Tag Archives | Judaism

This School Has to Make a Prophet

By on December 30, 2012 in News 3

In the year 1999, in the seventh month,
from the sky will come the great King of Terror,
bringing back to life the great King of the Mongols.
Before and after, Mars will reign by good fortune.

- Nostradamus

The passing of the 21st of December 2012 means the whiff of predicting the future is still in our collective nostrils. It’s perhaps ironic that a new school has opened in Tel Aviv which claims to teach the ancient art of Judaic prophecy. According to AP:

For just 200 shekels, about $53, and in only 40 short classes, the Cain and Abel School for Prophets says it will certify anyone as a modern-day Jewish soothsayer.

The school, which launched classes this month, has baffled critics, many of whom have dismissed it as a blasphemy or a fraud.

On a religious level, Jewish tradition recognizes a few dozen prophets from the biblical era — from the monumental figures of Abraham, Moses and Elijah to lesser known foretellers of doom and tormented questioners like Micah the Morashtite and Habakkuk.

… Read the rest

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‘Lost Tribe’ Returns to Israel

By on December 25, 2012 in News 3

Picture: Rachel-Esther (CC)

Dozens of the Bnei Menasche, a group of Indian Jews who claim to be the descendents of a lost Biblical tribe, arrived in Israel this week – and not everyone is happy:

Via Huffington Post:

The Bnei Menashe say they are descended from Jews banished from ancient Israel to India in the eighth century B.C. An Israeli chief rabbi recognized them as a lost tribe in 2005, and about 1,700 moved to Israel over the next two years before the government stopped giving them visas.

Israel recently reversed that policy, agreeing to let the remaining 7,200 Bnei Menashe immigrate.

Fifty-three arrived on a flight Monday. Michael Freund, an Israel-based activist on their behalf, said nearly 300 others will arrive in the coming weeks.

“After waiting for thousands of years, our dream came true,” said Lhing Lenchonz, 26, who arrived with her husband and 8-month-old daughter. “We are now in our land.”

Not all Israelis think Bnei Menashe qualify as Jews, and some suspect they are simply fleeing poverty in India.

… Read the rest

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Einstein: ‘God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses’

By on October 5, 2012 in News 27

Source: Gazin Auctions

Einstein’s “God Letter” is up for sale at auction. Any bidders? Jessica Ravitz reports for CNN:

Decades before atheist scientist and author Richard Dawkins called God a “delusion,” one world-renowned physicist – Albert Einstein – was weighing in on faith matters with his own strong words.

“The word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honorable, but still primitive legends,” Einstein wrote in German in a 1954 letter that will be auctioned on eBay later this month. “No interpretation no matter how subtle can (for me) change this.”

Dubbed Einstein’s “God Letter” by the Los Angeles-based auction agency that’s posting it online, the original document will be up for grabs starting Monday. The opening bid: $3 million.

The letter provides a window into the famed genius’s religious beliefs. Einstein wrote it to Jewish philosopher Eric Gutkind, one year before Einstein died, in reaction to Gutkind’s book, “Choose Life: The Biblical Call to Revolt.”…

[continues at CNN]… Read the rest

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Blurred Eyeglasses Unveiled To Help Israeli Ultra-Orthodox Avoid Impure Sights

By on August 15, 2012 in News 16

Fascinating — wearing blurry goggles to obscure one’s surroundings as a means of keeping the mind and spirit clear. In a world in which are constantly bombarded with undesired information, perhaps we could all use a pair. The Times of Israel writes:

An ultra-Orthodox organization has developed a range of products to act as a first line of defense against the threat of seeing immodest women, Israeli media reported on Tuesday.

In a change of tactics from previous ultra-Orthodox strategies that in the past have targeted women as the culprits of lasciviousness, the Committee for Purity in the Camp offers a variety of gadgets to limit the field of view and so prevent men from exposure to over-exposed women. The devices have recently gone on sale in ultra-Orthodox neighborhoods of Jerusalem and elsewhere.

Two semi-transparent stickers applied to the lenses of the user’s spectacles blur vision of anything beyond the range of a few meters and so diffuse immodestly dressed women to a harmless blot.

… Read the rest

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The Codex Aleppo Mystery

By on July 29, 2012 in News 4

This New York Times Magazine story by Ronen Bergman reads like a real-life Dan Brown novel (the background parts where our hero laboriously explains the significance of an historical artifact, anyway):

One day this spring, on the condition that I not reveal any details of its location nor the stringent security measures in place to protect its contents, I entered a hidden vault at the Israel Museum and gazed upon the Aleppo Codex — the oldest, most complete, most accurate text of the Hebrew Bible. The story of how it arrived here, in Jerusalem, is a tale of ancient fears and modern prejudices, one that touches on one of the rawest nerves in Israeli society: the clash of cultures between Jews from Arab countries and the European Jews, or Ashkenazim, who controlled the country during its formative years. And the story of how some 200 pages of the codex went missing — and to this day remain the object of searches carried out around the globe by biblical scholars, private investigators, shadowy businessmen and the Mossad, Israel’s intelligence agency — is one of the great mysteries in Jewish history.

… Read the rest

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Thank You God for Killing My Enemies’ Children

By on April 7, 2012 in News 44

Death Firstborn[Site editor's note: The following is an excerpt from the recent Disinformation title 50 Things You're Not Supposed To Know: Religion, authored by Daniele Bolelli.]

Often, the stories at the origin of many religious holidays sound like sweet fairy tales.

Think of Christmas, for example, with the shooting star, the three wise men bringing gifts, and baby Jesus being born in the midst of all the happy barn animals. It has a “God meets Old-MacDonald-Had-a-Farm” feel to it.

The story at the roots of the Jewish holiday of Passover, on the other hand, doesn’t sound quite like a fairy tale—unless perhaps one created by Stephen King. What exactly is celebrated during Passover? Our tale begins in Egypt over 3,000 years ago—or at least so we are told, since there is less historical evidence for the authenticity of this story than for the existence of the Yeti and the Loch Ness monster.… Read the rest

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The Passover Plot

By on April 6, 2012 in News 9

passover plotThis year Passover begins in the evening of Friday, April 6, 2012, with Easter Sunday falling on April 8, 2012. While many people celebrating the religious holidays this weekend think they know what happened in Golgotha, Israel a couple of thousand years ago, there is in fact tremendous controversy, spurred not least by a best-selling 1965 book by British Biblical scholar Hugh J. Schonfield, The Passover Plot.

Based on scholarly research into the social and religious culture in which Jesus was born, lived and died, into the source documents of the Gospels, and into other literature, Schonfield reached the following conclusions:

  • That Jesus was a deeply religious Jewish man, probably well-versed in the teachings of the local northern sects such as the Nazarenes and Essenes.
  • That growing up in Biblical Galilee he had a skeptical and somewhat rebellious relationship to the hierarchy and teachings mandated by the authorities (the Pharisees) of the Temple in Jerusalem.

    • … Read the rest

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The Occult Obsessions Of Sir Isaac Newton

By on February 17, 2012 in News 1

newton_manuscript416The father of physics was deeply involved with esoteric and Kabbala studies, and was convinced that Jewish scripture and the geometry of temples contained crucial worldly secrets, the Daily Mail reveals:

He laid the foundations of classical physics and is considered to be one of the greatest scientists of all time. But Sir Isaac Newton was also deeply interested in the occult and applied a scientific approach to the study of scripture and Jewish mysticism.

Now Israel’s national library, which contains a vast trove of Newton’s esoteric writings, has digitised his occult collection and posted it online. Among the yellowed texts is Newton’s famous prediction of the apocalypse in 2060.

Newton learned Hebrew and delved into the study of esoteric Jewish philosophy, the mysticism of Kabbala and the Talmud. He based his calculation on the end of days on information gleaned from the Book of Daniel, which projected the apocalypse 1,260 years later.

… Read the rest

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Religious Newspaper Removes Hillary Clinton From Situation Room Photo

By on May 9, 2011 in News 33

girls-Allowed-620x686Minor controversy erupted after people noticed that a Brooklyn-based, ultra-Orthadox Jewish newpaper’s version of the iconic “Situation Room” photograph had Hillary Clinton mysteriously vanished.

The story is an interesting and ironic example of a number of things — the literal erasing women’s accomplishments, and religious fundamentalists’ use of technology in postmodern fashion in their efforts to turn back society’s clock. From New York’s Daily News:

A Hasidic newspaper got into the business of revisionist history Friday when it printed a Situation Room photo that was doctored to remove Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

The Brooklyn-based publication Der Zeitung published the now iconic photo showing only men present to monitor a daring 40-minute Navy SEALs raid that killed Osama Bin Laden, the world’s most wanted terrorist. National Security team member Audrey Tomason was also scrubbed from the historic image.

As a rule, Der Zeitung does not run images of women that could be considered “sexually suggestive,” Jewish Week writer Rabbi Jason Miller said.

… Read the rest

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The Young Nazi Who Grew Up To Become A Jew

By on April 23, 2011 in News 0

Theo Haser & FamilyVia BBC News:

As a child, Theo Haser was a loyal member of the Hitler Youth. But decades later, haunted by the horror of the Holocaust, he converted to Judaism.

As a young boy, growing up amid the nationalist frenzy of Nazi Germany, Theo Haser idolised Hitler.

When the fuehrer came to his hometown of Munich to visit, Theo and his father were at the front of the crowd reaching out to touch his hand.

“I know if I was able to shake his hand I probably wouldn’t have washed for a few months,” he recalls.

Seventy years later, in a bid to come to terms with his Nazi past, Theo has become a Jew.

“I wanted to be part of a community, this was something I had never felt in my life,” he says. “I wasn’t running away from something, I was joining something entirely new.”

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