turned into a comic-book. New literary trends? Or simply the end of reading, as we knew?
Tuesday 18 August 2009
Monday 17 August 2009
The problems of jazz
I must confess: I never imagined that jazz could ever have a problem or it needs to be "saved". I knew it is about an industry as well, but considered it is completely irrelevant to waste my time with.
But I am not an addict: I can resist without listening jazz for months, maybe, but when I want to, I know which concert, festival or CD to choose.
I don't know how many people are listening the same music - from soft to very complicate and ermetic jazz - but I will always look with curiosity about new pieces, new artists, new ways to use creativity. Oh, and I discovered why I don't worry too much about the danger of a disappearing art - "culture" could fit better the whole idea: the creativity don't have limits and so the art of jazz.
Saturday 15 August 2009
Friday 14 August 2009
Religion
as a matter of choice or rejection of a social laziness of thinking. It is all about your own choice. To take off.
Thursday 13 August 2009
Former Hadassah Exec Says She Had an Affair
With Madoff. Who? Madoff, the one with the 150 years sentence because stealing 65 bn. dollars. Among them the former lover - 20 years ago - turned-into-author Sheryl Weinstein. Maybe she found a miraculous solution to recover the lost money...But I fully doubt it will be any curious about the love-life of this Madoff. Really. Not even for black humor, because the idea in itself to write a book about him - Madoff, the playboy, how impressive, it's kitsch.
Why do some people need less sleep?
it is a matter of genetics, it is said. A rare one. Ok then. Everything is under control. Full control of the nature.
Tuesday 11 August 2009
The art of naming the world
THIS PROFUSION OF HUMMINGBIRDS is from the book “Kunstformen der Natur,” by Ernst Haeckel, 1900. The names of the birds, like Topaza pella, or crimson topaz (third from top), and Sparganura sappho, or red-tailed comet (with forked tail), seem as lush and elaborate as their coloration. Monday 10 August 2009
Faces of the Post-Zionism in Israel
Or trying to explain to outside-of-Israel people that it is a normal post-Zionist life. Or at least, that there are more chances now than it ten years ago, for example.
What is Allenby 40
Allenby 40 is known as the sleaziest dance bar in Israel; but if you ask the owner, an Orthodox Jew named Mendy, he would say it’s not sleazy but liberating. So, what would a Jew who grew-up Chabad know about liberation? A lot, it seems. At Allenby 40, Orthodox men can gulp a beer and three chasers with their kippah on — guilt-free. And if the religious feel that way, you can imagine how the secular Jew gets down at Allenby 40. The decor is minimalist — just some walls painted flesh and a few dangling disco balls, but the DJs.
Friday 7 August 2009
Time to end discrimination
in a haredi girls' school.
Apparently, the subtelties of discriminations are endless - the compulsory Askenazi accent, for example, the separate entrances and the plaster wall. And why in the last two years nobody had the gorgious idea to oppose such hard to qualify situation?
Wednesday 5 August 2009
Monday 3 August 2009
Saving Jewish Children, but at What Cost?
Elaine Sciolino and Jason Horowitz
January 9, 2005
In October 1946, just a year after the defeat of the Nazis, the Vatican weighed in on one of the most painful episodes of the postwar era: the refusal to allow Jewish children who had been sheltered by Catholics during the war to return to their own families and communities.
A newly disclosed directive on the this subject provides written confirmation of well-known church policy and practices at the time, particularly toward Jewish children who had been baptized, often to save them from perishing at the hands of the Nazis. Its tone is cold and impersonal, and it makes no mention of the horrors of the Holocaust.
Its disclosure has reopened a raw debate on the World War II role of the Catholic Church and of Pope Pius XII, a candidate for sainthood who has been excoriated by his critics as a heartless anti-Semite who maintained a public silence on the Nazi death camps and praised by his supporters as a savior of Jewish lives.
The one-page, typewritten directive, dated Oct. 23, 1946, was discovered in a French church archive outside Paris and made available to The New York Times on the condition that the source would not be disclosed. It is a list of instructions for French authorities on how to deal with demands from Jewish officials who want to reclaim Jewish children.
"Children who have been baptized must not be entrusted to institutions that would not be in a position to guarantee their Christian upbringing," the directive says.
It also contains an order not to allow Jewish children who had been baptized Catholic to go home to their own parents. "If the children have been turned over by their parents, and if the parents reclaim them now, providing that the children have not received baptism, they can be given back," it says.
Even Jewish orphans who had not been baptized Catholic were not to be turned over automatically to Jewish authorities. "For children who no longer have their parents, given the fact that the church has responsibility for them, it is not acceptable for them to be abandoned by the church or entrusted to any persons who have no rights over them, at least until they are in a position to choose themselves," the document says. "This, obviously, is for children who would not have been baptized."
The document, written in French and first disclosed last week by the Italian daily newspaper Corriere della Sera, is unsigned but says, "It should be noted that this decision taken by the Holy Congregation of the Holy Office has been approved by the Holy Father."
The publication of the document is likely to embolden those who do not think Pius XII is worthy of becoming a saint. Some prominent Jews and historians have attacked the document for its insensitivity to the Holocaust.
The Rev. Peter Gumpel, a Rome-based Jesuit priest and a leading proponent for the beatification of Pius XII, the first step toward sainthood, said he was convinced that the document did not come from the Vatican. He pointed out that it is not on official Vatican stationery, that it is not signed and that it is written in French, not Italian. "There is something fishy here," he said.
But Étienne Fouilloux, a French historian who is compiling Pope John XXIII's diaries during his years in France, said that the document had been discovered recently in church archives outside of Paris by a serious researcher and that it is genuine. John has been beatified, the last formal step toward sainthood.
At the time, Pope John XXIII was Monsignor Angelo Roncalli, Pope Pius XII'S representative to France. During the war, Monsignor Roncalli was credited with saving tens of thousands of Jews from Nazi persecution by using diplomatic couriers, papal representatives and nuns to issue and deliver baptismal certificates, immigration certificates and visas, many of them forged, to Jews. He also helped gain asylum for Jews in neutral countries.
"This document is indicative of a mind-set at the Vatican that dealt with problems in a legal framework without worrying that there were human beings involved," Mr. Fouilloux said. "It shows that the massacre of Jews was not seen by the Holy See as something of importance."
He said he would include the document in the next volume of the diaries.
The document underscores the sanctity with which the Vatican treated the sacrament of baptism at the time - no matter how or why it was administered.
The church's stance that a baptized child is irrevocably Christian was established nearly a century before the Holocaust, when, in 1858, papal guards took Edgardo Mortara, 6, from his family in Bologna when word spread that he had been clandestinely baptized by a Catholic maid. It was relaxed only in the 1960's.
More important, the directive captures the church's failure to grasp the enormous implications of the Nazi extermination of the Jews. "It shows the very bureaucratic and very icy attitude of the Catholic Church in these types of things." said Alberto Melloni, an Italian historian with the John XXIII Foundation for Religious Studies in Bologna, who is working with Mr. Fouilloux to publish the diaries of Pope John XXIII. He called the tone of the directive "horrifyingly normal."
A second document that was also discovered by the French researcher is a letter in July 1946 to Monsignor Roncalli that noted his pledge to intervene to return Jewish-born children to their community and asked for his help to return 30 Jewish-born children living in a Catholic charity.
"Almost two years after the liberation of France, some Israelite children are still in non-Jewish institutions that refuse to give them back to Jewish charities," said the letter, which was signed by the Grand Rabbi of France and the head of the Jewish Central Consistory. It added, "We are in advance, grateful for your help."
It is not known whether there was a reply.
No reliable figures exist on how many French Jewish children were saved by the church from the Nazis, or affected by its decision to prevent them from rejoining their families and communities after the war. The French Jewish population had limited success in recovering Jewish children who had been adopted by non-Jews.
In the most well-documented case in France, two Jewish boys, Robert and Gerald Finaly, were sent in 1944 by their parents to a Catholic nursery in Grenoble. The parents perished at Auschwitz. Family members tried to get the boys back in 1945, but in part because they had been baptized, it took an additional eight years and a long legal battle to prevail over the church.
"Look, I know that for the church, baptism means the child belongs to the church, you can't undo it," said Amos Luzzatto, the president of the Union of Italian Jewish Communities. "But given the circumstances they could have made a human decision."
Mr. Luzzatto described himself as "speechless" that the Vatican directive on the children does not mention the Holocaust and questioned the worthiness of Pius XII to be made a saint.
"If they beatify him, don't ask us to applaud," he said.
Some corners of the Catholic Church are suspicious that the document, and the ensuing debate that has played out in Italian newspapers, was produced to create obstacles in Pius XII's march toward sainthood.
But Pope John Paul II strongly supports the campaign to make Pius XII a saint, and in February 2003, the Vatican announced the opening of some secret archives to help clear Pius XII's name, although the papers do not deal with his activities as pope.
Elaine Sciolino reported from Paris for this article, and Jason Horowitz from Rome.
A newly disclosed directive on the this subject provides written confirmation of well-known church policy and practices at the time, particularly toward Jewish children who had been baptized, often to save them from perishing at the hands of the Nazis. Its tone is cold and impersonal, and it makes no mention of the horrors of the Holocaust.
Its disclosure has reopened a raw debate on the World War II role of the Catholic Church and of Pope Pius XII, a candidate for sainthood who has been excoriated by his critics as a heartless anti-Semite who maintained a public silence on the Nazi death camps and praised by his supporters as a savior of Jewish lives.
The one-page, typewritten directive, dated Oct. 23, 1946, was discovered in a French church archive outside Paris and made available to The New York Times on the condition that the source would not be disclosed. It is a list of instructions for French authorities on how to deal with demands from Jewish officials who want to reclaim Jewish children.
"Children who have been baptized must not be entrusted to institutions that would not be in a position to guarantee their Christian upbringing," the directive says.
It also contains an order not to allow Jewish children who had been baptized Catholic to go home to their own parents. "If the children have been turned over by their parents, and if the parents reclaim them now, providing that the children have not received baptism, they can be given back," it says.
Even Jewish orphans who had not been baptized Catholic were not to be turned over automatically to Jewish authorities. "For children who no longer have their parents, given the fact that the church has responsibility for them, it is not acceptable for them to be abandoned by the church or entrusted to any persons who have no rights over them, at least until they are in a position to choose themselves," the document says. "This, obviously, is for children who would not have been baptized."
The document, written in French and first disclosed last week by the Italian daily newspaper Corriere della Sera, is unsigned but says, "It should be noted that this decision taken by the Holy Congregation of the Holy Office has been approved by the Holy Father."
The publication of the document is likely to embolden those who do not think Pius XII is worthy of becoming a saint. Some prominent Jews and historians have attacked the document for its insensitivity to the Holocaust.
The Rev. Peter Gumpel, a Rome-based Jesuit priest and a leading proponent for the beatification of Pius XII, the first step toward sainthood, said he was convinced that the document did not come from the Vatican. He pointed out that it is not on official Vatican stationery, that it is not signed and that it is written in French, not Italian. "There is something fishy here," he said.
But Étienne Fouilloux, a French historian who is compiling Pope John XXIII's diaries during his years in France, said that the document had been discovered recently in church archives outside of Paris by a serious researcher and that it is genuine. John has been beatified, the last formal step toward sainthood.
At the time, Pope John XXIII was Monsignor Angelo Roncalli, Pope Pius XII'S representative to France. During the war, Monsignor Roncalli was credited with saving tens of thousands of Jews from Nazi persecution by using diplomatic couriers, papal representatives and nuns to issue and deliver baptismal certificates, immigration certificates and visas, many of them forged, to Jews. He also helped gain asylum for Jews in neutral countries.
"This document is indicative of a mind-set at the Vatican that dealt with problems in a legal framework without worrying that there were human beings involved," Mr. Fouilloux said. "It shows that the massacre of Jews was not seen by the Holy See as something of importance."
He said he would include the document in the next volume of the diaries.
The document underscores the sanctity with which the Vatican treated the sacrament of baptism at the time - no matter how or why it was administered.
The church's stance that a baptized child is irrevocably Christian was established nearly a century before the Holocaust, when, in 1858, papal guards took Edgardo Mortara, 6, from his family in Bologna when word spread that he had been clandestinely baptized by a Catholic maid. It was relaxed only in the 1960's.
More important, the directive captures the church's failure to grasp the enormous implications of the Nazi extermination of the Jews. "It shows the very bureaucratic and very icy attitude of the Catholic Church in these types of things." said Alberto Melloni, an Italian historian with the John XXIII Foundation for Religious Studies in Bologna, who is working with Mr. Fouilloux to publish the diaries of Pope John XXIII. He called the tone of the directive "horrifyingly normal."
A second document that was also discovered by the French researcher is a letter in July 1946 to Monsignor Roncalli that noted his pledge to intervene to return Jewish-born children to their community and asked for his help to return 30 Jewish-born children living in a Catholic charity.
"Almost two years after the liberation of France, some Israelite children are still in non-Jewish institutions that refuse to give them back to Jewish charities," said the letter, which was signed by the Grand Rabbi of France and the head of the Jewish Central Consistory. It added, "We are in advance, grateful for your help."
It is not known whether there was a reply.
No reliable figures exist on how many French Jewish children were saved by the church from the Nazis, or affected by its decision to prevent them from rejoining their families and communities after the war. The French Jewish population had limited success in recovering Jewish children who had been adopted by non-Jews.
In the most well-documented case in France, two Jewish boys, Robert and Gerald Finaly, were sent in 1944 by their parents to a Catholic nursery in Grenoble. The parents perished at Auschwitz. Family members tried to get the boys back in 1945, but in part because they had been baptized, it took an additional eight years and a long legal battle to prevail over the church.
"Look, I know that for the church, baptism means the child belongs to the church, you can't undo it," said Amos Luzzatto, the president of the Union of Italian Jewish Communities. "But given the circumstances they could have made a human decision."
Mr. Luzzatto described himself as "speechless" that the Vatican directive on the children does not mention the Holocaust and questioned the worthiness of Pius XII to be made a saint.
"If they beatify him, don't ask us to applaud," he said.
Some corners of the Catholic Church are suspicious that the document, and the ensuing debate that has played out in Italian newspapers, was produced to create obstacles in Pius XII's march toward sainthood.
But Pope John Paul II strongly supports the campaign to make Pius XII a saint, and in February 2003, the Vatican announced the opening of some secret archives to help clear Pius XII's name, although the papers do not deal with his activities as pope.
Elaine Sciolino reported from Paris for this article, and Jason Horowitz from Rome.
The Organs Donations Issues
I tried to figure out myself a bit what it is the whole issue about the latest scandal about the organs donations.
Here, a couple of links:
Forward - How Kidneys are Bought and Sold on Black Market
one simple conclusion: there are people in desperate need for a transplant. The provisions in Israel are very strict and the offer is seriously limited in comparison with the demand.
See: Halachic Organ Donor Society
Also: the Syrian-Jewish Enclave in NYC
The insider spy
The almost Hollywood screenplay
How much is your body worth - or part of it?
the UK disscussion
the ethics context
value or market value?
Here, a couple of links:
Forward - How Kidneys are Bought and Sold on Black Market
one simple conclusion: there are people in desperate need for a transplant. The provisions in Israel are very strict and the offer is seriously limited in comparison with the demand.
See: Halachic Organ Donor Society
Also: the Syrian-Jewish Enclave in NYC
The insider spy
The almost Hollywood screenplay
and the letter of the Sephardic Community Alliance - a possible power conflict between the Sephardims and Askenazi could also offer an explanation ?
Hamodia found an explanation: We are Very Much in Galus
How much is your body worth - or part of it?
the UK disscussion
the ethics context
value or market value?
Recently, in Romania, several Israeli fertily doctors were arrested and are under investigation for egg trafficking. The "ova commerce" discussion is almost ten years old in Israel.
Health Bills Allow Some a Religious Exemption
Maura Reynolds
August 3
One of the central tenets of the health care legislation under construction on Capitol Hill is a mandate that every American be protected by some kind of medical insurance. There’s one exception to the mandate, though: people opposed to buying health coverage for religious reasons.
The emerging bills in both the House and Senate include language patterned on an existing “religious conscience” exemption to laws requiring workers to pay taxes for Social Security and Medicare. What’s not clear is whether the exemption, originally designed to apply only to the Old Order Amish, might be used by members of other religious groups — or those who just say they are — in order to evade the insurance mandate.
It’s probably not a large group: There are only between 200,000 and 250,000 Old Order Amish and Old Order Mennonites (with similar beliefs) in the United States, for instance. But data is thin. The IRS and the Social Security Administration say they don’t collate records on who files for the tax exemption or what religious affiliations they claim. Christian Scientists, who believe in spiritual healing rather than traditional medicine, might be able to file for exemptions to the taxes and to the health insurance mandate, but church officials and lobbyists declined several requests to discuss the matter.
According to the Web site of the Church of Christ, Scientist, believers do not object to all medical care or to purchasing health insurance: “Every Christian Scientist makes his or her own financial and health decisions,” the site says, including when and how to seek medical treatment and whether to carry health insurance.
In Massachusetts, where the Christian Science church is headquartered, the mandatory state health program offers a religious conscience exclusion, and about 9,700 people applied for it in 2007, the most recent year with complete data. The state program has penalties for those who apply for the exclusion and wind up visiting the doctor or the hospital anyway — and, two years ago, about 700 people who applied for the religious exemption were denied and fined, according to Robert Bliss of the Massachusetts Department of Revenue.
There is no similar penalty in the proposed language of the federal health care mandate. A senior Democratic aide involved in drafting the Senate bill, who declined to be named because he was not authorized to talk to reporters, said no member of Congress has pushed for penalties because the number of religious objectors are few and there has been little history of others improperly claiming the exclusion, at least for Social Security and Medicare taxes.
The tax exemption dates to 1965, when Congress included it in the revised Social Security Act (which also created Medicare) to settle a decade-long dispute with the Amish, who believe in a deep division between church and state. The Amish don’t object to paying taxes, and they routinely pay their income, property and other levies to federal and state authorities. But when the IRS began applying the Social Security self-employment tax to farm income in the 1950s — and confiscating farm animals to pay the arrears — the Amish resisted.
Amish farmers argued that Social Security was a form of public insurance, and their religious beliefs prevent them from taking part in public or commercial insurance. Instead, the Amish effectively self-insure within their own community: When a church member needs medical care, for instance, the family pays out of pocket and the church takes up a collection or reimburses them from a common fund.
“The Amish do not believe in accepting government help, and they believe profoundly in taking care of their own,’’ says the Rev. William C. Lindholm, a Lutheran minister and chairman of the National Committee for Amish Religious Freedom, which advocates on behalf of the Amish, who rarely venture into public debate.
What the Amish wanted to do, in effect, was opt out of the Social Security and Medicare systems entirely, and after a public backlash over the livestock confiscations, Congress decided to permit a narrow exemption for religious sects “opposed to acceptance of the benefits of any private or public insurance.”
To get the exemption, taxpayers must provide evidence they are members of a qualifying sect that has been in existence continuously since 1950. As Roberton Williams, a tax expert at the Urban Institute, put it, “People who try to set up their house as a church, well,that doesn’t fly.’
My Question: You could admit an adult is more or less aware of the consequence of its decisions, whatever the basis. The problem is what to do with the children who, because of the religious choices of their parents are unable to be benefit of a healthy treatment?
See also:
WSJ - Opting out
Sunday 2 August 2009
Numbers
From the last The Economist, a statistic about the Arab death following the Conflicts in the Arab world since 1990
Sources: Algerian Government, British Council, B'T selem, Iraq Body Count, Kuwaiti Government, Palestinian Centre for Human Rights, Project on Defense Alternatives, Reuters, UN
Conflict in Darfur, since 2003 - 400,000
Algerian Civil War 1991-2002 - 150,000-200,000
Invasion of Iraq (since 2003) - 101,000-109,000
Iraqi Shia rebellion - 60,000-100,000
War for Kuwait (1990 and 1991) - 24,000-31,000
Second Palestinian intifada (2000-05) -5,500
Gaza war (2009) - 1,400
Lebanon war (2006) - 1,200
Every human being have its value and its story and the same right to live. The same right to have its life defended. Why the apparent solidarity in the Middle East when it is about opposing Israel is fading away when it is to help the lives of other Arabs? The same question for the human rights activitst across the world.
The same Economist is quoting Mona Eltahawy, relating to another issue, but still concerning the Arab world: "Israel is the opium of the Arabs".
Still related to the latest evolution in the Middle East: why any kind of solidarity - human therefore, whatever the race, origin and country - is almost absent in the case of Iran? Of course, the situation is not clear, mainly regarding who could take the direct advantage of any change of the current status. But, beyond the geopolitical and pollitical considerations, it is first of all a matter of respect for the human rights.
What is it like to be a bat?
In 1974, the philosopher Thomas Nagel published the paper: "What it is like to be a bat?". The answer is, no surprise, we have no idea. We cannot enter the skull of another person, let alone another species, to experience directly the emotions that rats or bats or other humans feel. Our access is limited to the mechanical, external behavior, that may or may not accompany a certain type of emotion.
The Economist's art discoveries
are a series of not well-known but valuable museums and galleries across the world. After the series of The Monocle, discovering small and valuable ideas in big places, it is another sign that, in the area of creativity - including writing - and arts, the unique and less advertised places have a new future.
An interesting exhibition is currently displayed at the Asian Art Museum from San Franscisco, about the culture of samurai.
Vigil for TA attack held in Jerusalem
Jonathan Beck
The Jerusalem Post
The Jerusalem Post
August 2
Hundreds of people convened Sunday afternoon in Jerusalem's Kikar Zion to express solidarity with the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) after two people were killed and more than a dozen injured on Saturday night.
Some 500 arrived to the square, carrying signs in with slogans including "Live and Let Love," "Why Kill?" and Tourism Ministry posters of Jerusalem on which the phrase "Senseless Hatred destroyed Jerusalem" was written in Hebrew. Some people waved flags with the rainbow colors symbolizing the gay community and others waved black flags.
News of the vigil spread by word of mouth, through phones and SMS messages.
Dina G., a Jerusalem resident who was present at the vigil, told The Jerusalem Post that the vigil was a "beautiful, soulful" event, with no displays of violence and minimal police presence. Apart from the mostly young people who were at the square, some older people arrived, as well as religious Israelis, she said.
Dina told the Post that the vigil was quiet, with people congregating to honor the dead and some holding up signs, but without shouting slogans.
In a similar event in Tel Aviv, MK Dov Khenin, of the Hadash party, said the murder Saturday was "a horrible reminder of the serious threats to the democratic spectrum of liberties. Again we learn that no man is an island and no place is a safe bubble.
"We will not ask for whom the alarm bell tolls today - it tolls for all of us," Khenin added.
Vigils were also held in Beersheba in the South and Carmiel in the North.
Some 500 arrived to the square, carrying signs in with slogans including "Live and Let Love," "Why Kill?" and Tourism Ministry posters of Jerusalem on which the phrase "Senseless Hatred destroyed Jerusalem" was written in Hebrew. Some people waved flags with the rainbow colors symbolizing the gay community and others waved black flags.
News of the vigil spread by word of mouth, through phones and SMS messages.
Dina G., a Jerusalem resident who was present at the vigil, told The Jerusalem Post that the vigil was a "beautiful, soulful" event, with no displays of violence and minimal police presence. Apart from the mostly young people who were at the square, some older people arrived, as well as religious Israelis, she said.
Dina told the Post that the vigil was quiet, with people congregating to honor the dead and some holding up signs, but without shouting slogans.
In a similar event in Tel Aviv, MK Dov Khenin, of the Hadash party, said the murder Saturday was "a horrible reminder of the serious threats to the democratic spectrum of liberties. Again we learn that no man is an island and no place is a safe bubble.
"We will not ask for whom the alarm bell tolls today - it tolls for all of us," Khenin added.
Vigils were also held in Beersheba in the South and Carmiel in the North.
More about:
Eye witnesses - Forward - There were nowhere to run
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