Syria Appoints Jewish Acting President

(LNN*) [Damascus ] [I2-26-07] In response to Israel appointing Druze Majali Wahabe Acting President of Israel, Syrian President Bashar Assad is appointing currently unemployed former Israeli President Moshe Katzav as Acting President of Syria. Current Israeli Acting President Dalia Itzik is leaving Israel for a week long visit to the US. Mr. Assad is leaving Syria to further pursue his medical studies in London.

President Assad's secretive Alawite sect is considered similar to the Druse religion.

The state run Syrian Arab News Service (SANS) announced:

"The Syrian Arab Republic believes in peace and reciprocity. If Israel can appoint a Druze as Head of State, Syria will appoint a Jew."

"Mr. Katzav speaks a fluent Arabic, and has presidential experience, as well as experience making way for successors in an orderly fashion on short notice. This will prove useful when President Assad returns from his healing pursuits. Moreover, the press treatment of President Katzav in Israel may indicate that he will adjust well to the historical behavior patterns of the Assad family dynasty."

Further details to be announced on Sunday.

(*Leapa News Network)

Rabbonim Challenge

At a recent simcha, I guardedly verbalized my own position on the internet after listening to someone (who is on the net all day) expound on how terrible the internet is. I said the problem is that we're not facing the 'net with reality glasses.

He challenged me: "Tell your Rebbe* or your Bais Din what you are telling me".

I demurred, saying the Bais Din is not always free to say what they please (because in our community many Bais Dins serve at the sufferance of a Rebbe).

He then challenged again: "Ask any Bais Din, then. Or ask Rav Rosenbloom, or whomever - any Yiras Shomayim Bais Din"

Schon!

I have heard that the Stoliner Rebbe and R' Chaim Kohn, formerly of Machon HaHoyroa and KAJ have realistic views of the internet. Jnet also has a secret Bais Din who presumably have some acquaintance with the subject.

Who else?

*(My Rebbe, if indeed I have one, is over the ocean, and not the shmoozy type, at least to me. Further, Rebbes do not have the same obligation to answer that Rabbonim do.)

One Idea For Averting Apocalypse

We are seemingly faced with no win situation in Iran, aggravated and emasculated by our bungled and/or mistaken commitment in Iraq (and I am pro Bush). Moreover, the erstwhile world acceptance of the existence of Israel as a 'given' is now a 'maybe' to almost every country except America.

Natan (nee Anatoly) Scharansky has a possible solution in a JPost column named "Mobilize Now, Save The World" (unfortunately now in archives for which the Jerusalem Post charges).

Scharansky has been somewhat of a hero of mine ever since the Soviet Jewry movement, and my subsequent reading of his great book "Fear No Evil".

His proposal involves two parts forming a pincer: (1) Giving Iran the "Soviet Treatment". This means:

• No Iranian mission (including sports and cultural delegations) should be able to travel without being "accosted by protests and hostile questions". Scharansky admits this will not in/of itself change behavior, but it is 'critical' to creating a balanced climate in the eyes of Westerners.
• Public pressure should be put on governments and companies that provide Iran with refined oil, huge trade deals and military and nuclear assistance to end their complicity with a regime that is "racing to genocide".
• Pension funds should divest of all companies trading with or investing in Iran
• All parties to the Genocide Convention, and Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch (significantly funded and staffed by Jews) should seek the indictment of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for incitement to genocide.

(2) At the same time, support for Israel should constitute the second half of the pincer, by boycotting universities providing podiums for Holocaust deniers, and large demonstrations, a la the Soviet Jewry ones, for Israel.

Scharansky admits that changing Iran's course may seem a hopelessly difficult task, but he points out the internal sensitivity of the externally brutal USSR to bad PR, as well as the case where one individual women, a student, took on Harvard University for accepting a $10,000,000 'gift' from a Saudi Sheik. Harvard backed down, showing that "moral clarity, unapologetically and passionately expressed, can change seemingly unassailable ideas".
Sharansky concludes that morality, and Israel have friends who do not yet know they are friends, but "if we build it (a movement) they will come".

Of course for us chareidim, there are two problems with all of this:
The first is the tznius aspect of public demonstrations. It seems, however, at the recent demonstration at Ahmadinejad's UN appearance that the Gedolim have found a solution in the form of a separate section for chareidim, segregated by sex.

The second is that during the Soviet Jewry movement, many Gedolim, with the influential éminence grise of the Lubavitcher Rebbe zt"l , held that public demonstrations could be counterproductive by damaging Jews trapped behind the Iron Curtain.

In retrospect documents and accounts indicate this pressure, together with Helsinki Watch and the like, was useful in hemming in and pressuring the former Soviet Union which needed Western good will, aid and technology. At the same time, the absence of chareidim from the public forum may have given them some degree of leverage behind closed doors.

At any rate, there are not millions of Jews trapped inside Iran as there were in the former USSR, and though there are some thousands of Jews living there, the stakes for Jews worldwide are higher now than in the sixties and seventies. We are no longer talking about 'do gooding' but about possible or even likely pikuach nefesh mamesh.

The Court's Findings Will Be Interesting

News article excerpt:

The extent to which the Web has penetrated even the strictest haredi circles is demonstrated by a current Tel Aviv District Court case. 'I. A.'(ed), a well-known Gerer Hassid, sued "ploni almoni" (John Doe), the nickname of a chat room participant on the Chatzrot Hassidim (Hassidic courts) forum.

'A' said ploni almoni slandered him by reporting on the forum that he had brutally attacked another man. 'A' is demanding compensation for damages caused by ploni almoni's posts. The success of 'A's case depends on proving the popularity of the Internet among his fellow Gerer Hassidim.


Due to the context of the quote, and the mention of a name, I am not providing a link.

Quote of 1975

Senator Chris Dodd of Connecticut, supporter, then opponent of the Iraq war, in 1975:

"The greatest gift our country can give the Cambodian people is not guns but peace. And the best way to accomplish that goal is by ending military aid now."

DithPran.org reminds us of what happened the following month:
On April 17th, 1975 the Khmer Rouge, a communist guerrilla group led by Pol Pot, took power in Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia. They forced all city dwellers into the countryside and to labor camps. During their rule, it is estimated that 2 million Cambodians died by starvation, torture or execution. 2 million Cambodians represented approximately 30% of the Cambodian population during that time.

Hat Tip: James Taranto

Boruch Dayan Emes.

Levaya @ Shomrei Hachomos 2:30pm.

Na L'Hispalel

I know this isn't what you come here for, but please take a brief time now to be mispalel (pray) or say a kapital for Yisroel ben Ita Frimet, a 29 year old chasid with a wife and 3 small children in a Manhattan oncology center who needs our prayers immediately.

Now, That'll Solve Their Problem

The NYT reports that Williamsburg has a problem with boys in Oorah billboard ads appearing without peyos, and kosher food delivery services sporting web addresses.

They're right. Judging by the blogosphere and elsewhere, Oorah should be quite busy being m'karav Williamsburg youth, such as those in the billboard pictures, to Yiddishkeit.

The slippery slope:

1. Seeing a billboard of a boy without peyos
2. Ordering food
3. Sheol Tachtis?

The sad outcome is blatant (particularly before Shacharis)

Hat Tip: Orthomom

Quote of the Week

Rabbi Yakov Horowitz of Project Yes, a division of Agudath Israel:

Let’s face it. Blogging is here to stay and people will respond to my columns in one way or another. On my website or on someone else’s. If anything, the exponential advances in technology will only add to this phenomenon of instant polling and interactive discussions in ways we cannot even imagine at this time.

I think that I am best off following the sage advice of Dovid Hamelech (Kind David), who, sadly, knew a thing or two about discord and adversity. “Be’komim alay me’reim tish’mana aznei (Tehilim 92:8)– When my adversaries rise against me, my ears should hear [their words].” There is a Chassidic interpretation that Dovid prayed to Hashem that he maintain the moral strength to carefully listen to the rebuke of the people who were criticizing him, rather than ignore their words as those of ‘enemies.’ I ought not get defensive or reactionary, but rather reflect on the criticism of those who took the time to post the comments – and hopefully grow from reviewing them.

Quote of the Week

Rabbi Berel Wein:

The past three centuries, especially in the world of Ashkenazic Jewry, has produced a dazzling variety of movements, ideals and solutions to the age- old “Jewish problem.” The Haskala came to “civilize” us; the Marxists arose to create a utopia for us; the Zionists came to make us secure and cure anti-Semitism once and for all; Reform came to make us acceptable to non-Jewish society and to integrate us with humanistic goals; secularism came to free us from the burdens of tradition and mitzvoth. None of these movements achieved their stated goals.

The Holocaust made mockery of integration in the general humanistic world; Zionism created the State of Israel but has provided it with no sense of security and certainly has only exacerbated the problem of anti-Semitism; Stalin cured us of Marxism; the Haskala apparently did not sufficiently civilize us; and secularism has to constantly attempt to prove that it is not an empty wagon. Thus there is a great feeling of apathy and emptiness in the Jewish world today.

In the realm of traditional Jewry, much of Religious Zionism has lost its steam; Chasidut has pretty much frozen and atrophied and become insular; the yeshiva world has become a place of narrow focus and elitism; the Mussar movement no longer exists; and modern Orthodoxy has not found its voice and parameters.

Therefore we are witness to the end of an era. The old is going and the new has not yet arrived. Hence the apathy and ennui, and the seeming lack of leadership that grips the Jewish world today. It is at such moments in Jewish history that a renewal of faith and idealism has always occurred.