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May 9, 2008

Rabbi Abraham J. Twerski: Reverence, Yes; Worship, No

Mona Charen: Did Israel Drive Out the Arabs 60 Years Ago?

JWisdom: Ultimate opportunities by Rabbi Sroy Levitansky

May 8, 2008

Rabbi Nathan Lopes Cardozo: Israel at 3,500+

Jonathan Tobin: Still Fighting the Same War

Steven Plaut: How ‘nakba’ proves the fiction of a Palestinian Nation

JWisdom: Taking Israel for Granted? by Rabbi Mordechai Becher

May 7, 2008

Rabbi Hillel Goldberg: Israel is irrelevant to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict

Dion Nissenbaum: Latest Olmert scandal could derail efforts to force Israel's compromises

JWisdom: My Inner Ventriloquist by Sara Yoheved Rigler

May 6, 2008

Caroline B. Glick: Anti-Zionism at 60

The Kosher Gourmet By Ethel G. Hofman: In honor of Israel's 60th anniversary, the former president of the International Association of Culinary Professionals, whose members included the likes of Julia Child, is back with a smorgasbord featuring the taste and essence of the Jewish homeland

JWisdom: Holocaust in the Perspective of Faith by Rabbi Nosson Scherman: Jewish Deer in Nazi Headlights

May 5, 2008

The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Busy work

Jonathan Mark: Remarkable half-century old Mike Wallace interview with Abba Eban puts current anti-Israel sentiment into perspective

May 2, 2008

Rabbi Berel Wein: Rote religiosity

Caroline B. Glick: Whitewashing Hamas

JWisdom: Parent trap?

May 1, 2008

David Zwiebel: Faith communities can learn from Orthodox Jews in stimulating private philanthropy for religious education

George Friedman and Peter Zeihan of Stratfor: The Shift Toward an Israeli-Syrian Agreement

JWisdom: It's time to wake up by Rebbetzin Esther Jungreis

April 30, 2008

Jonathan Tobin: Pennsylvania's Democratic slugfest may leave some Jewish votes up for grabs

The Kosher Gourmet by Linda Gassenheimer: Fresh herbs, sauteed veal and tiny creamer potatoes makes a light spring dinner

JWisdom: How to Build a Mentch by Rabbi Mordechai Becher

April 29, 2008

Daniel Pipes: Barack Obama's Muslim Childhood

Joel Brinkley: On human rights, the U.N. once again strikes out

JWisdom: Holocaust in the Perspective of Faith by Rabbi Nosson Scherman: When The Truth is Unbelievable

April 28, 2008

The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Q: I'm often stuck in the doctor's waiting room for hours! Doesn't he owe me something for my wasted time?

Steven Emerson: New U.S. government policy advises agencies to avoid using some of the very same words that make up terror groups' names

JWisdom: Why You & I Never Die: A Jewish View of Immortality, Part I by Rabbi David Aaron

April 25, 2008

Rabbi Mitchell Wohlberg: Schadenfreude isn't kosher for Passover --- or at any other time

Rabbi Berel Wein: The secret of how the data bank of memory is transferred from one generation to the next

JWisdom: Stepping Up to A Higher Spiritual Life by Rabbi Lawrence Kelemen, Part III

April 24, 2008

Rabbi Nathan Lopes Cardozo: The successful failure

Fred Burton and Scott Stewart of Stratfor: Placing the terrorist threat to the food supply in perspective

JWisdom: Stepping Up to A Higher Spiritual Life by Rabbi Lawrence Kelemen, Part II

April 23, 2008

Connie Ogle: An intricate game of a novel

Jonathan Tobin: Making Sense of the 'J Street' Jive

JWisdom: Stepping Up to A Higher Spiritual Life by Rabbi Lawrence Kelemen

April 22, 2008

Jonathan Rosenblum: Why Israel's 'Leaven law' matters

Caroline B. Glick: Obama the Savior

April 18, 2008

Rabbi Harvey Belovski: Multimedia tool of antiquity

Caroline B. Glick: Revealed Truths vs. revealed lies

JWisdom: More than miracles by Rabbi Sroy Levitansky

April 17, 2008

Rabbi Avi Shafran: Deconstructing Dayeinu

Rabbi Elazar Meisels: Is innovation at the Seder a slap at tradition?

JWisdom: Discovering Your Divine Mission, Part III by Rabbi David Aaron

April 16, 2008

Jonathan Tobin: A Prayer for Sderot's Children

Ethel G. Hofman: Sumptuous Seder

JWisdom: The Divine is in the details by Rabbi Mordechai Becher

April 15, 2008

Rabbi Dovid Zauderer: Let Charlton Heston Go!

Frank J. Gaffney, Jr.: Jimma, tyranny's enabler

JWisdom: Relationships: Beyond Mars & Venus, Part IV by Dr. Lisa Aiken

April 14, 2008

The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: The Snitching Supervisor

Jonathan Tobin: Forget the Fun and Games!

JWisdom: Sincerity is Valued Most by Rabbi Abraham J. Twerski, M.D.

April 11, 2008

Rabbi David Gutterman: A Mystery in the Middle East

Caroline B. Glick: Why Ahmadinejad smiles

JWisdom: Elevated illness by Rabbi Sroy Levitansky

April 10, 2008

Stratfor Intelligence Briefing by George Friedman: A Mystery in the Middle East

The Kosher Gourmet By Steve Petusevsky: The spring elegance of asparagus

JWisdom: Holocaust in the Perspective of Faith by Rabbi Nosson Scherman: The Power of Rational Lies

April 9, 2008

Michael Feldberg: An all but forgotten Colonial doctor who put his Jewish values before his life

Jordan "Gorf" Gorfinkel's "Everything's Relative" gets philosophical

JWisdom: Four Rabbis in Bnei Brak by Rabbi Mordechai Becher

April 8, 2008

Caroline Glick: Covering for the enemy

Elliot B. Gertel: 'House' goes Hasidic

JWisdom: Relationships: Beyond Mars & Venus, Part III by Dr. Lisa Aiken

April 7, 2008

The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Q: I have a translating business. Recently someone asked me to translate some financial documents that are clearly forged. Should I agree?

Jonathan Rosenblum : Israel is unwittingly helping to fuel the international campaign of delegitimization against it

JWisdom: Matzah and leaven as a life philosophy by Rabbi Abraham J. Twerski, M.D.

April 4, 2008

Rabbi Abraham J. Twerski: The Mystery of Suffering

Caroline B. Glick: Fear of democracy

JWisdom: Dirty Jews by Rabbi Sroy Levitansky

April 3, 2008

Rabbi Y. Y. Rubinstein: Parents --- and the children who would be them

The Kosher Gourmet by Kathy Manweiler: Tempted by restaurant dressings? Don't be. Here are recipes that can be made at home, healthier!

JWisdom: The importance of retaining a 'slave mentality' by Rabbi Mordechai Becher

April 2, 2008

Mitch Albom: Child abuse, disguised as faith

Jonathan Tobin: Unreasonable Accommodations

JWisdom: Holocaust in the Perspective of Faith with Rabbi Nosson Scherman: Eliminating Jewish Influence over Germans

March 22, 2007

J-Rhythms with Avraham Rosenblum: JWR's cutting-edge music program showcasing performers -- singers, song writers, musicians, and bands -- who learn and live the Torah lifestyle (OUR NEWEST IGODCAST !)

Oct. 29, 2003
Mortimer B. Zuckerman: Graffiti On History's Walls (MUST-READ!)

Jewish World Review April 9, 2008 / 4 Nissan 5768

‘We interrupt this program…’

By Paul Greenberg


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http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | Easy off, easy on. That's what the billboards used to say out West along I-40 somewhere between Amarillo and Albuquerque under that pitiless sky stretched endlessly across the treeless High Plains. The signs usually advertised some Roadside Attraction. A gas station-cum-petting zoo, a souvenir shop (AUTHENTIC TURQUOISE JEWELRY!), or maybe a "museum" featuring Genuine Indian Artifacts — pottery, arrowheads, maybe a skeleton of Prehistoric Man behind glass.


Call it cut-rate sacrilege. Then, after the kids had had their run and the grownups were caffeinated, it was back on the interstate to the next rest stop and/or alligator farm. It was all fairly depressing, but anything for a break from the glaring sun.


I thought of all that on reading what happened to a bunch of foreign reporters/tourists when they went to Lhasa, capital of Tibet — the Roof of the World, Land of Lamas, Shangri-La and all that. It's now Occupied Tibet, though the commissars doing the occupying pretend that Tibet is an "integral" part of China, and that Tibetan culture/religion is just another quaint curiosity for the tourists. A show to take in. And be taken in by. Every communist regime from Pyongyang to Havana has become quite proficient at running these Potemkin tours.


This time the visiting delegation was being escorted through the Jokhang Temple, a regular tourist stop in Lhasa, and was part way through its Official Briefing — i.e., pack of lies — when reality erupted. A group of some 30 monks burst into the proceedings, shouting things like: "Don't believe them! They are tricking you! They are telling lies! Tibet is not free! Tibet is not free!"


It was as if, in the middle of the same old play, the whole set had collapsed, and the real world had come flooding in. ("We interrupt this program to tell you the truth….")


Some of the monks wept as they told the foreigners their stories. They said they'd been held in the temple for weeks while the Tibetan capital was jolted by the violent protests that had finally made the world news. Naturally the UN's "Human Rights" Council — long dominated by exemplars of freedom like Cuba, Libya, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Syria, Vietnam and Zimbabwe — declined to debate the Chinese clampdown on the demonstrations. In Lhasa, the bodies were soon collected, the monks silenced, and iron order restored. But for a moment human voices had been heard.


It was enough to bring back memories of Tiananmen Square, 1989. Remember the great demonstrations, the rumble of tanks? And then the appearance of a lone human being defying the Power of the State while the whole world watched? The line of tanks slowed, then stopped. The invincible machine had proved vincible. For a moment the spirit of man, stark, solitary, yet never defeated, was glimpsed, never to be forgotten and always waiting to reappear. Every tyranny lives in fear of such a moment.


It was also enough to bring back a long-ago visit to another citadel of human rights, the late Union of Soviet Socialist Republics of unlamented memory. It was 1983, and we innocents abroad were being given a stage-managed tour of Zagorsk, the ancient monastery an hour from Moscow that the guidebooks say not to miss. For centuries the focus of pilgrimages and then the seat of the official, state-approved version of the Russian Orthodox church, the monastery was being run much like any other Intourist attraction.


From afar the gold-and-white churches, with their delicate crosses glistening in the sun, had beckoned like a mirage. The priest who welcomed our group of American journalists whisked us through an adjoining museum, where thousands of icons had been collected, classified and catalogued like so many genuine Indian arrowheads. As a spiritual center, Zagorsk had long since been converted into a roadside museum — a discreet, Disneyesque view of religion.


As we were escorted in and out of the various chapels at Zagorsk and past walls of icons, much as one would be invited to admire the remains of an extinct culture, an undercurrent of murmuring could be heard all around us. It came from the pilgrims who didn't realize that religion was a thing of the past. They'd come to Zagorsk to do penance, heal their souls, say their thanksgivings, praise Him….


No desperate monks interrupted our tour to shout the truth, and yet the prayers all around said more than any protests whole about which was the living culture and which the fading regime.


At one point a troika of official priests conducted our Official Briefing. An editorial writer from Virginia — Gene Autry Owens of Roanoke — quickly dubbed them the Three Stooges, and the name stuck, for they were perfect representatives of Sovreligion. Each explained how grateful to the all-powerful State its subjects were. They were less priests than goodwill ambassadors for tyranny, exemplars of what happens when the church becomes but an arm of the state.


We came away knowing this kind of "faith" can't last; its falsity is transparent. It doesn't touch the soul. On the contrary, its very purpose is to anesthetize it. (Any American who thinks religion would benefit by government support might profit by the history of the Soviet-sponsored kind.)


Something tells me the temples of Lhasa will still ring with prayers long after the current Chinese empire follows its predecessors into the annals of the past. One day a free Tibet will no longer be a dream. And a free China will no longer be limited to an island off the coast of the mainland. Call it faith. And while its fruits may be long in coming, it is more convincing than Official Briefings, more enduring than tanks.

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