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| Dovid Efune, Ira Stoll, Laurel Leff and Ari Goldman discuss "The New York Times and the Jews" |
Shocking footage emerged on YouTube Saturday of Orthodox Jews in Jerusalem being hounded and abused by a mob of Arabs some of which are heard on the video to be laughing loudly.Here is the video:
In the video the Arab youths are seen kicking, shoving, hurling chunks of snow and shouting insults at two men. One of the Jewish men falls as he slips on stairs attempting to escape the mob and the hat of one of them is taken. The attackers are mostly hooded and wearing kaffiyehs.
Poland and the JewsYou can read the rest of the article and the interview here.
by Rabbi Michael Schudrich
An interview with Rabbi Michael Schudrich, Poland's Chief Rabbi.
"The subject of Jews and Poland involves three interrelated matters. The first concerns what is currently happening to the Jews living in Poland. The second is Poland's Jewish heritage, including its physical remnants: cemeteries, synagogues, communal and private property. The third has to do with the nature of Polish-Jewish relations."
Rabbi Michael Schudrich began working in Poland in 1990. He has been Rabbi of Warsaw and Lodz since 2000, and since 2004 has also served as Chief Rabbi of Poland. As often happens, a particular incident made his name internationally known. On a Shabbat at the end of May 2006, he was punched and pepper-sprayed by an attacker in a Warsaw street who shouted "Poland for the Poles." Nevertheless, Schudrich does not feel fearful in Poland.
Although his is not a Polish state title, he is de facto recognized by the government as the senior religious representative of Polish Jewry. Schudrich remarks: "When it is appropriate, the government invites me as 'clergy' -- that is, a minority theologian. This includes the inauguration of a new president and the first meeting of the new Sejm -- parliament."
Technorati Tag: Michael Schudrich and Poland and Jews and Polish Jews.
| TOTAL | Democrat | Republican |
|---|---|---|
| More Than Weekly (17%) | 38% | 60% |
| Weekly (28%) | 46% | 53% |
| Monthly (12%) | 57% | 41% |
| A Few Times a Year (25%) | 60% | 38% |
| Never (15%) | 67% | 30% |
| TOTAL | Democrat | Republican |
|---|---|---|
| Weekly (45%) | 43% | 55% |
| Occasionally (38%) | 59% | 39% |
| Never (15%) | 67% | 30% |
a recent Gallup poll that asked Americans how they felt about various religious groups. Surprisingly, Jews were the most popular of the 10 groups rated, not only scoring higher than Muslims and atheists, but higher than Catholics, Methodists, Baptists, Evangelical Christians, or Fundamentalist Christians (their categories).The article gives other reasons for the result, but I think it may be because while religious groups can be perceived as being threatening to the American public at large, Jews are perceived more as an ethnic group than as a religious group.
Technorati Tag: Israel and Elections and Jews and CNN and Democrats and Republicans.
Unlike Google, Jews don't necessarily find the word "Jew" to be a derogatory one, as shown by its prevalence in the titles of blogs.She even cites a number of blogs with the word 'Jew' in them to prove her point.
The word "Jew" is now very nearly taboo, except in very restricted contexts. You have to say "Jewish person," or some such formula -- though I suppose in ten years or so that will slip into taboo statusI also quote Jonah Goldberg, who wrote back in August 2000:
But in another sense, hearing "Jew" is a bit jarring...Still Hitler was largely successful in smearing the word "Jew." The word was so beaten up that after the Holocaust most American Jews took to saying, "I'm Jewish," rather than say, "I am a Jew."Have things changed since then?
Technorati Tag: Jews.
A new blog How Orthodox Jews Should Vote is trying to answer that question. Based on his own opionion and knowledge of the issues, as well as feedback from the campaign offices of the various candidates, HOJSV looks at various election campaign around the country. He gives the positions of the candidates, not the dirt.
Technorati Tag: Jews and Elections.
Benedict's overarching message in that lecture was that to survive, a culture must be willing to embrace its identity, for if it does not, it won't even be capable of understanding why it should survive.But that means our having the strength to define ourselves, and not allowing others to define who we are. Thus
the best way to safeguard our freedom and our heritage, is to embrace and celebrate our identity as Jews. As Elie Wiesel once explained to me, the key to defending ourselves is to never allow our haters to tell us who we are. "Hatred only defines the haters," he said.It is the ability to define ourselves as Jews that will enable us to counter the attacks of our enemies in every generation.
..."We Jews," Wiesel explained, "have always defined ourselves as the children of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob." Indeed, at Mount Sinai, in our acceptance of the Ten Commandments, the Jewish people became the first nation in history to self-consciously define itself. And each subsequent generation of Jews has remade that choice. Jews do not exist, as Jean-Paul Sarte ignorantly argued, because anti-Semites exist. The leader of the existentialist movement should have understood; anti-Semites exist because anti-Semites choose to exist.
Pope Benedict is able to discuss Islam because, secure in his Christian identity, he has a clear basis for judging the goodness or unreasonableness of Muslim values and behavior. Whether we agree with his judgments or not, through his willingness to judge, Benedict capably defends and advances his faith.This is all well and good, but if you read Glick's article, and look at her definition of being a Jew, it is a cultural-nationalist definition:
But despite the fundamental importance of religion, most of our sages and scribblers are poorly equipped to deal with it, as you can see from the awkward coverage of the pope’s speech at Regensberg. It was, as you’d expect from a pope, a religious text, but the religious content was rarely reported, aside from Benedict’s remarks about Islam — themselves a part of a broader religious message aimed primarily at Europeans.All the more reason for an understanding of things Jewish, to understand both ourselves, the world, and our place in it--and with Islam.
...But I’m afraid that we’re not engaging this debate, because our leaders are afraid to do so, and poorly equipped to participate. Our educational system has long since banished religion from its texts, and an amazing number of Americans are intellectually unprepared for a discussion in which religion is the central organizing principle.
...Ignorance of things religious is terribly damaging for other reasons as well, not least of all because it prevents us from understanding the nature of our most dangerous enemies.
Technorati Tag: Israel and Jews and Caroline Glick and Pope Benedict and Moslems.
Powerline recounts this meeting of Bush with 16 rabbis from around the country, giving the notes of one of the rabbis who attended.
I just thought it was interesting.
Technorati Tag: Jews and President Bush.
"He was clearly a Hasidic Jew," said Yves Faguy, a passenger seated nearby. "He had some sort of cover over his head. He was reading from a book.Because the man did not speak either English or French, he was escorted off the plane so they could find a translator. Still, it is not entirely clear why he had to be removed, seeing that it was clear that he was Jewish and just praying.
"He wasn't exactly praying out loud but he was lurching back and forth," Faguy added.
The action didn't seem to bother anyone, Faguy said, but a flight attendant approached the man and told him his praying was making other passengers nervous.
"The attendant actually recognized out loud that he wasn't a Muslim and that she was sorry for the situation but they had to ask him to leave," Faguy said.
...Air Canada Jazz termed the situation "delicate," but says it received more than one complaint about the man's behaviour.Does "more than one complaint" as opposed to "a number of complainst" or "many complaints" mean that there were just two complaints? If, as implied by Air Canada's statement, there were no more than a handful of complaints, then how was removing the man "in the interest of the majority of passengers"?
The crew had to act in the interest of the majority of passengers, said Jazz spokeswoman Manon Stewart.
The Jewish group B'nai Brith Canada has offered to help give Air Canada crews sensitivity training.Is there a need for sensitivity training?
-----Antisemitism remains at high levels in Canada League for Human Rights releases 2005 data
Posted On 03/22/06
Antisemitism remains at high levels in Canada League for Human Rights releases 2005 data
Ottawa, March 22, 2006 – The League for Human Rights of B'nai Brith Canada today released its 2005 Audit of Antisemitic Incidents, an annual study on patterns of prejudice in this country. In total, 829 incidents were reported in 2005, representing a marginal decrease of just 3.3% compared to 2004 when an increase of 46.7% was documented. The number of antisemitic incidents in 2005 marks the second highest total in the 23-year history of the Audit. Since 2001, the total number of incidents has increased almost three-fold.
NOTICE TO CANADIAN CITIZENS BORN IN JERUSALEMOne thing for sure--someone does.
B’nai Brith Canada is seeking a reversal of Canada’s passport policy, which denies Canadian citizens born in Jerusalem the right to have Israel noted in their passports as their country of birth. An application for judicial review of the Government’s policy has been filed by David Matas, B’nai Brith’s Senior Legal Counsel.
Canadian Terrorists Planned To Behead Prime MinisterBut before the police raid...
From the DNC’s Associated Press:
Family members and friends of 15 Canadians charged in an alleged terror plot make their way through media as they leave court in Brampton, Ont., Canada, on Tuesday June 6, 2006.
Canada plot allegedly involved PM attack
By BETH DUFF-BROWN, Associated Press Writer
Some of the 17 Muslim men accused of plotting terror bombings in Canada also planned to storm Parliament, take hostages and behead the prime minister and other leaders, according to accusations revealed Tuesday by the lawyer for one of the suspects.
Raid officers learned about Muslim traditions
From Tuesday's Globe and Mail
Tuesday, June 06, 2006
Before the raids came the sensitivity training: Tactical-squad Mounties learned how to properly handle Korans prior to arresting 17 terrorism suspects on the weekend.
And that's not all. The RCMP also made sure there were clean prayer mats on hand for their suspects when they were sent to jail cells.
Technorati Tag: Canada and Air Canada and Jew and Sensitivity Training.
One in an occasional series of articles related to the fifth anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacksSee the resemblance?
As the war on terror heads into its sixth year, a new racial stereotype is emerging in America. Brown-skinned men with beards and women with head scarves are seen as "Muslims" -- regardless of their actual faith or nationality.
Law enforcement measures, politicians, religious leaders and the media have contributed to stereotyping Muslims as a race -- echoing the painful history of another faith.
"Muslims are the new Jews," said Paul Silverstein, an anthropology professor at Reed College in Oregon who studies the intersection of race, immigration and Islam. "They're the object of a series of stereotypes, caricatures and fears which are not based in a reality and are independent of a person's experience with Muslims."
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Technorati Tag: Jews and Moslems.
The Belgian authorities have destroyed archives and records relating to the persecution and deportation of Jews in Belgium in the 1930s and 1940s. Some of this happened as recently as the late 1990s. This was revealed during hearings in the Belgian Senate last Spring. Though the Senate report dates from 4 May the Belgian press has not yet mentioned the affair. [update 3 Sept.: The Brussels Dutch-language newspaper De Morgen published an article on page 6 of its 14 Dec. 2005 edition, under the title: Archives about Persecution of Jews were Intentionally Destroyed] The Senate report says that “documents about the period 1930-1950 have been destroyed on a massive scale.”Some suggestions for the destruction of the records is offered.
In Charleroi the archives of both the municipal police as well as the judicial police were completely destroyed in the late 1970s. Before the war Charleroi had a relatively large Jewish community which was all but exterminated during the war, while in Antwerp a significant proportion of the Jews managed to survive. Yet in Belgium no-one is familiar with the extermination of the Walloon Jewry, while Antwerp is regularly blamed for having been a “center of anti-Semitism.” By destroying paper trails people are made to forget that certain events ever took place.Is Ahmadinejad planning on visiting Belgium too?
Hugo Vandenberghe, the leader of the Flemish Christian-Democrats, suggested that the destruction of the archives “may have had a political motive.” Senator Vandenberghe referred to the anti-Semitism of the Belgian authorities in the 1930s. The historian Nico Wouters told the Senators during the hearings that even after the war the Belgian authorities continued to arrest German Jews who had survived the holocaust by going into hiding, under the pretext that they were “citizens of a hostile nation.”
Technorati Tag: Belgium and Anti-semitism and Holocaust and Jews.
...41 per cent of the 464 respondents stated that they thought the Jews should learn from the Arabs hospitality, friendliness, and generosity; while 19 per cent answered that they should learn from the Arabs pride, honor, and honesty. Only a very small percentage of the respondents felt that the Jews should learn from the Arabs other things, such as tolerance and nondiscrimination (4 per cent), honor for parents and modesty (2 per cent), customs and details of traditions relating to foodstuffs, style of building, etc. (3 per cent), and agriculture (2 per cent).
Technorati Tag: Israel and Arabs and Jews.
A Muslim group is demanding that the Baltimore County school system remove Jewish holidays from the 2006-07 school calendar.
The demand comes after a nearly three-year battle between the Baltimore Muslim Council and the school system over adding two Islamic holy days, Id al-Fitre and Id al-Adha, to the school calendar.
Next school year's calendar, proposed May 10 and due to be voted on by the school board June 13, does not include the two holy days. But the calendar does list the Jewish holidays of Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur, meaning schools are closed those days.Apparently there are 2 ways of looking at Pharoan's statements--as a threat or a request for equal treatment.
Dr. Bash Pharoan, president of the Muslim council, said it is not fair for the county to recognize one religion while ignoring others. He said if the school board does not vote to allow the two Muslim holidays, then the Jewish holidays should be dropped.
"This issue is about equality, about equity," he said.
This is not an issue of equality. This is an issue of the dominant culture being made to submit to the demands of a tiny minority. The Jewish presence in America has always been significant; Muslim presence has been nil until recently, despite fantasies about Columbus' crew seeing minarets as they approached the New World. This is an attempt at cultural strong-arming and intimidation, and should be resisted as such.On the other side is Jewish Times in an article from June 2005:
Rabbi Mark G. Loeb, of Pikesville's Beth El Congregation, agreed. The number of Muslims - comparable to that of Jews in America, if not exceeding it - deserve recognition of their holidays.So what is the reason for not adding two Islamic holidays to the school calendar? The Jewish Times quotes Rabbi Rex D. Perlmeter, of Baltimore Hebrew Congregation, who claims the issue is one of practicality:
"I think if we are a pluralistic community, we ought to honor everybody," Rabbi Loeb said. "It's a matter of showing respect. They're asking for two days. It wouldn't be so hard to [give] two days out of the calendar."
"If Baltimore County schools didn't close on the Jewish holidays, there would be a substantial impact on classroom attendance and disruption of academic flow," he said. "But I don't know whether the statistics [of Muslims in Baltimore County] would bear out the closing of schools. That's the critical question."But North County News, quotes Arthur Abramson, executive director of the Baltimore Jewish Council, who says the issue is money: the reason for adding the Jewish holidays to the schedule is that it was too costly to hire the substitutes to fill in for the observant Jewish teachers-- and the school would add the Muslim holidays when the county had more Muslim teachers and students.
The Jewish lobby is, of course, not the only lobby of its kind. Consider three others: the Irish, Greek, and Armenian lobbies. The Irish lobby, which campaigned against the United Kingdom, America's closest ally, and the Greek and Armenian lobbies, which campaigned against Turkey when Turkey was a crucial NATO ally, were seen as pursuing their legitimate concerns. I don't recall accusations against any of them of disloyalty or even of divided loyalty.While on the topic, it might be interesting to compare AIPAC with CAIR, especially in the context of CAIR being named as a defendant in a 9/11 terror class action lawsuit. It would be interesting to compare the media coverage of AIPAC and the FBI investigation on the one hand as opposed to the media coverage of the suit against CAIR.
July 7, 2004: To sum up the state of CAIR's legal play: two of its associates (Ghassan Elashi, Randall Royer) have been convicted on terrorism-related charges, one (Bassem Khafegi) convicted on fraud charges, two (Rabih Haddad, Bassem Khafegi) have been deported, and one (Siraj Wahhaj) remains at large.He has an August 15, 2005 update that a 6th member of CAIR, Mohammad Nimer, has been named in the class action suit which claims that besides being director of CAIR's Research Center, he "also served as a member of the Board of Directors of the United Association for Studies and Research ('UASR'). The UASR is the strategic arm of Hamas in the United States."
Technorati Tag: Israel and Jews and Anti-Semitism and CAIR and AIPAC.
An interesting difference in hostile stereotypes can be found in anecdotes, jokes, and the like. The main negative quality attributed to Jews in Turkish and Arab folklore was that they were cowardly and unmilitary—very contemptible qualities in a martial society. A late Ottoman joke may serve to illustrate this. The story is that in 1912, at the time of the Balkan war, when there was an acute threat to the Ottoman Empire in its final stages, the Jews, full of patriotic ardor, decided that they, too, wanted to serve in the defense of their country, so they asked permission to form a special volunteer brigade. Permission was given, and officers and ncos were sent to train and equip them. Once the Jewish volunteer brigade was armed, equipped, and trained, ready to leave for the front, they sent a message asking if they could have a police escort, because there were reports of bandits on the road.In particular, Lewis uses this anecdote to explain the humiliation the Arab world felt in the aftermath of the War of Independence, and the subsequent wars it instigated and lost:
This is a very interesting human document. Is it hostile? Not really. It shows a sort of amused tolerance, at once good-humored and contemptuous, that may help us to understand the bewilderment and horror at the Israeli victories in 1948 and after. We have some vivid descriptions at the time of the expectations and reactions of 1948. Azzam Pasha, who was then the secretary-general of the Arab League, is quoted as having said: "This will be like the Mongol invasions. We will utterly destroy them. We will sweep them into the sea." The expectation was that it would be quick and easy. There would be no problem at all dealing with half a million Jews. It was then an appalling shock when five Arab armies were defeated by half a million Jews with very limited weaponry. It remains shameful, humiliating. This was mentioned at the time and has been ever since. One writer said: "It was bad enough to be conquered and occupied by the mighty empires of the West, the British Empire, the French Empire, but to suffer this fate at the hands of a few hundred thousand Jews was intolerable."According to Lewis then, the humiliation that the Arab world felt was not due to the fact that Jews were for over a thousand years dhimmis--subjugated second class citizens--but because they were historically considered weak and cowardly. In this Lewis is consistent in his view of "Dhimmitude":
If we look at the considerable literature available about the position of Jews in the Islamic world, we find two well-established myths. One is the story of a golden age of equality, of mutual respect and cooperation, especially but not exclusively in Moorish Spain; the other is of “dhimmi”-tude, of subservience and persecution and ill treatment. Both are myths. Like many myths, both contain significant elements of truth, and the historic truth is in its usual place, somewhere in the middle between the extremes.In contrast, Dr. Mitchell Bard, author of Myths and Facts, has an article on The Treatment of Jews in Arab/Islamic Countries where he details how Jewish communities in various Moslem communities in various periods of history were subject to the destruction of synagogues, living in ghettos, and the mass slaughter of Jews. Bard quotes G.E. Von Grunebaum, author of "Eastern Jewry Under Islam":
It would not be difficult to put together the names of a very sizeable number of Jewish subjects or citizens of the Islamic area who have attained to high rank, to power, to great financial influence, to significant and recognized intellectual attainment; and the same could be done for Christians. But it would again not be difficult to compile a lengthy list of persecutions, arbitrary confiscations, attempted forced conversions, or pogroms.But unlike the issue of former dhimmitude, the Arab view of Jews as cowardly comes into play in the way that Israel conducts itself in dealing and negotiating with the Palestinian terrorists from Oslo on--in the constant talk of the need for concessions and seeming reluctance to see to it that the Palestinian Arabs keep their promises and obligations.
Technorati Tag: Israel and Jews and Anti-Semitism and Dhimmis and Spain.
If you read the entire article, some facts are missing--Torturers' Iraq link
Criminals who tortured and killed a young hostage, keeping him naked and hooded and burning him repeatedly before throwing him from a train, were inspired by images from Iraq, according to a French prosecutor.
Photofit leads to capture of Paris 'honeytrap' gangThey reveal the name of the victim and even go so far as to admit that the Jewish community is concerned by the fact that 4 other Jews were targeted in botched kidnapping attempts. But according to The Times the key to the gang is not that the victim was horribly tortured, but that it is a "honeytrap" gang that uses women to lure the victim--and the model was not Iraq, but a 1995 movie called L'Appât (The Bait).
Paris police have arrested a dozen people suspected of kidnapping and torturing a young man to death after a blonde woman used to bait their honeytrap gave herself up.
"We think there is anti-Semitism in this affair," Rafi Halimi, Ilan's uncle, told the press.Apparently the fact that 4 other Jews were targeted is not enough of a hint.
"First, because the killers tried to kidnap at least two other Jews, and second, because of what they said on the phone," Rafi Halimi added. "When we said we didn't have 500,000 euros to give them they told us to go to the synagogue and get it," Rafi said. "They also recited verses from the Koran."
But the Paris public prosecutor, Jean-Claude Marin, told Parisian Jewish radio on Thursday that "no element of the current investigation could link this murder to an anti-Semitic declaration or action." The umbrella group of French Jewish secular organizations, CRIF, issued a statement Friday calling on the Jewish community "to keep calm, cautious and wait for developments in the investigation."
It's interesting to compare the Observer's report to the European Jewish Press report, which links Halimi's treatment more explicitly to the Abu Ghraib tortures
According to the prosecutor, however, Halimi was tortured in scenes
reminiscent of the abuse of prisoners at Baghdad’s notorious Abu Ghraib jail.
Held prisoner in a Bagneux apartment, "naked, with his face covered," he was abused in "a repetition of scenes seen elsewhere", the prosecutor said.
Update: There is more in another Haaretz article here.
“The highest echelons of the French government are now preoccupied with the murder of Ilan Halimi. … Once again, as in the suburban riots of 2005, the country is forced to come face to face with the criminalized, alienated and racist Muslim youth and their adult enablers in its midst. …BIG UPDATE (3/3/06):“The murder of Ilan Halimi invites comparison with the November 2003 killing of a Jewish disc jockey, Sébastien Selam. His Muslim neighbor, Adel, slit his throat, nearly decapitating him, and gouged out his eyes with a carving fork in his building's underground parking garage. Adel came upstairs with bloodied hands and told his mother, "I killed my Jew, I will go to paradise." …
Sarkozy revealed that some suspects possessed extreme Islamic and pro-Palestinian literature and documents. What they confessed to the police further confirmed the apprehension that Halimi was subjected to barbaric abuse because he was a Jew.Caroline Glick is more specific on the nature of the documents that were found:
It appears that Ilan Halimi's murderers had some connection to Hamas. Tuesday, French Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy said that police found propaganda published by the Palestinian Charity Committee or the CBSP at the home of one of the suspects. The European Jewish Press reported this week that Israel has alleged that the organization is a front group for Palestinian terrorists and that in August 2003 the US government froze the organization's US bank accounts, accusing it of links with Hamas.Glick is relentless in her critcism of how the Israeli government responded to the murder and to the Jewish community in France:
Israel's societal meekness accords well with Kadima's ideology. Its creed was best expressed by Foreign Minister, Justice Minister and Immigration Minister Tzipi Livni last month at the Herzliya Conference and is best characterized as "conditional Zionism." In her speech, Livni explained that Israel's international legitimacy is conditional. Unless a Palestinian state is established in Judea, Samaria and Gaza, she warned, Israel will lose its legitimacy as a Jewish state.
So for Livni, Acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Shimon Peres and the rest of the Kadima gang, unlike every other people in the world, the Jewish people does not have an inherent, natural right to exist as a free, sovereign and independent people in its homeland. For Kadima, the Jewish people's right to self-determination in our land years is conditional on our enemies' acceptance of our right to be here.
I thought that part of the Zionist ideal is that besides being a homeland and destination for Jews, Israel is here to help defend and look out for Jews around world.
Technorati Tag: Anti-Semitism and France and Jews.
The sphingolipid-storage diseases, Tay-Sachs, Gaucher's and Niemann-Pick, all involve extra growth and branching of the protuberances that connect nerve cells together. Too much of this (as caused in those with double copies) is clearly pathological. But it may be that those with single copies experience a more limited, but still enhanced, protuberance growth. That would yield better linkage between brain cells, and might thus lead to increased intelligence.A different case of Jewish DNA came up in 2002:
Why a failure of the DNA-repair system should boost intelligence is unclear—and is, perhaps, the weakest part of the thesis, although evidence is emerging that one of the genes in question is involved in regulating the early growth of the brain. But the thesis also has a strong point: it makes a clear and testable prediction. This is that people with a single copy of the gene for Tay-Sachs, or that for Gaucher's, or that for Niemann-Pick should be more intelligent than average.
Indian 'Jews' resist DNA tests to prove they are a lost tribeApparently the DNA issue was 'resolved' just last year, according to Brothers Judd in September of last year:
Members of a remote community of Indians who claim to be descendants of one of the 10 lost tribes of ancient Israel are resisting plans to carry out genetic tests to prove their Jewishness.
The group, which calls itself the Bnei Menashe (or children of the biblical tribe of Manasseh), fears that the plan by a group of American and Israeli scientists to carry out DNA tests may undermine its claims to Jewish ancestry.
DNA studies at the Central Forensic Institute in Calcutta conclude that while the tribe's males show no links to Israel, the females share a family relationship to the genetic profile of Middle-Eastern people.A third case has to do with tracing Cohanim:
Dr. Skorecki considered, "According to tradition, this Sephardi Cohen and I have a common ancestor. Could this line have been maintained since Sinai, and throughout the long exile of the Jewish people?" As a scientist, he wondered, could such a claim be tested?According to the article, there are further possibilities and ramifications for this use of DNA:
...In the first study, as reported in the prestigious British science journal, Nature (January 2, 1997), 188 Jewish males were asked to contribute some cheek cells from which their DNA was extracted for study. Participants from Israel, England and North America were asked to identify whether they were a Cohen, Levi or Israelite, and to identify their family background.
The results of the analysis of the Y chromosome markers of the Cohanim and non-Cohanim were indeed significant. A particular marker, (YAP-) was detected in 98.5 percent of the Cohanim, and in a significantly lower percentage of non-Cohanim.
Using the CMH as a DNA signature of the ancient Hebrews, researchers are pursuing a hunt for Jewish genes around the world.Speaking of the Ten Lost Tribes, a fourth example comes from an article in Thursday's LA Times which refers to:
This could have ramifications in the search for the Biblical Ten Lost Tribes.
DNA evidence showing that the ancestors of American natives came from Asia, not the Middle East.This is in reference to certain principles of the Book of Mormon which supposedly are contradicted by those findings.
Dr. Robert Pollack, a professor of biological sciences and director of the Center for the Study of Science and Religion at Columbia University, makes the following important observation in his online article, "The Fallacy of Biological Judaism" (Pollack, 2003):But Lindsay also refers to another article, this one byAt a recent meeting of the Association of Orthodox Jewish scientists and the Columbia Center for the Study of Science and Religion, it became clear that Jewish curiosity has provided sufficient genetic material to give a perfectly clear negative answer: There is no support in the genomes of today's Jews for the calumnious and calamitous model of biological Judaism. Though there are many deleterious versions of genes shared within the Ashkenazic community, there are no DNA sequences common to all Jews and absent from all non-Jews. There is nothing in the human genome that makes or diagnoses a person as a Jew.
Nicholas Wade, "Geneticists Report Finding Central Asian Link to Levites," New York Times, September 27, 2003:That's us--we've confused and confounded kings, politicians, historians, philosophers, and even the scientists.A team of geneticists studying the ancestry of Jewish communities has found an unusual genetic signature that occurs in more than half the Levites of Ashkenazi descent. The signature is thought to have originated in Central Asia, not the Near East, which is the ancestral home of Jews. The finding raises the question of how the signature became so widespread among the Levites, an ancient caste of hereditary Jewish priests.
...They say that 52 percent of Levites of Ashkenazi origin have a particular genetic signature that originated in Central Asia, although it is also found less frequently in the Middle East. The ancestor who introduced it into the Ashkenazi Levites could perhaps have been from the Khazars, a Turkic tribe whose king converted to Judaism in the eighth or ninth century, the researchers suggest.
Technorati Tag: Jews and DNA and Genealogy and Ten Lost Tribes.
After staying largely in the shadows for several years, the organized American-Jewish community has jumped full throttle into the debate over the Iraq war.According to the article, back in 2003 about 46% of Jews were in favor of the US going into Iraq. With that in mind we can contrast what Yoffie is trying to accomplish with what Rep. Jim Moran thought--and apparently still thinks--Israel, and Jews, are capable of:
... As the volume of pro- and anti-war debate continues to grow in the Jewish community, a poll of American Jews by the American Jewish Committee shows at least 70 percent of those polled oppose the conflict — a figure that has risen 4 percent since last year and 16 percent since 2003.
A Democratic congressman who opposes the liberation of Iraq is blaming the Jews for threatening Saddam Hussein's hold on power. "If it were not for the strong support of the Jewish community for this war with Iraq we would not be doing this," the Connection newspapers of northern Virginia quoted Rep. Jim Moran as saying last week. "The leaders of the Jewish community are influential enough that they could change the direction of where this is going and I think they should."Moran seems not to have changed his way of thinking much; and his has kept himself busy. On June 16, 2005 he joined some other democrats in playing house:
In the Capitol basement yesterday, long-suffering House Democrats took a
trip to the land of make-believe.
They pretended a small conference room was the Judiciary Committee hearing
room, draping white linens over folding tables to make them look like
witness tables and bringing in cardboard name tags and extra flags to make
the whole thing look official.
...The session took an awkward turn when witness Ray McGovern, a former
intelligence analyst, declared that the United States went to war in Iraq
for oil, Israel and military bases craved by administration "neocons" so
"the United States and Israel could dominate that part of the world." He
said that Israel should not be considered an ally and that Bush was doing
the bidding of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.
"Israel is not allowed to be brought up in polite conversation," McGovern
said. "The last time I did this, the previous director of Central
Intelligence called me anti-Semitic."
Rep. James P. Moran Jr. (D-Va.), who prompted the question by wondering
whether the true war motive was Iraq's threat to Israel, thanked McGovern
for his "candid answer."
At Democratic headquarters, where an overflow crowd watched the hearing on
television, activists handed out documents repeating two accusations -- that
an Israeli company had warning of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and that there
was an "insider trading scam" on 9/11 -- that previously has been used to
suggest Israel was behind the attacks.
