This is part four of a six-part newsletter. Part one looked at the recent 13 minute ‘walk around’ the Temple Mount by Israeli Minister of National Security Itamar Ben-Gvir and the immediate international explosion. Then it examined the histories of Roman, Byzantine and Islamic laws forbidding Jews to walk on or pray on the Temple […]
Category Archives: Intercession
The God of eternity revealed to Moses what happened on the first day of recorded history: And the earth was a formless and desolate emptiness, and darkness was over the surface of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the surface of the waters. Then God said, “Let there be light”; and there was […]
In a memorable scene in Steven Spielberg’s film Schindler’s List, a group of Jewish men in the Polish suburb of Kraków-Płaszów huddle around an old oil barrel, warming their hands over burning scrap wood. One of them confidently proclaims, “There’s nowhere down from here. This is it! This is the bottom. The ghetto is liberty!” […]
There is a Yiddish story about a man who spent all his free time at the shtetl kretchmeh (in Yiddish, a tavern doubling as an inn; in Polish karczma or in Ukrainian корчма). His wife bitterly complained about his all too frequent absences, asking him what he does there anyway with all his spare time. […]
An ancient Indian Buddhist parable (circa 500 B.C.) tells of nine blind men who had never encountered an elephant. Each one was given a different part of the elephant’s body to touch, and then was called upon to describe the pachyderm. It comes as no surprise that each description was totally different from his neighbor’s! Each […]
Let’s move the hands of the clock back more than 2,400 years to ancient Iran. Two high-level Persian court politicians had become so angry with King Ahasuerus that they plotted together to assassinate him. The old Latin word for this plan – conspiracy – comes from the joining of ‘spiro’ (to breath) and ‘con’ (together). […]