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

THE REMUH SYNAGOGUE, KRAKOW/POLAND Monday, Kislev 26, 5777. December 26, 2016. Shalom! World.  There are two mysteries that have defied explanation for as long as anyone can remember. The first mystery is anti-Semitism, which is a mystery because there are few things in history that have been as consistent, as universal, and as predictable as anti-Semitism. From one country to another, from one culture to another, from one religion to another - although lifestyles, philosophies, and  so forth are extremely different, there is one thing all of  the peoples of the world had in common: They all, at one point or another, included individuals, and even large segments of their populations, who did not like Jews. What did these people know about Jews? Sometimes a lot, sometimes very little, sometimes nothing at all. And yet all of them have a discomfort with Jews. Some of the things anti-Semites come up with concerning Jews and Judaism, make us wonder, "What did...

The Chain Bridge - Budapest/Hungary Sunday, Kislev 18, 5777. December 18, 2016. Shalom! World. Let's return to the question of anti-Semitism. The non-Jew comes to the Jew and says, "What are you? Explain yourself." What do we respond? We make uo stories, we make excuses, we start from Adam and Eve, we discuss Noah, and we give a history lesson, but we don't answer the question. Sometimes the question is asked more bluntly: "You are the chosen people. It says so in the Bible. What does it means/" To which we respond, "Chosen? I don't know about chosen, maybe we are a little different..." The non-Jew can't get a straight answer. Jews don't give straight answer to this type of question because we don't know how to answer. We don't know what we are because nobody ever answered that question for us. We were told we're Jewish, our parents are Jewish, our grandparents are Jewish, so we're Jewish and that...

MONUMENT WHERE WAS THE SYNAGOGUE. Sunday, Kislev 11, 5777. December 11, 2016. Shalom! World. Karlovy Vary (Czech Republic) is a famous spa town in western Bohemia prohibited Jews from residing in the town until the 1840s when Jewish population grew rapidly. The Synagogue that accomodated 2.000 worshippers, designed by Edwin Oels Oppler, was built in 1877. A popular Jewish resort and meeting place for rabbis and communal leaders, all but four Jews left during the Sudeten crisis in 1937. THE NEW SYNAGOGUE Jewish population: No Jews in 1868; 1,069 in 1890; 1,600 in 1910; 2,650 in 1921; and 2,120 in 1930 (8.9% of the total) with a additional 292 in the industrial area of Rybare (Fischern). Jewish settlement was prohibited from 1499 to 1793. Up 1848 Jewish residence was contested in litigation initiated by non-Jewish merchants. Authorities generally sided with the Jews. Jews living in the nearby communities of Becov (Petschau; 18 in 1930), Luka (Luck; 21 in 1930), and Hr...

FRANZ ROSENZWEIG MARTIN BUBER Sunday, Kislev 4, 5777. December 4, 2016. Shalom! World. Mendelssohn and Cohen posits a confluence between Judaism and rationality in which Jews and Judaism would exist as a minority that would contribute to the majority culture.  Martin Buber (1878-1965) and Franz Rosenzweig (1886-1929) rejects what they deem overly apologetic arguments for a confluence between Judaism and modernity. Experience, and not rationality, they contend, is the basis of a Jewish life. While Buber underscores the centrality of the experience of dialogue between two people to the exclusion of Jewish law and ritual, Rosenzweig stresses the necessity of law and ritual. The German Jewish thinkers: Mendelssohn, Geiger, Graetz, Cohen and Hirsch, were all didicated to a German notion of Bildung, which involved a commitment to self-improvement, rationality, and refinement. For Germans and German Jews alike, eastern European Jews represented the coarseness and v...