JACOB JR. - BENLEUMI NEWS יעקב ג 'וניור. הבינלאומי חדשות

Shalom! World. By ARTHUR WOLAK   11/27/2010 23:14 The Spanish city has a rich Judaic tradition, and may be home to the oldest synagogue in Europe. Talkbacks ( 3 )   BARCELONA – Known for its cosmopolitan restaurants, modernist architecture and pleasant Mediterranean climate, Barcelona – the second largest city in Spain (after Madrid), and capital of the province of Catalonia – also has a rich Jewish history that deserves to be explored by all interested tourists. Long before the tumultuous expulsion of the Jews in 1492, Jewish culture thrived throughout the Iberian Peninsula. Indeed, during an era justifiably known as the Golden Age, Spain’s large, influential, and prolific Jewish community produced many luminaries. Through their great works of poetic, biblical and kabbalistic writings, these poets and rabbinic scholars exercised a profound influence on the development of Jewish philosophical thought, and halachic and liturgical practice. Their insig...

Shalom! World. Jewish emancipation, RELIGIOUS, POLITICAL AND HUMAN Night of Jewish thought and I am struck by a literary memory of Karl Marx "To the Jewish question." Moved by the influence of Bruno Bauer, brilliant student of Hegel and a professor of theology at Berlin, Marx approaches Bauer at the time it leaves the course for Philosophy of Law (finished in 1841). Bauer's influence and point of resistance to Marx. Yes, but you have to see this introduction to the topic? Ask that person away from philosophical paths, but I'll explain: there were two views to be accepted by both Bauer and Marx on the Jewish question.  Initially, Bauer notes that in Prussia, emancipation (the Jews) is not feasible: it is the religious character (non-secular or non-atheist) the rule that prevents the emancipation and therefore the existence of real citizens, in a word a Christian state one is emancipated. Then, it is irrelevant that the Jews, keeping themselves as Jews (i...

Shalom! World. By MICHAEL M. COHEN 25/04/2010 06:31 What do they all have in common? Zionism. For the last 34 years of his life, Albert Einstein was the most famous spokesman and advocate for the Zionist movement. Many may find it surprising that a pacifist and opponent of nationalism like Einstein was the champion of the Zionist cause in the decades leading up to the establishment of the Jewish state in 1948. That involvement with Zionism, however, also serves as a cautionary tale, adding light on the present relationship between US President Barack Obama and Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu. Einstein’s support of the Zionist enterprise was absent during the first four decades of his life. It was after he moved to Berlin in 1914 that he said, “I discovered for the first time that I was a Jew, and I owe this discovery more to the gentiles than to the Jews.” Tied to that awakened identity was his growing awareness “of our precarious situation.” With that new o...

There is no better time than the days between Passover, the holiday of freedom and the formation of the Jewish people, and Independence Day, the holiday of freedom and the formation of the State of Israel, to discuss personal and national freedom. Shalom! World. The Jewish people have been refugees throughout history: as slaves escaping Egypt, Holocaust survivors who help build Israel, or Jewish refugees from Arab countries. The Israeli media has also focused on refugees recently. Not on Jewish refugees, thank G-d, but on others that have been knocking on Israel's doors, such as the African refugees, foreign workers and some that have lived amongst us for years. At the same time, no one in Israel seems to be discussing another type of refugees – the Palestinian refugees. No one has mentioned it, because those who speak do so in order to condemn the State of Israel, threaten it with "the right of return," and delegitimize it. But this silence does not eras...

Shalom! World. We must work to uphold the Torah of universal human rights. Holocaust Remembrance Day memorializes the victims of the Nazis. Observance of this day, though, is also meant to inspire a response from us about how to ensure that such horrible atrocities never occur in our world again. Noted philosopher and theologian, Rabbi Emil Fackenheim z”l, taught that the Holocaust defies any attempt to locate meaning in it. Indeed, it would be scandalously disrespectful to the victims to “justify” their murder by extrapolating some higher meaning from the Shoah’s happening, a blasphemy to find some purpose or reason to the presence of such radical evil in God’s world and in the capability of human beings – created in God’s own Image – both to enact such evil and to be victimized by it. And yet, Fackenheim noted, a particularly Jewish response to the Shoah is nevertheless imperative. A universal response of all humanity to the Holocaust is no less obligatory. IT IS inter...