrase. I'll wait to talk more about these things until Piper gets to them. Perhaps Piper is right in the sense that it is a slightly different phrase. Perhaps Paul doesn't want his audience to think he is talking about the same thing in Romans 2 that he is in Romans 3. In the end, though, Paul doesn't seem to have a problem with speaking of justification by works in a final sense, given all the caveats of Romans 3 about no one ultimately deserving God's favor. But given God's favor, indeed given God's empowerment, works are expected at the Judgment. And Paul simply doesn't have a problem in that context of speaking of it not just as co-instrumental. Frankly, in the context of final judgment, works seem to take the prominent role! This lends support to the view of the new perspective that "works of law" in Romans primarily refers to the more ethnically unique parts of the Jewish law. On the other hand, what Christians have long called the "moral law" (an anachronistic term to be sure) appears to be the criterion by which mortals will be judged on the Day.

March 8, 2011 LAPD bomb squad officers to train in Israel Four Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) bomb squad technicians are visiting Israel to train with their counterparts in the Israeli National Police Bomb Squad. Ronald Capra, an LAPD bomb squad officer who will accompany three other officers for the training, said LAPD’s “exposure to local [Israeli] bomb units” will help the LAPD learn more about how to handle and dispose of explosive devices, given Israeli technicians’ experience with suicide attacks. “They’ve paid the price for it,” Capra said, referring to Israeli lives lost in bomb-related violence, but they are the “foremost” experts on explosives “in the world.” Capra also emphasized the importance of a relationship between Los Angeles and Israel to facilitate the “exchange of information.” The training will start in May and last approximately two weeks. Chuck Boxenbaum, a prominent donor to Birthright Israel and a past chairman of The Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles, recently donated funds to the Los Angeles Police Foundation, an organization that provides resources for the LAPD that the city can’t offer, to be used for the trip, which will cost approximately $18,000. On Feb. 17, Boxenbaum sponsored a breakfast at Hillcrest Country Club, where Capra gave a presentation about the training to local representatives of the Israeli community, including Gil Artzyeli, deputy consul general of Israel in Los Angeles. Artzyeli said he welcomed the municipal partnership between local law enforcement and its Israeli counterparts as an addition to the already-existing United States-Israel federal relationship.

Born: 1929, Horochow, Poland Describes escaping from the Horochow ghetto [Interview: 1993] My mother came home from work and she says, "It's time to go." And so, she made me dress in my best clothes, and, again, I still had that coat with a few sewn-in coins, and I put on my high-top shoes, and she got dressed in whatever she felt was still not threadbare, and she made two little bundles, one for myself and one for her. We ate our meager supper, and when it got dark, really dark--it was a dark night, it was very quiet--we stepped out of our room, we didn't tell anyone. At that point, no one shared information with anyone else. It seems like everyone was an entity unto oneself. We walked out, we didn't say goodbye to anyone. And pretty soon we were in the river. It was very quiet, and there were a lot of bulrushes and there's a lot of underbrush, and I held on tightly to my mother's hand, and all of a sudden shots rang out and we ducked, and when it stopped we proceeded a little further. But then, the gun...the gunshots were sporadic, but we could not move because it was still, and when we moved we made noise. And so, we just stayed there, and it turned out we stayed the entire night, because the sporadic gunshots were making it impossible for us to move. The next morning, there were no sporadic gunshots, it was regular now, and it seemed to come from every which side. We heard a lot of noise, a lot of commotion, we saw fire, we heard screams, we heard babies crying, and it seems that it was none too soon that we got out. At that point, a lot of other people from the ghetto tried to do the very same thing we did, and they ran towards the river. At that time, the guards started screaming, the Ukrainian guards, and this is a phrase in Ukrainian, "Wylaz Zyde Ya Tebe Bachu" and that means, "Crawl out, Jew, I can see you." That phrase rings in my ears constantly, and a lot of people came out. My mother held me down and we stayed put. And that went on for several days, and my mother made me eat the soggy bread that was in the bundle. It tasted awful, and she kept saying I have to be strong, and I can't give up now, and she kept giving me directions of how to get to the farmer's house on the other side of the river where that was, that was supposed to have been our hiding place. And I, I felt I knew and I, I told her, I mean, "Stop repeating it. I know how to get there," because we used to go there before the war and my mother used to buy some of the dairy products like milk and cheese and butter from that farmer, so I knew his name, I knew his family, and I knew where he lived. Only we didn't go through the river, went all around. That was in a little village called Skobelka. And we stayed pinned down and at that point the gunshots were working full time. There were screams from the ghetto, and fire, and it never let down even at night, night and day. I don't know how many days we stayed in the river, but it was several days, and I kept dozing off. And one time I woke up, or I thought I woke up, and I looked around, and my mother wasn't there. I really became panic-stricken, and I didn't know what to do, and I just stayed there until the very end of that day. And by that time, everything quieted down. There was no more sound except my own sobbing. I, I was crying. It was so still. And somehow, at that moment, I felt I let my mother down. I fell asleep, and she probably couldn't wake me up, and she had to leave. And so when it got real dark I made my way to the other side of the river, and by that time it was dawn. I was wet and petrified and utterly confused. I made my way to the farmer's house and the farmer saw me and he led me into the barn and I asked him, "Is my mother here?" He said, "No." I said, "Well, she's supposed to be here." He says, "Yes." I said, "Well, I'll wait, you know, until she comes." And he said, "No, you will not wait here. I'll feed you, you'll stay until it gets dark, and you better leave." And I looked at him. I said, "You made an agreement with my mother," and I asked--I mean I, I, I addressed him by his name, which I don't want to give now because I think I have a lot of questions and I would like to resolve them someday before I die, when I go back there, and I asked him, "You made an agreement." And he says, "I changed my mind," and he shrugged his shoulders and he said I have to go when it gets dark. If I don't go he'll report me to the authorities. It was very ironic, 'cause he was wearing a farmer's, like a coverall, and in the corner I saw my father's gold pocket watch with the chain, which I'm sure was part of the money that my mother tried to buy the hiding place for us. Both of Charlene's parents were local Jewish community leaders, and the family was active in community life. Charlene's father was a professor of philosophy at the State University of Lvov. World War II began with the German invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939. Charlene's town was in the part of eastern Poland occupied by the Soviet Union under the German-Soviet Pact of August 1939. Under the Soviet occupation, the family remained in its home and Charlene's father continued to teach. The Germans invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941, and arrested Charlene's father after they occupied the town. She never saw him again. Charlene, her mother, and sister were forced into a ghetto the Germans established in Horochow. In 1942, Charlene and her mother fled from the ghetto after hearing rumors that the Germans were about to destroy it. Her sister attempted to hide separately, but was never heard from again. Charlene and her mother hid in underbrush at the river's edge, and avoided discovery by submerging themselves in the water for part of the time. They hid for several days. One day, Charlene awoke to find that her mother had disappeared. Charlene survived by herself in the forests near Horochow, and was liberated by Soviet troops. She eventually emigrated to the United States. US Holocaust Memorial Museum - Collections

Bat Mitzvahs Get Too Glitzy Women fought for a ceremony to mark a Jewish girl’s passage into womanhood. Now the ritual’s meaning is often lost amid flashy parties and clothes. My bat mitzvah was a low-key affair. I wore an uber-nerdy blue-gray knit dress with a boat neck, looking like a tween refugee from the secretarial pool in Working Girl. Girls in my Conservative shul weren’t allowed to read Torah back then, but I rocked my Haftorah, a Girl Power story about Deborah the Prophet. (She’s a judge! And she helps lead the battle against the Canaanites!) I designed my own invitations, inspired by a very Girl Power-y section of that Haftorah about a woman named Yael who killed a Canaanite captain by driving a tent pin through his head while he slept: The invitations featured a cartoon of a fiendishly delighted Yael with a mouthful of pointy teeth, chortling and clutching a Buffy-like stake while standing over the sleeping soldier. After the service, we had brunch at shul, and then I had a roller-disco party at Bobby’s Rollaway in Pawtucket, R.I. Oh yes, it’s ladies’ night and the feeling’s right! All that—handmade invitations, a tale of female empowerment, a little Kool and the Gang—was plenty for me back in the 1980s. But today, as I start to think about my oldest daughter’s bat mitzvah, mine looks like an ancient relic. Bat mitzvahs aren’t what they used to be. In some ways, that’s good: Girls read Torah confidently in a great many synagogues. And the ubiquity of the “mitzvah project,” in which the kid does something charitable or raises money for a cause, preferably one related to her own interests, is to be applauded (though not when the “mitzvah” seems to be a pro forma letter to guests hitting them up for donations—girlfriend, put some work into it). But sometimes, and I realize I sound as old as the hills here, the changes feel stark and disturbing. These days, I’m often gobsmacked by girls’ outfits at their parties—and sometimes in shul, as well: gynecologically short skirts, bustier tops cantilevered over barely developed curves, nosebleed-inducing stratospheric heels. The bat mitzvah girl’s friends teeter into the party like a herd of newborn foals. Some hostesses provide baskets of ankle socks so that the girls can dance more comfortably after they take off their foot-bindings. And oh, the dancing. Again, I sound like a pinched-faced Pat Boone fan, but vey iz mir, the volume! And the nightmarish “party pumpers,” shrieking and hectoring and whoo-ing the crowd into dances and ever-so-festive party games! Not even Paul Rudd could make this pleasurable. Don’t worry, I’m not going to write yet another article bemoaning the expense of it all, with the Titanic-themed giant icebergs and the rappers and the decrepit rock stars and the Cirque du Soleil performers and the bouncers preventing young hooligans from trashing the bathrooms. But I am a little concerned about the big picture. What’s the point of having a bat mitzvah—a symbolic ceremony marking the time when a girl becomes a Jewish adult, fully responsible for her own actions and choices—if she’s going to focus more on the clothes and the party than the ritual? Why choose to do exactly what everyone else does, with the only individualization being the theme colors, the degree of showiness, and the amount of pupik shown by both the bat mitzvah girl and her mother? The ungapatchka same-sameness seems particularly sad when you consider how hard individual girls and women worked to win the right to celebrate this milestone at all. Indeed, ’twas not ever thus, you realize if you go back into the mists of time. The exhibit “Bat Mitzvah Comes of Age,” on view at the JCC in Manhattan through April 27, then traveling to communities throughout North America, paints a portrait of a much more modest ritual. Presented by the Museum of American Jewish History and Moving Traditions, it examines bat mitzvahs going back to 1922, when Rabbi Mordecai M. Kaplan called his daughter, Judith, to … well, not the bima. She stood at the foot of the bima, “at a very respectable distance from the Torah scroll,” and read from her own Bible in both Hebrew and English. It was considered shocking back then, though Judith reminded the Chicago Tribune 70 years later, “No thunder sounded. No lightning struck.” When you read women’s own stories of how resistant their communities were to their becoming bat mitzvah, you can’t help thinking about how much we take for granted today. Watching the slideshow on the home page of the exhibit’s website, in which women of different ages recall how fiercely they fought for this right and how much their bat mitzvahs meant to them, I found myself weeping. The exhibit’s timeline is touching, taking viewers through milestones such as confirmation rituals for both boys and girls at New York City’s Anshe Chesed synagogue in 1846; Sephardic authority Ben Ish Hai of Baghdad sanctioning girls getting dressed up and reciting shehechiayanu at their coming-of-age in the 1870s; Rabbi Yehezkial Caro allowing a bat mitzvah ceremony in his temple in Ukraine in 1902. We see the movement gaining ground: In 1931, a survey of Conservative synagogues found that only six had adopted the bat mitzvah; by 1948, one-third had. The show puts the wider adoption of bat mitzvah ceremonies into an American political context as well as a Jewish one: It notes the publication of The Feminine Mystique in 1963, and Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret in 1970; the founding of Ms. magazine and the ordaining of Reform Rabbi Sally Priesand in 1972. I appreciated the show’s inclusiveness, encompassing the creation of the role of “Rabba” for Orthodox women, the depiction of a group of Jewish adoptees from the same Chinese orphanage at one of the girls’ bat mitzvah, and the bat mitzvah of transgender author Rachel Pollack in Woodstock, N.Y., in 1998, 40 years after Pollack’s bar mitzvah. Change isn’t all festive corsages and jelly candies, of course. There are stories of men throwing their prayer shawls over their heads and marching out when girls approached the bima, people scanning ahead in their siddurs in the hope that the bat mitzvah girl would make a mistake and embarrass herself along with the foolish rabbi who allowed her to do this. But lighter stories abound, too, like Margie Tarmy Berkowitz’s reminiscence of her 1956 bat mitzvah party in the basement, when her mom broke the ice by calling down, “Margie, why don’t you put on the new record by that guy named Pelvis?” Frankly, the reason this whole topic makes me feel fragile is that we just got Josie’s bat mitzvah date. The notion of my little 10-year-old (who was only a moment ago a newborn—Sunrise, Sunset!) becoming a woman in the tradition of our people just blows my mind. Josie’s Torah portion will be Lech Lecha (“Go forth”), a fitting parashah for someone negotiating her way in the wide, scary world. It was also the portion of my wonderful friend Jill, who did not have a bat mitzvah as a child but chose to have one at 26—and then got a commemorative tattoo of the Hebrew words Lech Lecha. “It was a real transition point to ‘go forth’ into the rest of my life—the parashah really resonated with me and made me feel more connected to the Jewish people and to my own potential,” she told me, when I tearily told her that Josie would be chanting the same words two decades after she did. She added, “But tell Josie that Auntie Jill says, ‘Hold off on the tattoo until you’re 13-times-two, and then if you want to lech lecha permanently, go forth!’” (Uh, thanks, Jill? Well, better lech lecha than a little tramp stamp of a fairy, a boy’s name, or a Chinese character that supposedly means love but actually means “bite the wax tadpole,” I guess.) The idea of my child being old enough to chant Torah, let alone go forth on her own terms, makes me weepy. Of course, the notion of her dressing like a two-dollar whore while jerking her hips to LMFAO’s “Sexy and I Know It” makes me even weepier. So, I was glad to attend a session on bat mitzvah clothing and values at the Jewish Theological Seminary’s What to Wear event (organized by my mom, featuring Tablet’s Editor Alana Newhouse, and horrifying The Forward) that put the bat mitzvah in a context of how women’s clothing reflects both spoken and unspoken messages about their role in society and choices of self-representation. We watched a video about different girls’ and families’ approaches to bat mitzvah, curated by Beth Cooper Benjamin, director of research for the Jewish feminist girls’ organization Ma’yan. At the event, I nearly wept with gratitude to meet one of the girls in the video, the awesome Ella Tav, 13, who chose a low-key, spiritual, non-Manolo-oriented path for her bat mitzvah. “My cousins had really extravagant and fancy bat mitzvahs in Toronto,” she told me later. “And I had friends who had big boom-boom parties. But my mom and I started out with ‘We are not having a boom-boom party.’” Ella’s mom, Rabbi Kara Tav, added, “I’m very sensitive to the sexualization of the teenager in the bat mitzvah. They don’t need to put on skimpy clothes and dance in a provocative way in front of their parents and each other to mark their coming of age in the Jewish community. I found it distasteful. Just because it’s the norm it doesn’t have to stay the norm.” So, Ella had an ice-skating party at Wollman Rink in Central Park (like my own roller disco party 30 years ago, but with less embarrassing music). “All my friends were there but it wasn’t intense, it wasn’t stressful in any way,” she said. “It was like a gigantic birthday party. There was hot chocolate and candy apples and caramel corn. It was like being in a giant snow globe.” Her mom added fondly, “It felt like a fairy tale.” And Ella kept the meaning of bat mitzvah first and foremost: “It means being able to participate more in the community, being a role model for younger girls to love where they come from and who they can be, loving the community they’re part of,” she said. When you think about what our forebears went through to win this ceremony for our children, and you talk to a kid who still gets that, how can you not kvell? And I’m breathing a lot easier at the thought of my daughter and me finding a way to mark this occasion in a way that reflects more spirituality than shoe-shopping. Like this article? Sign up for our Daily Digest to get Tablet Magazine’s new content in your inbox each morning. Polish has no word for a leisurely, late-morning meal, but brunch is catching on in Krakow, with french toast, stiff drinks, and schmoozing Daily rate: $2 Monthly rate: $18 Yearly rate: $180 WAIT, WHY DO I HAVE TO PAY TO COMMENT? Tablet is committed to bringing you the best, smartest, most enlightening and entertaining reporting and writing on Jewish life, all free of charge. We take pride in our community of readers, and are thrilled that you choose to engage with us in a way that is both thoughtful and thought-provoking. But the Internet, for all of its wonders, poses challenges to civilized and constructive discussion, allowing vocal—and, often, anonymous—minorities to drag it down with invective (and worse). Starting today, then, we are asking people who'd like to post comments on the site to pay a nominal fee—less a paywall than a gesture of your own commitment to the cause of great conversation. All proceeds go to helping us bring you the ambitious journalism that brought you here in the first place. I NEED TO BE HEARD! BUT I DONT WANT TO PAY. Readers can still interact with us free of charge via Facebook, Twitter, and our other social media channels, or write to us at email@example.com. Each week, we’ll select the best letters and publish them in a new letters to the editor feature on the Scroll. We hope this new largely symbolic measure will help us create a more pleasant and cultivated environment for all of our readers, and, as always, we thank you deeply for your support.

You are here Alan Heatherington, Music Director Alan Heatherington has built his career in the Chicago metropolitan area as a choral and orchestral conductor, a violinist/concertmaster and an educator. So distinguished are his accomplishments that the Chicago Tribune named him a Chicagoan of the Year in the arts in 2004. The Illinois Council of Orchestras awarded him the title of Conductor of the Year for 2005 and again in 2012. In 2010 he received the Cultural Leadership Award, the highest honor bestowed by the Illinois Council of Orchestras, for “sustained leadership, extending beyond his own organizations and community, that has profoundly impacted the state of the arts in Illinois.” He was the recipient of the 2013 Distinguished Achievement Award from Chicago Classical Review. He has held the post of Music Director of the Chicago Master Singers (CMS) since 1989, leading the chorus on 10 concert tours in most of the musical capitals of Western and Eastern Europe. He will co-direct the Mozart Salzburg Choral Festival in 2014 with Domkapellmeister János Czifra. In addition to CMS, he is the founder and music director of the Ars Viva Symphony Orchestra, a professional orchestra composed of many of the finest professional musicians in the Chicago metropolitan area, including many members of the world-renowned Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Maestro Heatherington has conducted or played with virtually all the major orchestras in Chicago throughout more than four decades, has taught at various colleges and universities for more than twenty years, and has conducted concerts in many of the major cultural capitals of Europe. He made his European opera debut conducting The Barber of Seville at the Krakow Opera. He has also conducted the National Gallery Orchestra in Washington, D. C. and the Ural Philharmonic Orchestra and Chorus in Ekaterinburg, Russia under the auspices of Soli Deo Gloria. A frequent conductor in the Czech Republic, he has conducted the Czech National Symphony Orchestra, the North Czech Philharmonic Orchestra and the West Bohemia Symphony Orchestra. Heatherington was the founding Music Director of the Chicago String Ensemble (1979-1995), the only professional string orchestra in the Midwestern United States. He is the Music Director Emeritus of the Lake Forest Symphony, having served as Music Director for 13 years (2000-2013). He also founded the Innsbruck International Choral Festival, co-conducting the festival for four years with Alice Parker and Weston Noble. He was the Director of Music Ministries at the First Presbyterian Church of Lake Forest (1995-2003) as well as Director of the Anshe Emet Synagogue professional choir (1992-2000) which can be heard on a collection of compact discs of Jewish High Holy Days music with Hazzan Alberto Mizrahi. He is currently attending Nashotah House Seminary in Wisconsin in preparation for ordination as an Anglican priest, a vocation which he will pursue alongside his current musical endeavors. He and his wife Gayle, a vocalist who works professionally in arts management and graphic design, live in Libertyville, Illinois.

It’s well known that the staff at Politico is between the sheets with MSNBC and on the outs with FNC. An excerpt from the to-be-released An Atheist in the FOXhole published by Salon confirms that fact and provides a little more detail: Sometimes entire organizations were given lifetime bans [at Fox News]. The website Politico wrote something a few years back that rubbed Roger the wrong way (we were never told what exactly the transgression was) and word went out to all the shows: No more Politico reporters as guests. Also, any anchors who mentioned the site on air had to use the phrase “left-wing Politico” — an absurd designation for a publication that usually played it down the middle. A web search shows Politico has, in the past, been referred to as “liberal” or “lefty” at FNC. Those references seemed to take place exclusively on FNC’s morning show “Fox & Friends” and with particular zeal from co-host Steve Doocy. It’s common knowledge that many current and former reporters at Politico (and a lot of different publications on Planet Earth) are on the outs with FNC and FNC PR in particular, with editors and scribes dealing with intense squabbles. But is Ben Smith to blame for the deep rift? Asked if he knows anything about the “ban” on Politico reporters, Smith simply told FishbowlDC, “I don’t!” But Smith, formerly with Politico and now editor-in-chief of BuzzFeed, has a past with Doocy. Smith wrote up a fairly innocuous item for Politico in Jan. 2011 headlined “The plot to take [FNC CEO] Roger Ailes down.” In the piece, which was mostly a highlight of an Esquire feature on Ailes, Smith called FNC’s honcho “interesting” and “one of the most powerful men in American politics.” It also pulled a bit from the Esquire article in which Ailes recounted how he came to apologize to the Jewish community for calling NPR executives “Nazis.” “You know on this program how we talked about Politico is a lefty web site?” Doocy said on F&F the next day. “I was looking at it yesterday, I was reading a column by Ben Smith — column about a guy here at Fox News Channel — and I looked at some of the comments from some of his readers and these are some of the comments about Ben Smith at Politico.” Doocy went on to read negative anonymous comments on Smith and the “liberal media.” Smith responded with a post, in which he said Doocy’s “rant” revealed “a remarkably thin skin.” Nearly a month later, in a conversation with conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt, Doocy once again called Politico “lefty” on the air. Five months after that, “F&F” ran a segment on former Politico reporter Andy Barr leaving the publication to work for the Arizona Democratic Party. “SITE’S LIBERAL SLANT REVEALED,” read the “F&F” screen title. An Atheist in the FOXhole is authored by Joe Muto, who worked as a producer on FNC’s “The O’Reilly Factor.” He was fired in the summer of 2012 after the network learned he was leaking internal FNC information to Gawker. We reached out to Politico for comment and they said they’d get back to us if they had anything to say. Nothing yet.

Jewish religious life is centered in both the home and the synagogue. Some important practices, like the Passover seder, provide opportunities for families to spend time together. Other rituals, such as reading from the Torah scroll, require a communal gathering. Because these rituals are essential to Judaism, Jewish communities in Maine generally established synagogues as soon as they grew large enough to do so. Over the years Maine’s Jewish communities have witnessed the modernization of synagogue rituals and the transformation of family traditions. These objects and photographs reflect some of the religious traditions that have been important to Jews in Maine. What are these traditions? How have they changed over time? Curated by Jena Hershkowitz '12

Jewish World Review March 11, 2005 /30 Adar I 5765 Danny, ye hardly knew ye In a perfect world, Dan Rather would have left his CBS News studio, and with his crowd of well-wishers and supporters in tow, walked up to the roof of CBS headquarters to board a helicopter to whisk him away from the national stage. Perhaps he could have even offered one last Nixonian gesture, a wave and two-handed victory sign? But his farewell comments at the end of his last broadcast as CBS News anchor will do just fine. A mere 215 words, it certainly wasn't verbose, even by the economical standards of the nightly news. And, on the surface, it was fair enough. The guy's gotta say something, right? But, on a deeper level, his parting thoughts tell a lot about the man, and about the thing that made his broadcasts and the mainstream media generally so controversial. One can forgive Rather for thanking of the "hundreds of professionals" at CBS News he worked with, even if it was a wry reminder that he let a few fellow professionals get the axe for a story he was in charge of. No, what was most revealing in his farewell was the way he decided to take the word "courage" back down from the shelf. "Not long after I first came to the anchor chair I briefly signed off using the word 'courage.' I want to return to it now, in a different way," he said, punctuating his sentences with oddly long pauses. "To a nation still nursing a broken heart for what happened here in 2001 and especially those who found themselves closest to the events of Sept. 11; to our soldiers in dangerous places; to those who have endured the tsunami and to all who have suffered natural disasters and who must find the will to rebuild; to the oppressed and to those whose lot it is to struggle, in financial hardship or in failing health; to my fellow journalists in places where reporting the truth means risking all; and to each of you: Courage." Now, I don't have a huge problem with the sentiment behind Rather's comments, but the fact that the sentiment is there reveals the basic flaw with Rather's lifelong insistence that he was a purely "objective" reporter. In 1992 Dan Rather told the Los Angeles Times: "I walk out every day trying to have a big 'I' for independence stamped right in the middle of my forehead. I try to play no favorites, pull no punches." He told NBC's Tim Russert: "You know, my job is to be accurate, be fair and, insofar as it's humanly possible, to keep my feelings out of every story. … I do agree that one test of a reporter is how often he or she is able to keep their emotions out of what they are doing and keep their own biases and agendas out of it." Well if he's got that "I" on his forehead and he keeps his emotions out of it, why should he express any concern for Americans "nursing" broken hearts? Sentimentalism about the victims of society may be an admirable trait in a man, but in a journalist who claims to prize objectivity above all else it's a betrayal. How do you define "victim"? How do you define "looking out" for him? For Rather's critics it was always clear that he saw the government as the protector of the little guy. And that meant anyone who favored reducing the role of the federal government was automatically the bad guy. "The new Republican majority in Congress took a big step today on its legislative agenda to demolish or damage government aid programs, many of them designed to help children and the poor," Dan Rather began one typical segment. That these programs didn't do what they were designed to do wasn't an important part of the story for Rather. Rather could always be counted on to elevate certain facts, certain experts, certain arguments as more important than others. Perhaps that's an inevitable feature of all media but especially of TV and print, where a few players have enormous influence. One needn't be a postmodern relativist to understand that journalistic objectivity the ideal of reporting the facts without prejudice or favor is an unattainable goal. I have no objection to journalists having biases, much as I have no objection to two plus two equaling four. One may choose to accept the fact or not, but it is a fact nonetheless. Dan Rather, however, always insisted his reporting was bias-free, that he was calling the facts, and just the facts. His career as anchor ended in large part because he couldn't accept that something he had reported wasn't true and that he had rushed to report it because of an agenda that wasn't stamped with an "I." The irony is that that's what his career was always about. Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in Washington and in the media consider "must reading." Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.

I would appear to be in Jerusalem! We spent much of yesterday getting here, leaving West Hampstead at just before 10 to travel to Luton Airport, which is a spectacular dump! We flew with EasyJet. Who'd've thought they would run flights to Tel Aviv? It's a 4 1/2 flight, which actually seemed to go by in the blink of an eye, largely because we decided to watch the film of Brass at the Hackney Empire. One of the benefits of having written a rather lengthy show is that it makes a plane journey seem considerably shorter! The flight was somewhat marred by a number of high-maintenance mothers who plainly didn't understand that the world didn't revolve around their children. The safety announcement had to be paused whilst their cloying offspring were cleared from playing in the aisles. The same thing happened on landing. The crew were forced to rush to the children to scoop them back into their seats. The mothers looked confused and angry as though no one had ever said no to them or their children before: "my child wants to play. If you stop my child from playing he will get angry and then it will be your fault if he cries." At a certain point I feel that parents need to take responsibility for the decision THEY made to have children. We took a shared mini bus taxi to Jerusalem with a curious selection of ultra-Orthodox Jews and a ghost. We know she was a ghost because a) she was sitting on our train from West Hampstead, b) she was on the plane in front of us knitting and c) because neither of us saw her getting into the taxi. She literally just appeared in the shadows of the back seat. We'll see her again, I have no doubt, muttering prayers to herself in a soothing voice! We were the last to be dropped off by the taxi, which passed through a series of frum neighbourhoods in the city. I find the sight of men in their Humburg hats, their prayer shawls dangling around their thighs, quite compelling. It feels like such a curious way to express religion. My companion for the trip is Michael Etherton, who runs the UK Jewish film festival. He speaks Hebrew and lived in Israel for three years, so I feel I'm in a very safe pair of hands. We took ourselves on a lengthy walk yesterday night. Israel is two hours behind the UK, so suddenly the day seemed rather short. The sun, in fact, was setting as we touched down, and by the time we'd left the airport, it was dark, although still immensely humid. The walk started with street food, Israel style, at the Old Station: Jerusalem's first train station, which has been converted into a sort of cross between Covent Garden and Brighton pier. We had hummus and falafel, and chips covered in paprika. The old walled city of Jerusalem is a deeply, deeply impressive place which carries the heavy weight of immense religious significance on its shoulders. We entered via the Jaffa gate, and instantly found ourselves walking down a series of underground alleyways which, during the day, would be filled with market stalls: a riot of life and noise. At night, it's deathly quiet. The silhouettes of Hasidic Jews glide through the shadows, making their way to the Western Wall. The odd shop keeper closes his shop, water flows down the alleyways... We appeared at the Western Wall - perhaps better (and more offensively) known as the "wailing wall" - at about midnight. As the only bit remaining of the old temple (destroyed by the Romans) it stands as the most important holy site for Jewish people in the world. We donned kippa hats and took ourselves up to the wall itself, which I found a profound and deeply moving experience. There is definitely an incredibly strong atmosphere there. Who knows if it's spiritual or simply an atmosphere which has been created by religious, psychological fervour. Men daven: rocking and bobbing, facing the wall. Some weep openly. There's a hushed excitement. The wall itself is enormous and formed of huge blocks of gleaming cream-coloured stone. Rather large circular plants grow through the cracks, their greeny-yellow fronds create an interesting effect against the sand stone. From the Western Wall, we took ourselves around the old city walls, past the Mount of Zion whose cliffs were lit up with huge floodlights of ever-changing colour, and back to the hotel in the soupy air. A wonderful night.

We are The Horables! We like to play Klezmer, Django style jazz, polkas, Gypsy dance tunes and rags from the age of steam. You will also hear songs in Yiddish and English. You can find us playing at festivals such as Mill Race (2013), Northern Lights (2013), Ashkenaz (2011), Winterfolk (2010) Jewish Music Week (2015) or the Roncesvalles Polish festival (2011,12,13,14 &15 ). We are busking regulars at markets like the Wychwood Barns or Evergreen Brickworks, and you can often find us at the Free Times Cafe Klezmer brunch. We rose from the ashes of a band known for it's activism as well as it's music, the all woman Klezmer band Pomegranate. About the musicians: Rachel Melas has spent almost 4 decades playing electric and upright bass in various bands, and decided that she liked Klezmer music so much that she would learn a whole new instrument to play it. She is currently fascinated by all sorts of archaic music. She plays bass with Swamperella, les Singes Bleus, Moo'd Swing, Jazz singer Joanne Morra and other purveyors of jazz and traditional music. Conny Nowe is a veteran of many musical scenes, drumming in punk and pop bands in the 80's, world music bands in the 90's and turning her attention to acoustic music as the rhythm guitarist in Swamperella for the last 20 years. She has been playing Klezmer and Old Time music on the mandolin for the last 15 years. When Conny is not playing music she is a professional sound technician. Rachel Sheninhas played the violin since childhood, studying classical music and then jazz and folk styles. She leads the Bulgars and Freylachs fearlessly, solos effortlessly on the jazz tunes and sings in Yiddish. She is the most virtuosic Horable! A school teacher by trade she saves her musical talents for The Horables. About our Name - Whats in a Horable ? A Hora is a musical form in Jewish music, it could be a slow walking tune in 3/4 time or a fast dancing tune. Either way, the HORAbles do it all ..... both. The Horables recording " No Shirt No Shoes No Tsuris " is now available for download or buy a copy at one of our gigs!! Contact The Horables : firstname.lastname@example.org Rachel @ 416 871 4691

Controversy has broken out in the UK over alleged anti-Semitic comments made by Labour MP Paul Flynn about the British Ambassador in Tel Aviv. According to The Jewish Chronicle (a publication whose record demonstrates that its accuracy can never been taken for granted) Flynn questioned whether Gould could be properly loyal to the UK because he is Jewish and has declared himself a Zionist: A Labour MP has caused outrage by suggesting that Britain’s first Jewish ambassador to Israel has divided loyalties because he has “proclaimed himself to be a Zionist.” Challenged by the JC to clarify his comments about Matthew Gould, who took up the post last year, Paul Flynn, the Labour MP for Newport West, said ambassadors to Israel had not previously been Jewish “to avoid the accusation that they have gone native.” Britain needed, he said, “someone with roots in the UK [who] can’t be accused of having Jewish loyalty.” In a post at The New Statesman, Owen Jones wrote that if Flynn’s comments were accurately reported, “then Paul Flynn has discredited himself.” Jones argues that raising Gould’s self-declared Zionism is legitimate because, “Zionism is a political movement, after all, and an MP is well within his rights to query whether there is a conflict of interest.” But, he continues “there is no justification whatsoever for his subsequent comments” questioning Gould’s loyalty because he is Jewish. Jones adds: Of even greater concern is Flynn’s clear suggestion that a Jewish person has no “roots in the UK”. This echoes classic anti-semitism, which is based on the slur that Jews outside Israel are aliens in whichever country they live (a myth that, unfortunately, is these days also promoted by the Israeli government.) Perhaps Flynn’s words simply were ill-chosen but he certainly should clarify what he meant by this. Jones sums up his concern that Flynn’s comments could discredit support for the Palestinian cause, which he correctly notes has also come from many prominent Jewish people: But Flynn’s comments will now be used by ultra-Zionists as evidence that their critics are motivated by bigotry. Zionism is anti-Semitism I agree fully with Jones’ reading of Flynn’s reported comments. If accurate it is indeed outrageous to suggest that a British person cannot be loyal to the UK just because he or she is also Jewish. And it’s even more outrageous to suggest that a Jewish person has no “roots” in the UK, just as it would be to suggest the same of a British Muslim or any other person. But what Jones – and perhaps other critics of Flynn’s comments – have missed, is that the claims Flynn reportedly made have always been at the very heart of Zionism. The basic idea is simple enough: Zionists, just like anti-Semites, believed that Jews were inherently alien and rootless in Europe and needed to be expelled physically. The “father” of Zionism, Theodor Herzl in his seminal tract, Der Judenstaat, wrote this nauseatingly anti-Semitic passage: The Jewish question exists wherever Jews live in perceptible numbers. Where it does not exist, it is carried by Jews in the course of their migrations. We naturally move to those places where we are not persecuted, and there our presence produces persecution. This is the case in every country, and will remain so, even in those highly civilized—for instance, France—until the Jewish question finds a solution on a political basis. The unfortunate Jews are now carrying the seeds of Anti-Semitism into England; they have already introduced it into America. Of course the “political solution” of which Herzl spoke was – Zionism – the removal of Jews from Europe and America so that they could not carry with them the “seeds” of their own persecution. Greatest British Zionist hero a vile anti-Semite It is no coincidence then that the greatest British hero of Zionists to this day is Lord Arthur Balfour whose eponymous Balfour Declaration promised the Zionist movement that to which it had no right: the land of Palestine. As Kattan points out in his book From Coexistence to Conquest: International Law and the Origins of the Arab-Israeli Conflict 1891-1949, Balfour’s anti-Semitism was well documented and expressed in his writings. From Kattan: Zionism actually provided Balfour and those who thought like him with the perfect pretext to reduce Jewish immigration into Britain whilst portraying themselves, falsely, as ‘humanitarians’ concerned about their welfare. This is what Balfour wrote in the conclusion to his introduction to Nahum Sokolow’s epic book, the History of Zionism, 1600–1918 (1919): If [Zionism] succeeds, it will do a great spiritual and material work for the Jews, but not for them alone. For as I read its meaning it is, among other things, a serious endeavour to mitigate the age-long miseries created for western civilisation by the presence in its midst of a Body which it too long regarded as alien and even hostile, but which it was equally unable to expel or absorb. Surely, for this if for no other reason, it should receive our support. That Balfour had the gall to write this in a book on Zionism was foreboding. One can only imagine what he wrote about the Jews in private or in correspondence that was destroyed or lost. Indeed. And, as Kattan documents, such sentiments were shared by German anti-Semites who in the same period became enthusiastic supporters of Zionism. Can anyone see the difference between the views allegedly expressed by Flynn and those of his British Zionist forerunners such as Balfour? Flynn, it should be pointed out, has asserted: “I have been a lifelong friend of Israel and Jewish causes.” Given the lengthy tradition of anti-Semitic support for Zionism and Israel in the UK, there’s no reason to doubt that. Zionism’s hatred of diaspora Jews alive and well Zionism’s hatred of diaspora Jews and its desire to see them removed from Europe and other places they live persists to this day. In 2004, for example, then Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon told France’s 700,000 Jews they don’t belong there and should leave. Israel funds organizations, such as Nefesh b’Nefesh dedicated to reducing the number of Jews living around the world, and encouraging them – including with cash payments – to leave their homes and go into exile on stolen Palestinian land. The goal of various “Birthright Israel” programs is the same – to instil nationalist loyalty to Israel in young Jews from around the world – in the hope that they will leave their native lands and move to Israel. Zionists – allegedly like Flynn – believe that the true “roots” of Jews are not in the countries of their birth, but in Israel. It’s a positive sign that most Jews in the world remain resistant to these efforts, and despite the exhortations of Zionists, Jewish communities in the UK, France and Germany among other countries, are thriving while Israel struggles to entice all but a handful each year to abandon their homes.

Dov B. Chaikin London-born (1926) Dov Chaikin, together with his two older brothers and their mother, was brought to Jerusalem in May 1928, to be raised by his orthodox Jewish paternal grandparents, his father having passed away earlier that year. Claiming he was eighteen years of age in April 1942 he joined the British Army, seeing service in Egypt and Libya and from 1944 in Italy with the independent Jewish Brigade Group. After his demobilization in March 1947, he occupied various positions, including that of head of the English division of the Israel Government Press Office. It was in August 1976 that he met his future wife, Tehilah, who was used by the Lord to draw him to the Narkis Street Congregation in Jerusalem where he met Pastor Bob Lindsey. Dov's Life Story, A Living Link A Living Link, The Story of Dov Chaikin by Dov Chaikin (Author), Kelvin Crombie (Introduction) First published 2019 Published by Heritage Resources Pty Ltd Printed by Total Digital, Burswood, Western Australia © Copyright Dov Chaikin Purchase the Kindle version for $2.99, here. Nov 21st, 2020 with Danny Kopp "A Jew Finding His Jewish Messiah" April 18, 2015

General News Archive - March 07, 2006 Japan's government on Tuesday endorsed legislation requiring foreigners to be photographed and fingerprinted on arrival as part of measures to prevent terrorism. Growing U.S.-Russian tensions including differences over Iran and the Palestinian militant group Hamas are expected to be aired in talks on Tuesday between Russia's foreign minister and the Bush administration. For once, Israeli politicians aren't so quick to promise peace. Broadcast campaigns for March 28 elections kicked off on Tuesday with little of the past rhetoric by Israel's high-flying hawks and doves on how best to end conflict in the Middle East. HILLA, Iraq (Reuters) - Four explosions rocked the Iraqi city of Hilla south of Baghdad on Tuesday, and police said at least two of them were car bombs. One of the car bombs caused no casualties. The effects of a second car bomb in the city center were unclear. The U.S. Justice Department asked a federal court on Monday to dismiss a lawsuit charging that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld bears responsibility for the torture of detainees in Iraq and Afghanistan. Eight in 10 Americans believe that recent sectarian violence in Iraq has made civil war likely, according to an ABC News/Washington Post poll released on Monday. Israel could target Hamas leaders, including Palestinian Prime Minister-designate Ismail Haniyeh, if the militant group resumes attacks in the Jewish state, Israeli Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz said on Tuesday. DUBAI (Reuters) - Al Jazeera television aired on Tuesday a video showing three of four Christian peace activists held hostage in Iraq and said the men had called on Gulf Arab leaders and their own governments to help free them. U.S. drivers saw gasoline prices soar an average 7.7 cents a gallon over the last week, while truckers paid the most for diesel fuel since November, the government said on Monday. By Jeffrey Heller JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Interim Prime Minister Ehud Olmert vowed on Tuesday to reduce spending on Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank after an Israeli election his party is expected to win, underscoring plans to quit isolated enclaves.

Michael B. Hyman Justice Michael B. Hyman was assigned to the First Appellate District on January 8, 2012. He was appointed to the Circuit Court of Cook in 2006. The people of Cook County elected him to a countywide seat for a full-six year term in 2008. Before joining the judiciary, Justice Hyman was a principal at Much Shelist, Chicago, which he joined in 1979 after serving two years as an Assistant Illinois Attorney General in the Antitrust Division. He graduated from Northwestern University, Medill School of Journalism, with honors in 1974, and from Northwestern University School of Law in 1977. As a judge of the Circuit Court Of Cook County, Justice Hyman sat in the General Chancery Division (Oct. 2010 Jan. 2013); Domestic Relations Division (Mar. 2009 Sept. 2010); Supplementary Proceedings, Courtroom 1401 (mid-Dec. 2006 Mar. 2009); Municipal Court, non-jury, contract and tort trials (mid-Sept. 2006 mid-Dec. 2006); and Traffic Court (July 2006 mid-Sept. 2006). The Illinois Supreme Court has appointed Justice Hyman to serve as the chairperson of the Illinois Judicial Conference Committee on Strategic planning for the Conference year 2013. Justice Hyman has a habit of getting involved in causes he cares about and has been active in numerous professional organizations. Among them are: Chicago Bar Association (President, 2005 - 06 and Editor-in-chief of the CBA Record and columnist, 1988 - 1990, 1993 2004, and 2007 -present); Illinois Judges Association (First Vice-President, 2012-2013 and Board member 2007 - present); Illinois Judicial Ethics Committee (Committee member, 2007 - present); Illinois Judges Foundation (Board member, 2007 - present); Chicago Bar Foundation (Secretary, 2011 - present and Board member, 2003 - present); Lend-A-Hand to Youth Program (Executive Committee, 2007 2010 and acting treasurer 2009 - 2010); American Bar Association (House of Delegates, Chicago Bar Association representative, 2005 2009; Coalition on Racial & Ethnic Justice, chair, 2012 - present and member, 2009 - present; Judicial Division, Lawyers Conference, Chair, 2008 - 2009 and executive committee member, 2002 - 2010; Section of Litigation; Editor-in-chief, Litigation News, 1990 1992; Founding editor-in-chief, Litigation Docket, 1995 2001; Chair of a number of Section committees); and the Illinois State Bar Association (elected representative, Assembly, 1986 - 1992; 1993 - 1996; 2000 - 2004; Chair of a number of ISBA Committees or Councils); and Jewish Judges Association of Illinois (president, 2011 - present). Other leadership roles of Justice Hyman include the Lawyers Trust Fund of Illinois (Board member, 2009 - present); SCRIBES, The American Society of Writers on Legal Subjects (First vice-present, 2012-present and board member, 2004-present); Coalition for Equal Justice (Chair, 2009 - present); and Decalogue Society of Lawyers (president, 2004 - 2005). Justice Hyman has written numerous articles and columns on a variety of subjects which have appeared in legal publications including CBA Record, ISBA newsletters, ABA Judges Journal, Chicago Lawyer, Chicago Daily Law Bulletin, and The Bencher (American Inns of Court publication), among others. In addition, he frequently speaks at education programs for attorneys, law students, and judges. Among awards Justice Hyman has received are the CBA's inaugural Diversity Initiative Award (2006); the IJA Presidential Service Award (2007); and the Court of Honor Award from Chicago Volunteer Legal Services (2008).

A Note From Jonathan and RuPaul’s Drag Race If you’re up for it tonight you’ll want to head on out to Lavish – if you made i to last week’s mixer you got a taste for how crazy things get there after 11pm these days…:) and although they’ve had to put the underwear party on hiatus for a bit (if you were there you know why) expect to see maybe a special installment of it in the coming months…something that can be better prepared for…for everyone! Though this would be on opportune moment to suggest that everyone take a moment to place a few well-timed votes for Mimi Imfurst and her race to get onto season two of Rupaul’s Drag Race…so if you haven’t already voted today (and really you DO know you can vote DAILY, right? why not take a moment now and get one of our local gals on the little screen next season!? 🙂 now with that done, if you’re not planning to be out late with the local boys and girls at lavish lounge tonight might i direct you to our brunch tomorrow afternoon! SAT – MAY 30 – OUT ASTORIA MAY BRUNCH AT LOCALE – 2PM 33-02 34 Avenue, Astoria, NY – 718-729-9080 We haven’t been back to Locale in ages – and originally this month we were slated to be at Cup Diner but then they decided to start renovations on their place so we decided to come back to an old brunch staple of ours! Locale Cafe & Bar is located in the heart of historic Astoria, NY. It’s style reflects the neighborhoods modern yet multi-cultural sheik aspect, which has become a signature of present day Astoria. Locale’s diverse menu can accommodate almost any taste, whether it’s an early afternoon brunch or an intimate dinner by candlelight. We can usually get a group of 20 in here at two different table groups! but try not to turn up too late, there’s a limit of bloody marys to which even i must adhere! 🙂 after the brunch the OA steering committee will be meeting up to have a little pre-pride powwow – so if there’s anything you’d like to ask or suggest feel free to send it to me tomorrow before 4pm and i’ll be glad to bring it up at the meeting! but aside from that if you’re itching to do a little marriage equality stuff and really who isn’t these days…let me draw your attention to a fabulous rally… SUN – MAY 31 – RALLY FOR MARRIAGE EQUALITY AT ATHENS PARK IN ASTORIA – 6PM TO 8PM – FREE 30th Avenue at 30th Street, Astoria, NY – 877-772-0089 This fabulous rally in support of Marriage Equality is being put together by your local girls and boys involved with the local Marriage Equality Capter, Western Queens for Marriage Equality, and Astorians for Marriage Equality! But I’m going to give you the text of the evite just exactly as they have written it because who could say it better than they can?! Remember you don’t have to be on the facebook evite to attend, but if you want to invite more people to the rally feel free to just forward them this email…of course they want as many people there to support Marriage Equality as possible…and you know I’ll be there along with some of my Out Astoria bretheren! 🙂 Thanks for making the Prop 8 rally such a success- now we will be continuing NYS efforts for marriage equality with a rally this Sunday in Queens. Come show your support for equality, meet up with fellow activists from Queens, hear music from Broadway stars (names TBA), and hear from government officials and members of our community who support marriage equality. State Senator George Onorato, who represents much of Western Queens, currently opposes marriage equality but our work got us a meeting with him this past Thursday…so lets keep it up! Senator Huntley, Senator Padavan, and Senator Addabbo of Queens currently oppose marriage equality. Senator Monsorrate is a supporter but not yet listed as a co-sponsor. Also, the Senate Majority Leader, Malcolm Smith, is a Queens senator. So, Let’s show these Queen’s Senators that there is public support for marriage equality! This rally is sponsored by Western Queens for Marriage Equality. Western Queens for Marriage Equality is a coalition of groups including: Democracy for New York City, Long Island City Alliance, New York State Young Democrats, Queens County Young Democrats, the Jewish Alliance for Change, IntegrityNYC, Marriage Equality New York, Broadway Impact, Civil Rights Front, Empire State Pride Agenda, Civil Marriage Trail Project, OUT Astoria, Astorians United Against Hate Crimes and Astorians United for Peace and Justice. Western Queens for Marriage Equality is a coalition group that believes marriage is a human right that should be available to all New Yorkers, regardless of sexual orientation. In the words of Mildred Loving, the woman whose courage made interracial marriage legal throughout America, marriage is about “the love, the commitment, the fairness, and the family that so many people, black or white, young or old, gay or straight seek in life. [We] support the freedom to marry for all.” now if this sunday isn’t enough for you you’ll probably want to come and check out Lavish Lounge’s new Monday night series for charity! MON – JUNE 1 – OUT ASTORIA AT LAVISH LOUNGE’S DRINKING SOCIALLY – 7PM TO 10PM – FREE 34-01 36 Avenue, Astoria, NY -718-361-0022 Tonight and EVERY Monday in the month of June, the owners of Lavish Lounge have agreed to donate ALL profits made beyond their nightly overhead to charity! Yeah SERIOUSLY! And during the month of June it’s going to be your best friends at Out Astoria! Of course they’ll still be doing 2-4-1 drinks from 7pm to 10pm so make sure you stop by and have a few happy hour cocktails before heading home…keep in mind every dollar you spend a certain portion of it is going back to Out Astoria to help us get more events running in this fabulous little neighborhood! Talk about a great way to get warmed up before NYC pride at the end of the month! See you there this Monday! and of course you don’t want to forget… SUN – JUNE 7 – THE 17TH ANNUAL QUEENS LESBIAN GAY BISEXUAL TRANSGENDER PRIDE PARADE – JACKSON HEIGHTS – 12PM TO 7PM – FREE! 75th St. and 37th Avenue, Jackson Heights, NY – 718-228-7599 Join us on Sunday June 7th for the 17th Annual Queens Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender Pride Parade & Multi-Cultural Festival. Don’t forget to look for Out Astoria at the street festival and in the parade…and you better say hi to Mimi and I at the judge’s tent on the parade route! 🙂 The Parade steps off at Noon from 89th St. and 37th Avenue in Jackson Heights, and marches to 75th St. and 37th Avenue. Where it meets up with the Multi-Cultural Festival on 75th St. and 37th Road. It’s a day full of food, performances, music, dancing and of course PRIDE !!! We look forward to seeing you there! THE USUAL “IN CLOSING” BLURB: If you’re not already a member of the Out Astoria facebook group you should join that too!http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=6026204257 And of course, don’t forget – we’re also on Why Leave Astoria?! – I went to a round table discussion they were having and these people are a hoot – even if you’re not gay you can get a lot from poking around their site – there’s tons of stuff going on locally that even my jaded ass didn’t know about! That’s all for this weekend kids…if I don’t catch you out at Lavish tonight, hopefully we’ll be sitting next to each other at brunch tomorrow! 🙂

Metro is on hand to help you plan your theater calendar for this week. Here's what's happening: "Soul Doctor," opening Thursday, tells story of the father of popular Jewish music, Shlomo Carlebach, and his unlikely friendship with Nina Simone. It stars Eric Anderson of "Kinky Boots," is directed by Daniel S. Wise and is written by Wise (book), David Schechter (lyrics) and Shlomo Carlebach (music). Tickets are on sale at Souldoctorbroadway.com. 'Love's Labours Lost' The Public’s second show in its free Shakespeare in the Park season is "Love's Labours Lost." Directed by Alex Timbers, with songs by Michael Friedman ("Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson") and book adaptation by Alex Timbers ("Peter and the Starcatcher"), this brand new musical based on Shakespeare’s classic comedy opens Monday. Free tickets are available at Shakespeareinthepark.org. This week is your final chance to see "The Nance," written by Douglas Carter Beane, directed by three-time Tony Award winner Jack O’Brien and starring two-time Tony Award winner Nathan Lane. The play involves the lives of burlesque performers during the 1930s. The last performance is Sunday. Tickets are on sale at www.lct.org. 'Nobody Loves You' "Nobody Loves You" — about a philosophy grad student who auditions for a reality TV dating show in an attempt to win back his ex-girlfriend — closes this weekend. It's written by Itamar Moses (book and lyrics) and Gaby Alter (music and lyrics), and directed by Michelle Tattenbaum. The last performance is on Sunday. Tickets are on sale at www.2st.com. Final performances take place this weekend. Written by Tarell Alvin McCraney, the play takes place in The Charles R. Drew Prep School for Boys, which is dedicated to the creation of strong, ethical black men. Pharus is one such young man who wants to take his rightful place as leader of the school's legendary gospel choir. The final performance is Sunday, Aug. 11. Tickets are on sale at Manhattantheatreclub.com.

I’m not sure how many of you follow boxing. But there’s a big boxing match coming up. The date is set for August 26,2017 in Las Vgeas. I think it could break pay-per view records. The boxing champ is Floyd Mayweather. Mayweather has held the welterweight,light welterweight and light middleweight title. His challenger is MMA fighter Conor McGregor. A boxer fighting a mixed martial artist is a bit unconventional. McGregor has never even had an amateur boxing match. Mayweather shouldn’t even be fighting this clown. So I understand why some die hard boxing fans are against this. They feel it’s disrespectful to the sport of boxing. But this is clearly for the money. Both fighters are looking to cash in. But boxing is about big fighters with big names. And the truth is Mayweather has beaten all top contenders. Mayweather is a big loud mouth. He’s great at trash talking and it really pisses off a lot of boxing fans. This is a pattern that has gone on for many years. Back in the sixties and seventies you had Muhammad Ali. Ali didn’t want to go to Vietnam for religious reasons. But many whites saw that has disrespectful and looked at Ali has a traitor to his country. Many whites wanted to see Ali lose his heavyweight title. Mayweather is much different than Ali. Mayweather doesn’t really speak up for black people and is apolitical for the most part. He is very flashy with his money and it turns off a lot of people. And he is currently have trouble with the IRS. I know many black people that don’t like him. But most I know will be rooting for him against McGregor. Conor McGregor talks a lot of trash too. But of course it’s a double standard when it’s a white man. Some say Conor is a racist. Not a big surprise there right? The bottom line is white people are always looking for their “great white hope”. And they are really excited about tis fight. As a matter of fact,most non-blacks always root against the black man. Most Mexicans,Asians and whites are going for McGregor. I know Mexican coworkers that hate Mayweather with a passion. Most of them can’t stand to see a black man at the top of any sport. They know they can’t compete with black men in basketball or football. That’s why so many Mexicans like soccer. They like sports where they can see themselves. Nothing wrong with that. But boxing is about one on one power. And when a black man dominates in an individual sport they don’t like it. And make no mistake this fight represents Black power vs White power. That’s why boxing matches that are interracial create the most buzz. Mayweather is American right? McGregor is from Dublin,Ireland. So where are the white Americans rooting for fellow American Mayweather?? I don’t see very many. That’s because race trumps nationality. It’s the same reason most whites root against Serena Williams even when she faces foreign tennis players. Her black skin makes her an “other”. Whites see her has different. It’s the same with Mayweather. Most whites want to see his 48-0 record broken. Who better to blemish his record than a white man. They are hoping for the “luck of the Irish”. Am I a huge Mayweather fan? Not really. He’s not pro-black or a Pan African. As a matter of fact,he was asked a few years ago about helping out African. He replied “What has Africa done for me?” So he’s obviously not a very conscious black man. He’s a loud mouth to likes to show off his expensive cars and planes. But he has the right to spend his money any way he likes. I’m not mad at him for his success. I just wish he was a more positive role model. I think he could do a better job at inspiring black youth who dream of big success. Having said that, I still would like him to beat Conor in their bout. I’m lookin at the bigger picture. I think it’s important from a historical boxing perspective. Many whites don’t want him to break the boxing record held by heavyweight champ Rocky Marciano. Marciano was the heavyweight champion from 1952-1956. He is a big hero in many Italian neighborhoods. His record was 49-0. He never loss one fight. But he only defended his title six times. That’s not very much in my opinion. Other champs have defended it many more times. Not only that but he beat a lot of weak fighters and their is speculation that many boxers threw those fights. Boxing was(and still is) controlled by the mafia from what I understand. And I think these Jewish promoters and Italian mobsters don’t want Marciano’s record broken. And definitely not broken by a black fighter. Mayweather has already tied Marciano at 49-0. That’s why if he beats Conor his record will be 50-0. But there’s a catch! If Mayweather beats him this win will have an asterick(*) next to it. Conor is not a “real” professional boxer. So whites people will be able to say Mayweather’s last fight was not against a real boxer so it doesn’t really count. In their minds he’ll still be tied with Marciano. And the record by their “great white hope” will still stand. They sure are slick aren’t they? White people never miss a chance to put one past you. But regardless I still hope Floyd beats his ass! Just on principle alone. The first time I saw actress Lisa Bonet was on The Cosby Show. The main stars on the show were Bill Cosby and Phylicia Rashad. The other daughters were played by actresses Tempestt Bledsoe,Keisha Knight Pulliam and Sabrina Le Beauf. But Lisa was clearly the most popular daughter. Lisa played Denise Huxtable.The show came on back in 1984. I remember a lot of black boys in my neighborhood had a crush on her. I wont lie,I thought she was pretty too. I remember a classmate telling me that she was biracial and had a Jewish mother. I did think it was a bit strange that she looked biracial but had two black parents. I remember on the Cosby Show there were all different shades of black people. I also remember she did a spinoff show called A Different World. I remember that the character Dwayne Wayne,played by Kadeem Hardison had a huge crush on Denise Huxtable. Eventually Lisa Bonet left the show to start a film career. After she left Dwayne fell in love with Whitley Gilbert played by Jasmine Guy(pictured above). The thing I noticed about these women is they are both biracial. Why is the mixed woman the object of affection so often? I didn’t think about it much as a child. But I started to think about it more as I got older. This is something that has been going on for quite some time. I’ve covered this subject before and it needs repeating. It’s not really about just Lisa Bonet. She’s just one of the first examples I remember where the mixed woman gets all the attention. I’ve seen this pattern over thirty years. And it’s steadily increasing. But it’s mostly about the fact that Hollywood still uses biracial women has the standard for beautiful black women. And also we as black people have a problem liking any group of people that look “less black”. This is a learned behavior. I’ve seen it in film,music and television. It’s really nothing new. I’ve seen it throughout my whole childhood. You may find some of these women attractive. But the issue is not their attractiveness. The issue is the over abundance of mixed women being in the forefront representing black beauty. There’s so many I could never list them all. But here’s just a small sample of some of the more popular ones. And even some biracial women you may not be that familiar with. Long before Mariah Carey or Alicia Keys….Sade was the biracial songbird that took the music world by storm. She was a huge star in the 80’s. I admit I like her music. She really has a lovely voice. I remember guys in my neighborhood would always say she was so beautiful. Her being biracial probably didn’t hurt too much either. They said she was wife material. It’s funny because rarely did I hear them say that about Anita Baker,Patti LaBelle or Jody Watley very much. In the 80’s biracial actress Rae Dawn Chong was the “black” actress in many Hollywood films. Although she was mostly paired with white men. Actress Jennifer Beals became a huge star when starred in the film Flashdance(1983). She played an exotic dancer in the film. Her mother is white and father is a black man. In the action film Action Jackson(1988) the late pop singer Vanity played the love interest to Carl Weathers. The biracial singer whose real name was Denise Matthews also dated pop/rock icon Prince. On the sitcom The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air(1990-1996) biracial actress Karyn Parsons played Hilary Banks. She played the cousin of Will Smith. In the interracial drama Jungle Fever(1991) biracial actress Lonette McKee played the wife of Wesley Snipes. He cheated on his biracial wife for an Italian woman. I guess his wife wasn’t white enough for him. In the film Mo Money(1992) Damon Wayans starred with biracial actress Stacey Dash. In Boomerang(1992) Eddie Murphy was paired with biracial actress Halle Berry. Robin Givens was also in the film but Halle was the women every guy wanted. Of course Halle was the go-to mulatto throughout the nineties. And even won an Oscar award in the process. She became the “pretty black woman” in Hollywood. Sade ruled the 80’s but in the 90’s Mariah Carey became the mulatto singer the media feel in love with. I remember on music channels they would say she was a beautiful black woman. Mariah used to always insist that she was biracial though. Lately she has been getting more in touch with her black side. Maybe it was because she married black actor/rapper Nick Cannon. They have since divorced after having two children. The sitcom Sister Sister(1994-1999) was a big hit among teenage girls. It starred biracial sisters Tia and Tamera Mowry. R&B pop singer/dancer Mya was biracial as well. She first came on the scene back in 1998. She did a little acting in a few films. Some thought she would be the next Janet Jackson. I haven’t heard much from her lately. Not sure what she’s been up to. In the 90’s biracial actress Kristen Wilson was paired with black actors like Eddie Murphy and Damon Wayans. Biracial actress Gloria Reuben was on the hit drama ER(1994-2009) Her character always had troubling finding love. I also remember actress Michael Michele(above) was on the drama ER the same time as Gloria Reuben. She was a nice addition since there wasn’t much “color” on that show. Of course she’s biracial as well. What’s the Worst That could Happen(2001) Starred Martin Lawrence and biracial actress Carmen Ejogo. She usually plays a black woman or a racially ambiguous role. This is a great video(above) by Youtuber Chrissie. She perfectly explains the double standard when it comes to biracial beauty. There’s a lot of dishonesty when people talk about colorism and the advantage of being biracial. Biracial actress Kandyse McClure is from South Africa. She has starred in films like Children of the Corn and Broken Kingdom. She’s most known for the sci-fi television show Battlestar Galactica(2004-2009). R&B singer Amerie debuted in 2002. There was a lot of buzz about her in the beginning. Her “exotic looks” come from her black father and Korean mother. Her only hit single was “One Thing”. Some thought she would dethrone Beyoncé as the next big thing. Didn’t quite happen though. R&B/pop singer Cassie Ventura(knows as Cassie) on the scene in 2006. Her father is Filipino and mother is black/Mexican. She has done some acting as well. She obviously wants to be a bigger star. Although she is most known for dating music producer Puff Daddy. She has been his on/off again side piece for the last few years. In the black drama ATL(2006) biracial actress Lauren London was the love interest to rapper/actor T.I. This film was supposed to make London the role model for all the biracial ghetto hood chicks. I guess she’s living up to it. She already has two children by two gangster rappers. One with Lil Wayne and Nipsey Hussle. In the film Idlewild(2006) biracial actress Paula Patton played the love interest to rapper/actor Andre Benjamin. Over the years she has starred alongside Denzel Washington and Tom Cruise. At one point she was dubbed the “next Halle Berry”. In the comedy film Norbit(2007) biracial actress Thandie Newton was paired with Eddie Murphy. Norbit was a horrible film. A total waste of film! I remember when pop singer Leona Lewis dropped her debut cd Spirit in 2007. The British born singer has a black father and white mother. She made a big splash in her debut. She has the light skin,light eyes and long hair….and could actually sing. It’s no wonder music critics called her the “new Mariah”. In the comedy action film Rush Hour 3(2007) mixed-raced actress Noemie Lenoir was the love interest for Chris Tucker. Singer Jordin Sparks won the show American Idol back in 2007. The biracial singer was seventeen at the time. I think that show is rigged anyway…I’m just saying. She has become quite a big star over the last several years. Biracial actress Tracee Ellis Ross stars on the silly sitcom show Black-ish(2014-). She plays the wife of Anthony Anderson. Her mother is music icon Diana Ross. Her father is a Jewish businessman. On the Fox show Gotham(2014-) biracial actress Jessica Lucas plays Tabitha Galavan. She is not only a vicious villain buy also plays a lesbian. You know Hollywood always has to throw in that sexual confusion. There are even more biracial women in news media as well. This picture(above) is ESPN sports reporter Sage Steele with her white husband. Steele is most known for being a white racist apologist. She never misses an opportunity to insult black people and the black struggle. Does that make her a mulatto coon? This is biracial news anchor Soledad O’Brien. She’s a news anchor on CNN. Just like Sage Steele she also married a white man. Look at those children. You can see the African features are just about gone! Kiss those black genes goodbye! But I guess that’s purpose of marrying white anyway. This picture(above) is of biracial news anchor Melissa Harris-Perry. She is pictured with her mother and father. She is an author and political commentator. She had her own show for four years(2012-2016) on MSNBC. Unlike Sage Steele and Soledad O’Brien she decided to marry a black man. On the Fox show Pitch(2016-) biracial actress Kylie Bunbury plays Ginny Baker. It’s a show about the first woman to play major league baseball. So…they couldn’t find a woman that was just black?? Nope! They have to cast the biracial woman as the center of attention. This picture was very interesting to me. I found it very eye opening. This is part of the cast of the Disney show K.C. Undercover(2015-present). From left to right the actresses are Zendaya Coleman,Jasmine Guy,Kara Royster and Tammy Townsend. The first three women all have white mothers. Townsend has a white father and a black mother. That’s right..all of these women are biracial. How is that possible that ALL of them are biracial? They casted all biracial women. Could this be an accident? I’ll let you decide. This young lady is rapper Miss Mulatto. That’s not a misprint,you read it right. Her actual rape name is Miss Mulatto. Her real name is Alyssa Stephens. The 18- year old rapper is most known for being on the reality show The Rap Game. I just find it interesting that she is capitalizing off of the popularity of being racially ambiguous. And using that as a way of being seen as unique in the rap world. Then we have pop singer Tinashe. She is biracial as well with a black father and white mother. She’s an okay dancer but not the best singer. But you don’t have to be able to sing in the music industry anymore. You just have to have the right “look”. Maybe Tinashe will be the next Zendaya. Or the next Jordin Sparks? On the next Mya? Who knows! I ‘m starting to get them all mixed up. Biracial actress Cynthia Addai-Robinson is getting a lot of roles lately. She has appeared in films like Colombiana and The Accountant. And shows like Texas Rising,Arrow and Shooter. Actress Jamie Lee Kirchner(pictured above) was born in Germany. She has a black mother and white father. She has been in shows like CSI,Dollhouse and Bull. Although she has brown skin she is still biracial. Some people get fooled by this. Not all biracial women have really light skin and light colored eyes. Some of a bit more melanin but they don’t always have African-textured hair. Many of them have lanky hair with a bit of a curl to it. This is just a small sample of biracial actresses and singers. I could’ve listed a lot more. But the main point is that many of these white Hollywood casting agents don’t think that deep brown skinned and dark chocolate-colored(not biracial) women are good enough. They don’t have the “exotic look” they’re looking for. They don’t want African(Original)looking women with black features representing the black race. And they purposely promote biracial women in films and music as the standard. Otherwise why do they keep doing this? People say “well black people come in many different shades”. Okay then why do the biracial women get so much of the attention. We all know why. The truth is white people(other races and some blacks) believe that mixed race women are more attractive than black women. They don’t think that black women that are 85% black or more should be the standard. But this colorism madness needs to STOP! There are plenty of darker skinned actresses and singers that don’t get the shine they deserve. I want all my sisters to get the limelight. She can have full lips,thick thighs,african textured hair and dark skin. This is not about bashing biracial woman. Like I have said before,I have biracial people in my family. I have cousins that have married whites and Mexicans(Hispanic whites). I But I don’t consider them black..they are mixed. This one-drop rule has gotten out of control. I don’t have any hatred towards them. I have nothing against them. But it’s time to stop putting black beauty on the back burner. Black/African women have their own unique beauty that should be celebrated. I just don’t think it’s “fair” to give them most of the shine while black women are an afterthought. Lisa Bonet is a pretty woman. But a black woman shouldn’t have to look like Lisa to get some credit for her beauty.

Prophecy Update Newsletter IN TODAY'S NEWSLETTER... When Will Christ Return? (Sooner vs. Later) - Pete Garcia - I walked home from work yesterday, which I am not prone to do often. Not because of the distance, but usually I am much too hurried either coming or going to bother with it. However, the weather was just so good I could not resist taking advantage of it. The last portion of my walk is approximately a half-mile, and I decided instead of taking the road, to take the sidewalk path that leads behind the base housing. As I started down it, I noticed an anthill along the side of the path. A thought immediately popped into my head, if I were an ant, I wonder how long it would take me to travel this same distance? Well, it takes me about 15-20 minutes to walk it at a normal pace. I reckoned that an ant travelling a half mile (without stopping) would take hours, even possibly a full day to make the same trek. But what if I were twenty-feet taller? Of course, being twenty-five feet (and change) tall, my pace would be considerably faster. I bet I could do it in under five minutes. Naturally, I began to ponder the "deeper" prophetic implications of size versus distance as it relates to time. I know I know...I am weird like that. That got me thinking of an article I read a long time ago from Don Koenig's The Prophetic Years. He is one of the most pragmatic, astute, and prolific prophecy writers still writing today. Several years back, he did a comparison study of the different times when the Lord could return at the Second Coming. Admittedly, I was somewhat discouraged with the models he showed that extended our time into the 2040's. Mind you, this was 2007, and looking at the possibility of the Second Coming happening some thirty to forty years into the future was not very appealing to me. Now the year is 2018, and I have revisited this particular article and have seen how accurate his assessments have been pertaining to what he thought would arise in the years to come since 2007. It is uncanny. I believe his prognostications then were far more accurate than just about anyone else's I have read anywhere. Where 2034-2047 seemed a lifetime away to a young man who was fired up about prophecy, these dates do not seem very far away to the older, more tempered version of myself. However, he has since revised that scenario to a much closer window (admitting that he erred on the side of caution with the 2050 setting), showing that he could not see the Second Coming extending any later than 2035. I tend to agree with him. If you back that up by a minimum of seven years, that puts the Rapture "window" around 2027. Barring a gap of time between the Rapture and the start of the 70th Week, the Rapture could be much sooner. If anyone else had come out and said it, I suppose I would have just chucked their opinion in the "wait and see" category. However, regarding the timing of the Second Coming, Don has always presented a very cautious and studied view, which is what got me excited. If he is revising his views on this to be sooner (rather than later), I think there is probably a great deal of prudence built into that revision. However, not only Don, or myself see this Second Coming sooner rather than later (which implies a sooner Rapture as well), but many other orthodox and studied prophecy experts, ministers, and watchers everywhere are seeing the same thing. Is that a coincidence, or is it divinely inspired? What we are witnessing is the rapid, intentional dismantling of all the current natural, cultural, religious, political, and economic orders, into one (a new world order) that the Bible says is coming. Especially since the elections of both Obama and Trump. I imagine that from God's perspective, the sea of humanity can at times; resemble a freshly stirred and angry Fire Ant mound (this hearkening back to Psalms 2). We rush about attacking anything we can with no discernable pattern of advance. We frenziedly crawl over each other and when we do discern that the threat is gone, we retreat into our darkened tunnels doing pretending that the outside world does not exist. For most of human history (o/a 6,000 years), man has been limited to the speed of horse, in that the masses were generally limited to archaic technology [not including the antediluvian era]. In other words, for most of human history, we were trudging along at an ant's pace down the timeline of God's prophetic path. Fortunately, our humanistic ambitions were tempered by our own lack of technology, which limited the amount of damage we could do to ourselves. Imagine if Alexander the Great had M-1 Abram tanks, or if Hitler atomic bombs at their disposal at the beginning of their European expansionism? Along that same timeline for mankind, we have had what military historians refer to as a RMA's, or a Revolution in Military Affairs. These inventions/tactics/etc. significantly changed the nature of battle and warfare. For example; 14th century-the longbow 16th century-architectural fortifications 17th century-European tactical reforms 17th and 18th centuries-naval warfare introduced 18th century-British financial revolution 18th and 19th centuries-industrial revolution 19th century-American Civil War 20th century-World War I -World War II -Strategic air war I would add that the rate of change has only intensified going into the 21st-century with the development of: Cyber, Nano, space warfare, robotics, information processing, genetic editing, digitized crypto-currencies, quantum technology, electromagnetic pulse weapons, artificial intelligence, and unmanned systems creating whole new markets and arenas with both civilian and military applications. RMAs have significantly changed how nations conducted warfare, which has affected the rest of the course of human affairs. Nevertheless, what is routinely ignored by the world is the Revolution in Prophetic Affairs (RPAs). Just like the list above, before the 20th century, biblical prophecy progressed (seemingly) at a sluggish rate from the First Century. Once national Israel went into diaspora (circa AD70 courtesy of the Roman Legions), the Church in large part, lost its ability to understand where we were on God's prophetic calendar. However, in the 20th-Century, Someone stirred the anthill and things have begun happening at a frenzied pace. The prophetic events along God's prophetic timeline can succinctly be summed up into three broad events/movements: Whereas man could not know where he was on God's prophetic calendar pre-1897, we can definitively know where we are today, given all that has transpired over the last 120 years. We have gone from wondering where we are, to wondering when it (the Rapture) will happen. We have been marching along the path of time making marginal progress as it relates to God's prophetic calendar. The length of the path has not changed, however, our size (size = our technological advancements, plus Israel, plus the geopolitical situation) is what has changed relative to it. It seems as if time is speeding up similar to how a kid and adult view time. To a four-year old, a year seems like a lifetime away when they are looking forward to another birthday or Christmas. To a forty-three year old however, a year is not very long at all. This is the time-distance relationship. Simply put, a forty-three year old has lived through more years then a four-year old, thus the time (a year) is not as drastic in relation to perception, even though the year is still the same length of time. The prophet Daniel was told that the end would come as a flood, before the final last seven years, and we can certainly see all these things happening with greater frequency and intensity. The increase of wars, rumors of war, natural disasters, pestilence, violence, wickedness, and apathy are just par for the course these days to the unbelieving world. In 2007, Don Koenig set 2047 as the outer marker for the Second Coming. He did this only after consulting a variety of factors: Biblical patterns and cycles, Scriptural prophecies and signs, non-canonical historical texts, and many other resources from other learned-eschatologists. His conclusion was that the absolute no later than (NLT) time-frame 2024-2047 while still remaining consistent with Christ's own admonishment in Matthew's Fig Tree Parable (Matt. 24:32-35). In 2018 (11 years later), he adjusted that NLT to be 2035 for the Second Coming. If we subtracted seven-years for Daniel's 70th Week (aka...The Tribulation), then we are potentially at 2028 for the NLT time of the Rapture. Granted, that does not take into account any type of "gap" between the Rapture and the Tribulation. For me, the gap will probably be around three and a half years...the same length of time for Christ's ministry while He was on the earth. Many eschatology experts have futilely tried to pin Hosea 6:2 either to the birth of Christ, or to His death. However, both of these exact dates have been in contention for millennia and likely will not get resolved this side of the Rapture. What we do know definitively, is that of the length of His ministry (which transitioned the Old Testament into the New per Hebrews 9:16-17), was three and a half years. Is it possible that the gap of time between the Rapture and the start of the 70th Week is also three and a half years? Especially considering that this would allow time for the Gog/Magog War cleanup (Ezekiel 39:9-10), the arrival of the Two Witnesses (Elijah and Enoch and/or Moses), the building of a new third Temple, and the confirming of a covenant? (Ezekiel 38-39, Matt. 17:1-3, Hebrews 9:27, Malachi 4:5, Revelation 11:1-14) If that is the case and 2035 is a solid (best-theorized) date for the Second Coming, we would have to subtract seven-years (70th Week), plus another three and a half (gap), we would be somewhere around 2024...just six years from today. Since so many have tried to predict when Christ would return, my opinion, as well as Don's (or anyone else's for that matter), are just educated shots in the dark. We look at Scripture, we look at the facts on the ground, and we try to piece together where they might point too. However, it is not as dark as it once was (2 Peter 1:19). The closer we draw to That Day, the more things fall into place and the clearer the picture becomes (1 Thess. 5:1-3). One thing we do know is that the time is growing exceedingly short. We may not know the day or hour, but we can definitely see the day approaching (Hebrews 10:25). So stay strong, stay watching, stay in the Word, keep the faith, and remember what Christ said to those of the Philadelphian Church, Because you have kept My command to persevere, I also will keep you from the hour of trial which shall come upon the whole world, to test those who dwell on the earth. Behold, I am coming quickly! Hold fast what you have, that no one may take your crown. Revelation 3:10-11 Even So, Maranatha! Syria & The End Times - By Britt Gillette - With all the events taking place in Syria right now, many people are asking, "What does the Bible have to say about Syria and the end times? Is this the beginning of World War III and Armageddon?" Those are legitimate questions, but let me assure you, this is not the end. How can I be so sure? Because the Bible says Armageddon takes place at the end of the seven year Tribulation (Revelation 16:16), and the Tribulation has yet to begin. That said, I believe recent events in Syria have great significance when it comes to the study of bible prophecy. This doesn't mean you're guaranteed to see the immediate fulfillment of any specific bible prophecy. However, it does mean you should pay close attention. Why? Because, at the very least, these events are setting the table for the fulfillment of multiple bible prophecies. Just look around you. The signs of the Second Coming are everywhere. The restoration of Israel (Isaiah 11:12)... The Jews back in Jerusalem (Luke 21:24-28)... The Gospel preached to the world (Matthew 24:14)... An increase in travel and knowledge (Daniel 12:4)... The rise of the European Union (Daniel 2:43)... And many more. Jesus says once you see all these signs come together, His return is near (Luke 21:28). This means the Tribulation is close, and you should expect to see the fulfillment of many end times prophecies in the near future. Below are two prophetic events especially relevant to the ongoing events in Syria. The first could take place at any moment. I believe a careful study of the Bible reveals the second event will take place sometime after the war foretold in Psalm 83. Either way, both events could be very close to fulfillment. While both could still be several years away, breaking events could lead to their fulfillment in this very hour. The Destruction of Damascus (Isaiah 17) Chapter 17 in the Book of Isaiah paints a sobering picture. In it, the city of Damascus is a pile of rubble. The Bible says it will disappear from the face of the earth and become a heap of ruins (Isaiah 17:1). At the same time, large parts of northern Israel will also lie in ruin (Isaiah 17:3). Now, before you say this prophecy was fulfilled during Old Testament times, keep this in mind... This passage says Damascus will cease to be a city (Isaiah 17:1). It will be utterly and completely destroyed. Yet, Damascus is one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities on record. Its history goes back more than 5,000 years. At 2,600 years old, the Book of Isaiah itself is new compared to Damascus! This prophecy is yet to be fulfilled. So how do current events in Syria relate to Isaiah 17? Following the U.S. strike on the Syrian Syrian chemical weapons facilities, a statement was issued by the Russian ambassador to the US saying: 'Again, we are being threatened. We warned that such actions will not be left without consequences." While this statement was clearly in response to a U.S. attack, Russia, Iran & Syria have made it clear they will respond to any nation they view as an aggressor. This includes Israel and makes a much more likely target than Syria or Russia retaliating direclty against the US. Hezbollah is part of the Iran/Syria/Russian alliance and would be more than glad to launch targeted attacks into Israel with backing from these nations. While it hasn't been a major news story, Israel has also been bombing Syria. They've attacked Hezbollah targets in Syria several times over the last year and last week bombed an airbase that resulted in several Iranian Republican Guard deaths, including a Colonel. Hassan Nasrallah, The leader of Lebanon's Hezbollah terror group said the Israeli airstrike on an air base in central Syria that killed seven Iranians was a "historic mistake" that has brought Israel into direct conflict with Tehran. "This is unprecedented in seven years of war in Syria that Israel directly targets Iran's Revolutionary Guard," Nasrallah said. Israel issued it's own threats in response, with senior Israeli security officials saying that if Iran strikes at Israel from Syrian territory, "Assad's regime and Assad himself will disappear from the map." They continued, "Our recommendation to Iran is that it does not try to act because Israel is determined to continue on this issue to the very end." If Syria and its allies view their situation as desperate, they may decide to use these bombing raids as an excuse to launch a chemical attack on Israel. This is because drawing Israel into the war could rally the Muslim world to Syria's side. Saddam Hussein tried this same tactic during the first Gulf War. In 1991, he fired Scud missiles at Israel in an effort to draw them into the war and break up the coalition aligned against him. If Syria, Hezbollah, or any of their allies managed to strike Israel with a weapon of mass destruction, the response would be swift. Israel would most likely respond in kind. If their intelligence revealed the Assad regime was behind such an attack, nuclear retaliation on Damascus would not be out of the question. While this is all speculation, and not necessary how Isaiah 17 will be fulfilled, it shows how realistic a near-term fulfillment of this prophecy could be. With current instability in the region, and so many warring factions in Syria, events could spiral out of control very quickly. At this point in time, it's not difficult to imagine a scenario in which Damascus is completely destroyed. The Gog of Magog War (Ezekiel 38-39) Current events in Syria are also setting the stage for the Gog of Magog War. More than 2,600 years ago, the prophet Ezekiel warned of a future time when a vast coalition of nations will attack Israel. Ezekiel identifies these nations as "Magog, Rosh, Meschech, Tubal, Persia, Cush, Put, Gomer, and Beth-togarmah" (Ezekiel 38:1-6). These nations have since come to be known as the Gog of Magog alliance. Now, with the exception of Persia and Cush, I realize most people have never heard of these nations. But keep in mind Ezekiel used the names of these nations as they were known in his day. Each one is a clearly identifiable nation today. So who are these nations in our day and time? Below is a list. The Old Testament name is listed first, followed by its modern day equivalent: Rosh = Russia Magog = Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Afghanistan Persia = Iran Cush = Sudan Put = Libya Meshech, Tubal, Gomer, and Beth-togarmah = Turkey Collectively, these nations have never attacked Israel. In fact, in the history of the world, such an alliance of nations has never existed. But today we see it coming together right in front of us. Since 1989, Russia and Iran have gradually strengthened their diplomatic, military, and economic ties. Yet, in the first 2,600 years after Ezekiel recorded his prophecies, the nations of Russia and Persia (Iran) had never been part of any alliance of any sort. Never. Cooperation between Russia and Iran, especially military cooperation, didn't take place. This led many people to claim Ezekiel's prophecy was symbolic. Why? Because the idea of the Gog of Magog war seemed absurd. After all, at the dawn of the 20th Century, Russia was an orthodox Christian nation and Israel didn't exist! But those who believed in a literal interpretation of the Bible knew otherwise. They knew all prophecy would come to pass. Because bible prophecy doesn't come from mere humans. It's God's Word (2 Peter 1:19-21). In the years since, the stage has been set for the literal fulfillment of Ezekiel 38-39. A 1917 communist revolution transformed Russia from a Christian nation to an atheist nation. In 1948, Israel once again became a nation. And earlier this week, Russia and Iran issued a joint statement vowing to respond with force to any aggressor. And Turkey? For decades, people have wondered how Turkey could be a part of this alliance. After all, Turkey is a member of NATO. And in late 2015, Turkey shot down a Russian jet when it strayed into Turkish airspace. Russia and Turkey seem to be at odds. So how could Turkey be a part of this alliance? At first glance, it seems unlikely. But in the summer of 2016, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan jailed thousands of political opponents. And recently, Turkey voted to eliminate its parliamentary form of government and give expanded powers to Erdogan. Ultimately, this could be what pushes Turkey into the Russian sphere of influence. Erdogan is an anti-Western, pro-Islamist leader, and he's worked hard to strengthen Turkey's ties with Russia. He has had several heated exchanges with Israel's Netanyahu in the press and has shown support for the Hamas uprising along the border in Gaza. Turkey has clearly shifted from friend to foe over the past decade and presents a direct threat to Israel having one of the largest militaries in the region. In light of these developments, we can see the Gog of Magog alliance coming together for the first time in history. For the first time since Israel re-emerged on the world scene in May 1948, the main players of the Ezekiel 38-39 alliance are all working together. Even more important, they all have military personnel close to Israel's border. The stage is set for the fulfillment of Ezekiel 38-39. What Will Ultimately Happen? While terrible destruction awaits Damascus (Isaiah 17:1), northern Israel (Isaiah 17:3), and the entire Gog of Magog Alliance (Ezekiel 38:19-22), we have reason to be hopeful. Because of these events, the Bible says people will soon look to and acknowledge their Creator - the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob (Isaiah 17:7). When He strikes down Israel's enemies, the whole world will know He is the God Israel (Ezekiel 38:23). In the days and weeks ahead, we can't be certain what will happen in Syria. But in the long run, we can be absolutely certain the events of Isaiah 17 and Ezekiel 38-39 will be fulfilled. Damascus will lie in ruin, and the Gog of Magog Alliance will be destroyed. These events are certain. Because whatever He has declared, God will bring to pass (Isaiah 14:24). And when these things happen, the world will no longer be able to deny Him. He will destroy the enemies of Israel in plain view of the entire world. "In this way," says the Lord. "I will show my greatness and holiness, and I will make myself known to all the nations of the world. Then they will know that I am the Lord." Ezekiel 38:23 (NLT) The Feasts of the Lord - By Daymond Duck - In Lev. Chapter 23, God identified seven feasts that He wanted the Jews to observe in their seasons. Three of those feasts (Passover, Unleavened Bread and Firstfruits) occur in the spring season; one of those feasts (Weeks or Pentecost) occurs in the summer season; and the remaining three feasts (Trumpets, Atonement and Tabernacles) occur in the fall season. God told the Jews to proclaim these feasts to be "holy convocations." This means God wanted these feasts to be set apart for a special purpose. The purpose was twofold: 1) The feasts were gatherings that remember past events, and 2) They were gatherings that reveal future events. The Lord's Supper is a good example. Paul said, "For as often as ye eat this bread, and drink this cup, ye do show the Lord's death (a past event) till he come" (a future event; I Cor. 11:26). The past events that God selected for the feasts of the Lord are not haphazard choices or coincidences. God selected the past events that He wanted to be remembered because they are "a shadow of good things to come" (Heb. 10:1). The Jews were meticulous about remembering the past events, but only a handful (called Messianic Jews) understand that they reveal future events. One reason for this lack of understanding could be that certain Scriptures (Isa. 53 is an example) are omitted from regular Jewish Scripture readings. Many Jews make themselves willingly ignorant of the future events because they don't read certain Scriptures. Before one condemns the Jews for this, it should be noted that some publishers of Christian Sunday school lessons often omit prophetic passages from the Sunday school lessons. These publishers are guilty of doing the same thing the Jews do. Anyway, Jews celebrate the feasts of the Lord in the spring, summer and fall. Think about it! God gave the Jews three spring feasts that reveal the Gospel (the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus), one summer feast that reveals the church (believing Gentiles and Messianic Jews), and three fall feasts that reveal the return of Jesus and His reign on earth. The three Spring Feasts - Passover, Unleavened Bread and Firstfruits - reveal the gospel (the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus). Concerning Passover, it is no coincidence that the Jews remember the past by selecting a lamb without blemish on Nisan 10 (Jesus, the unblemished Lamb of God, made His Triumphal Entry into Jerusalem on Nisan 10); that the Jews killed a lamb on Nisan 14 (Jesus was killed on Nisan 14); that the Jews killed the lamb at 3 pm (Jesus died at 3 pm); that the Jews didn't break any of the lamb's bones (none of Jesus' bones were broken); and the Jews didn't leave any of the lamb for the next day (the body of Jesus was removed from the cross before the next day). Concerning Unleavened Bread, it is no coincidence that the Jews remember the past by eating unleavened bread on Nisan 15 (Jesus was the unleavened, sinless, Bread of Life whose body was in the grave on Nisan 15); that the Jews ate unleavened bread with stripes on it (Jesus was beaten with 39 lashes), that the Jews ate unleavened bread with holes in it (Jesus' hands and feet were pierced). Concerning Firstfruits, it is no coincidence that the Jews remember the feast of Firstfruits on Nisan 16 (the first time their ancestors ate food that was raised in the Promised Land was on Nisan 16, exactly 40 years after they left Egypt), and because Jesus is the Firstfruits of those to be raised from the dead. The one Summer Feast reveals the church. It is no coincidence that the Jews remember the birth of Judaism on Sivan 6, exactly 50 days after Firstfruits, because that reveals the birth of the church on Sivan 6, exactly 50 days after Firstfruits. That's right; the Jews received the Ten Commandments and came under the Law on the same day the church (120 believers) was to receive the Holy Spirit and come under grace. The Three Fall Feasts - Trumpets, Atonement and Tabernacles - reveal the return of Jesus and His reign on earth (the Rapture, Second Coming and Millennium). Concerning Trumpets, among other things, God told the Jews to use trumpets to assemble the people, announce feast days, etc. (Num. 10:1-10). The trump of God will sound to raise the dead, assemble the Church and announce the Rapture (I Thess. 4:15-17). Concerning Atonement, the Jews offer two goats (one a sin substitute, the other a sin bearer) to be a temporary atonement for their sins during the year (Lev. 16), and this reveals that Jesus would be the believers' sin substitute, sin bearer and permanent atonement (Isa. 53:4-6; I Pet. 2:24; Heb. 8:12). Concerning Tabernacles, the Jews remember that their ancestors dwelled (or tabernacled) in temporary housing (tents) in the wilderness, and God dwelled with them in a temporary house (the Ark of the Covenant in the Tabernacle); but a time is coming when God will permanently dwell with His people (Jewish and Gentile believers). The reader should know that there is much more to the Feasts of the Lord than has been said, but the point of this article is that the feasts reveal the Gospel, the Church and the return and reign of Jesus. Wouldn't it be great if publishers and pastors would stop making themselves willingly ignorant of these things? Prophecy Plus Ministries, Inc. Daymond & Rachel Duck US-Russia Military Encounter in Syria: Implications for Israel - By Louis Rene Beres - For the most part, Israel has always been able to identify and manage its own particular involvements with Syria, regarding both the incessantly criminal regime of Bashar al-Assad and the sub-national groups in-league with the dictator or opposed to him. Nonetheless, the increasingly belligerent rhetoric of the American president toward both Assad and his principal mentor in Moscow now suggest some potentially imminent and far-reaching conflict transformations in the entire region. In turn, such changes could quickly produce very grave hazards to Israel, risks that lie ominously beyond its own national scope of operational competence or political influence. Ultimately, of course, the most serious of any such transformations would concern a nuclear war between the superpowers. In those notably unprecedented circumstances, virtually all traditional geopolitical models that were once au courant in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem would summarily become moot. For the United States, the corresponding "trick" will be to meet both military and legal objectives without simultaneously generating a nuclear war. Significantly, at least on the military side, there are no available experts on the subject of nuclear war - not in Washington, not in Moscow, not in Jerusalem. This is the case, moreover, whether we are presently concerned with deliberate or inadvertent nuclear war. Arguably, in this particular geo-strategic context, the latter would appear more portentous than the former, at least from the standpoint of plausibility or presumptive likelihood. For US President Donald Trump, it will be necessary above all to avoid any direct military confrontations with Russian forces or identifiable weapon system assets. In this connection, it is entirely possible that Russian President Vladimir Putin would deploy Russian soldiers to some of the areas most likely to be targeted by the United States. These Russian deployments could be undertaken for purely tactical reasons, or instead for less conspicuous purposes of enhancing credible deterrence. In essence, the latter purposes would be to erect a suitable "trip wire." Accordingly, the purpose of the deployed Russian troops would not be to actually fight against the Americans, but rather to "trip" certain expectedly desirable escalations with the United States. Naturally, drawing an exact line between desirable and undesirable escalations here would prove very difficult in practice, and could have a broad variety of possible conflict outcomes. To be sure, these murky and historically unique circumstances could slowly or suddenly escalate out of control, triggering either an inadvertent or very deliberate nuclear war. In either case, most other states in the Middle East could be more-or-less directly impacted, Israel, of course, in particular. Significantly, because true probabilities can only be calculated according to the discernible frequency of pertinent past events, there would be no reliable way to figure out how it would end. In the obviously worst-case scenario, the ending would involve multiple firings of nuclear missiles and/or bombs - issuing from both superpower combatants. What about the Russian soldiers? Their only predictable function in such an inherently ambiguous scenario would be to die. Plainly, they could serve no other ordinary military function. Furthermore, even if Vladimir Putin would not purposefully introduce a trip wire force into the conflict, his already deployed S-400 advanced surface-to-air missile systems could readily elicit identically perilous consequences. In essence, because the Americans would necessarily strike these missile targets first, Russian military personnel could plausibly be among the first casualties of any impending superpower military engagement in Syria. Then what? For Israel, the answers would depend, in large measure, upon the actual physical and human costs being inflicted upon the Jewish State, whether intentional or as "collateral" harms. Quo Vadis? Where might President Trump and the United States go now? It's a question for Israelis, as well as for Americans. Insofar as Mr. Trump has already announced an allegedly irrevocable decision to employ armed force against Syria, the president's operational choices are probably foreseeable in Moscow. In response, Mr. Putin could take various prompt military steps to counter the growing American preparations or to best avoid any forms of superpower military engagement altogether. For Israel, that decision taken in Moscow could produce manifestly different but still decisively consequential outcomes. All things considered, US President Donald Trump's available policy options could lead incrementally and/or inexorably to certain direct US-Russian military encounters. Among other things, Mr. Trump's most advanced strategic thinkers (not ordinary tactical planners) would then need to work very quickly and capably through the hideously complex dialectics of virtually all possible nuclear attack scenarios. In the final analysis, what will be needed in Washington will be exceptional intellectual skills, not just the far more usual and orthodox operational talents. For the United States, the overriding task must not be to merely maximize target damage in Syria, but also to prevent any grievously destructive nuclear war in the area. Depending upon the precise extent to which US President Donald Trump can keep this sensitive equation correctly in mind, the resultant outcomes will be more or less welcome in Israel. For the moment, less seems far more plausible. Daily Jot: Syria Bombings and Prophecy - Bill Wilson - President Donald Trump did what he said he would do: Bomb Syria for its participation in gassing its own civilians. In doing so, the president also made it very clear what he thought of Russian President Vladimir Putin, tweeting: "President Putin, Russia and Iran are responsible for backing animal Assad. Big price to pay." In announcing the missile response, Trump said, "Russia must decide if it will continue down this dark path or if it will join with the civilized nations as a force for stability and peace." Interesting that many of the prophetic players on the world stage are gathered in Syria where the prophet Isaiah wrote, "Damascus is taken away from being a city, and it shall be a ruinous heap." Turkey and Iran are there in Syria. Turkey has been, at least publicly, supporting the removal of dictator-president Bashar Assad. Iran is supporting Assad because Syria is essentially a vassal state of Iran. They have a mutual defense pact. Russia, Turkey and Iran recently met to develop a peace plan, not only for Syria, but for all of the Middle East. Russia supports Assad and Iran in this conflict. But Turkey, Russia and Iran appear to be working together more than just in the public relations/propaganda world. The entire conflict arose out of the immediate past US "president's" support for Arab Spring uprisings where the US supported various terrorist groups connected with al Qaeda to overthrow Assad. There has been a lot of talk that this is the time that perhaps Isaiah's prophecy will be fulfilled. Damascus, after all, is hardly a city nowadays. It is maintaining a heartbeat after years of civil war and fighting that includes various al Qaeda terrorist groups, Hezbollah from Iran, Russian interests, American interests, Turkey, the Islamic State, and, of course the Assad government. The ingredients are there for the total destruction of Damascus. Damascus may be devastated by this massive gathering of many forces, but it is not the total destruction prophesied by Isaiah. As with most prophecy, it often appears to be fulfilled, but in types and shadows, layers, and signs before it is ultimately fulfilled. The context of Isaiah 17 is judgment on nations that come against Israel, beginning with Assyria in Chapter 9 and continuing with Palestina, Moab, Ethiopia, Egypt, Shebna, and Tyre through Chapter 24. The phrase "In/At that day" is mentioned no less than four times in this short chapter of 14 verses. This phrase is an indicator for the Day of the Lord, meaning when the Lord returns to judge the nations that came against Israel. Verse 7 says, "At that day shall a man look to his Maker, and his eyes shall have respect to the Holy One of Israel." Verse 11 speaks that the harvest shall be a day of grief and of desperate sorrow. Context is key. It's dangerous to take just one verse and develop a scenario or doctrine around it. In Syria, we are seeing prophetic movement, but we will know when God fulfills the prophecy. It will be clear. Daily Devotion: Walking Epistles - By Greg Laurie - Clearly you are an epistle of Christ, ministered by us, written not with ink but by the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of flesh, that is, of the heart. -2 Corinthians 3:3 Sammy Mason was a stunt pilot and a committed follower of Jesus Christ. He also was a flight instructor at the Santa Paula Airport in California. One day a man came to see him about some flight training, because he had recently purchased an antique Stearman biplane. The man's name was Steve McQueen. Having conquered auto racing and motocross, the world-famous actor wanted to learn how to fly. McQueen had been raised by an alcoholic mother who had little to no time for him, and he had spent time at the Boys Republic in Chino Hills. He had ascended to the top in Hollywood and was making millions of dollars, yet there was a big hole in his heart. McQueen spent hours in the cockpit with Sammy Mason, and he admired him. One day he asked his instructor what his secret was, and Mason told him about his faith in Jesus Christ. Then McQueen asked if he could attend church with him. They went to Ventura Missionary Church, where Pastor Leonard DeWitt preached the gospel and invited people to come to Christ at each service. After a few weeks passed, McQueen had an extended conversation with the pastor, which resulted in McQueen's committing his life to Jesus Christ. We have heard of Steve McQueen, but we probably hadn't heard of Sammy Mason. One person can make all the difference. We all have something to do. We all have a sphere of influence. We want to do what we can while we can. If you're a believer, then you are a representative of Christ. You may be the only Christian some people ever will know. It's been said that Christians are walking epistles, written by God and read by men. You may be the only Bible that some people ever read. 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20jul19. Breda, Netherlands 🇳🇱 20jul19. Breda, Netherlands 🇳🇱 20jul19. ˡᵉᵃᵛⁱⁿᵍ ᵇʳᵘˢˢᵉˡˢ⁻ᵐⁱᵈⁱ ʰᵉᵃᵈⁱⁿᵍ ᵗᵒʷᵃʳᵈˢ ᵗʰᵉ ⁿᵉᵗʰᵉʳˡᵃⁿᵈˢ #graffiti #landscape 20jul19. The Hague, Netherlands 🇳🇱 20jul19 ᵀʳᵃⁱⁿ ᵖⁱᶜˢ ᵒᶠ ᵍʳᵃᶠᶠⁱᵗⁱ ᵇᵉᵗʷᵉᵉⁿ ᵀʰᵉ ᴴᵃᵍᵘᵉ, ᴺᵉᵗʰᵉʳˡᵃⁿᵈˢ ᵃⁿᵈ ᴮʳᵘˢˢᵉˡˢ, ᴮᵉˡᵍⁱᵘᵐ #ᵍʳᵃᶠᶠⁱᵗⁱ #ᵉᵘʳᵒᵖᵉ JULY 20, 2019 Experts in authoritarianism advise to keep a list of things subtly changing around you, so you’ll remember. This list is from: https://theweeklylist.org/weekly-list/week-140/ and the art is either pics taken by me, or found on social media during the week. This week, in a shocking display of racism, Trump tweeted that four congresswomen of color should “go back” to the countries they came from. Amid Republican silence, rather than backing off, Trump ramped up his attacks, leading to a mid-week rally where his supporters chanted “send them back.” At first Trump seemed to distance himself from his supporters’ chants, but the next day doubled-down, calling the supporters “incredible patriots,” while escalating his attacks on the congresswomen further. Still, by week’s end, no Republicans publicly criticized Trump, rather backing him or seeking to redirect his racist comments to a discussion of political ideology. This week as the House voted to condemn Trump’s racist tweet, and to hold Attorney General William Barr and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross in criminal contempt on the citizenship question — yet both votes were symbolic gestures, having no real impact. Questions were raised by members of Congress about Barr’s involvement with dismissing charges against the police officer who allegedly strangled Eric Garner to death, and in ending the Southern District of New York’s investigation into campaign finance violations over hush-money payments to silence two women. The House also entertained an impeachment resolution from Rep. Al Green, which 95 House Democrats voted to advance — the highest level of support so far — as Robert Mueller prepares to testify next week. 1 On Saturday, AP reported the vast majority of 10,000 election jurisdictions nationwide will be using Windows 7 or an older operating system, no longer supported by Microsoft, for voting in the 2020 election. 2 Windows 7 reaches its “end of life” on January 14, leaving the systems vulnerable to hacking. States impacted include Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Florida, Iowa, Indiana, Arizona, North Carolina, Michigan, and Georgia. 3 On Wednesday, the Democratic National Committee sent out an alert to presidential campaigns warning the popular face-transforming app called FaceApp was created by developers in St. Petersburg, Russia. 4 The DNC told staffers “delete the app immediately.” The app was launched in 2017 by the St. Petersburg-based company Wireless Lab, and has been used more than 80 million times. 5 On Wednesday, Microsoft announced it has detected more than 740 infiltration attempts by nation-state actors of U.S.-based political parties, campaigns, and other democracy-focused organizations in the past year. 6 Microsoft did not publicly reveal how many infiltration attempts were successful, but noted similar targeting occurred in the early stages of the 2016 and 2018 elections. 7 Politico reported Jonathan Karl, the new president of the White House Correspondents’ Association, asked press secretary Stephanie Grisham to resume daily White House briefings. The last briefing was on March 11. 8 On Saturday, Trump’s ICE launched raids targeting migrant parents and their children. Although reporting and Trump claimed last week 2,000 would be targeted, NYT reported there were only a handful of arrests. 9 Authorities told the Times more arrests would instead take place during the week, saying the operation was changed last minute because news reports had tipped off immigrant communities. 10 On Sunday, CNBC reported fear of ICE raids has caused some American citizens, largely Latinos, to carry their passports to avoid being mistakenly detained by ICE. 11 On Sunday, Trump tweeted at four congresswomen, Reps. Ilhan Omar, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rashida Tlaib, and Ayanna Pressley to “go back” to the countries they came from. Only Rep. Omar was not born in the U.S. 12 Trump tweeted the four “originally came from countries whose governments are a complete and total catastrophe, the worst, most corrupt,” adding, “if they even have a functioning government at all.” 13 Trump also tweeted the four are “viciously telling the people of the United States, the greatest and most powerful Nation on earth,” how to run our government. 14 Trump also tweeted the four should “go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came,” adding, “then come back and show us how it is done,” and “you can’t leave fast enough.” 15 Trump also tweeted, “I’m sure that Nancy Pelosi would be very happy to quickly work out free travel arrangements!” citing Democratic party infighting. His tweets stopped infighting, and unified Democrats. 16 Trump’s attacks mirrored rhetoric on Fox News, including host Tucker Carlson telling Somali-born Rep. Omar to return to her birth country, citing her “undisguised contempt for the United States and for its people.” 17 House Speaker Nancy Pelosi tweeted that Trump “reaffirms his plan to “Make America Great Again” has always been about making America white again,” adding, “diversity is our strength,” and “Stop the raids.” 18 On Monday, Trump continued attacks, tweeting, “When will the Radical Left Congresswomen apologize to our Country, the people of Israel and even to the Office of the President, for the foul language they have used.” 19 Trump also tweeted, “So many people are angry at them & their horrible & disgusting actions!,” adding the four are “very unpopular & unrepresentative Congresswomen.” 20 Trump also sent a series of tweets quoting Sen. Lindsey Graham, calling the four a “bunch of Communists,” adding “they are Anti-Semitic, they are Anti-America,” and “their policies will destroy our Country!” 21 On Monday, at a “Made in America” event at the White House, Trump told reporters “these are people who in my opinion hate our country,” adding, “All I’m saying is, if they’re not happy here, they can leave.” 22 Trump said Rep. Omar “hates Israel” and “hates Jews, hates Jews,” adding, “I mean, I look at the one, I look at Omar. I mean, I don’t know, I never met her, I hear the way she talks about al Qaeda.” 23 Reporters at the event shared photos of Trump’s handwritten notes, where he spelled al Qaeda as “Alcaida,” and people as “peopel.” Last week, Trump blamed Twitter misspellings on “fingers aren’t as good as the brain.” 24 On Monday, Pulitzer Prize-winning presidential historian John Meacham told MSNBC that Trump “has joined Andrew Johnson as the most racist president in American history.” 25 On Monday, WAPO reported a full day after Trump’s “go back” tweets, no prominent Republicans had publicly disagreed, indicating they agree with him or Trump has consolidated power and they are disinclined to dissent. 26 On Monday, the four congresswomen held a press conference to respond to Trump’s attacks, saying his “blatantly racist” assault on them was an attempt to distract from his corruption and inhumane policies. 27 Just before they took to the podium, Trump tweeted, “IF YOU ARE NOT HAPPY HERE, YOU CAN LEAVE!” adding, “This is about love for America. Certain people HATE our Country.” 28 Trump tweeted, “They are anti-Israel, pro Al-Qaeda, and comment on the 9/11 attack, “some people did something,”” adding, “Detention facilities are not Concentration Camps!” and “America has never been stronger.” 29 The four told reporters the agenda of white nationalists had gone from chat rooms to the White House garden, and condemned Trump’s treatment of migrants at the border and his calls for deportations. 30 They also said Trump could not defend his policies, so he attacked them personally, and called on their colleagues to begin impeachment proceedings. They added, “ we love all people in this country.” 31 On Sunday and Monday, world leaders and senior politicians condemned Trump’s tweets. Outgoing conservative British PM Theresa May said “the language used to refer to these women was completely unacceptable.” 32 On Monday, a WAPO media columnist wrote that similar to the media’s reluctance to use the word “lies” while reporting on Trump, not referring to him as racist “is a betrayal of journalistic truth-telling.” 33 Later Monday, Post Executive Editor Martin Baron said, “The ‘go back’ trope is deeply rooted” in the history of U.S. racism, adding, “we have concluded that ‘racist’ is the proper term to apply to the language he used Sunday.” 34 On Tuesday, Trump continued his attacks, tweeting, “the Democrat Congresswomen have been spewing some of the most vile, hateful, and disgusting things ever said,” adding, but “they get a free pass.” 35 Trump also tweeted, “Our Country is Free, Beautiful and Very Successful,” adding, “If you hate our Country, or if you are not happy here, you can leave!” 36 On Tuesday, the Republican National Committee parroted Trump’s attacks, saying in an email to reporters, “the squad…regularly use vile, hateful, anti-Israel, and anti-American rhetoric.” 37 Later Tuesday, at a meeting with his cabinet, when asked by reporters if the four should leave, Trump responded, “It’s up to them,” adding, “Go wherever they want, or they can stay. But they should love our country.” 38 Trump also said, “They shouldn’t hate our country,” adding, “You look at what they’ve said, I have clips right here — the most vile, horrible statements about our country, about Israel, about others.” 39 After Trump spoke, HUD Secretary Ben Carson, the only black person in Trump’s cabinet, praised Trump, thanking him for his “incredible courage,” saying Trump is “not a racist,” and “I think God is using you.” 40 On Tuesday, ahead of House Democrats voting on a resolution to condemn Trump’s tweets, he tweeted, “Those Tweets were NOT Racist. I don’t have a Racist bone in my body!” 41 Trump also called the vote a “con game,” adding, “Republicans should not show “weakness” and fall into their trap” and the vote should be on “the filthy language, statements and lies” by the Democratic Congresswomen. 42 Trump also misrepresented a poll, tweeting that the congresswomen, “based on their actions, hate our Country. Get a list of the HORRIBLE things they have said. Omar is polling at 8%, Cortez at 21%,” adding “See you in 2020!” 43 Later Tuesday, when White House counselor Kellyanne Conway was asked by a Jewish White House reporter about Trump’s racist tweets, she asked, “What’s your ethnicity?” 44 The reporter, Andrew Feinberg responded, “Uh… why is that relevant?” Conway responded, “My ancestors are from Ireland and Italy.” Conway later tried to distance herself from her own remarks. 45 On Tuesday, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell tried to quell fallout from Trump’s tweets, saying Trump is “not a racist,” and “political rhetoric has really gotten way, way overheated all across the political spectrum.” 46 On Tuesday, CNN drew criticism for hosting Richard Spencer, a white nationalist who was a featured speaker at the deadly 2017 Unite the Right neo-Nazi rally, on their network to discuss Trump’s racist tweets. 47 On Tuesday, the Editorial Board of the Charlotte Observer asked, “Are you OK with a racist president, Republicans?” saying every Republican lawmaker should speak out on Trump’s “dangerous, destructive behavior.” 48 On Tuesday, a Reuters/Ipsos public opinion poll showed Republican support for Trump was up 5 points to 72% after his racist attacks. His support with Democrats dropped 2 points, and 10 points with independents. 49 On Tuesday, the House floor was thrown into chaos during a move by Democrats to vote on a resolution to condemn Trump’s racist tweets due to Speaker Pelosi’s use of the term “racist” in her remarks. 50 Pelosi said, “Every single member of this institution.. should join us in condemning the president’s racist tweets.” Republicans sought to strike her use of “racist” from the record as it went against House rules. 51 After review, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer announced Pelosi’s comments were “out of order.” The House then voted along party lines to allow Pelosi’s remarks to remain in the Congressional Record. 52 The House voted 240-187 on the resolution, with four Republicans and Rep. Justin Amash joining Democrats. Many Democrats pushed House leadership for a harsher punishment for Trump. 53 Ahead of the vote, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy had mirrored Leader McConnell’s statement, saying Trump “is not a racist.” McCarthy also said, “This is all about politics and beliefs of ideologies.” 54 After the vote, Trump tweeted, “so great to see how unified the Republican Party was on today’s vote,” saying they should look at the “horrible things” the four congresswomen said about “our Country, Israel, and much more.” 55 On Tuesday, speaking with Fox News host Tucker Carlson, GOP Sen. John Kennedy called the four congresswomen the “four horsewomen of the Apocalypse,” and “whack jobs” who are “destroying the Democratic Party.” 56 On Wednesday, a Pew Research poll found 62% of Americans say openness to people from around the world is “essential to who we are as a nation,” down from 68% in September because of a shift in Republicans. 57 The poll found 57% of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents say if the U.S. is too open to foreigners, “we risk losing our identity as a nation,” and increase from 44% in September. Democrats stayed constant. 58 On Wednesday, the House voted 332-95 to table the impeachment resolution drafted by Rep. Al Green over Trump’s racist attacks. Among Democrats, the split was 137 to table, 95 to advance. 59 Politico reported that 27 Democrats who have not publicly come out for impeachment yet voted to advance the measure to impeach Trump. Before the vote, 85 Democrats were for impeachment. 60 Committee chairs including Reps. Maxine Waters, Jerrold Nadler, Eliot Engel, Raúl Grijalva, Bennie Thompson, Frank Pallone Jr, Nita Lowey, Jim McGovern, and Nydia Velázquez also voted to advance Green’s resolution. 61 On Wednesday, before heading to his campaign rally in Greenville, North Carolina, Trump repeated a far-right conspiracy theory, telling reporters there’s “a lot of talk” about Rep. Omar being married to her brother. 62 Trump claimed, “I know nothing about it,” but added, “You’re asking me a question about it. I don’t know, but I’m sure that somebody would be looking at that.” 63 On Wednesday, warming up the crowd in Greenville before Trump spoke, Lara Trump said, “If you don’t love our country, the president said it, ‘You can leave.’” 64 At the rally, Trump told the crowd, of the four congresswomen, “They don’t love our country,” adding, “I think, in some cases, they hate our country. You know what? If they don’t love it, tell them to leave it.” 65 Trump reeled off several controversial comments made by Rep. Omar, including repeating a false claim that she is sympathetic to Al Qaeda. The crowd started chanting “Send her back.” 66 Trump spent a little time on the economy, but most of the evening was devoted to attacking “the squad,” and Democratic 2020 candidates who he said want “radical socialism and the destruction of the American Dream.” 67 Trump also bragged that Rep. Green’s articles of impeachment had been voted down, calling it “an overwhelming vote against impeachment, and that is the end of it,” and telling Democrats to “go back to work.” 68 On Thursday, NYT reported Trump allies, including House Republican leaders, flooded his team with expressions of concerns about the nativist chants of “send her back,” warning Trump was on dangerous ground. 69 While Republicans denounced the chant — with Minority Leader McCarthy saying “Those chants have no place in our party or our country” — Republicans continued to refuse to publicly criticize Trump. 70 On Thursday, CBS News reported Trump also took heat from First Lady Melania and Ivanka over the chants at the rally, as well as from Vice President Mike Pence. 71 On Thursday, House Democrats expressed outrage that Trump’s comments have put Rep. Omar and her family in “imminent danger,” with senior Democrats calling for authorities to evaluate her security. 72 Rep. Ocasio-Cortez also said she has concerns for her safety, and is discussing with Democrats whether to add additional security. Speaker Pelosi said she spoke to the Sergeant-at-Arms office Wednesday night. 73 Later Thursday, Trump tried to distance himself from the chants, telling reporters he was “not happy” with the chant, and falsely claiming he tried to stop the chant saying, “I think I did — I started speaking very quickly.” 74 WAPO fact checkers gave Trump’s claim that he tried to stop the chants Four Pinocchios, noting his comments led to the crowd’s chant, and he stood silent for 13 seconds waiting for the chant to die down. 75 Once it did, Trump started up again, saying of the congresswomen, “They never have anything good to say. That’s why I say, ‘Hey, if they don’t like it, let them leave,’…They’re always telling us how to run and how to do this.” 76 Later Thursday, Trump retweeted a video of conservative Mark Levin on Fox News slamming the four congresswoman, calling them “anti-Semite bigots,” adding, “their families really have done nothing for this country.” 77 Shortly after, the official Twitter account for the White House, a tax-payer funded feed, also tweeted the five-minute video, as did Trump’s official @POTUS account. 78 On Thursday, Majority Leader McConnell told Fox Business that Trump is “on to something” with his attacks, adding, “we’re in a big debate now and next year about what we want America to be like,” citing socialism. 79 On Thursday, the Palm Beach County GOP disinvited Anthony Scaramucci from addressing its annual fundraiser, after he told the BBC on Tuesday, on Trump, “maybe you weren’t a racist, but now you’re turning into one.” 80 Scaramucci repeated his criticism on cable news interviews, and theorized attacking the four congresswomen could help Trump win 2020. An adviser told Politico Scaramucci’s criticism on cable TV has left Trump “furious.” 81 On Thursday, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch Editorial Board wrote, “Congressional Republicans shame themselves with their silence on Trump’s racism,” saying their response “continues to be … nothing.” 82 On Thursday, ESPN host Dan Le Batard broke from company policy of avoiding politics, saying Trump was instigating “racial division,” and calling the network “cowardly.” Le Batard is the son of Cuban immigrants. 83 On Friday, in a series of morning tweets, Trump returned to attacking the congresswomen, including “ Foul Mouthed Omar.” Notably, Trump frequently uses profanity, and drew criticism for saying “goddamn” twice at his rally. 84 Trump also attacked the media, tweeting, “it is amazing how the Fake News Media became “crazed” over the chant “send her back”” but is “calm & accepting” of “vile and disgusting” statements by the congresswomen. 85 Trump tweeted the media “has lost all credibility” and “become a part of the Radical Left Democrat Party,” and said he would win Rep. Omar’s state in 2020, saying “they can’t stand her and her hatred of our Country.” 86 Trump also referred to the “three Radical Left Congresswomen.” WAPO reported a White House spokesman did not respond to their query about the change from four to three. 87 Trump attacked NYT columnist Thomas Friedman, who called him a “racist, divisive, climate-change-denying, woman-abusing jerk,” saying he is not a racist and calling Friedman “a weak and pathetic sort of guy.” 88 On Friday, speaking to reporters from the Oval Office, Trump backtracked from disavowing chants of “send her back” at his rally, saying of his supporters, “Those are incredible people. Those are incredible patriots.” 89 Trump continued his obsession with crowd size, saying the rally was a “record crowd” and he could have filled the arena ten times over, after tweeting in the morning it was “a packed Arena (a record) crowd.” 90 Trump also attacked the congresswomen, saying, “I’m unhappy with the fact that a congresswoman can say anti-Semitic things,” adding, and “a different congresswoman, can call our country and our people garbage.” 91 Trump also said, “I’m unhappy when a congresswoman goes and says, I’m going to be the president’s nightmare,” adding, “She’s lucky to be where she is” and “the things that she has said are a disgrace to our country.” 92 Before leaving the White House, Trump told reporters, “I don’t know if it’s good or bad politically — I don’t care,” adding, “I can tell you this: You can’t talk that way about our country, not when I’m the president.” 93 Trump also responded to CBS News reporting that his family spoke to him about the “send her back” chants, saying “We — I talked about it, but they didn’t advise me,” and called the story “fake news.” 94 On Friday, WAPO reported Trump has been publicly criticizing the U.S. for year, often praising foreign dictators and himself while doing this. Trump has also repeatedly questioned the notion of American exceptionalism. 95 On Friday, the NYT said it had asked its readers if they had been told to “go back to where you came from” as Trump told the four congresswomen, and received 16,000 responses, some of which they published. 96 On Friday, Erica Thomas, a black lawmaker in Georgia, said a middle-aged white man called her vulgar names and told her to “go back where you came from” at a supermarket, while her 9 year-old daughter looked on. 97 On Monday, Navy Secretary Richard Spencer assumed the role of acting defense secretary, becoming Trump’s third acting so far this year. Mark Esper stepped down for the Senate confirmation process. 98 On Tuesday, Sen. Elizabeth Warren grilled Esper on his past position as a top lobbyist for defense contractor Raytheon. Warren asked if he would recuse himself from all matters involving Raytheon, and Esper said no. 99 On Wednesday, Acting Defense Secretary Spencer sent 2,100 additional troops to the U.S.-Mexico border, bringing the total force at the border to 6,600 active duty and Texas National Guard soldiers. 100 On Monday AP reported the Trump regime plans to end all asylum protections for most migrants fleeing violence and poverty in Central America, reversing decades of U.S. policy. 101 According to the regime’s plan, migrants who pass through another country, in this case Mexico, on their way to the U.S. would be ineligible for asylum. Some migrants from Africa, Cuba, and Haiti also pass through Mexico. 102 Mexico voiced disagreement with the plan. Attorney General William Barr said the U.S. is a “generous country” but “overwhelmed” and the rules are aimed at “those who seek to exploit our asylum system to obtain entry.” 103 On Tuesday, a coalition of immigration advocacy groups challenged the new rule in court, seeking an injunction to block it. The Trump regime has claimed the spike in migrants crossing the border is a crisis. 104 On Friday, Politico reported at a meeting of security officials on refugee admissions, officials discussed cutting back the number of refugees admitted to zero for fiscal year 2020. 105 The regime had already cut the level from 110,000 under Obama to 50,000 in 2017, then down to 45,000 in 2018 and then 30,000 for 2019. Advisers aligned with Stephen Miller are pushing for the zero cap. 106 On Monday, NPR reported Border Patrol agents in El Paso, Texas told a 3 year-old Honduran girl to pick a parent to stay with her in the U.S. and the other would be deported in an attempted family separation. 107 The move is part of Trump’s Migrant Protection Protocols, or “remain in Mexico.” In court, advocates asked that the family be removed from MPP, citing the girl’s having a heart condition, and had suffered a heart attack. 108 On Tuesday, dozens of Jewish protestors from the group “Never Again is Now” staged a sit-in in the lobby of ICE’s headquarter building in Southwest Washington. Ten were arrested. 109 On Thursday, in a day dubbed “Catholic Day of Action,” 70 Catholic sisters, clergy, and parishioners were led away in handcuffs from the Senate office building, protesting ICE and overcrowded migrant detention camps. 110 Hundreds of protestors gathered, carrying photos of migrant children who died in federal custody. Five protestors laid on the floor in the shape of a cross, while the group recited the children’s names. 111 On Thursday, at a House Oversight hearing on family separation, Chair Elijah Cummings erupted at Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kevin McAleenan, after demanding improvement, and McAleenan saying we are “doing our level best.” 112 Cummings responded, “What does that mean when a child is sitting in their own feces, can’t take a shower? Come on, man…They are human beings.” Cummings also accused McAleenan of having an “empathy deficit.” 113 On Tuesday, a new NAACP report charged Trump is filling the courts with judges to undermine voting rights, saying, “This administration is weaponizing the federal judiciary to restrict the vote.” 114 On Monday, a second GOP candidate governor candidate in Mississippi, former MS Supreme Court Justice Bill Waller Jr., said he follows the “Billy Graham rule” and will not be alone with a woman who is not his wife. 115 On Monday, CNN reported according to a survey conducted by the union representing them, the vast majority of the 540 USDA research employees whose jobs are being moved D.C. to Kansas City are likely to resign. 116 On Monday, anti-Semitic flyers saying the Holocaust was “fake news” were found at Temple Emanu-El in Marblehead, Massachusetts. Rabbi David Meyer called it “distressing,” adding “the political climate is one of divisiveness.” 117 On Monday, a Charlottesville circuit judge sentenced James Fields Jr. to a second sentence of life in prison for killing Heather Heyer and injuring dozens of others when he rammed his car into a group of protestors. 118 On Tuesday, the DOJ said it would not to move forward in prosecuting NYPD Officer Daniel Pantaleo for fatally choking Eric Garner. A video showed Garner had said “I can’t breathe” 11 times while in a strangle hold. 119 Attorney General Barr made the final decision not to prosecute Pantaleo, siding with the DOJ team from New York over the Civil Rights division which recommended prosecution. 120 On Tuesday, in a letter, Sen. Cory Booker, a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, demanded answers from Barr on the DOJ’s decision not to press charges. 121 On Monday, WAPO reported nearly a quarter of a million households will receive 2020 Census forms which include a citizenship question. The test questionnaire was sent two weeks before Supreme Court ruling. 122 The questionnaire was meant to provide the Census Bureau data on how the public would react to the question “Is this person a citizen of the United States?” A total of 480,000 were sent, half with and half without the question. 123 On Tuesday, the ACLU and other plaintiffs filed a complaint asking Judge Jesse Furman to impose penalties on the Trump regime for allegedly providing “false or misleading” statement about the citizenship question. 124 The complaint noted “the misconduct appears to have been perpetrated by senior Commerce and [Justice Department] officials — not the career DOJ attorneys who litigated this case.” 125 On Wednesday, the House voted 230-198 along party lines to hold Barr and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross in criminal contempt for failing to provide documents related to the citizenship question. 126 The vote was largely symbolic since those found guilty are referred to the DOJ for prosecution, and the DOJ would not prosecute itself. The White House said Democrat’s “shameful and cynical politics know no bounds.” 127 On late Monday, Trump’s Department of Health and Human Services issued a notice, saying it was immediately enforcing a new rule as part of Title X which would cut funding for health clinics that give abortion referrals. 128 The rule is the first of its kind since Title X was established in 1970, and impacted $260 million of funding to 90 recipients. Maine Family Planning and Planned Parenthood of Illinois dropped out of the program Tuesday. 129 On Tuesday, the board of Planned Parenthood voted to oust president Leana Wen, saying the organization needed a more aggressive political leader to combat the current efforts to roll back access to abortion. 130 On Friday, the Trump regime said it may delay its ban on funding for clinics that provide abortion referrals, amid widespread confusion about the new restrictions. 131 On Wednesday, a November 1992 tape released from the NBC archives showed Trump and Jeffrey Epstein discussing women at a party at Mar-a-Lago. Trump also grabbed a woman towards him, and patted her behind. 132 On Wednesday, James Troiano, the New Jersey judge who recommended leniency for a 16 year-old boy accused of rape in Week 138 because he was from a “good family,” resigned. 133 The state’s Supreme Court announced new mandatory training for judges on Wednesday, following a nationwide outcry. Elected officials and protestors had called on Troiano to resign, and he received death threats. 134 LGBTQ Nation reported every member of Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s Commission on Unalienable Rights, announced in Week 139, has a history as an academic or activist against the LGBTQ community. 135 On Thursday, the LA Times reported Homeland Security has quietly gutted multiple programs in the past two years created after September 11, 2001 established to prevent terrorism involving weapons of mass destruction. 136 DHS has also canceled dozens of training exercises, and lost scores of scientists and policy experts. Thirty current and former DHS officials voiced concern that the changes have put Americans at greater risk. 137 On Thursday, Trump nominated Eugene Scalia, son of late Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia, for Labor Secretary. Scalia has represented corporations in pushing back at unions and for tougher labor laws. 138 On Thursday, Environmental Protection Agency administrator Andrew Wheeler rolled back an Obama-era ban on chlorpyrifos, a widely used pesticide which experts say is tied to serious health problems in children. 139 The EPA said data supporting objections to use were “not sufficiently valid, complete or reliable” — a victory for the chemical industry. This marks the second move by the regime this year to roll back chemical safety rules. 140 NYT reported the EPA is also preparing to weaken rules in place for the last quarter century, which allow advocates in communities near power plants and factories to appeal against EPA-issued pollution permits. 141 On Friday, new data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration showed June 2019 was the hottest June on record around the globe in the 140 years the group has kept records. 142 Economist Art Laffer, who was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in Week 136 by Trump, told CNBC the Federal Reserve should not be independent, but should be controlled by the president and Congress. 143 On Monday, the White House Office of Management and Budget, in its midyear review, projected the federal deficit will exceed $1 trillion this year, the first time it has exceeded $1 trillion since the Great Recession. 144 On Tuesday, Trump tweeted, “Billionaire Tech Investor Peter Thiel believes Google should be investigated for treason,” adding that on “Fox & Friends” Thiel accused “Google of working with the Chinese Government.” 145 Thiel said on the show, “Google employees that are ideologically super left wing,” are “working with communist China but not with the U.S. military.” Trump tweeted: “The Trump Administration will take a look!” 146 On Friday, in a series of tweets, Trump attacked the Federal Reserve, noting its “faulty thought process,” adding, “our interest costs are much higher than other countries, when they should be lower. Correct!” 147 Trump also praised New York Fed President John Williams for saying “the Fed “raised” far too fast & too early,” and said we are “winning big but it is no thanks to the Federal Reserve,” adding, “Don’t blow it!” 148 On Friday, WAPO reported Trump told aides to expect big spending cuts if he wins a second term, a dramatic shift from the big-spending approach of Trump’s first 30 months, sowing confusion about the regime’s direction. 149 On Monday, CNN reported on new surveillance reports which reveal Julian Assange received in-person deliveries during the 2016 U.S. election during a series of suspicious meetings at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London. 150 The deliveries build on the Mueller report which said couriers brought hacked files to Assange at the embassy. The surveillance report showed he used the embassy as a command post for meddling in the U.S. election. 151 On Monday, White House counselor Kellyanne Conway defied a Congressional subpoena, refusing to show up for a House Oversight Committee hearing on her violations of the Hatch Act. 152 In a letter to Chair Cummings, White House Counsel Pat Cipollone again asserted again that Trump’s advisers are “absolutely immune” from congressional testimony. 153 Chair Cummings said, “We are requiring her to testify…about her multiple violations of federal law, her waste of taxpayer funds,” and threatened to hold Conway in contempt if she does not testify before July 25. 154 On Monday, Chair Cummings demanded in a letter to Education Department Secretary Betsy DeVos that she turn over all emails from her personal account related to official government business. 155 Cummings cited a May report by the Office of the Inspector General which found 78% of department officials used personal emails, but did not preserve them. Cummings has sent multiple letters without a response. 156 On Tuesday, Trump appointed former Fox News contributor Monica Crowley to be the Treasury Department spokesperson. Crowley currently serves as Treasury’s senior adviser for public affairs. 157 On Tuesday, Judge Amy Berman Jackson barred Roger Stone from posting on social media platforms, saying, “Once again I am wrestling with behavior that has more to do with middle school than a court of law.” 158 Prosecutors accused Stone of violating the court’s gag order. Judge Berman also prohibited public statements made by “surrogates, family members, spokespersons, representatives, or volunteers” of Stone. 159 On Wednesday, Politico reported House Democrats’ strategy is to slowly and meticulously building a record of the Trump regime’s stonewalling their investigations to persuade a court to break the blockade. 160 The team of House lawyers is overstretched, and Democrats fear an adverse ruling. The slow pace and lack of results from House Democrats has fueled criticism from progressive lawmakers and activists. 161 On Thursday, a federal judge said he is considering throwing out the case against Michael Flynn’s former business partner, Bijan Kian, saying evidence presented at trial this week has been “very, very circumstantial.” 162 The biggest hole in the prosecutors’ case was testimony from Flynn. With his new attorney, Flynn told prosecutors he could no longer say under oath he intentionally made a false filing, and was therefore cut as a witness. 163 On Wednesday, the DOJ said it was ending its inquiry into hush money payments Trump made to keep Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal quiet in the months before the election. 164 Lanny Davis, a lawyer for Michael Cohen, asked why he was the only one “to be prosecuted and imprisoned” when “virtually all” of the admitted crimes “were done at the direction of and for the benefit” of Trump. 165 On Thursday, a federal judge in New York ordered court records related to the case be unsealed. Federal prosecutors did not reveal why they had ended their investigation. 166 The newly unredacted 2018 Cohen search warrants revealed then-candidate Trump communicated repeatedly with his then-lawyer Cohen about keeping Trump’s affairs quiet ahead of the election. 167 The documents revealed, starting the day after the “Access Hollywood” recording became public, Hope Hicks, Trump, and Cohen spoke to formulate a plan to pay $130,000 to Stormy Daniels to keep her quiet. 168 Hicks told the House Judiciary Committee last month said she was “never present” when Cohen and Trump discussed Daniels, and said she “had no knowledge” of Daniels other than her shopping around her story. 169 The committee is investigating whether Hicks lied in her testimony. Chair Nadler demanded Hicks appear before the panel to explain discrepancies in her testimony and the unsealed documents. 170 The documents also showed Cohen paid Daniels on November 1, 2016 and called Trump and Kellyanne Conway that day but did not get through. Records show Conway called him back and they spoke for six minutes. 171 Documents show before WSJ’s story Nov. 4 on Karen McDougal, Cohen spoke to Hicks and Dylan Howard, a National Enquirer executive, and texted AMI’s David Pecker, “The boss just tried calling you. Are you free?” 172 On Friday, USA Today reported a person familiar with the case said the DOJ’s opinion that a sitting president cannot be indicted factored in to prosecutors’ decision to end the investigation. 173 On Friday, in a letter to the deputy U.S. Attorney in Manhattan, House Oversight Chair Cummings asked whether prosecutors had identified evidence of criminal conduct by Trump. 174 Cummings also sought information on whether the DOJ opinion had played a role, noting this would be the second time (Mueller), and, “The Office of the President should not be used as a shield for criminal conduct.” 175 On Friday. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, also said Congress must hold a public hearing on “whether the White House or AG Barr has interfered in any way in this investigation.” 176 On Friday, the Daily Beast reported George Nader, a key witness in the Mueller probe, faced new federal charges of sex trafficking, child pornography, and obscenity in Virginia. 177 On Friday, federal justice Emmet Sullivan temporarily halted congressional subpoenas of Trump’s financial records in the emoluments case, after an appeals court said to re-examine separation-of-powers. 178 On Sunday, about 1,000 protested in an unsanctioned rally in Moscow over the city election commission’s decision to keep several opposition candidates off the ballot. More than 25 were detained by police. 179 On Tuesday, in a statement, a North Korean Foreign Ministry spokesperson warned North Korea may resume nuclear missile tests, citing the U.S. and South Korea moving forward with planned military exercises. 180 On Wednesday, the House voted to block Trump from bypassing Congress and selling arms to Saudi Arabia. Only four Republicans and Rep. Amash joined Democrats, setting up a likely veto of the resolutions by Trump. 181 On Thursday, senior defense officials said U.S. Marines jammed an Iranian drone in the Straight of Hormuz, bringing it down and destroying it. The incident is part of a series of tense interactions between the countries. 182 Trump told reporters, “This is the latest of many provocative and hostile actions by Iran against vessels operating in international waters,” saying the drone was threatening a U.S. ship and was “immediately destroyed.” 183 On Friday, Iran’s Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi denied Iran lost a drone, mockingly tweeting, “I am worried that USS Boxer has shot down their own UAS (Unmanned Aerial System) by mistake!” 184 On Friday, Trump reiterated, “We shot it down.” National security adviser John Bolton added there is “no question” it was an Iranian drone and that it presented a threat. 185 On Friday, as the governor of Puerto Rico faced protests over a scandal facing his administration, Trump tweeted, “The Governor is under siege, the Mayor of San Juan is a despicable and incompetent person.” 186 Trump claimed Congress gave Puerto Rico $92 billion, adding, “much of which was squandered away or wasted, never to be seen again.” Congress allocated $42 billion to Puerto Rico, but just $14 billion has been received. 187 On Friday, WAPO reported when Trump met with Nobel Peace Prize winner and Yazidi activist Nadia Murad in the Oval Office, he avoided eye contact with her, and was unaware of her story or the plight of the Yazidis. 188 When Murad told Trump she wanted to go home, but ISIS had murdered her mother and six brothers, Trump responded, “Where are they now?” Murad repeated, “They killed them. They are in the mass grave in Sinjar.” 189 On Thursday, Gallup polling said Trump’s 10th quarter approval was 42.7%, his highest approval since taking office. His approval has remained in a band of 36.8% to 42.7% since he took office. 190 Trump’s approval had dipped to 40% in May when details of the Mueller report emerged, and during his trade war with China, then rebounded to 44% in early July. Polling did not include his racist tweets this week. 191 On Friday, the number of Democrats for impeaching Trump rose to 92–39% of the caucus — including 15 of the 24 Democrats of the House Judiciary Committee. Independent Rep. Amash is also for it. 192 On Friday, Trump told reporters he does not plan to watch Mueller’s testimony on July 24, saying, “At some point they have to stop playing games. They’re just playing games.” 193 Trump said of Green’s impeachment vote, “It’s a disgrace. No other president should have to go through it,” and, “they already took their impeachment vote, adding, it was “lopsided” and “a massive victory.” 194 House Democrats hope to use Mueller’s five-hour appearance next week as an opportunity to educate the American people by using his testimony to tell a compelling narrative about his report, which few have read. The Weekly List podcast is here! You can find more information here by clicking here. THE LIST — weeks 1–52 of The Weekly List is out as a book! You can order your copy by clicking here. Representatives Ayanna Pressley (D-MA) speaks as Ilhan Abdullahi Omar (D-MN)(L), Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) hold a press conference, to address remarks made by US President Donald Trump earlier in the day, at the US Capitol in Washington, DC on July 15, 2019. July2019. Brussels, Belgium 🇧🇪 13jul19. Vilvoorde, Belgium 🇧🇪 14jul19 Mons, Belgium 13july19. Mechelen, Belgium 6jul19 Ostend, Belgium 🇧🇪

Born in Skvyra, Russia in 1856, this famous philosopher and essayist was originally given the name Asher Zvi Hirsch Ginsberg. It was only when he started using his Hebrew name as his pen name that he started being known as the now familiar Ahad Ha’am. As the father of Cultural Zionism, Ahad Ha’am was most famous for his essays urging a Zionism new to many contemporary modern ears – a Zionism fueled by and intertwined with Jewish tradition and culture. In his famous essay A Truth From Eretz Yisrael, written after his first trip to Palestine in 1891, Ha’am critiqued the vibrant Political Zionism of his day, led largely by the famous Theodor Herzl. Ahad Ha’am spent the last years of his life living in Tel Aviv (after many years in London working for the Wissotzky Tea company!). His essays expressing traditional Zionist views permeate and guide much of Jewish and Zionist thought today. A great friend of Ahad Ha’am, Hayyim Nahman Bialik is famous for both his moving poetry and folkloric prose. Born in Ukraine in 1873 and making his way to Lithuania, Berlin, and ultimately Tel Aviv, Bialik’s writings similarly weave their way through the globe of Jewish struggle and identity. His famous poem ‘The City of Slaughter’ is paradigmatic of Bialik’s exploration of religion and tradition. Bialik’s works embody his religious upbringing and Talmudic study while simultaneously questioning and challenging those very traditions. Bialik’s writings have so influenced and transformed Israeli culture that the Bialik Prize was established in 1933, awarding exemplars of both Hebrew literature and thought in Israel each year. A visit to the Bialik House, now a museum and formerly the poet’s home, is one well worth making. From the same literary community as Bialik in Germany, Shmuel Yosef Agnon is renowned for both his Yiddish and Hebrew fiction, poetry, and folklore. Agnon’s literary career began when he was only 15 years old, with the publication of his first poem. His works, including the famous story Agunot – from which it is said that his pen name, Agnon, is derived – are known for exploring the tension between Jewish tradition and modernity. Agnon sets many of his short stories in old European villages and through simple tales, bringing to life both the vibrant traditional life of the shtetl and its tension with contemporary and secularized thought. Agnon’s most famous works include A Simple Story, The Bridal Canopy, and Tmol Shilshom (after which the popular Jerusalem café is named). Agnon was awarded both the Bialik and the Israel Prize twice for literature, and in 1966, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. Agnon moved from Galicia to Jaffa at the age of 20 and later settled in his Jerusalem home, which can be visited together with his impressive library in Talpiyot. Leah Goldberg was born in Lithuania to a Lithuanian-speaking family, but her love for the Hebrew language began when she was young. And though she kept a diary in Hebrew at the age of ten, Goldberg’s fluency in seven languages led to her successful career as a translator of literature, including works of Shakespeare, Rilke, and Tolstoy, into Hebrew. But what Goldberg is perhaps most loved for is her children’s literature, including A Flat for Rent and Miracles and Wonders. Many of her poems, full of idyllic imagery and nostalgic tone, have been put to music and have become favorites amongst Israelis, past and present. Crossing over Goldberg Street right at its heart, Alterman Street is named after the famous poet and playwright, Nathan Alterman. Born in Warsaw, Alterman moved to Tel Aviv with his family at the age of 15. While considered today to be one of the most influential Hebrew poets, his Zionist political satire led to many of his poems being banned by the British mandate. Many of Alterman’s poems are deeply romantic while still others portray a profound religious quest, and perhaps critique, such as his provocative poem ‘From Among All the Nations,’ written upon first hearing about the Holocaust in 1942. Alterman was awarded both the Bialik Prize and Israel Prize, and starting in 2016, he is the new face of the NIS 200 bill! Yaakov Shabtai’s life began and ended in Tel Aviv, with a small interlude of ten years living on a kibbutz in his youth. Though Shabtai published many plays, short stories, and even a collection of poetry, he is most famous as a novelist for the one novel that he published during his lifetime, Past Continuous. This novel was groundbreaking in both its language and its form, being the first novel to be written in vernacular Hebrew, and the entirety of the text, moving back and forth through time and perspective, is just one single paragraph. Much of Shabtai’s writings are concerned with tragic life and impending death. Shabtai himself died an untimely death at the age of 47 from a heart attack. His career, however, continued after his death, as his wife published Past Perfect, a sequel to Past Continuous, from a collection of Shabtai’s manuscripts. His daughter, Noa Shabtai, having been born from his liaison only a few months before his death, directed a film about the life of the father she never knew. By Yael Herzog Yael, originally from New Jersey, is currently studying English literature and creative writing at Bar Ilan University in Ramat Gan, Israel. She is a lover of traveling, painting, and has just recently begun falling in love with sculpting.