Now that there's a Sanhedrin, who needs the Supreme Court?
By Nadav Shragai When the "new Sanhedrin" was established in Tiberias a year ago, hardly anyone took it seriously. The 71 rabbis who came to the northern city 1,660 years after the original Sanhedrin (the assembly of 71 ordained scholars that was both supreme court and legislature in Talmudic times) held its last meeting there, were welcomed by many in the Orthodox and ultra-Orthodox sectors with smiles tinged with derision.
The declaration of the Sanhedrin's reestablishment was perceived as both a curiosity on the margins of the right and as a rebellion against halakhic conventions; as a perhaps daring step, but one that was also a warning; far-reaching, but to a large extent provocative.
The fact that the leading Torah scholars of this generation, or those who are identified as such, took no part in this pretentious venture posed many questions about the new Sanhedrin's source of power and authority. The founding rabbis, most of them fairly anonymous, did agree in writing to vacate their places in favor of rabbis who are greater Torah scholars, as soon as some are found willing to serve.
Advertisement Nevertheless, the initial impression was that this was another effort by the Jewish Leadership movement within the Likud, an effort that had a Torah-oriented, halakhic-messianic slant and was striving for a revolution in the government.
The man who headed the new venture was Hillel Weiss, a professor of literature and one of the leaders of Jewish Leadership, who nearly twenty years ago reinstated another ancient practice: the traditional hakhel gathering, which took place once every seven years at the end of the Sukkot festival, the year after an agricultural Sabbatical (shmitta) year, and was attended by the king of Israel.
The first hakhel gathering organized by Weiss at the Western Wall plaza in 1987 was attended by then-president Chaim Herzog, prime minister Yitzhak Shamir, Supreme Court president Meir Shamgar, chief rabbis Avraham Shapira and Mordechai Eliahu and many other dignitaries. It has been repeated twice since, once every seven years.
A year after its establishment, it is impossible to see the new Sanhedrin as the domain of the extreme right wing alone: at a large gathering in Jerusalem's Har Nof neighborhood Tuesday, Rabbi Adin Even Israel Steinsaltz, a well-known Talmud scholar who is much esteemed in Torah circles, both in the ultra-Orthodox world and in the national-religious sector, came forward as the president of the Sanhedrin.
Steinsaltz avoided delving into politics and spoke about gradually building up the ancient institution, which would take several generations, he said. The very fact that he is leading the new Sanhedrin can be considered a dramatic event, given the numerous efforts in the last few years to strengthen the Jewish character of the state, integrate into it elements of Hebrew law and to combat the idea of a state for all its citizens.
The fact that the new Sanhedrin also includes many rabbis affiliated with the ultra-Orthodox stream, added to the fact that they are not among the best known and leading rabbis in that sector, endows the effort with another unusual dimension that distances it from being another "extreme right-wing" venture.
In its first year, the new Sanhedrin initiated a dialogue with the Ministry of Education over the Bible and Scriptures curriculum; set up a "High Council for the Sons of Noah," whose task it is to establish contact with non-Jewish communities seeking to observe the Noahide laws - the seven commandments given to the sons of Noah, or all mankind, which non-Jews are obligated to uphold according to halakha.
The Sanhedrin also discussed at length the physical location of the altar and Holy of Holies on the Temple Mount and dealt with the question of whether in our generation, Jews abroad must continue to observe the second festival day of the Diaspora, an additional day that is added to each of the three pilgrimage festivals - Sukkot, Passover and Shevuot.
The new Sanhedrin sharply attacked the disengagement plan and recently ruled that three minors who asked it for a ruling had acted properly when they refused to be tried in a court not based on Torah law.
"We hereby instruct you to continue your refusal, and the One who releases prisoners will release you from your confinement," the rabbis wrote them. In another ruling, the Sanhedrin's "Court for Matters of Nationhood and State" permitted a family from the evacuated community of Sa-Nur to accept compensation from the state for their evacuation, "even though this was an unjust law forced on the expellees."
Ordination revived
According to halakha, in order to revive the Sanhedrin, "ordination" is required, i.e., the ordination of members by others who are greater and wiser Torah scholars, to serve on the Supreme Court as necessary.
The first ordination, you may recall, was that of Joshua Bin Nun, whom Moses ordained. Other famous ordinations over the course of the generations included the "five elders": Rabbi Meir, Rabbi Yehuda, Rabbi Shimon, Rabbi Yossi and Rabbi Eliezer Ben Shamu'a, who were ordained by Yehuda Ben Baba, between the towns of Usha and Shfaram.
Ordination ended in Israel when the yeshivas closed and the Sanhedrin stopped functioning. The last people ordained no longer placed their hands on their students' heads, because of the restrictions imposed by the Roman government.
Maimonides wrote that if all scholars in Israel agree to appoint scholars and ordain them, than these are ordained people and they may discuss matters of fines and punishment and may ordain others. However, even Maimonides did not see this as a fait accompli; he added that the matter needed to be "decided on."
In the 16th century, nearly all the Torah scholars in the land of Israel accepted the initiative of Rabbi Jacob Birav to resume ordination and reestablish the Sanhedrin. Rabbi Levy Ben Haviv, the rabbi of Jerusalem who was not informed of the plans, sabotaged the effort, and in the end Birav was forced to flee the country.
Upon the reestablishment of the state, the first minister of religion, Rabbi Yehuda Leib Hacohen Maimon, attempted to renew the Sanhedrin, but the opposition of the ultra-Orthodox sabotaged the effort.
It is therefore surprising that the first ordained person in modern times, who ostensibly authorized the convening of the new Sanhedrin, was an ultra-Orthodox figure - Rabbi Dov Levanoni of Jerusalem. The members of the new Sanhedrin present a video in which Rabbi Levanoni relates how he received the first ordination to take place since the time of Rabbi Yaakov Birav, from one of the leaders of the Eidah Haredit's Beit Din Zedek religious court, Rabbi Moshe Halberstam. Levanoni ordained two other rabbis, and they ordained four more.
Since each person can only ordain two people, it took almost a year to ordain the 120 men needed for the new Sanhedrin. Most of them were present at Tuesday's gathering in Hai Taib Street synagogue in Har Nof, to mark a year since the renewal of the ancient institution.
The new Sanhedrin is recognized by a very small public, and this is its Achilles heel. Rabbi Re'em Hacohen, the head of the hesder yeshiva in Otniel, who delivered the opening address at the meeting - he is not a member of the new Sanhedrin - sketched clear halakhic parameters that indicate the problems involved. According to him, it is not possible to resume the ordination without the consent of the entire Jewish people.
"The Sanhedrin is the foundation for the presence of the Divine spirit ... and until this body has representatives from the entire nation - and at the moment it does not have representatives of the entire nation, not even representatives of the religious, Torah observant segment of the nation, then it is problematic," Hacohen said. Like other speakers at the conference, he too feels that "today there is a total division between the executive and judicial branches, and the nation and the rabbinical court system is also not free of this plague." Nevertheless, he says, "The Sanhedrin cannot replace them until it draws its power from the entire nation."
The establishment of the new Sanhedrin reflects profound unhappiness with the way the Israeli legal system is run, there were harsh remarks to that effect at the conference. Rabbi Israel Rosen, the head of the Tsomet Institute of Halakha and Technology, which provides solutions to halakhic problems using technology, attacked the sections on religion and state, minorities and the status of the Supreme Court in the draft constitution proposed by the Israel Democracy Institute, for whom the "Supreme Court has become their Sanhedrin."
"But the Sanhedrin in its existing format," acknowledges Rosen, "is not serious. Even if in principle one accepts the need to revive the Sanhedrin, it should include authoritative halakhic scholars and Torah scholars of the first order. At the moment, it seems as if they have jumped too high."
Ultra-Orthodox Rabbi Yoel Schwartz, spiritual advisor to the ultra-Orthodox Nahal brigade and a member of the new Sanhedrin, accepts the criticism and defines the institution as "infrastructure only." Not everyone sees eye to eye with him. Hillel Weiss, who also has become one of the ordained members, says, "The goal of the new Sanhedrin is to become a source of authority for the Jewish people, and this is contrary to the accepted position of the left that the state of Israel is the source of this authority.
"I and many of my colleagues want to be part of this state, but not at the cost of our spiritual and physical destruction. This Sanhedrin draws together all the scars and injuries and anguish from the injustice and persecution that Jews endure here from the Supreme Court and whoever follows the Supreme Court and whoever pretends to maintain the rule of law here."
Rabbi Ratzon Arussi, the rabbi of Kiryat Ono and a member of the Supreme Rabbinical Council, also feels persecuted. On Tuesday, Arussi sharply criticized the Knesset and the court. He spoke about the "clash that is gaining momentum between Torah law and state law," and despaired over "barren dialogues with the secular side that ostensibly create understandings, which have no practical value for various connections to our heritage." The court, Arussi feels, "is today obligated only to the state, but not to its Jewish identity."
Arussi suggested setting red lines for this identity and announcing that if the Knesset does not incorporate them into legislation, all the religious parties will resign. Rabbi Dov Lior, the head of the Committee of Judea and Samaria Rabbis, said things at the conference that were even more far-reaching: "A collective of evil people is not part of the quorum ... every law against the Torah is invalid. There are forces of evil seeking to harm anything related to the sanctity of Israel, and the legal system is one area where the greatest desecration of God's name is occurring.
It is hard to know how long Steinsaltz will last as president of the new Sanhedrin. At the public session held on the first anniversary of the apparent reestablishment of the ancient institution, he appeared to be fighting internal opposition. He pointed out to those present that worldwide events couldn't happen in one fell swoop.
Jerusalem wasn't built in a day
"Before the flood, Noah built the ark and prepared to enter it for 120 years," he reminded the audience. "In order to move forward and no longer be defined as `an aborted fetus,' to become serious so we can say, `a child was born to us,' we need a lot of time. The mere mention of the name Sanhedrin is not a given. It is no longer a matter of a religious council, or a council for the cats on Emek Refaim Street. It's something that has historical meaning. A basic change, not of one small system, but of fundamental systems.
"It's no wonder that these things frighten people. There are people who are concerned about what is emerging here. And where is it headed? After we have made it through this year with no catastrophes occurring, even though there were some foolish comments and chuckling, we will intensify and strengthen our activities. We will do things with an eye toward future generations, not with a stopwatch and an annual calendar. The Jewish calendar is a calendar of thousands of years. A lot of patience and a lot of work are needed. I'd be happy if in another few years these chairs are filled by scholars who are greater than us and we can say: `I kept the chairs warm for you.'"
Steinsaltz used his position as president of the Sanhedrin to protest its involvement in politics. "I'm not afraid of the Supreme Court, the police or the attorney general. A rabbi is also permitted to engage in public issues, but to do so he has to have all the appropriate material before him, whether he is dealing with the kosher status of a chicken or the disengagement.
"When there is such a disengagement plan, and I don't have enough information about it, just as there is a commandment to speak out, there is a commandment to remain silent.
As a private person, I, just like every one of us, have understanding, but as a rabbi, dealing with political matters such as the disengagement is a mockery of the essence of the concept of a Sanhedrin.
"If I don't want to be a laughing-stock, then I won't express an opinion on every issue. These words of truth need to be said, so that this Sanhedrin does not become a branch of the Yesha Council (of Jewish Settlements in Judea, Samaria and Gaza) or of the Council for Peace and Security."
The Sanhedrin
Its history and reinstatement
by Roy E. Hoffman
The Jewish legal system consisted and will consist of a big Sanhedrin of 71 judges that is like the high court, small Sanhedrins in each city consisting of 23 judges and batei din (law courts) of 3 judges. The members of batei din (with the exception of monetary cases) and any Sanhedrin must be smuchim (ordained).
Ideally, there should be a direct line of smichah (ordination) from Moses. (This smichah should not be confused with the examinations taken today in order to become a rabbi and are also called smichah.) However, line of smichah was lost shortly after the last Sanhedrin ceased to function about 1500 years ago. Hence, the batei din of recent times do not consist of smuchim and are restricted to monetary cases.
Renewing the smichah (according to Maimonides Hilkhot Sanhedrin 4:11,12) requires the agreement of all the Rabbis in Israel to somech (ordain) one person. That person can then somech others. All this must take place in Israel. An attempt was made to reintroduce the smichah in 1538 by Rabbi Yaakov Beirav of Safed but some Rabbis including the Ralbach (Rabbi Levy Chaviv of Jerusalem) objected. As a result, that smichah was never widely accepted, vanished within two generations and no Sanhedrin was ever formed.
Once there are 71 smuchim, they can form a big Sanhedrin and they could appoint three smuchim to change the calendar. According to the simple interpretation of Maimonides (Hilkhot Kiddush Hachodesh 5:2) the calendar change should happen immediately on the formation of the Sanhedrin. However, the Ralbach holds that this need not happen before the Messiah.
The Chazon Ish (Rabbi Avraham Yeshaya Karelitz who lived in the 20th century) reconciles the two opinions by saying that the calendar will be changed some time between the formation of the big Sanhedrin and the coming of the Messiah.
On 9th February 1807, Emperor Napoleon I of France gathered together 71 Jews including 36 Rabbis in Paris and declared them to be a Sanhedrin. He ordered them to rule on certain issues for his own political ends. Later, he used these rulings as a justification for granting limited rights to Jews. This Sanhedrin had no validity in Jewish law for three reasons: it was formed outside Israel, the members were not smuchim and they were coerced into making rulings.
Napoleon's Sanhedrin, Paris, 9th February 1807
At the start of the 20th century, Rabbi Aharon Mendel Baharan of Cairo, Egypt and Rabbi Zvi Mokovsky of Tel-Aviv proposed the reintroduction of the smichah and reinstitution of the Sanhedrin. Hundreds of rabbis from around the World signed on to this proposal but nothing came of it. Shortly after the establishment of the State of Israel, the Religious Affairs Minister, Rabbi Yehudah Leib Maimon, suggested reestablishing the Sanhedrin but again nothing came of it.
In 2001, at the suggestion of Rabbi Zvi Idan, President Katzav, President of Israel, called for the establishment of a Sanhedrin-type body. In early 2004, a number of very senior rabbis were asked if they considered a certain person (who's name has not been published) was worthy of smichah. All those asked indicated that he was worthy.
On that basis he then gave smichah to others. By 13th October 2004, there were about 90 smuchim and a big Sanhedrin of 71 was formed in Tiberius (see video, they have a Hebrew website but it may not be up to date – a new website is promised in the near future). The Sanhedrin has been meeting every month or so since its reestablishment. A working group of 23 (small Sanhedrin) intends to meet regularly to discuss important issues and will assemble the big Sanhedrin when necessary to make final decisions.
On the subject of the calendar, they are only willing to say that they intend to discuss the implications of fixing the calendar according to observation in our times. However, while I have not heard any formal condemnation of their activities, many major authorities are not taking them seriously, citing serious flaws in the manner in which they reinstated the smichah. As a result, this Sanhedrin has not received widespread recognition.
1st meeting of the Sanhedrin in Tiberias, 13th October 2004
Members of the Sanhedrin gathered in Jerusalem, 7th February 2005
Here are three differing views on the validity of the new Sanhedrin:
1) According to Rabbi Zvi Idan, leader of the Sanhedrin, the existence of the Sanhedrin changes the whole way Jewish law will be made. From now on, each Rabbi will not be able to rule for his own community. Instead, each member of the Sanhedrin can have his say and the final decision will be by a vote and binding on everybody.
2) On the other hand, Rabbi Nachum Rabinovitch and Rabbi Elisha Aviner think that the new Sanhedrin is a joke and not to be taken seriously. Rabbi Rabinovich compares the new Sanhedrin with Rabbi Beirav's 16th century smichah. He says that using grandiose names like Sanhedrin does not make it a reality. We, as a nation, are not in a position to reintroduce smichah and it cannot be done until society is ready.
3) My personal opinion is that the Sanhedrin is in the process of establishing itself. There is a chance that it will gather momentum and in the process it will take upon itself more important decisions. Its halakhic (religious legal) authority will become more apparent as it progresses. One can assume that this will happen in time and it is likely that the institution of the Sanhedrin will undergo many changes as greater scholars join. The new Sanhedrin is a serious institution. Even Rabbi Rabinovich compares it with the smichah of Rabbi Yaakov Beirav.
If Rabbi Beirav had been just a joke, we would not remember him till this day. In addition, the new Sanhedrin has already surpassed Rabbi Beirav with many more smuchim and the establishment of a Sanhedrin. Therefore, it is reasonable to suppose that the Sanhedrin will, sooner or later, receive widespread and increasing recognition that will eventually be accepted by the entire Jewish people. This is a developing story.
If this or some other Sanhedrin achieves widespread recognition in the future then a likely scenario for the calendar would be as follows. They would form a committee to discuss the calendar. They would use the information gathered by, amongst others, the Israeli New Moon Society. Members of the society would be invited to advise them. If they came to a decision to renew the determination of the calendar by observation then members of the society would be amongst those who would testify upon seeing the Moon. The observers' testimony would be checked using techniques developed by the society and others.
Updated March 24th 2005 © Roy Hoffman 2004-5
Friday, December 09, 2005
Monday, December 05, 2005
KING DAVIDS PALACE
Amazing discovery in heart of biblical Jerusalem
By: DAVID HAZONY Special to the CJN
Recent archaeological find, thought by some to be the biblical palace built by King David, stirs controversy over the right of the Jewish people to claim Jerusalem.
In what many archaeologists hail as the potential find of the century, remains of a massive structure dating to the time of King David have been discovered in the heart of biblical Jerusalem. Eilat Mazar, the Israeli archaeologist leading the excavation, has suggested that it may, in fact, be the palace built by David as described in the Bible.
The discovery has shaken the already contentious field of biblical archaeology to its roots: For the last few years, a number of respected archaeologists n most prominently Israel Finkelstein, chairman of Tel Aviv University’s archaeology department and author of the 2001 best-seller The Bible Unearthed in have argued that the biblical accounts of Jerusalem as the seat of a great and united monarchy under the rule of David and Solomon are false. If Mazar’s hypothesis proves right, it would go a long way toward proving Finkelstein and the others wrong.Her findings will also doubtlessly affect the broader political battle over Jerusalem in that is, the question of whether the Jewish people has its origins in the city and thus has a special hold over it, or whether the concept of a Jewish origin in Jerusalem is nothing but a myth.
With such a potentially powerful find, there will naturally be no shortage of skeptics, whether for reasons of politics or scholarship. Yet there are many good reasons to identify Mazar’s find, at least provisionally, as the palace described in the Book of Samuel. These reasons deserve to be heard.According to archaeological evidence, Jerusalem was founded two millennia before David arrived on the scene in 1000 B.C.E.
Because of its unique topography in a high hill nestled between two deep valleys that converge at its southern point, graced with abundant sources of water and exposed to attack only along a ridge from the north in the location proved ideal for the capital of a kingdom.Therefore, David did not destroy the city when he conquered it from the Jebusites, but rather added to it. The most notable addition was the palace built by the Phoenician king, Hiram of Tyre, as a gesture of friendship.Based on the biblical account, coupled with textual clues as to the topography and findings previously published by Kathleen Kenyon, Mazar formulated her proposal as to the location of the palace in a 1997 article in Biblical Archaeology Review.
“If some regard as too speculative the hypothesis I shall put forth in this article,” she wrote, “my reply is simply this: Let us put it to the test in the way archaeologists always try to test their theories n by excavation.” In early 2005, with the support of the Jerusalem-based Shalem Center, the City of David Foundation, and Hebrew University, Mazar did just that.The evidence she found is remarkable: A section of a massive wall, which runs about 100 feet from west to east before making a right-angle turn heading south, implies the existence of a very large building. Other findings include pottery shards, discovered in the dirt fill between the stones of the wall, which were dated to the 11th century B.C.E., the earliest possible date of the building’s construction. Additionally, the building is positioned directly on bedrock along the city’s northern edge with no archaeological layers beneath it. This implies that the structure, built two millennia after the city’s founding, constituted a new, northward expansion of the city’s limits, as described in the biblical account. It is located at what was then the very summit of the mountain n a reasonable place for the palace from which David is said, in II Samuel (5:17), to have “descended.”Finally, Mazar discovered a remarkable clay bulla, or signet impression, bearing the name of Yehuchal Ben Shelemiah, a Judean prince from the time of King Zedekiah mentioned by name in Jeremiah 37:3. This evidence suggests that four centuries after David, the site was still an important seat of Judean royalty. This matches the biblical account of the palace being in continuous use from its construction until the destruction of Judea by the Babylonians in 586 B.C.E.
The evidence seems to agree surprisingly well with Mazar’s claim that this could be David’s palace. The location, size, style, and dating of the building all match the textual description. Moreover, there are no finds that suggest the contrary, such as the idolatrous statuettes or ritual crematoria found in contemporary Phoenician settlements. Furthermore, the building appears in an ancient world where such constructions were extremely rare and represented the greatest sort of public works. Finally, the evidence fits well with previous archaeological finds from the site.
Naturally, many archaeologists, having been trained in a scholarly world wary of religious enthusiasts, will be extremely reluctant to identify any new archaeological find with particulars found in the Bible. Others, driven by a combination of interests, ideologies, or political agendas, will seize on any shred of uncertainty in the building’s identification to distract attention from the momentousness of the find. Both groups will invoke professionalism and objectivity to undermine the proposition that this was David’s palace: They will either raise the bar of required proofs to a standard that no archaeological find could ever meet, or they will simply dismiss it all as wishful thinking in the service of religious or Zionist motives.
Yet even if this is not in fact David’s palace, there is no doubt that we are talking about an archaeological find of revolutionary proportions. It is still the first discovery of a major construction from the early Israelite period in Jerusalem.No longer is it reasonable to claim, as many revisionist archaeologists have done, that the absence of evidence from the relevant period shows that the great unified monarchy of David and Solomon was really an imaginary historiosophic creation. It is thus significant that the normally reserved Amihai Mazar, cousin of Malat Mazar and one of the most esteemed scholars in the field of biblical archaeology and author of the standard textbook Archaeology of the Land of the Bible, 10,000 - 586 B.C.E., has described the discovery as “something of a miracle.
”Furthermore, so long as we are willing to admit that possible future evidence may prompt a different conclusion, there is no reason not to identify this building as David’s palace. Put simply, we have before us two things: A biblical text describing in detail the creation of a Phoenician-style palace by David on a particular mountain around the end of the eleventh or beginning of the tenth century B.C.E.; and a grand Phoenician style structure dating from the same time on the summit of that very mountain, located with assistance from the text and previous archaeological discoveries.
Is this absolute proof? No. But surely it is enough to shift the burden of proof. For in the end, the theory that this is David’s palace is thus far the best explanation for the data. As Mazar herself says, “Anyone who wants to say otherwise ought to come up with a better theory.”This is neither wishful thinking nor an imagined past. It’s good science.David Hazony is editor-in-chief of Azure A longer version of this piece appears in the journal’s autumn 2005 issue.
By: DAVID HAZONY Special to the CJN
Recent archaeological find, thought by some to be the biblical palace built by King David, stirs controversy over the right of the Jewish people to claim Jerusalem.
In what many archaeologists hail as the potential find of the century, remains of a massive structure dating to the time of King David have been discovered in the heart of biblical Jerusalem. Eilat Mazar, the Israeli archaeologist leading the excavation, has suggested that it may, in fact, be the palace built by David as described in the Bible.
The discovery has shaken the already contentious field of biblical archaeology to its roots: For the last few years, a number of respected archaeologists n most prominently Israel Finkelstein, chairman of Tel Aviv University’s archaeology department and author of the 2001 best-seller The Bible Unearthed in have argued that the biblical accounts of Jerusalem as the seat of a great and united monarchy under the rule of David and Solomon are false. If Mazar’s hypothesis proves right, it would go a long way toward proving Finkelstein and the others wrong.Her findings will also doubtlessly affect the broader political battle over Jerusalem in that is, the question of whether the Jewish people has its origins in the city and thus has a special hold over it, or whether the concept of a Jewish origin in Jerusalem is nothing but a myth.
With such a potentially powerful find, there will naturally be no shortage of skeptics, whether for reasons of politics or scholarship. Yet there are many good reasons to identify Mazar’s find, at least provisionally, as the palace described in the Book of Samuel. These reasons deserve to be heard.According to archaeological evidence, Jerusalem was founded two millennia before David arrived on the scene in 1000 B.C.E.
Because of its unique topography in a high hill nestled between two deep valleys that converge at its southern point, graced with abundant sources of water and exposed to attack only along a ridge from the north in the location proved ideal for the capital of a kingdom.Therefore, David did not destroy the city when he conquered it from the Jebusites, but rather added to it. The most notable addition was the palace built by the Phoenician king, Hiram of Tyre, as a gesture of friendship.Based on the biblical account, coupled with textual clues as to the topography and findings previously published by Kathleen Kenyon, Mazar formulated her proposal as to the location of the palace in a 1997 article in Biblical Archaeology Review.
“If some regard as too speculative the hypothesis I shall put forth in this article,” she wrote, “my reply is simply this: Let us put it to the test in the way archaeologists always try to test their theories n by excavation.” In early 2005, with the support of the Jerusalem-based Shalem Center, the City of David Foundation, and Hebrew University, Mazar did just that.The evidence she found is remarkable: A section of a massive wall, which runs about 100 feet from west to east before making a right-angle turn heading south, implies the existence of a very large building. Other findings include pottery shards, discovered in the dirt fill between the stones of the wall, which were dated to the 11th century B.C.E., the earliest possible date of the building’s construction. Additionally, the building is positioned directly on bedrock along the city’s northern edge with no archaeological layers beneath it. This implies that the structure, built two millennia after the city’s founding, constituted a new, northward expansion of the city’s limits, as described in the biblical account. It is located at what was then the very summit of the mountain n a reasonable place for the palace from which David is said, in II Samuel (5:17), to have “descended.”Finally, Mazar discovered a remarkable clay bulla, or signet impression, bearing the name of Yehuchal Ben Shelemiah, a Judean prince from the time of King Zedekiah mentioned by name in Jeremiah 37:3. This evidence suggests that four centuries after David, the site was still an important seat of Judean royalty. This matches the biblical account of the palace being in continuous use from its construction until the destruction of Judea by the Babylonians in 586 B.C.E.
The evidence seems to agree surprisingly well with Mazar’s claim that this could be David’s palace. The location, size, style, and dating of the building all match the textual description. Moreover, there are no finds that suggest the contrary, such as the idolatrous statuettes or ritual crematoria found in contemporary Phoenician settlements. Furthermore, the building appears in an ancient world where such constructions were extremely rare and represented the greatest sort of public works. Finally, the evidence fits well with previous archaeological finds from the site.
Naturally, many archaeologists, having been trained in a scholarly world wary of religious enthusiasts, will be extremely reluctant to identify any new archaeological find with particulars found in the Bible. Others, driven by a combination of interests, ideologies, or political agendas, will seize on any shred of uncertainty in the building’s identification to distract attention from the momentousness of the find. Both groups will invoke professionalism and objectivity to undermine the proposition that this was David’s palace: They will either raise the bar of required proofs to a standard that no archaeological find could ever meet, or they will simply dismiss it all as wishful thinking in the service of religious or Zionist motives.
Yet even if this is not in fact David’s palace, there is no doubt that we are talking about an archaeological find of revolutionary proportions. It is still the first discovery of a major construction from the early Israelite period in Jerusalem.No longer is it reasonable to claim, as many revisionist archaeologists have done, that the absence of evidence from the relevant period shows that the great unified monarchy of David and Solomon was really an imaginary historiosophic creation. It is thus significant that the normally reserved Amihai Mazar, cousin of Malat Mazar and one of the most esteemed scholars in the field of biblical archaeology and author of the standard textbook Archaeology of the Land of the Bible, 10,000 - 586 B.C.E., has described the discovery as “something of a miracle.
”Furthermore, so long as we are willing to admit that possible future evidence may prompt a different conclusion, there is no reason not to identify this building as David’s palace. Put simply, we have before us two things: A biblical text describing in detail the creation of a Phoenician-style palace by David on a particular mountain around the end of the eleventh or beginning of the tenth century B.C.E.; and a grand Phoenician style structure dating from the same time on the summit of that very mountain, located with assistance from the text and previous archaeological discoveries.
Is this absolute proof? No. But surely it is enough to shift the burden of proof. For in the end, the theory that this is David’s palace is thus far the best explanation for the data. As Mazar herself says, “Anyone who wants to say otherwise ought to come up with a better theory.”This is neither wishful thinking nor an imagined past. It’s good science.David Hazony is editor-in-chief of Azure A longer version of this piece appears in the journal’s autumn 2005 issue.
Sunday, December 04, 2005
ASTEROID IMPACT COMING
The Bible clearly states that a Asteroid and meteor showers will hit the Earth in the future.
This time it will be to shorten the daylight hours though, not to destroy all of mankind like it did the dinasaurs. In Isaiah 30:26 it says the sun will be seven times hotter than it is now. So that means the climate change will affect the Ozone and from here on in the Summers will be hotter than ever.
30:26 Moreover the light of the moon shall be as the light of the sun, and the light of the sun shall be sevenfold (7 times), as the light of seven days, in the day that the Lord bindeth up the breach of his people (Israelis), and healeth the stroke of their wound.
We also see in Matthew 24:29 Immediately after the tribulation of those days shall the sun be darkened (Asteroid hit), and the moon shall not give her light, and the stars (Meteriorites) shall fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens shall be shakin (Earthquake).
A total of 1/2 of earths population die during this future 7 year false peace treaty signing, from War, famine, pestilence and space debris. (Matthew 24:40-51).
1/4 of the population from sword, hunger, death (Incurable diseases : aids, bird flu, cancers etc.
(Revelation 6:7-8). 1/3 of Earths population from Nuclear Bombs, (revelation 9:18). And the remainder die from natural disasters, earthquakes and Space debris. for a total of 1/2 of earths population.(revelation 16:21)
Now we go to revelation to see that all earths population would die from the heat if G-D would
not show mercy, but for his elect sake (Israelis), he will stop the sun from killing everyone.
Revelation 16:8-9 And the forth angel poured out his vial upon the Sun; and power was given unto him to scorch men with fire. 9-And men were scorched with great heat, and blasphemed the name of G-D, which hath power over these plagues: and they repented not to give him glory. Mark 13:20 And except that the Lord had shortened those days, no flesh should be saved: but for the elect's sake (Israel), whom he has chosen, he has shortened the day(Light) hours.
Oregon State University
SOURCES:
Andrew Blaustein, 541-737-5356
Charles Cockell, (international) 44-1223-221560
March 9, 2000
Asteroid devastation could even be worse than feared By David Stauth, 541-737-0787
CORVALLIS, Ore. -- Researchers say in a new report that if a huge asteroid were to hit the Earth, the catastrophic destruction it causes, and even the "impact winter" that follows, might only be a prelude to a different, but very deadly phase that starts later on.
They're calling it, "ultraviolet spring."
In an analysis of the secondary ecological repercussions of a major asteroid impact, scientists from Oregon State University and the British Antarctic Survey have outlined some of the residual effects of ozone depletion, acid rain and increased levels of harmful ultraviolet radiation. The results were just published in the journal Ecology Letters.
The findings are frightening. As a number of popular movies have illustrated in recent years, a big asteroid or comet impact would in fact produce enormous devastation, huge tidal waves, and a global dust cloud that would block the sun and choke the planet in icy, winter-like conditions for months. Many experts believe such conditions existed on Earth following an impact around the Cretaceous-Tertiary, or K-T boundary, when there was a massive extinction of many animals, including the dinosaurs.
That's pretty bad. But according to Andrew Blaustein, a professor of zoology at Oregon State University, there's more to the story.
"Scientists have pretty well documented the immediate destruction of an asteroid impact and even the impact winter which its dust cloud would create," Blaustein said. "But our study suggests that's just the beginning of the ecological disaster, not the end of it."
Blaustein and colleague Charles Cockell examined an asteroid impact of a magnitude similar to the one that occurred around the K-T boundary, which is believed to have hit off the Yucatan Peninsula with a force of almost one trillion megatons.
The immediate results would be catastrophic destruction and an impact winter, with widespread death of plants and the large terrestrial animals -- including humans -- that most directly depend on those plants for food. That's the beginning of an ugly scenario, the researchers say.
As a result of the impact, the atmosphere would become loaded with nitric oxide, causing massive amounts of acid rain. As they become acidified, the lakes and rivers would have reduced amounts of dissolved organic carbons, which would allow much greater penetration of ultraviolet light.
At first, of course, the ultraviolet rays would be blocked by the dust cloud, which sets the stage for a greater disaster later on. Many animals depend on some exposure to ultraviolet light to keep operational their biological protective mechanisms against it -- without any such light, those protective mechanisms would be eroded or lost.
During the extended winter, animals across the biological spectrum would become weaker, starved and more vulnerable. Many would die. Then comes ultraviolet spring, shining down on surviving plants and animals that have lost their resistance to ultraviolet radiation and penetrating more deeply, with greater intensity, into shallow waters than it ever has before.
"By our calculations, the dust cloud would shield the Earth from ultraviolet light for an extended period, with it taking about 390 days after impact before enough dust settled that there would be an ultraviolet level equal to before the impact. After that, the ozone depletion would cause levels of ultraviolet radiation to at least double, about 600 days after impact."
According to their study, these factors would lead to ultraviolet-related DNA damage about 1,000 times higher than normal, and general ultraviolet damage to plants about 500 times higher than normal. Ultraviolet radiation can cause mutations, cancer, and cataracts. It can kill plants or slow their growth, suppressing the photosynthesis which forms the base of the world's food chain.
Smaller asteroid impacts, which have happened far more frequently in Earth's history, theoretically might cause similar or even worse problems with ultraviolet exposure, the researchers say. The ozone depletion would be less, but there would also be less of a protective dust cloud.
"Part of what we're trying to stress here is that with an asteroid collision, there will be many synergistic effects on the environment that go far beyond the initial impact," said Cockell, a researcher with the British Antarctic Survey who did some of this analysis while formerly working with NASA. "Effects such as acid rain, fires, the dust clouds, cold temperatures, ozone depletion and ultraviolet radiation could all build upon each other."
During the K-T event, the scientists said, many of the animals may actually have been spared most of the ultraviolet spring they envision. That impact, oddly enough, hit a portion of the Earth's crust that was rich in anhydrite rocks. This produced a 12-year sulfate haze that blocked much of the ultraviolet radiation. But it was a lucky shot -- that type of rock covers less than 1 percent of the Earth's surface.
So when the next "big one" comes, the scientists said, the ecological repercussions may be more savage than any of those known in Earth's long history. The collision will be devastating, the "impact winter" deadly.
But it will be the ultraviolet spring that helps finish off the survivors.
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04 Dec 2005
This time it will be to shorten the daylight hours though, not to destroy all of mankind like it did the dinasaurs. In Isaiah 30:26 it says the sun will be seven times hotter than it is now. So that means the climate change will affect the Ozone and from here on in the Summers will be hotter than ever.
30:26 Moreover the light of the moon shall be as the light of the sun, and the light of the sun shall be sevenfold (7 times), as the light of seven days, in the day that the Lord bindeth up the breach of his people (Israelis), and healeth the stroke of their wound.
We also see in Matthew 24:29 Immediately after the tribulation of those days shall the sun be darkened (Asteroid hit), and the moon shall not give her light, and the stars (Meteriorites) shall fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens shall be shakin (Earthquake).
A total of 1/2 of earths population die during this future 7 year false peace treaty signing, from War, famine, pestilence and space debris. (Matthew 24:40-51).
1/4 of the population from sword, hunger, death (Incurable diseases : aids, bird flu, cancers etc.
(Revelation 6:7-8). 1/3 of Earths population from Nuclear Bombs, (revelation 9:18). And the remainder die from natural disasters, earthquakes and Space debris. for a total of 1/2 of earths population.(revelation 16:21)
Now we go to revelation to see that all earths population would die from the heat if G-D would
not show mercy, but for his elect sake (Israelis), he will stop the sun from killing everyone.
Revelation 16:8-9 And the forth angel poured out his vial upon the Sun; and power was given unto him to scorch men with fire. 9-And men were scorched with great heat, and blasphemed the name of G-D, which hath power over these plagues: and they repented not to give him glory. Mark 13:20 And except that the Lord had shortened those days, no flesh should be saved: but for the elect's sake (Israel), whom he has chosen, he has shortened the day(Light) hours.
Oregon State University
SOURCES:
Andrew Blaustein, 541-737-5356
Charles Cockell, (international) 44-1223-221560
March 9, 2000
Asteroid devastation could even be worse than feared By David Stauth, 541-737-0787
CORVALLIS, Ore. -- Researchers say in a new report that if a huge asteroid were to hit the Earth, the catastrophic destruction it causes, and even the "impact winter" that follows, might only be a prelude to a different, but very deadly phase that starts later on.
They're calling it, "ultraviolet spring."
In an analysis of the secondary ecological repercussions of a major asteroid impact, scientists from Oregon State University and the British Antarctic Survey have outlined some of the residual effects of ozone depletion, acid rain and increased levels of harmful ultraviolet radiation. The results were just published in the journal Ecology Letters.
The findings are frightening. As a number of popular movies have illustrated in recent years, a big asteroid or comet impact would in fact produce enormous devastation, huge tidal waves, and a global dust cloud that would block the sun and choke the planet in icy, winter-like conditions for months. Many experts believe such conditions existed on Earth following an impact around the Cretaceous-Tertiary, or K-T boundary, when there was a massive extinction of many animals, including the dinosaurs.
That's pretty bad. But according to Andrew Blaustein, a professor of zoology at Oregon State University, there's more to the story.
"Scientists have pretty well documented the immediate destruction of an asteroid impact and even the impact winter which its dust cloud would create," Blaustein said. "But our study suggests that's just the beginning of the ecological disaster, not the end of it."
Blaustein and colleague Charles Cockell examined an asteroid impact of a magnitude similar to the one that occurred around the K-T boundary, which is believed to have hit off the Yucatan Peninsula with a force of almost one trillion megatons.
The immediate results would be catastrophic destruction and an impact winter, with widespread death of plants and the large terrestrial animals -- including humans -- that most directly depend on those plants for food. That's the beginning of an ugly scenario, the researchers say.
As a result of the impact, the atmosphere would become loaded with nitric oxide, causing massive amounts of acid rain. As they become acidified, the lakes and rivers would have reduced amounts of dissolved organic carbons, which would allow much greater penetration of ultraviolet light.
At first, of course, the ultraviolet rays would be blocked by the dust cloud, which sets the stage for a greater disaster later on. Many animals depend on some exposure to ultraviolet light to keep operational their biological protective mechanisms against it -- without any such light, those protective mechanisms would be eroded or lost.
During the extended winter, animals across the biological spectrum would become weaker, starved and more vulnerable. Many would die. Then comes ultraviolet spring, shining down on surviving plants and animals that have lost their resistance to ultraviolet radiation and penetrating more deeply, with greater intensity, into shallow waters than it ever has before.
"By our calculations, the dust cloud would shield the Earth from ultraviolet light for an extended period, with it taking about 390 days after impact before enough dust settled that there would be an ultraviolet level equal to before the impact. After that, the ozone depletion would cause levels of ultraviolet radiation to at least double, about 600 days after impact."
According to their study, these factors would lead to ultraviolet-related DNA damage about 1,000 times higher than normal, and general ultraviolet damage to plants about 500 times higher than normal. Ultraviolet radiation can cause mutations, cancer, and cataracts. It can kill plants or slow their growth, suppressing the photosynthesis which forms the base of the world's food chain.
Smaller asteroid impacts, which have happened far more frequently in Earth's history, theoretically might cause similar or even worse problems with ultraviolet exposure, the researchers say. The ozone depletion would be less, but there would also be less of a protective dust cloud.
"Part of what we're trying to stress here is that with an asteroid collision, there will be many synergistic effects on the environment that go far beyond the initial impact," said Cockell, a researcher with the British Antarctic Survey who did some of this analysis while formerly working with NASA. "Effects such as acid rain, fires, the dust clouds, cold temperatures, ozone depletion and ultraviolet radiation could all build upon each other."
During the K-T event, the scientists said, many of the animals may actually have been spared most of the ultraviolet spring they envision. That impact, oddly enough, hit a portion of the Earth's crust that was rich in anhydrite rocks. This produced a 12-year sulfate haze that blocked much of the ultraviolet radiation. But it was a lucky shot -- that type of rock covers less than 1 percent of the Earth's surface.
So when the next "big one" comes, the scientists said, the ecological repercussions may be more savage than any of those known in Earth's long history. The collision will be devastating, the "impact winter" deadly.
But it will be the ultraviolet spring that helps finish off the survivors.
Site Manager: Don YeomansWebmaster: Ron BaalkeLast Updated:
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CHRISTIANS PASTORED BY RABBIS
Christians should be taught by Rabbis
I Just found out by listening to Torah tidbits on Israel National Radio, that the word of the lord will be coming from Jerusalem.
In Judiasm the Torah is read and handed down orally from generation to generation. We as christians don't know the oral traditions just the Torah reading parts.
I will now give you one example of what I mean.
Genesis 22:18 And in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed; because thou hast obeyed my voice.
1 - Gensesis 22:1 And it came to pass after these things, that God did tempt Abraham, and said unto him, Abraham: and he said, behold, here I am. 2-And he said, take now thy son, thine only son Isaac, whom thou lovest, and get thee into the land of Moriah; and offer him there for a burnt offering upon one of the mountains which I will tell thee of.
then abraham saddled his donkey and took Isaac with him, but he never told Isaac what was about to happen.
It took them 3 days to get to the Temple Mount. we now continue on with verse 5-And Abraham said unto his young men, abide ye here with the donkey; and I and the lad (Issaic) will go yonder and worship, and come again to you.
so they went to the Temple Mount But Isaac asks Abraham were is the lamb to offer. Abraham responded God will supply the Lamb.
9-And they came to the place which God had told him of; and Abraham built an altar there, and laid the wood in order, and bound Isaac his son, and laid him on the altar upon the wood. 10-And Abraham stretched forth his hand, and took the knife to slay his son. 11-And the Angel of the Lord called unto him out of heaven, and said, Abraham, Abraham: and he said, here am I. 12-And he said, Lay not thine hand upon the lad, neither do thou any thing unto him: for now I know that thou fearest God, seeing thou hast not witheld thy son, thine only son from me. 13-And Abraham lifted up his eyes, and looked, and behold behind him a ram caught in a thicket by his horns: and Abraham went and took the ram, and offered him up for a burnt offering in the stead of his son. 14-And Abraham called the name of that place Jehovah-Jireh: as it is said to this day, In the mount of the lord it shall be seen.
In these verses of our bible it just says that God directed Abraham to a lamb to be sacrificed. But in Jewish oral tradition and writings it was passed down that Issac actually died of a heart attack or scared to death, was burnt up. But God brought Isaac back to life.
So here we see that what we read sometimes is not the full truth of what really happened, just a partial picture. Now we know why in the future the 144,000 Jewish Evangelicals will be preaching the truth to the world. What we read will be from oral tradtion and Jewish writings expended upon.
12,000 Jewish preachers from each of the 12 tribes will be ministering to the world. Revelation 7:1-10. and millions of people will be saved as a result of these Jewish ministers. There message will be repent and be prepared for the Coming of the Messiah will be very shortly. These 144,000 will be preaching for the 70th and final week of years of Daniels prophesy, which is the 7 year peace treaty signing of Daniel 9:27.
So we as christians should be sitting under Rabbis not just Pastors. So we could really know what the Torah and Jewish writtings and oral traditions of the Jewish faith really say what the Bible says.
I Just found out by listening to Torah tidbits on Israel National Radio, that the word of the lord will be coming from Jerusalem.
In Judiasm the Torah is read and handed down orally from generation to generation. We as christians don't know the oral traditions just the Torah reading parts.
I will now give you one example of what I mean.
Genesis 22:18 And in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed; because thou hast obeyed my voice.
1 - Gensesis 22:1 And it came to pass after these things, that God did tempt Abraham, and said unto him, Abraham: and he said, behold, here I am. 2-And he said, take now thy son, thine only son Isaac, whom thou lovest, and get thee into the land of Moriah; and offer him there for a burnt offering upon one of the mountains which I will tell thee of.
then abraham saddled his donkey and took Isaac with him, but he never told Isaac what was about to happen.
It took them 3 days to get to the Temple Mount. we now continue on with verse 5-And Abraham said unto his young men, abide ye here with the donkey; and I and the lad (Issaic) will go yonder and worship, and come again to you.
so they went to the Temple Mount But Isaac asks Abraham were is the lamb to offer. Abraham responded God will supply the Lamb.
9-And they came to the place which God had told him of; and Abraham built an altar there, and laid the wood in order, and bound Isaac his son, and laid him on the altar upon the wood. 10-And Abraham stretched forth his hand, and took the knife to slay his son. 11-And the Angel of the Lord called unto him out of heaven, and said, Abraham, Abraham: and he said, here am I. 12-And he said, Lay not thine hand upon the lad, neither do thou any thing unto him: for now I know that thou fearest God, seeing thou hast not witheld thy son, thine only son from me. 13-And Abraham lifted up his eyes, and looked, and behold behind him a ram caught in a thicket by his horns: and Abraham went and took the ram, and offered him up for a burnt offering in the stead of his son. 14-And Abraham called the name of that place Jehovah-Jireh: as it is said to this day, In the mount of the lord it shall be seen.
In these verses of our bible it just says that God directed Abraham to a lamb to be sacrificed. But in Jewish oral tradition and writings it was passed down that Issac actually died of a heart attack or scared to death, was burnt up. But God brought Isaac back to life.
So here we see that what we read sometimes is not the full truth of what really happened, just a partial picture. Now we know why in the future the 144,000 Jewish Evangelicals will be preaching the truth to the world. What we read will be from oral tradtion and Jewish writings expended upon.
12,000 Jewish preachers from each of the 12 tribes will be ministering to the world. Revelation 7:1-10. and millions of people will be saved as a result of these Jewish ministers. There message will be repent and be prepared for the Coming of the Messiah will be very shortly. These 144,000 will be preaching for the 70th and final week of years of Daniels prophesy, which is the 7 year peace treaty signing of Daniel 9:27.
So we as christians should be sitting under Rabbis not just Pastors. So we could really know what the Torah and Jewish writtings and oral traditions of the Jewish faith really say what the Bible says.
3 NEWS EVENTS SPACE,VATICAN
Europeans Seek More Backing for Robotics
By AIDAN LEWIS Associated Press Writer
PONTEDERA, Italy (AP) -- The metallic fingers close around yours in near-perfect synchrony, then tighten their grip as you try to pull away.
For now, it is a computer that orders "Cyberhand" to greet you at the robotics lab where researchers have spent the past 3 1/2 years creating the first prosthetic hand capable of eliciting natural sensory signals.
If all goes well, researchers say this bionic hand could be implanted on human arms two years from now, its wired joints discreetly covered by a synthetic glove. Cyberhand would allow the maimed to have "the feeling of touching things," says Paolo Dario, the project's coordinator at the Polo Sant'Anna Valdera institute in this central Italian town.
The hand is the fruit of cooperation between six teams working in four European countries - Italy, Germany, Spain and Denmark. For Dario, it is also an example of Europe's enormous - but still relatively underfunded - potential in the fast-expanding field of robotics.
"We have a network, we know how to work together. We are ready to make a leap ahead," he said. Financed with $1.8 million from a special European Union fund for emerging technologies, Cyberhand was cited as a success by European Commission officials in October when they appealed to governments and industry to give robotics more financial backing.
Increased funding is essential, they said, if Europe is to exploit robotics' vast economic potential and compete with projects in the United States, Japan, and South Korea. AP: Each year, the commission and EU nations combined spend $100 million on robotics research. Japan and Korea each spend about the same, while the United States spends up to $500 million - largely because of the huge demand for military-related robotics, researchers and EU officials say.
In Dario's view, Europe's strength in robotics is in a broad approach that is also perhaps more sensitive to the social and ethical issues raised by the increasing use of robots to help humans with everyday tasks.
The Cyberhand team and other European robotics research groups have been more apprehensive than the Japanese about bringing robotic technology into everyday life, says James L. Patton, a research scientist at the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago who has closely followed the Cyberhand project.
"They've been pioneers in launching those considerations: what is an acceptable practice for robots, how do we make robots safe, are they safe, psychologically how will they influence people and their behavior?"
In contrast, several robotics experts said, Japanese projects tend to be showier in hopes of making a media impact and attracting funding. The Cyberhand team not only has tried to develop a hand that would provide greater grip and control for an amputee, but it also has been concerned about the hand's aesthetics.
Giovanni Stellin, one of the Cyberhand researchers, said many patients were ashamed or self-conscious about using the less sophisticated, pincer-mechanism, prosthetic hands developed after World War II and still on the market.
Cyberhand would be attached to amputees below the elbow and covered by several layers of synthetic material that would seek to copy the features of a natural hand by making the prosthetic replacement soft, compliant, and flexible. Patton says it represents "the first prosthetic hand that really is fully integrated into the nervous system." Linked to the nerves
by tiny electrodes and biomimetic sensors, it would let patients sense the position and movement of the hand as well as stimuli from the outside environment.
Though researchers in the United States have covered similar ground, they have not addressed the problems of electrodes, prosthesis, sensory feedback, control, and processing of commands all together, said Silvestro Micera, a Cyberhand researcher. That type of teamwork is more likely to flourish in Europe, where technology partners are accustomed to working in transnational consortiums, said Micera.
What remains to be seen, Patton says, is whether the materials used for Cyberhand will be compatible with the human body, how a patient's brain will adapt and how the hand can be powered. Another project touted by European officials is HYDRA, a project coordinated from Denmark that is developing the world's first shape-shifting robot. It is made up of modules, each containing its own processors, batteries, sensors and actuators, which can attach and detach from each other so the robot can change its physical form.
Such a robot could be used, for example, in relief efforts after an earthquake, said Henrik Hautop Lund, a professor at the University of Southern Denmark and HYDRA's coordinator.
Having driven to a site, the robot could transform into a crawler to climb over debris, a snake to get through a hole, or columns to hold up a collapsed building and protect a survivor.
HYDRA has developed 100 modules, and Lund is looking for industrial partners who would invest in manufacturing the robot and put it to use. The project, begun in 2001, has received $2.1 million - about two-thirds of its total funding - from the EU.
Like Dario, Lund argues that Europe has an advantage in its more integrated approach to robotics. But he also notes the financial constraints. Member states have failed to agree in recent months on the EU's 2007-2013 budget, so researchers still don't know how much support they will receive, sparking concern that projects could lose momentum.
"One of the problems Europe has had in its robotics research has been getting it out to market as product," said Ken Young, chairman of the British Automation and Robotics Association.
"While we may have a good research network at (the) academic level, I don't see the big industrial players getting involved to the extent they do in Japan and Korea. Ultimately it is these people who will take it to market and make it a success. ... In the EU it strikes me we develop some great technology and then leave it for the rest of the world to pick up and exploit."
Saturn's largest moon has dramatic weather
AP, PARIS Dec 1: Saturn's planet-size moon Titan has dramatic weather, with turbulent high-altitude winds, periodic floods of liquid methane and possibly lightning, scientists said Wednesday in describing a world that may look like Earth before life developed.
The European Space Agency's probe landed on Titan in January, uncovering some mysteries of the methane-rich globe - the only moon in the solar system known to have a thick atmosphere. Scientists presented detailed results of months of study in the online edition of the journal Nature and at a news conference in Paris.
"It's a very strange fantasy world made of ice, with things like gasoline and tar that make up the rivers and the lake beds," said scientist Jonathan Lunine of the University of Arizona, when asked how he would explain the finding to a child.
"If you try to walk around on it, your feet might get stuck in some places, you'd slide down into methane rivers in other places, and you'd better watch out for the ammonia volcanoes," he said. "And absolutely bring a big heavy coat, because it's really cold - and bring a tank of oxygen because there's no oxygen to breathe, but don't light a match." Titan, located 740 million
miles from Earth, has long intrigued researchers because it is surrounded by a thick blanket of nitrogen and methane. Until recently, scientists believed the most likely explanation for the methane was the presence of a methane-rich sea of hydrocarbons.
The Huygens probe and its mother ship, Cassini, have offered evidence against that theory. The $3.3 billion Cassini-Huygens mission to explore Saturn and its moons was launched in 1997 from Cape Canaveral, a joint effort involving NASA, ESA and the Italian space agency.
Titan's clouds are made from molecules that include carbon and nitrogen - compounds generated in photochemical smog and circulated by rain and the atmosphere, the researchers reported in Nature.
They said there was no reason to believe Titan's methane is a product of biological activity. Yet more methane is appearing constantly and may burst from ice volcanos or fall as rain, researchers said, describing riverbed and drainage channels spotted during the craft's descent Jan. 14.
Abbas invites Pope to Holy Land
BBC NEWS Mr Abbas and the Pope had a 20-minute meeting Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas has invited the Pope to visit Jerusalem and places holy to Christians. During their first meeting at the Vatican, Benedict XVI accepted the offer, but no date has been set. Jerusalem is a key sticking point in Israeli-Palestinian relations, with Palestinians hoping a future state would include the east of the city.
Israeli President Moshe Katsav met the Pope last month and invited him to visit the Jewish state. The disputed status of the city of Jerusalem - that is holy to Jews, Muslims and Christians - has always been a matter of interest to the Roman Catholic Church, the BBC's David Willey in Rome reports.
'Unlimited access'
"You will be very welcome in Jerusalem and the holy places," Mr Abbas told the pontiff at the end of a private audience at the Vatican. "Thank you very much," was the response from Pope Benedict XVI.
One of Mr Abbas' aides - who lives in Bethlehem - also gave then gave the pontiff a document granting the Pope unlimited access to Bethlehem, the town where Jesus Christ was born.
The unresolved status of Jerusalem - the eastern part of which was annexed by the Israelis in the 1967 war - has always been a key issue for the Vatican.
The late Pope, John Paul II, had said he was in favour of the internationalisation of Jerusalem, and this is still official Vatican policy, our correspondent says. Israel has always refused such a solution claiming jurisdiction over the whole city as the undivided capital of the country.
Palestinians want East Jerusalem to be the capital of their eventual state.
By AIDAN LEWIS Associated Press Writer
PONTEDERA, Italy (AP) -- The metallic fingers close around yours in near-perfect synchrony, then tighten their grip as you try to pull away.
For now, it is a computer that orders "Cyberhand" to greet you at the robotics lab where researchers have spent the past 3 1/2 years creating the first prosthetic hand capable of eliciting natural sensory signals.
If all goes well, researchers say this bionic hand could be implanted on human arms two years from now, its wired joints discreetly covered by a synthetic glove. Cyberhand would allow the maimed to have "the feeling of touching things," says Paolo Dario, the project's coordinator at the Polo Sant'Anna Valdera institute in this central Italian town.
The hand is the fruit of cooperation between six teams working in four European countries - Italy, Germany, Spain and Denmark. For Dario, it is also an example of Europe's enormous - but still relatively underfunded - potential in the fast-expanding field of robotics.
"We have a network, we know how to work together. We are ready to make a leap ahead," he said. Financed with $1.8 million from a special European Union fund for emerging technologies, Cyberhand was cited as a success by European Commission officials in October when they appealed to governments and industry to give robotics more financial backing.
Increased funding is essential, they said, if Europe is to exploit robotics' vast economic potential and compete with projects in the United States, Japan, and South Korea. AP: Each year, the commission and EU nations combined spend $100 million on robotics research. Japan and Korea each spend about the same, while the United States spends up to $500 million - largely because of the huge demand for military-related robotics, researchers and EU officials say.
In Dario's view, Europe's strength in robotics is in a broad approach that is also perhaps more sensitive to the social and ethical issues raised by the increasing use of robots to help humans with everyday tasks.
The Cyberhand team and other European robotics research groups have been more apprehensive than the Japanese about bringing robotic technology into everyday life, says James L. Patton, a research scientist at the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago who has closely followed the Cyberhand project.
"They've been pioneers in launching those considerations: what is an acceptable practice for robots, how do we make robots safe, are they safe, psychologically how will they influence people and their behavior?"
In contrast, several robotics experts said, Japanese projects tend to be showier in hopes of making a media impact and attracting funding. The Cyberhand team not only has tried to develop a hand that would provide greater grip and control for an amputee, but it also has been concerned about the hand's aesthetics.
Giovanni Stellin, one of the Cyberhand researchers, said many patients were ashamed or self-conscious about using the less sophisticated, pincer-mechanism, prosthetic hands developed after World War II and still on the market.
Cyberhand would be attached to amputees below the elbow and covered by several layers of synthetic material that would seek to copy the features of a natural hand by making the prosthetic replacement soft, compliant, and flexible. Patton says it represents "the first prosthetic hand that really is fully integrated into the nervous system." Linked to the nerves
by tiny electrodes and biomimetic sensors, it would let patients sense the position and movement of the hand as well as stimuli from the outside environment.
Though researchers in the United States have covered similar ground, they have not addressed the problems of electrodes, prosthesis, sensory feedback, control, and processing of commands all together, said Silvestro Micera, a Cyberhand researcher. That type of teamwork is more likely to flourish in Europe, where technology partners are accustomed to working in transnational consortiums, said Micera.
What remains to be seen, Patton says, is whether the materials used for Cyberhand will be compatible with the human body, how a patient's brain will adapt and how the hand can be powered. Another project touted by European officials is HYDRA, a project coordinated from Denmark that is developing the world's first shape-shifting robot. It is made up of modules, each containing its own processors, batteries, sensors and actuators, which can attach and detach from each other so the robot can change its physical form.
Such a robot could be used, for example, in relief efforts after an earthquake, said Henrik Hautop Lund, a professor at the University of Southern Denmark and HYDRA's coordinator.
Having driven to a site, the robot could transform into a crawler to climb over debris, a snake to get through a hole, or columns to hold up a collapsed building and protect a survivor.
HYDRA has developed 100 modules, and Lund is looking for industrial partners who would invest in manufacturing the robot and put it to use. The project, begun in 2001, has received $2.1 million - about two-thirds of its total funding - from the EU.
Like Dario, Lund argues that Europe has an advantage in its more integrated approach to robotics. But he also notes the financial constraints. Member states have failed to agree in recent months on the EU's 2007-2013 budget, so researchers still don't know how much support they will receive, sparking concern that projects could lose momentum.
"One of the problems Europe has had in its robotics research has been getting it out to market as product," said Ken Young, chairman of the British Automation and Robotics Association.
"While we may have a good research network at (the) academic level, I don't see the big industrial players getting involved to the extent they do in Japan and Korea. Ultimately it is these people who will take it to market and make it a success. ... In the EU it strikes me we develop some great technology and then leave it for the rest of the world to pick up and exploit."
Saturn's largest moon has dramatic weather
AP, PARIS Dec 1: Saturn's planet-size moon Titan has dramatic weather, with turbulent high-altitude winds, periodic floods of liquid methane and possibly lightning, scientists said Wednesday in describing a world that may look like Earth before life developed.
The European Space Agency's probe landed on Titan in January, uncovering some mysteries of the methane-rich globe - the only moon in the solar system known to have a thick atmosphere. Scientists presented detailed results of months of study in the online edition of the journal Nature and at a news conference in Paris.
"It's a very strange fantasy world made of ice, with things like gasoline and tar that make up the rivers and the lake beds," said scientist Jonathan Lunine of the University of Arizona, when asked how he would explain the finding to a child.
"If you try to walk around on it, your feet might get stuck in some places, you'd slide down into methane rivers in other places, and you'd better watch out for the ammonia volcanoes," he said. "And absolutely bring a big heavy coat, because it's really cold - and bring a tank of oxygen because there's no oxygen to breathe, but don't light a match." Titan, located 740 million
miles from Earth, has long intrigued researchers because it is surrounded by a thick blanket of nitrogen and methane. Until recently, scientists believed the most likely explanation for the methane was the presence of a methane-rich sea of hydrocarbons.
The Huygens probe and its mother ship, Cassini, have offered evidence against that theory. The $3.3 billion Cassini-Huygens mission to explore Saturn and its moons was launched in 1997 from Cape Canaveral, a joint effort involving NASA, ESA and the Italian space agency.
Titan's clouds are made from molecules that include carbon and nitrogen - compounds generated in photochemical smog and circulated by rain and the atmosphere, the researchers reported in Nature.
They said there was no reason to believe Titan's methane is a product of biological activity. Yet more methane is appearing constantly and may burst from ice volcanos or fall as rain, researchers said, describing riverbed and drainage channels spotted during the craft's descent Jan. 14.
Abbas invites Pope to Holy Land
BBC NEWS Mr Abbas and the Pope had a 20-minute meeting Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas has invited the Pope to visit Jerusalem and places holy to Christians. During their first meeting at the Vatican, Benedict XVI accepted the offer, but no date has been set. Jerusalem is a key sticking point in Israeli-Palestinian relations, with Palestinians hoping a future state would include the east of the city.
Israeli President Moshe Katsav met the Pope last month and invited him to visit the Jewish state. The disputed status of the city of Jerusalem - that is holy to Jews, Muslims and Christians - has always been a matter of interest to the Roman Catholic Church, the BBC's David Willey in Rome reports.
'Unlimited access'
"You will be very welcome in Jerusalem and the holy places," Mr Abbas told the pontiff at the end of a private audience at the Vatican. "Thank you very much," was the response from Pope Benedict XVI.
One of Mr Abbas' aides - who lives in Bethlehem - also gave then gave the pontiff a document granting the Pope unlimited access to Bethlehem, the town where Jesus Christ was born.
The unresolved status of Jerusalem - the eastern part of which was annexed by the Israelis in the 1967 war - has always been a key issue for the Vatican.
The late Pope, John Paul II, had said he was in favour of the internationalisation of Jerusalem, and this is still official Vatican policy, our correspondent says. Israel has always refused such a solution claiming jurisdiction over the whole city as the undivided capital of the country.
Palestinians want East Jerusalem to be the capital of their eventual state.
Saturday, December 03, 2005
SHARON WANTS ARAB ON HIS SIDE
SO MAYBE THATS WHY I GOT A REPLY LETTER BACK FROM ARIEL SHARON WHEN I WROTE ABOUT WORLD TERRORISM. CHECK OUT #15 AFTER THIS ARTCLE AND NOTICE HIS OFFICE DULY NOTED WHAT I WROTE ABOUT.
Arutz-7 News
1. Sharon Seeks Out Extremist Arab Mayor for New Party
By Hillel FendelAn Arabic-language newspaper in the Negev reports that Ariel Sharon offered the mayor of the Arab city of Rahat a place on his new Kadima party list for the Knesset. The mayor in question has called in the past upon his fellow not to dare sell land to Israeli bodies. He has also issued threats in the event that the Government of Israel does not meet the Bedouin's budgetary demands.Analyst and former IDF Intelligence officer Yonatan D.
HaLevy reports that the mayor is Talal Al-Karinawi, head of the Negev city of Rahat, north of Be'er Sheva. Al-Karinawi has not yet responded to Sharon's offer, and isconsulting with his close associates.
Kadima party officials continue to seek leading personalities to fill their list of Knesset candidates. The list currently includes 21 candidates: * 14 former Likud Ministers and MKs * two from Labor (Ramon and Itzik); Shimon Peres, also formerly of Labor, has apparently been promised a ministerial portfolio by Sharon, but will not run for a Knesset seat*
Michael Nudelman (National Union)* David Tal (One Nation). In addition, former GSS Director Avi Dichter, former Education Ministry Director Ronit Tirosh, and Kiryat Shmonah Mayor Chaim Barbivai have agreed to join.
Polls foresee Sharon's party receiving at least 30 seats, and Sharon is therefore seeking additional names to run with. He met with some 60 mayors earlier this week, and several of them are said to be considering joining the party. Former Agriculture Minister Shalom Simchon of Labor and Cabinet Secretary Yisrael Maimon turned down offers to join Kadima this week.
The Kadima party already has one Arab MK, Majali Wahabe, who was one of the first to announce that he was joining Sharon. It is also rumored that Labor MK Raleb Majadele, an Israeli-Arab who replaced Avraham Burg in the Knesset in June 2004, is planning to join. Shimon Peres, who announced his support of Kadima this past Wednesday night, publicly called upon Majadale to join Kadima as well.
The Arab mayor courted by Sharon has expressed a tough stance regarding the Bedouins in the Negev. Analyst HaLevy reports that in Nov. 2001, Mayor Al-Karinawi was quoted on the Hamas website as having said, "The Arab residents in the Negev will employ strong steps if the government does not meet their [financial] demands, and this will affect the Jewish residents who live in the Negev and who will never know quiet in the area.
"In Dec. 2004, HaLevy reports, Al-Karinawi told Islam Online that the Bedouin tribes are fighting to prevent their recruitment into the IDF. Most recently, Al-Karinawi took a strongly militant pro-Bedouin stand in the ongoing struggle between Bedouin and Jews for control of the Negev. He said that the Bedouin lived in the land "before the establishment of the State [of Israel], and they are protecting it [the Negev] with their souls and bodies.
This ceremony [marking Earth Day] is a proof of the unity of the Arabs who are 'inside' [as opposed to in Judea and Samaria - ed.] and of our adherence to [demanding] our rights... We must be partners in developing the Negev. No matter what our financial state is, it is absolutely forbidden to sell the land to the Israel Lands Authority."
QUICK ACCESS TO ALL MY STORIES SO FAR.
01 - http://israndjer.blogspot.com/2005/11/we-must-act-for-jerusalem.html
02 - http://israndjer.blogspot.com/2005/11/last-generation.html
03 - http://israndjer.blogspot.com/2005/11/questions-ww3-whats-coming.html
04 - http://israndjer.blogspot.com/2005/11/israels-land-not-ishmaels-land.html
05 - http://israndjer.blogspot.com/2005/11/church-dedicated-to-jesus-found.html
06 - http://israndjer.blogspot.com/2005/11/pope-john-paul-dies-at-84.html
07 - http://israndjer.blogspot.com/2005/11/blessed-new-year-to-israel.html
08 - http://israndjer.blogspot.com/2005/11/sanhedrin-after-1600-yrs-back-in.html
09 - http://israndjer.blogspot.com/2005/11/israel-must-not-be-separatedtrouble.html
10 - http://israndjer.blogspot.com/2005/11/world-flooding.html
11 - http://israndjer.blogspot.com/2005/11/israel-jerusalem-together-forever.html
12 - http://israndjer.blogspot.com/2005/11/final-status-talks-will-be-trouble.html
13 - http://israndjer.blogspot.com/2005/11/2005-whats-coming.html
14 - http://israndjer.blogspot.com/2005/11/from-nebuchadnezzar-to-today.html
15 - http://israndjer.blogspot.com/2005/11/if-arafat-deadtrouble-for-mideast.html ###########
16 - http://israndjer.blogspot.com/2005/11/god-revealed-to-oral-roberts.html
17 - http://israndjer.blogspot.com/2005/11/prophesy-happening-on-this-day.html
18 - http://israndjer.blogspot.com/2005/11/club-of-rome-10-world-regions.html
19 - http://israndjer.blogspot.com/2005/11/eu-wants-in-final-status-talks-already.html
20 - http://israndjer.blogspot.com/2005/11/3rd-temple-update.html
21 - http://israndjer.blogspot.com/2005/12/wording-of-jerusalem-covenant.html
22 - http://israndjer.blogspot.com/2005/12/3rd-temple-sacrifices-to-be-done.html
23 - http://israndjer.blogspot.com/2005/12/belgium-leader-wants-united-states-of.html
24 - http://israndjer.blogspot.com/2005/12/world-nations-in-trouble.html
25 - http://israndjer.blogspot.com/2005/12/lukewarmness-trouble-coming.html
Arutz-7 News
1. Sharon Seeks Out Extremist Arab Mayor for New Party
By Hillel FendelAn Arabic-language newspaper in the Negev reports that Ariel Sharon offered the mayor of the Arab city of Rahat a place on his new Kadima party list for the Knesset. The mayor in question has called in the past upon his fellow not to dare sell land to Israeli bodies. He has also issued threats in the event that the Government of Israel does not meet the Bedouin's budgetary demands.Analyst and former IDF Intelligence officer Yonatan D.
HaLevy reports that the mayor is Talal Al-Karinawi, head of the Negev city of Rahat, north of Be'er Sheva. Al-Karinawi has not yet responded to Sharon's offer, and isconsulting with his close associates.
Kadima party officials continue to seek leading personalities to fill their list of Knesset candidates. The list currently includes 21 candidates: * 14 former Likud Ministers and MKs * two from Labor (Ramon and Itzik); Shimon Peres, also formerly of Labor, has apparently been promised a ministerial portfolio by Sharon, but will not run for a Knesset seat*
Michael Nudelman (National Union)* David Tal (One Nation). In addition, former GSS Director Avi Dichter, former Education Ministry Director Ronit Tirosh, and Kiryat Shmonah Mayor Chaim Barbivai have agreed to join.
Polls foresee Sharon's party receiving at least 30 seats, and Sharon is therefore seeking additional names to run with. He met with some 60 mayors earlier this week, and several of them are said to be considering joining the party. Former Agriculture Minister Shalom Simchon of Labor and Cabinet Secretary Yisrael Maimon turned down offers to join Kadima this week.
The Kadima party already has one Arab MK, Majali Wahabe, who was one of the first to announce that he was joining Sharon. It is also rumored that Labor MK Raleb Majadele, an Israeli-Arab who replaced Avraham Burg in the Knesset in June 2004, is planning to join. Shimon Peres, who announced his support of Kadima this past Wednesday night, publicly called upon Majadale to join Kadima as well.
The Arab mayor courted by Sharon has expressed a tough stance regarding the Bedouins in the Negev. Analyst HaLevy reports that in Nov. 2001, Mayor Al-Karinawi was quoted on the Hamas website as having said, "The Arab residents in the Negev will employ strong steps if the government does not meet their [financial] demands, and this will affect the Jewish residents who live in the Negev and who will never know quiet in the area.
"In Dec. 2004, HaLevy reports, Al-Karinawi told Islam Online that the Bedouin tribes are fighting to prevent their recruitment into the IDF. Most recently, Al-Karinawi took a strongly militant pro-Bedouin stand in the ongoing struggle between Bedouin and Jews for control of the Negev. He said that the Bedouin lived in the land "before the establishment of the State [of Israel], and they are protecting it [the Negev] with their souls and bodies.
This ceremony [marking Earth Day] is a proof of the unity of the Arabs who are 'inside' [as opposed to in Judea and Samaria - ed.] and of our adherence to [demanding] our rights... We must be partners in developing the Negev. No matter what our financial state is, it is absolutely forbidden to sell the land to the Israel Lands Authority."
QUICK ACCESS TO ALL MY STORIES SO FAR.
01 - http://israndjer.blogspot.com/2005/11/we-must-act-for-jerusalem.html
02 - http://israndjer.blogspot.com/2005/11/last-generation.html
03 - http://israndjer.blogspot.com/2005/11/questions-ww3-whats-coming.html
04 - http://israndjer.blogspot.com/2005/11/israels-land-not-ishmaels-land.html
05 - http://israndjer.blogspot.com/2005/11/church-dedicated-to-jesus-found.html
06 - http://israndjer.blogspot.com/2005/11/pope-john-paul-dies-at-84.html
07 - http://israndjer.blogspot.com/2005/11/blessed-new-year-to-israel.html
08 - http://israndjer.blogspot.com/2005/11/sanhedrin-after-1600-yrs-back-in.html
09 - http://israndjer.blogspot.com/2005/11/israel-must-not-be-separatedtrouble.html
10 - http://israndjer.blogspot.com/2005/11/world-flooding.html
11 - http://israndjer.blogspot.com/2005/11/israel-jerusalem-together-forever.html
12 - http://israndjer.blogspot.com/2005/11/final-status-talks-will-be-trouble.html
13 - http://israndjer.blogspot.com/2005/11/2005-whats-coming.html
14 - http://israndjer.blogspot.com/2005/11/from-nebuchadnezzar-to-today.html
15 - http://israndjer.blogspot.com/2005/11/if-arafat-deadtrouble-for-mideast.html ###########
16 - http://israndjer.blogspot.com/2005/11/god-revealed-to-oral-roberts.html
17 - http://israndjer.blogspot.com/2005/11/prophesy-happening-on-this-day.html
18 - http://israndjer.blogspot.com/2005/11/club-of-rome-10-world-regions.html
19 - http://israndjer.blogspot.com/2005/11/eu-wants-in-final-status-talks-already.html
20 - http://israndjer.blogspot.com/2005/11/3rd-temple-update.html
21 - http://israndjer.blogspot.com/2005/12/wording-of-jerusalem-covenant.html
22 - http://israndjer.blogspot.com/2005/12/3rd-temple-sacrifices-to-be-done.html
23 - http://israndjer.blogspot.com/2005/12/belgium-leader-wants-united-states-of.html
24 - http://israndjer.blogspot.com/2005/12/world-nations-in-trouble.html
25 - http://israndjer.blogspot.com/2005/12/lukewarmness-trouble-coming.html
Friday, December 02, 2005
WORLD NATIONS IN TROUBLE
copyright (c) 2005 by Mr. Reuven A. Kossover [mailto:hadas11@actcom.co.il]
LIBERATED YERUSHALIYIM, D.C. (David's Capital), Liberated Israelite Tribal Territories of Yehudah and Binyamin, Kingdom of David and Shlomo, United Israelite Kingdom of Yehudah and Yosef, Erev Shabbat (Eve of the Jewish Sabbath), Yom Shishi, 18 Tishrei, 5766, Root & Branch Information Services [mailto:rb@rb.org.il] [www.rb.org.il]:
I am a product of the Brooklyn public school system, I studied political science and public administration in university and I love history. Those of you who know me also know that I managed a Burger King in Roseville, Minnesota near St. Paul.
In 2004 I delivered a lecture dealing with this basic topic: "Looking at History Through a Jewish Lens: The War of Tisha B'Av".
Let us review some of the main points of last year's lecture, and add a couple of points that drive home the essential premise.
The actual subject of this essay is "Was the Messiah Born on Tisha B'Av? Looking at History Through a Jewish Lens".
When we Jews look at history, we tend to look at it through the lenses of those who teach the points of view of Christians. Most of us have gone to school in the Christian countries of the Diaspora. The history curricula there reflect that viewpoint. Jewish schools there rarely stray far from these because the students in those countries have to pass tests designed there.
The curricula of this country (Israel) have copied the curricula of gymnasia in Europe or of high schools in the United States. The big discovery that I made in the middle 1990's while reading through the Chumash (Five Books of Moses) and re-connecting with Torah, was that I was not reading fairy tales, or fables meant to convey a moral, but history. You don't believe me?
You shouldn't. Look at Parshat Ki Tavo, the one we read for the week of September 24. Think about the curses upon our people that Moses prophesied would come, especially towards the End. That is not a description of Jewish life for the last thousand years or so?
I want to emphasize one point before I go on. Looking at events through the Hebrew calendar is central to what I say here. It is central to our understanding of history and therefore central to our survival. If you take nothing else from this essay other than this one single point, I've accomplished my purpose in writing it.
To give us a small taste of what I'm talking about, let's return to Parshat Ki Tavo. This is read every year, once a year. In the year 5699 (1939), it was studied and read on the days leading up to September 2, 1939, which was the Sabbath. Let's look at the text.
This translation comes from my Artscroll edition of the Chumash, pages 1081 and 1085. First, Devarim/Deuteronomy 28:49-50 HaShem will carry against you a nation from afar, from the end of the earth, as an eagle will swoop, a nation whose language you will not understand, a brazen nation that will not be respectful to the old nor gracious to the young.
Rambam comments on Deuteronomy 28:49 that Vespasian and his son Titus came from Rome to conquer the Land of Israel and destroy Jerusalem and the Second Temple. The awful conditions described though verse 57 took place during the siege of Jerusalem. A yeshiva student studying these lines in Warsaw on the night of Wednesday, August 30, 1939, would have read Rambam in the Hebrew, saying exactly what I quoted you. However, if he had time to follow the reading of the Torah in shul (synagogue) on September 2 and could concentrate upon it, instead of the screaming of the Luftwaffe overhead, he might have had a very different comprehension of these same lines.
Hashem will carry against you a nation from afar, from the end of the earth, as an eagle will swoop...The eagle was the symbol of Rome, but it was also the symbol of Germany, which attacked Poland that day. Let us never forget that Moses was a prophet, the one prophet with the clearest view of the future. G-d spoke to Moses as though to a friend, face to face.
So Rambam was certainly right in his analysis of this portion of the Torah in that it referred to Rome and the events that led up to the destruction of the Temple. But could it not have also been a prophecy for the recent past, as well as our own day?
Prophecy layered upon prophecy?
Let's continue with Devarim/Deuteronomy 28:62-66:
You will be left few in number, instead of having been like the stars of heaven in abundance, for you will not have hearkened to the voice of HaShem, you G-d. And it will that just as HaShem rejoiced over you to benefit you and multiply you, so HaShem will cause them to rejoice over you to make you perish and to destroy you; and you will be torn from upon the ground to which you come to possess it.
HaShem will scatter you among all the peoples, from the end of the earth to the end of the earth, and there you will work for gods of others, whom you did not know -- you or your forefathers –- of wood and of stone. And among those nations, you will not be tranquil, there will no rest for the soul of your foot; there HaShem will give you a trembling heart, longing of eyes, and suffering of soul. Your life will hang in the balance, and you will be frightened night and day, and you will not be sure of your livelihood.
Need we stress the point that even in America, Jews are not tranquil, and have a trembling heart, longing of the eyes and suffer in their souls? Need we mention that from September 1939, onwards for at least 6 years, the idea of Jews's lives "hanging in the balance" is an understatement?
What about our lives here in Israel?
That was the foretaste. Now let's dig in to the main course. As most of us know, Tisha B'Av is our "national disaster day", so to speak. Tradition holds that the Sin of the Spies took
place on that day, our Temples were destroyed twice on that day; Beitar, the last stronghold of the Bar Koseba rebellion, fell also on that day. Three separate times in the last thousand years, Jews were expelled from Christian countries on that day.
In the last Christian (20th) century, there was a terrible conflict (World War One) that started on Tisha B'Av. The interesting thing about this conflict was that those who began it, who brought it about in the pendulous summer of that year, did not think about the significance of the date to us. We did not count at all in the calculations of the Christian and Moslem diplomats who weighed the fates of their nations and plunged four empires into a conflict from which they would never emerge.
This event, unlike many of the other disasters that befell our people on Tisha B'Av was not at all aimed at us in particular (at least not initially). Therefore, it cannot be argued, as it can with the expulsions of Jews from Britain, France and Spain (all in different years, of course), that the acts were dated to occur on Tisha B'Av because they would destroy the morale of the Jews targeted.
The incident that led up to this conflict was the assassination of the Archduke Ferdinand and his wife Sophie in an open vehicle traveling in Sarajevo by a Serbian nationalist. Austria Hungary decided that this would provide the opportunity to squelch Serbian nationalism, but the Russians did not quite agree.
An uneasy game of "follow the leader to disaster" ensued. When the battle lines were drawn, there were two "Central Powers", Germany and Austria-Hungary on the one side, and three "Allied Powers", Russia, Britain and France on the other, coming to the aid of the Kingdom of Serbia. This all occurred by Tisha B'Av, 5674, August 2, 1914.
All this ties in with a very interesting Jewish tradition -– the messiah will be born on Tisha B'Av. The idea is that the day of disaster will produce for us national redemption. Does this mean that every shmendrick on a donkey traveling to the Golden Gate at the Old City has to be stopped and his Teudat Zehut searched to see what his birthday is?
It could mean just that. Christians looking for the "sign of the beast" tend to look at the forehead of suspicious individuals, thinking that some mark or number would indicate the evil identity of the individual. I know a Catholic lady who once speculated that the birthmark on top of Mikhail Gorbachev's head was just that. And there are a lot of Russians who feel that Gorbachev was worse than the devil.
Somehow, I don't think that this is the case. It just doesn't make sense. Jewish prophecies and prophetic traditions take a little more work than that. Our answer will be found where I started this discourse –- with the idea of looking at history through a Jewish lens. The Hevlei haMashiah, commonly translated into English as the "birth pangs of the messiah", began the day that the messiah was born.
The tradition does not refer to a specific birthday, but rather is a finger pointing to a specific date in history to show a beginning point. Everything I am sharing with you is designed to recast history in that light. One of the things this means is that we should stop regarding the catastrophic conflict that began in August 1914 -– Tisha B'Av, 5674, as the First World War. When looking at history through our Jewish lens, not that of the Christians who until now have been most of its authors, it isn't.
The War of Tisha B'Av, which began in 1914, was the defining conflict of the age immediately prior to the one we live in now. This conflict, as usually taught in schools, lasted four years. Not so. When you look at the War of Tisha B'Av through a Jewish lens, focusing on what this conflict meant for our own People, a very different picture emerges.
It is a picture of one long series of conflicts lasting 76 years; one that results in the murder of one third of our population, the rise of a Jewish enterprise in Eretz Yisrael, and the rise and fall of an empire in Russia that retarded the development of that Jewish enterprise until its fall.
The fall of that empire marks the end of the conflict and gave way to Milhemet haMifratz (the Gulf War) -– a war fought in two parts. One part began with the invasion of Kuwait by Iraq and ended on Purim (1991); the second part began the day after Purim with the invasion of Iraq by the United States two years ago (2003) and continues to this day.
The War of Tisha B'Av began with irony -- a string of defensive alliances, all intended to prevent war, which worked instead to drag the major European empires into a mortal conflict from which they did not really emerge until 1990. When they finally did, they were entirely different in their apparent composition, but basically ready to be united into one empire once again. The
European Union that emerged in 1992 is just that -- a new empire.
When the guns of August (1914) began to boom, they sounded the death knell for Austria Hungary, the German Empire, the Russian Empire, the Ottoman Empire, and many, many millions of people. In addition, this conflict spelled the end of the British Empire and the French Empire, though not as immediately, or as obviously.
Now let's look at the consequences of the conflict that began on Tisha B'Av 5674 (1914), focusing on the Jewish People and our calendar.
In its opening stages, thousands of Jewish soldiers fought against thousands of other Jewish soldiers. The price of Napoleon's "emancipation" from the ghettos over a century earlier was now being paid in blood. The Covenant of Abraham was overridden by the "call to the colors" -– loyalty to the "fatherland". It was more important to demonstrate loyalty to the Kaiser, the Czar, the King, the Republic, the Flag, etc. than to G-d. We see this difficulty even today -– our rabbis can't decide whether Israelis should be more loyal to the flag or to G-d.
The conflict supposedly stopped for a time in Western Europe, allegedly settled by a treaty in Versailles (1919) that was supposed to enshrine all sorts of high-flown principles. The two lasting effects of this Treaty was firstly, to engender hatred throughout Europe against Jews who had subsumed the Covenant of Abraham to the call to the colors in their attempts to
assimilate and be good Europeans. Secondly, it enabled the possibility of the resurrection of a Jewish state in Eretz Yisrael.
In reality, this conflict did not wind down in Europe for 9 years. The Greek nationalist leader Venezilos, talked about "Greece for the Greeks", implying that anyone who wasn't a Greek
Orthodox Christian just didn't belong. In 5679 (1919), the Greek army invaded Asia Minor (Turkey), where many Greeks lived, and fought until it was defeated and driven out entirely. The result was that Greece was indeed for the Greeks. But the Turks paid them back in kind, expelling all of the Greeks from Asia Minor. So a major transfer of populations took place. This
process ended in 5683 (1923), the first round of conflict after the Crown Prince Ferdinand was murdered in Sarajevo.
In Germany, Jews were accused of stabbing the war effort in the back. Similar accusations faced Jews in the new Austrian Republic, the tiny nugget of provinces surrounding Vienna. The new Polish Republic, under General Pilsudski, was anti-Semitic from the day it was declared. In fact, with the exception of Czechoslovakia, all of Eastern Europe was anti-Semitic.
Of course, in the years 5675 and 5676 (1915 & 1916), a major population transfer of another kind had already taken place in the Turkish Empire. One and a half million Armenian Christians were transferred from this side of the veil to the other. While this did not bear upon us immediately, it did eventually have its impact on us in a very major way a few years later.
The Ottoman Empire was divvied up by the French and the British, leaving a rump Anatolian state that is now the Republic of Turkey, the one born fighting the Greeks in Asia Minor. The big thing in this that mattered for us is that for the first time in eighteen centuries, a Jewish fighting force had been created that did not go down to ignominious defeat, and that the British
undertook to create a Jewish national homeland in Eretz Yisrael.
The possibility of a reishit tzmichat geulatinu (first flowering of our redemption) actually arose. So the war of Tisha B'Av quickened an already planted seed. This is an important point to file away for the moment. We'll return to it. The Russian regime collapsed during the first three years of the War of Tisha B'Av. In 5677 (1917), the Czar was overthrown and a republic declared by Aleksandr Kerensky. Kerensky was overthrown in 5678 (also 1917) by a man named Vladimir Ulyanov.
He is known to history as Vladimir Lenin. He died in 5685 (1924) and was eventually succeeded by a man from Gruzia, known as Georgia to English speakers, named Joseph Djugashvili. Djugashvili is known to history as Stalin –- man of steel.
Before we go further, three points here should be made crystal clear, points usually not fully understood by folks who come from Western Europe and the Americas. But, these are things that Russian Jews, understand very well.
First of all, Joseph Stalin had every intention of conquering the world. For the rest of his life, until he died from a stroke he suffered on Purim, 5713 (1953), this was his goal. His successors did not have the fire in the belly that he had and many of the individuals who possibly could have continued in his tradition had died in labor camps or prisons because Stalin was
extremely suspicious. So, the Soviet Union rotted away from the inside under the rule of his successors until it fell.
The second point is that the Yiddish speaking Bundists, who were hostile to the Zionist enterprise, rode to temporary power with the Bolsheviks. This antipathy kept Russian Jews imprisoned in the Soviet Union for many years. The Russians we see here now are the grandchildren or great-grandchildren of those who might have left there to live here in the mid twenties.
The third point is that when Stalin suffered what was to be a fatal stroke on Purim 5713, in 1953, he was on the verge of planning the mass murder of the Jews living in the Soviet Union.
For eight years from 1923 to 1931 (5683 to 5691), there was no fighting in Europe or Asia, except for the Arab rioting here. But one of the ultimate causes of the conflict, frustrated German ambition nurtured by Kaiser Wilhelm II, did not go away.
The German army was commanded by most of the same generals that had commanded it under the Empire and the Germans worked out a secret deal with the Bolsheviks to train soldiers on Russian territory to evade the provisions of the Versailles treaty limiting Germany to 100,000 soldiers.
The world that existed immediately after the first round of fighting in the War of Tisha B'Av died down in 5683 (1923) was a fantasy world with a bubble of prosperity that shook unsteadily over a reality of poverty and violence hidden just below the surface. Eventually, all bubbles burst. Early in 5690 (1929) the stock market, which had fueled the delusions of prosperity in
the United States, crashed in New York.
Let's focus on that crash for a minute, paying particular attention to the Jewish calendar. The terribly bloated stock market in New York was headed for a smash-up. Looking back with the hindsight of three quarters of a century, this cannot be denied.
In fact, the market first gave serious signs of instability in September, 1928, and nearly had a crash in March 1929. A lot of the "smart" money got out after that big scare. The market could have crashed then, but it didn't. Instead, it climbed to even dizzier heights, seducing fools out of their money.
Now, let's look at when the crash actually occurred. It was during the holiday of Sukkot, 5690. Bear in mind that we Jews believe that Divine judgment is rendered on Rosh HaShanah, sealed on Yom Kippur, and executed on Hoshana Raba at the end of the Sukkot festival. Hoshana Raba 5690 was Friday, 25 October 1929. Sukkot, 5690 began on Shabbat, 19 October 1929. The market was open for only a half a day that day, with little clue to the disaster coming the following week. On Monday, October 21, the market seriously declined. It was a scary experience.
According to the book "1929" by William Klingaman, "Taken as a whole", reported The New York Times, "the character of the market left Wall Street both bewildered and frightened". Consequently, the Hoover administration released a statement saying, "there was no evidence of a serious business or financial situation which could be held responsible for the decline of Stock Exchange values". Continues Klingaman, "Yale University's Irving Fisher contemptuously dismissed the day's break as a 'shaking out of the lunatic fringe that attempts to speculate on margin'; the market, he implied, was well rid of such amateur speculators".
Klingaman writes about the nest day, Tuesday, October 22, "Although Manhattan was buffeted by 50mph winds...the stock exchange observed a rare and blessedly peaceful day. On the morning of Wednesday, October 23, ... Wall Street opened the day in a haze of uncertainty. Those who confidently expected Tuesday's half-hearted rally to continue were disappointed… By noon it was obvious that the market was heading for another sharp fall. And this time even the strongest nerves cracked".
Klingaman continued a page later, "Thursday, October 24...Anticipating disorder, [New York City, Police Commissioner] Grover Whelan dispatched a squadron of police wagons to the financial district and instructed them to block the narrow entrance from Broadway to Wall Street. On the floor of the exchange, nervous and exhausted brokers and clerks took up their
posts early. Nearly all the 1,100 members of the exchange were present, about 300 more than on a normal business day.
Matthew Josephson, who had forsaken a brief and not terribly successful career as a stockbroker to pursue writing… recalled more than forty years later: 'I heard -– and I can still hear it -– the sound of running feet, the sound of fear, as people hastened to reach posts of observation before the gong rang for the opening of trading'. In the words of one Wall Street old-timer, the market opened 'like a bolt out of hell'. Trading was already extraordinarily heavy, involving more than 1,600,000 shares in the first thirty minutes alone. Until 10:30 the market seemed uncertain, directionless. Then it plunged straight down, and no power on earth could stop it".
Thursday, October 24, 1929, the day before Hoshana Raba 5690, is generally recorded in the history books as the start of the Great Depression. A less than astute man could see that an era was ending that day. There were many severely less than astute people who still kept their money in the market, unwilling to believe the goose that laid the golden egg through the
decade previous had indeed died and was being served up with sauce.
However, a man steeped in the Jewish calendar would have realized that a Divine Judgment had been executed, even if he could not see the ultimate consequence of that Judgment. That was why the crash, bound to occur anyway, occurred when it did. It was a Divine Finger pointing out that something extremely Significant had occurred, and it was time to pay careful
attention.
It did not take long for the illusions of prosperity that had fooled Americans to disappear worldwide. Europe's economy fell apart as well. With the illusory bubble of prosperity gone, hunger and violence resurfaced, giving new hope to the Communists in Moscow for world revolution.
Capital ceased to flow from America to Germany, making it impossible for that country to continue on the strangely jiggered repayments of the war debt that had been initiated several years earlier. When this was no longer possible, the so-called Weimar Republic that existed in Germany at the time began to fall apart. The extremists in that country, both on the right and
the left, began to gain in power.
One of the corporals in the German Imperial army, a man who had immigrated to Germany from Austria and who had won an Iron Cross in combat, tried to establish himself as something more than a starving artist. He joined an organization of disgruntled unemployed workers known as the National Socialist German Workers' Party, which was abbreviated as
N.S.D.A.P. His membership card was #7. He was a charismatic individual who had a way with words who soon attracted the attention of Bolshevik agents looking for something to re-spark a Communist revolution in Germany, a revolution to succeed where the previous one failed in 5680 (1919).
In addition, his group attracted the attention of bankers looking for means of controlling events in the unstable, inflation-ridden country that succeeded the German Empire. This was the Union Bank in New York with its branch in the Netherlands and its German branch, the Thyssen Bank. Its American representative in Europe was Prescott Bush. His grandson is the president of the United States. His other grandson is governor of Florida.
Adolf Hitler's attempted coup d'etat in Bavaria in 5683 (1923) provoked nothing but laughter amongst Germany's politicians. His Bolshevik backers were furious with him. They had plans for him to attempt his coup d'etat the next day when they would have had more backing for him. But investors saw an opportunity to laugh all the way to the bank. They built him a house in the Bavarian mountains. And later, the Bolsheviks were not entirely unhappy to have someone like the Nazis, as they soon became known, for an enemy. Their violence and extremism, and willingness to combat the German Communists in street battles helped to keep membership in the Communist party up.
Hitler had a series of policies for Germany's rebirth and redevelopment that he expounded in a book called Mein Kampf, which he wrote while sitting in prison. One of his policies included expelling or killing all the Jews in Germany. Asked about this, he commented that if the Turks could get away with killing a million and a half Armenians, Germany could get away with killing
the Jews.
The great depression gave Hitler the opportunity he sought. Over the next three years, from 1930 to 1933 (5690 to 5693), his Nazi Party increased its number of seats in the German Reichstag. In 1933 (5693), the president of the German republic von Hindenberg asked Hitler to become reichskansler, or prime minister. When the German president died soon after, Hitler took the opportunity to have the offices of president and reichskansler combined into the position of "leader" -- Fuehrer. The politicians weren't laughing anymore.
Now, let us return to the reishit tzmichat geulatinu (first flowering of our redemption) that began to arise here in Eretz Yisrael after the British took over. The local organizations that pushed this, the Zionist parties, tried hard to get settlers for this country from Europe, America and the Soviet Union, but there was an economic depression here in the 5680's (1920's).
Life was still better in Europe, bad as it was, Jews like my father were beginning to prosper in America, and the Soviet Union had become a prison for its Jews. Jewish organizations pressed ahead anyway, using the little blue pishkeh (charity box) as their funding method when nothing else worked. We're still using that little blue pishkeh or modern variants of it today.
A Hebrew University was founded on Har HaTzofim, with its opening attended by the British High Commissioner, Sir Herbert Samuels. But European Jews sniffed contemptuously at the Zionist enterprise.
The following is taken from an essay written by Albert Montefiore Hyamson, then Controller of Labor for the Government of Palestine. The essay was written for the "Historian's History of the World", a publication of the Encyclopedia Britannica and was entitled "Palestine Freed from Turkish Rule". It is a good sample of what Jews generally felt about re-establishing a
Jewish State at that period of our history:
The impracticability, to say nothing less, of a scheme whereby a handful of farmers, shopkeepers, students and workingmen should, even if increased by such limited immigration as the economic state of the country rendered possible, be able to secure the government of a state, seven eighths of whose population were determinedly and ineradicably opposed to
such a government, was brushed aside by these idealists.
The absurd proposals for creating a majority of Jews in Palestine put forward by impractical Jewish men of letters, who fortunately had no influence in the Zionist Organization or otherwise in Jewish politics, created more attention and alarm than the statesmanlike proposals of that party in the organization which may be said to be inspired by the Hebrew philosopher Ahad Ha'Am (Asher Ginzberg)...
This was just a sentence and a half written by a man whose views were typical of the day but whose vested interest it was to defend his employer. Interestingly enough though, this same writer used the term "Palestinian" to describe Arabs a few paragraphs later in the same essay.
Arabs in this country rioted a number of times during this short interregnum between major conflicts. When Albert Hyamson wrote his essay on Palestine in 5685 (1925), the population was seven eighths Arab. A decade later, the proportion of Jews had more than doubled. When major fighting re-ignited in Europe in 5700 (1939), one third of the population of Eretz Yisrael
was Jewish.
We are warned in Parshat Eikev not to view our accession to this Land as the result of our own merit, and certainly not to view it as the result of our own efforts. If we fail to see the Hand of G-d in the success of the Zionist enterprise in the years before the declaration of the State in 5708 (1948), we are all fools indeed.
If you review the rain records for the years leading up to 5700, you find an increased amount of rain. This filled the borot, the aquifers of the land, and allowed for cultivation of food to feed the increasing population here. This was not the doing of human beings.
We can also ask ourselves: was the animus to hate Jews that afflicted Europe and the Arab world over the last 90 years really the doing of man? Or was it the hardening of the hearts of our enemies, that we not feel too comfortable in exile and remember Jerusalem with more than just sayings on Pesach? We face this question now as well. Every time I read an ad on Janglo
describing a furniture sale by Jews leaving to relocate in the United States, I get nervous. A little for me, but, mostly for them.
The War of Tisha B'Av started up again, not in Europe, but in Asia in the year 5691 (1931). The background of this is a short summary of the growth of Imperial Japan. In 5655 (1895), the Japanese had seized the island of Taiwan from China. In 5665 (1905), the Empire of Japan had successfully humiliated the Russians in battle, defeating their armies and their fleet. In
reality, this war finished off the Russian Empire.
Five years after their defeat of the Russians, the Japanese seized control of the Korean peninsula. When the War of Tisha B'Av began, they sided against Germany and seized German colonial holdings in the Pacific. But in 5691 (1931), when the rest of the world slid into economic depression, the Japanese invaded China.
The Japanese saw the depression as their opportunity, because the European powers that had taken over almost all of Asia in the previous century were seriously weakened. They erected a puppet state in Manchuria. They made plans to conquer south Asia. Europe and America, broke and weakened, watched with alarm but could do nothing. The Japanese solution to dealing with depressed world markets was to go to war and turn them into internal markets with plenty of business.
Two yeas later when Hitler took over Germany (1933), he got Germany out of recession by building for war. He brought hope to Germany by building roads across the breadth of the country, the famous Autobahnen. He erected a car company to make vehicles cheaply for Germans to ride on these roads and enjoy them -– Volkswagen -– the people's car. He brought
dictatorship and terror and terrible corruption, but he also brought prosperity. I don't know if he copied the Japanese, but arming for war was a profitable business, and it brought prosperity to Germany again.
Again, one should not dismiss the hand of G-d in all this. Why did Germany's neighbors not act to squelch this danger to their own lands, even when Hitler began to seize other territories and openly violate the treaty of Versailles? When reading the sad history of this decade, one has to wonder where all the sense of the British and the French had fled to. One has to wonder if it
were not Divine Will that this basic sense of self protection should be absent.
While the Japanese continued to conquer Chinese territory, the European continent slid back to violence. The Fascist dictator Mussolini seized portions of the Kingdom of the South Slavs, Yugoslavia, and eventually annexed Albania. A rebellion began in Spain against the secular republic there and evolved into a civil war in 5696 (1936). This civil war gave the Soviets and the Nazis a chance to test their weapons. Six months after this civil war ended, the Germans invaded Poland.
In general, we know most of the details of this conflict. It ended in Europe shortly after Lag B'Omer, 5705 (1945). We should note that Hitler killed himself on the eve of Lag B'Omer and the bonfire that was his funeral extended into that holiday. Note how we celebrate Lag B'Omer –- with bonfires in the night. Active fighting in the Pacific ended shortly before Elul, 5705. It
unveiled a new terror for the world, the atom bomb.
After the fight against the Nazis ended, Stalin worked hard to get an atom bomb, and he shortly had one. His armies occupied Eastern Europe, ending whatever hope there might have been for democratic regimes to flourish there. This included eastern Germany and the northeastern quarter of Austria. His agents started a civil war in Greece, attempting to take over the entire
Balkan Peninsula.
Stalin's ally, Mao Dze Dung, effectively took over the Chinese mainland in 5709 (1949). The very next year, the Communist government set up by Russia in the northern half of Korea invaded the southern half of the Korean Peninsula. The Americans came to the aid of their ally, South Korea. When the Americans got close enough to the Chinese border in 5711 (1950), the
Chinese invaded Korea, nearly driving the Americans off that peninsula entirely. In short, the War of Tisha B'Av entered its final phase, the war against the Communists. This stage of the conflict finally dictated the face of the world we live in now.
As I've pointed out earlier, Joseph Stalin really intended to conquer the world. What happened after the Nazis were defeated should show this intent. The United States was engaged world wide in a fight for its survival, but it could not go to open war against the Soviet Union because of fear of what the atom bombs and, later, nuclear bombs could do. Those of us over the
age of fifty all remember this conflict. Some of us fought in one or more of the open conflicts that broke out between 5711 (1950) and 5751 (1990) and all of us remember the constant balance of terror that burdened us.
Europe reached a balance of sorts, but for as long as Stalin lived; he kept testing the limits of that balance. In Asia, the Communists did what they could to seize land. A nationalist, Ho Chi Minh, managed to succeed in so weakening the French in Indochina that they left open control to local regimes.
The war against Communism mostly moved to Asia, with open conflicts being waged in Indochina and Korea and finally, Afghanistan. Lesser wars broke out all over the world with "revolutionaries" attempting to replace the ruling regimes with "peoples' democracies" of various varieties.
Outside of Asia, only Cuba fell to the Communists. There is only one more point that needs to be made about this conflict against Communism. After the death of Joseph Stalin in 5713 (1953), there was a qualitative change in the challenge from Communist Russia.
The succession to Stalin was unclear at first, and when it finally did become clear, with Nikita Khrushchev at the helm, the idea of world conquest seemed abandoned. This is so even though the bloodiest conflict against Communism was to take place in Vietnam long after Stalin's death. Although the rhetoric was not abandoned -– it was Khrushchev who said "we will bury you" -- the "kitchen debate" that occurred between him and then Vice President Richard Nixon would have been unthinkable between an American leader and Stalin.
In a thousand small ways, Nikita Khrushchev signaled that he wanted peace –- co-existence, not conquest. The ultimate proof of this was in the Cuba missile crisis of 5721 (1961). Khrushchev blinked. He backed down.
The exact date to the end of the War of Tisha B'Av cannot be defined with certainty. Reality is that wars in history tend to peter out. Sometimes there is a grand treaty, as in the treaty that ended the Thirty Years War 370 years ago in 5408 (1648).
But, more often than not, treaties tend to set the stage for a new version of a conflict, because they set to writing results of a previous conflict, thereby drawing the battle lines for the next one. Sometimes wars end with the destruction of one of the combatants entirely. The destruction of Carthage 2,200 years ago is an example of this. Once Carthage was destroyed by the Romans, there was no need for a treaty. The results were obvious.
The very next year, the outward trappings of the Soviet empire began to crumble. The wall that divided Berlin fell. Communist regimes were ousted from country after country in Europe. The Russians withdrew their soldiers from Eastern Europe.
Germany rapidly became the leading power on that continent, set to do what it had been set to do 80 years earlier -- take over Europe through its economic power. Finally, the Soviet Union collapsed entirely in the year 5751 (1991). This was the year that a huge aliya (immigration) of Russian Jews began to this country. At this point, we may say for certain that the War of Tisha B'Av ended. A new era had already begun with its focus on this part of the world.
Wars and rumors of wars rumbled across ancient Babylon. On Purim, 5751 (1991), the United States, now viewing itself as the world's sole superpower, ended a campaign in Iraq known as "Desert Storm". This was the opening of the Gulf War, which as I mentioned earlier, continues today.
This leads us finally to the rise of our own state. The history of Jews suffering in Displaced Persons camps after the Germans were defeated hardly needs repeating. At least six million had died at the hands of Hitler's S.S. in his death camps. A guilty world tried hard to entice these people to come to their countries. Only Eretz Yisrael remained closed.
For a few short years, much of the world that seemed to give us nothing but spit in our faces and dirt in our eyes, gave us sympathy and understanding. Miracles seemed to take place. Arab forces fled from smaller Jewish ones. By Tu B'Shvat, 5709 (1949), there was a State of Israel.
In the month of Sivan 5727 (1967), the Arabs gathered their forces around us and threatened attack. Our leaders, in a very rare show of courage, attacked first. Our forces solved the problem of fighting on a two front war by fighting on a three front one.
Our armies conquered the Sinai, liberated and reunited Jerusalem and even scaled the Heights of Golan, driving the Syrians away from their Russian supplied artillery. The Arabs in Judea and Samaria fled from before our soldiers and massed at the bridges of the Jordan River, ready to cross into being refugees again. Looking back, it becomes clear. Because we had faith in G-d, He delivered the enemy into our hands.
And then it all went wrong. A man with an eye-patch, who was a national hero at the time, handed control of the Temple Mount to the Arabs. He ordered the bridges on the Jordan blown up. The Arabs of Judea and Samaria, unable to cross the river, returned to their homes. The decisive victory was thrown away.
Very few saw the loss in the victory or the consequences. I know that I certainly didn't. Six years later, on Yom Kippur (1973), the enemy attacked again. Our forces, fearing to anger the United States, waited for the attack instead of attacking first. The day of the bent backed Jew, wheedling and begging before the world, has returned. In addition, the world's contempt for him has returned also.
In the War of the Day of Judgment, the man with the eye-patch, by now the Minister of Defense, tried to restrain a headstrong brutal young man from attacking and destroying the enemy across the Suez Canal. General Ariel Sharon won the day for us in a sad war that could have been a victory but wasn't.
Even that was stolen away. Sharon sold out to the United States and now vents his brutality on Jews. Nobody much talks about the fellow with the eye-patch these days. There are those who talk endlessly about the need for our government to withdraw to defensible borders, citing all kinds of "demographics" problems. Such people do not look at the facts of history.
They try to dismiss them instead. The facts of history are that in spite of demographics, our population has increased, and the percentage of the world's Jews living here has increased.
Israel is one of the most crowded countries on earth. Nearly fifty percent of the world's Jews live here. Six hundred thousand of them lived here in 5708 (1948). This was about three times the amount that Albert Hyamson talked about in his essay written twenty years earlier.
Six hundred thousand Jews were 5% of the world's total in 5708. Today, percentage-wise, nearly ten times that number, live here now. These are just numbers, the dry statistics.
So much for efforts of men and their governments.
But G-d, in His wisdom, has seen fit to cause prophecy to come about in our days. The lines of Isaiah 49:20: "the children of your bereavement shall yet say in your ears, 'The place is too tight for me; make room for me that I may sit'", appear to have come to pass. When I visited this country thirty one years ago as a young man, the neighborhood I live in now was just being built. Most of it didn't even exist. Lots of neighborhoods here are just like that. Jerusalem stretches nearly as far south as Bethlehem.
In other words, in order to see prophecy, all we need to do is open our eyes. It is all around us.
Faith is what we require now, not armies or arguments. Armies, arguments and even nuclear weapons, which we also possess, will do us no good without faith and courage. The beginning of that faith is to look at the world through a Jewish lens -– to perform the mitzvah of keeping the moadim, the dates and festivals of the Torah, and looking at the world through the calendar that we have –- the one given us through G-d's word in the Torah -– not the one of our enemies.
Some have written that we received a "period of grace" after the founding of our State that would last for 40 years. During that forty years we were supposed to repent, return to the Torah and thus bring the messiah early without many of the dramatic and disastrous prophecies in the Tanakh needing to come true. This didn't happen.
This period of grace ended in 5748 (1988). And in the last 18 years, we have seen a stunning reversal of our fortunes in this country. Every day, we argue over that reversal of our fortunes.
I've attempted to refocus the events of the last 90 years or so to show that the date Tisha B'Av as seen as the "birth of the messiah" was a finger pointing to a beginning date of the era we call the "birth pangs of the messiah" (reishit smichat geulateinu). In addition, and far more important, I've attempted to focus the events of the relatively recent past through a Jewish lens.
In the last few weeks, another event occurred that began on Tisha B'Av. This was Hurricane Katrina. The tropical depression that was to develop into this storm began on Tisha B'Av. It emerged as a major storm in the Caribbean just as the process of expelling Jews from Gush Katif was being completed. It struck as the Jewish graves there were disinterred.
The parallels between the forced homelessness of 10,000 Jews and hundreds of thousands of residents of New Orleans are scary. The reports of floating coffins eerily reflect the bodies removed from Jewish Gaza.
Like the Shoemaker-Levy comet, which fell apart under Jupiter's gravitational pull and collapsed into twenty-one separate asteroids on Tisha B'Av in 1994, Hurricane Katrina may have also been the Finger of G-d telling us to wake up and smell the heavenly coffee.
HaShem tends to show mercy and give more than one warning or sign. It doesn't say "signs and wonders" in Torah for nothing. However, I fear that we will soon see the strong Hand and outstretched Arm of HaShem as more than a mere shadow to be guessed at.
Shabbat Shalom and Shana Tova (Happy New Hebrew Year of 5766) from Liberated Yerushaliyim,
Mr. Reuven A. Kossover [mailto:hadas11@actcom.co.il]
ABOUT REUVEN KOSSOVER:
Reuven Kossover spent his formative years in Brooklyn, N.Y. where he earned a Bachelor's degree in political science and public administration. He moved to Minnesota to pursue graduate studies and lived there for twenty-two years, writing stories and managing restaurants. Presently, he lives in Jerusalem with his wife and family, working as a writer and business
consultant.
rb@rb.org.il
AN OMEN
copyright (c) 2005 by Dr. Yacov M. Tabak [mailto:tasysymt@netvision.net.il]
An annular solar eclipse took place on Erev Rosh Hashanah (Eve of the Jewish New Year) 5766 -- October 3, 2005. Hazal (Our Sages) determined that "likui hamah -- siman ra leovdei kochavim" [Babylonian Talmud/Tractate Sukkah 29a] -- solar eclipses bode ill for the nations of the world.
Lunar eclipses on the other hand are worrisome for Israel (since we are the ones whose fortunes wax and wane...). Note where this eclipse is first to be observed:
The path of the annular eclipse begins in the North Atlantic at 08:41 UT. Rushing southeast, the antumbra quickly reaches the northern coast of Spain and Portugal (08:51 UT). Bisecting the Iberian Peninsula, the antumbra engulfs Madrid (08:56 UT) which lies near the central line. The annular phase will last 04m 11s from this capital city with 90% of the Sun's surface being obscured by the Moon.
This is from the website http://www.spaceweather.com/. I am grateful to my sister-in-law for the reference.
Madrid (gematria = 258) is the key take-off point for Milhemet Gog Umagog (War of Gog and Magog) [ki kibetzam ka'amir Gorna (258) -- Micha 4:11-12]. Please read the chapter carefully.
It describes Bat-Zion as a woman in trepidation and pangs of childbirth, who goes forth from the Kiryah (Israel's military headquarters), dwells in the field (as armies do), gets as far as
Bavel (Iraq) and at that point is saved by G-d.
How?
The Nations sit in judgement on Bat-Zion at a conference, decide that Bat-Zion is guilty ("techenaf" in Hebrew) and as punishment they want to gaze on Zion themselves (i.e. come here to Israel). They do not understand G-d's strategy in that He gathered them together at Gorna (a threshing floor, but the gematria equivalent of Madrid: A correlation first pointed out to me
by my son the day after then Secretary of State Baker announced this venue for the post-Gulf-War Conference).
The Nations end up getting thoroughly threshed, i.e. crushed, which the commentators identify as the outcome of the Gog Umagog (Gog and Magog) conflict!
http://israndjer.blogspot.com/2005/11/questions-ww3-whats-coming.html
This scenario in detail took place in 1991-92 with the first Madrid Conference, except that then the Nations did not decide on an invasion of Israel.
This time around, the Quartet - United States, Russia, United Nations, and European Union -- imposing its "road map" on Israel, was constituted on April 10, 2002, again in Madrid. Remember, important events happen twice -- even this one. If, on the day before Rosh HaShanah (Jewish New Year) 5766, a bad omen for the Nations of the world is first observed at
Madrid, it may well be that this is the year whose developments will lead to the finale of Gog Umagog (Gog and Magog).
This is not the first indication of the importance of 5766, but it may be a very powerful pointer. That would mean that the finale, preceded by a nine-month gestation-like occupation of Israel by a coalition of Christians and Moslems (see Zechariah 14), could take place on the night of Hoshana Rabbah, 5767.
Recall the January 15/Hoshanah Rabbah interval chart I prepared 4 years ago? Human gestation is an average 38 weeks -- 266 days. The interval in 2006 is 271 days. The year of the Gulf War 1991 it was 264 days. It does not match perfectly, but it is close. Humans do not deliver babies after an exact interval either.
So, if the U.N./Quartet convenes -- most appropriately but not necessarily in Madrid, delivers an ultimatum to Israel to destroy yishuvim (Jewish Pioneering Communities) in Yehuda and Shomron and perhaps even in the Old City of Jerusalem -- chas vechalilah [Heaven Forbid], delivers a deadline that this destruction must be initiated by January 15, 2006, and threatens to invade and do it themselves if we do not [since the Gaza precedent now shows that we know how], hold on to your hat.
Plan to be in Eretz Yisrael (Land of Israel) for Sukkot (Tabernacles), 5767 (Shabbat, October 7 -- Shabbat, October 14, 2006).
It will be the safest place at the world-wide finale.
Shavua Tov and Chag Sameach from Liberated Yerushaliyim,
Dr. Yacov M. Tabak [mailto:tasysymt@netvision.net.il]
LIBERATED YERUSHALIYIM, D.C. (David's Capital), Liberated Israelite Tribal Territories of Yehudah and Binyamin, Kingdom of David and Shlomo, United Israelite Kingdom of Yehudah and Yosef, Erev Shabbat (Eve of the Jewish Sabbath), Yom Shishi, 18 Tishrei, 5766, Root & Branch Information Services [mailto:rb@rb.org.il] [www.rb.org.il]:
I am a product of the Brooklyn public school system, I studied political science and public administration in university and I love history. Those of you who know me also know that I managed a Burger King in Roseville, Minnesota near St. Paul.
In 2004 I delivered a lecture dealing with this basic topic: "Looking at History Through a Jewish Lens: The War of Tisha B'Av".
Let us review some of the main points of last year's lecture, and add a couple of points that drive home the essential premise.
The actual subject of this essay is "Was the Messiah Born on Tisha B'Av? Looking at History Through a Jewish Lens".
When we Jews look at history, we tend to look at it through the lenses of those who teach the points of view of Christians. Most of us have gone to school in the Christian countries of the Diaspora. The history curricula there reflect that viewpoint. Jewish schools there rarely stray far from these because the students in those countries have to pass tests designed there.
The curricula of this country (Israel) have copied the curricula of gymnasia in Europe or of high schools in the United States. The big discovery that I made in the middle 1990's while reading through the Chumash (Five Books of Moses) and re-connecting with Torah, was that I was not reading fairy tales, or fables meant to convey a moral, but history. You don't believe me?
You shouldn't. Look at Parshat Ki Tavo, the one we read for the week of September 24. Think about the curses upon our people that Moses prophesied would come, especially towards the End. That is not a description of Jewish life for the last thousand years or so?
I want to emphasize one point before I go on. Looking at events through the Hebrew calendar is central to what I say here. It is central to our understanding of history and therefore central to our survival. If you take nothing else from this essay other than this one single point, I've accomplished my purpose in writing it.
To give us a small taste of what I'm talking about, let's return to Parshat Ki Tavo. This is read every year, once a year. In the year 5699 (1939), it was studied and read on the days leading up to September 2, 1939, which was the Sabbath. Let's look at the text.
This translation comes from my Artscroll edition of the Chumash, pages 1081 and 1085. First, Devarim/Deuteronomy 28:49-50 HaShem will carry against you a nation from afar, from the end of the earth, as an eagle will swoop, a nation whose language you will not understand, a brazen nation that will not be respectful to the old nor gracious to the young.
Rambam comments on Deuteronomy 28:49 that Vespasian and his son Titus came from Rome to conquer the Land of Israel and destroy Jerusalem and the Second Temple. The awful conditions described though verse 57 took place during the siege of Jerusalem. A yeshiva student studying these lines in Warsaw on the night of Wednesday, August 30, 1939, would have read Rambam in the Hebrew, saying exactly what I quoted you. However, if he had time to follow the reading of the Torah in shul (synagogue) on September 2 and could concentrate upon it, instead of the screaming of the Luftwaffe overhead, he might have had a very different comprehension of these same lines.
Hashem will carry against you a nation from afar, from the end of the earth, as an eagle will swoop...The eagle was the symbol of Rome, but it was also the symbol of Germany, which attacked Poland that day. Let us never forget that Moses was a prophet, the one prophet with the clearest view of the future. G-d spoke to Moses as though to a friend, face to face.
So Rambam was certainly right in his analysis of this portion of the Torah in that it referred to Rome and the events that led up to the destruction of the Temple. But could it not have also been a prophecy for the recent past, as well as our own day?
Prophecy layered upon prophecy?
Let's continue with Devarim/Deuteronomy 28:62-66:
You will be left few in number, instead of having been like the stars of heaven in abundance, for you will not have hearkened to the voice of HaShem, you G-d. And it will that just as HaShem rejoiced over you to benefit you and multiply you, so HaShem will cause them to rejoice over you to make you perish and to destroy you; and you will be torn from upon the ground to which you come to possess it.
HaShem will scatter you among all the peoples, from the end of the earth to the end of the earth, and there you will work for gods of others, whom you did not know -- you or your forefathers –- of wood and of stone. And among those nations, you will not be tranquil, there will no rest for the soul of your foot; there HaShem will give you a trembling heart, longing of eyes, and suffering of soul. Your life will hang in the balance, and you will be frightened night and day, and you will not be sure of your livelihood.
Need we stress the point that even in America, Jews are not tranquil, and have a trembling heart, longing of the eyes and suffer in their souls? Need we mention that from September 1939, onwards for at least 6 years, the idea of Jews's lives "hanging in the balance" is an understatement?
What about our lives here in Israel?
That was the foretaste. Now let's dig in to the main course. As most of us know, Tisha B'Av is our "national disaster day", so to speak. Tradition holds that the Sin of the Spies took
place on that day, our Temples were destroyed twice on that day; Beitar, the last stronghold of the Bar Koseba rebellion, fell also on that day. Three separate times in the last thousand years, Jews were expelled from Christian countries on that day.
In the last Christian (20th) century, there was a terrible conflict (World War One) that started on Tisha B'Av. The interesting thing about this conflict was that those who began it, who brought it about in the pendulous summer of that year, did not think about the significance of the date to us. We did not count at all in the calculations of the Christian and Moslem diplomats who weighed the fates of their nations and plunged four empires into a conflict from which they would never emerge.
This event, unlike many of the other disasters that befell our people on Tisha B'Av was not at all aimed at us in particular (at least not initially). Therefore, it cannot be argued, as it can with the expulsions of Jews from Britain, France and Spain (all in different years, of course), that the acts were dated to occur on Tisha B'Av because they would destroy the morale of the Jews targeted.
The incident that led up to this conflict was the assassination of the Archduke Ferdinand and his wife Sophie in an open vehicle traveling in Sarajevo by a Serbian nationalist. Austria Hungary decided that this would provide the opportunity to squelch Serbian nationalism, but the Russians did not quite agree.
An uneasy game of "follow the leader to disaster" ensued. When the battle lines were drawn, there were two "Central Powers", Germany and Austria-Hungary on the one side, and three "Allied Powers", Russia, Britain and France on the other, coming to the aid of the Kingdom of Serbia. This all occurred by Tisha B'Av, 5674, August 2, 1914.
All this ties in with a very interesting Jewish tradition -– the messiah will be born on Tisha B'Av. The idea is that the day of disaster will produce for us national redemption. Does this mean that every shmendrick on a donkey traveling to the Golden Gate at the Old City has to be stopped and his Teudat Zehut searched to see what his birthday is?
It could mean just that. Christians looking for the "sign of the beast" tend to look at the forehead of suspicious individuals, thinking that some mark or number would indicate the evil identity of the individual. I know a Catholic lady who once speculated that the birthmark on top of Mikhail Gorbachev's head was just that. And there are a lot of Russians who feel that Gorbachev was worse than the devil.
Somehow, I don't think that this is the case. It just doesn't make sense. Jewish prophecies and prophetic traditions take a little more work than that. Our answer will be found where I started this discourse –- with the idea of looking at history through a Jewish lens. The Hevlei haMashiah, commonly translated into English as the "birth pangs of the messiah", began the day that the messiah was born.
The tradition does not refer to a specific birthday, but rather is a finger pointing to a specific date in history to show a beginning point. Everything I am sharing with you is designed to recast history in that light. One of the things this means is that we should stop regarding the catastrophic conflict that began in August 1914 -– Tisha B'Av, 5674, as the First World War. When looking at history through our Jewish lens, not that of the Christians who until now have been most of its authors, it isn't.
The War of Tisha B'Av, which began in 1914, was the defining conflict of the age immediately prior to the one we live in now. This conflict, as usually taught in schools, lasted four years. Not so. When you look at the War of Tisha B'Av through a Jewish lens, focusing on what this conflict meant for our own People, a very different picture emerges.
It is a picture of one long series of conflicts lasting 76 years; one that results in the murder of one third of our population, the rise of a Jewish enterprise in Eretz Yisrael, and the rise and fall of an empire in Russia that retarded the development of that Jewish enterprise until its fall.
The fall of that empire marks the end of the conflict and gave way to Milhemet haMifratz (the Gulf War) -– a war fought in two parts. One part began with the invasion of Kuwait by Iraq and ended on Purim (1991); the second part began the day after Purim with the invasion of Iraq by the United States two years ago (2003) and continues to this day.
The War of Tisha B'Av began with irony -- a string of defensive alliances, all intended to prevent war, which worked instead to drag the major European empires into a mortal conflict from which they did not really emerge until 1990. When they finally did, they were entirely different in their apparent composition, but basically ready to be united into one empire once again. The
European Union that emerged in 1992 is just that -- a new empire.
When the guns of August (1914) began to boom, they sounded the death knell for Austria Hungary, the German Empire, the Russian Empire, the Ottoman Empire, and many, many millions of people. In addition, this conflict spelled the end of the British Empire and the French Empire, though not as immediately, or as obviously.
Now let's look at the consequences of the conflict that began on Tisha B'Av 5674 (1914), focusing on the Jewish People and our calendar.
In its opening stages, thousands of Jewish soldiers fought against thousands of other Jewish soldiers. The price of Napoleon's "emancipation" from the ghettos over a century earlier was now being paid in blood. The Covenant of Abraham was overridden by the "call to the colors" -– loyalty to the "fatherland". It was more important to demonstrate loyalty to the Kaiser, the Czar, the King, the Republic, the Flag, etc. than to G-d. We see this difficulty even today -– our rabbis can't decide whether Israelis should be more loyal to the flag or to G-d.
The conflict supposedly stopped for a time in Western Europe, allegedly settled by a treaty in Versailles (1919) that was supposed to enshrine all sorts of high-flown principles. The two lasting effects of this Treaty was firstly, to engender hatred throughout Europe against Jews who had subsumed the Covenant of Abraham to the call to the colors in their attempts to
assimilate and be good Europeans. Secondly, it enabled the possibility of the resurrection of a Jewish state in Eretz Yisrael.
In reality, this conflict did not wind down in Europe for 9 years. The Greek nationalist leader Venezilos, talked about "Greece for the Greeks", implying that anyone who wasn't a Greek
Orthodox Christian just didn't belong. In 5679 (1919), the Greek army invaded Asia Minor (Turkey), where many Greeks lived, and fought until it was defeated and driven out entirely. The result was that Greece was indeed for the Greeks. But the Turks paid them back in kind, expelling all of the Greeks from Asia Minor. So a major transfer of populations took place. This
process ended in 5683 (1923), the first round of conflict after the Crown Prince Ferdinand was murdered in Sarajevo.
In Germany, Jews were accused of stabbing the war effort in the back. Similar accusations faced Jews in the new Austrian Republic, the tiny nugget of provinces surrounding Vienna. The new Polish Republic, under General Pilsudski, was anti-Semitic from the day it was declared. In fact, with the exception of Czechoslovakia, all of Eastern Europe was anti-Semitic.
Of course, in the years 5675 and 5676 (1915 & 1916), a major population transfer of another kind had already taken place in the Turkish Empire. One and a half million Armenian Christians were transferred from this side of the veil to the other. While this did not bear upon us immediately, it did eventually have its impact on us in a very major way a few years later.
The Ottoman Empire was divvied up by the French and the British, leaving a rump Anatolian state that is now the Republic of Turkey, the one born fighting the Greeks in Asia Minor. The big thing in this that mattered for us is that for the first time in eighteen centuries, a Jewish fighting force had been created that did not go down to ignominious defeat, and that the British
undertook to create a Jewish national homeland in Eretz Yisrael.
The possibility of a reishit tzmichat geulatinu (first flowering of our redemption) actually arose. So the war of Tisha B'Av quickened an already planted seed. This is an important point to file away for the moment. We'll return to it. The Russian regime collapsed during the first three years of the War of Tisha B'Av. In 5677 (1917), the Czar was overthrown and a republic declared by Aleksandr Kerensky. Kerensky was overthrown in 5678 (also 1917) by a man named Vladimir Ulyanov.
He is known to history as Vladimir Lenin. He died in 5685 (1924) and was eventually succeeded by a man from Gruzia, known as Georgia to English speakers, named Joseph Djugashvili. Djugashvili is known to history as Stalin –- man of steel.
Before we go further, three points here should be made crystal clear, points usually not fully understood by folks who come from Western Europe and the Americas. But, these are things that Russian Jews, understand very well.
First of all, Joseph Stalin had every intention of conquering the world. For the rest of his life, until he died from a stroke he suffered on Purim, 5713 (1953), this was his goal. His successors did not have the fire in the belly that he had and many of the individuals who possibly could have continued in his tradition had died in labor camps or prisons because Stalin was
extremely suspicious. So, the Soviet Union rotted away from the inside under the rule of his successors until it fell.
The second point is that the Yiddish speaking Bundists, who were hostile to the Zionist enterprise, rode to temporary power with the Bolsheviks. This antipathy kept Russian Jews imprisoned in the Soviet Union for many years. The Russians we see here now are the grandchildren or great-grandchildren of those who might have left there to live here in the mid twenties.
The third point is that when Stalin suffered what was to be a fatal stroke on Purim 5713, in 1953, he was on the verge of planning the mass murder of the Jews living in the Soviet Union.
For eight years from 1923 to 1931 (5683 to 5691), there was no fighting in Europe or Asia, except for the Arab rioting here. But one of the ultimate causes of the conflict, frustrated German ambition nurtured by Kaiser Wilhelm II, did not go away.
The German army was commanded by most of the same generals that had commanded it under the Empire and the Germans worked out a secret deal with the Bolsheviks to train soldiers on Russian territory to evade the provisions of the Versailles treaty limiting Germany to 100,000 soldiers.
The world that existed immediately after the first round of fighting in the War of Tisha B'Av died down in 5683 (1923) was a fantasy world with a bubble of prosperity that shook unsteadily over a reality of poverty and violence hidden just below the surface. Eventually, all bubbles burst. Early in 5690 (1929) the stock market, which had fueled the delusions of prosperity in
the United States, crashed in New York.
Let's focus on that crash for a minute, paying particular attention to the Jewish calendar. The terribly bloated stock market in New York was headed for a smash-up. Looking back with the hindsight of three quarters of a century, this cannot be denied.
In fact, the market first gave serious signs of instability in September, 1928, and nearly had a crash in March 1929. A lot of the "smart" money got out after that big scare. The market could have crashed then, but it didn't. Instead, it climbed to even dizzier heights, seducing fools out of their money.
Now, let's look at when the crash actually occurred. It was during the holiday of Sukkot, 5690. Bear in mind that we Jews believe that Divine judgment is rendered on Rosh HaShanah, sealed on Yom Kippur, and executed on Hoshana Raba at the end of the Sukkot festival. Hoshana Raba 5690 was Friday, 25 October 1929. Sukkot, 5690 began on Shabbat, 19 October 1929. The market was open for only a half a day that day, with little clue to the disaster coming the following week. On Monday, October 21, the market seriously declined. It was a scary experience.
According to the book "1929" by William Klingaman, "Taken as a whole", reported The New York Times, "the character of the market left Wall Street both bewildered and frightened". Consequently, the Hoover administration released a statement saying, "there was no evidence of a serious business or financial situation which could be held responsible for the decline of Stock Exchange values". Continues Klingaman, "Yale University's Irving Fisher contemptuously dismissed the day's break as a 'shaking out of the lunatic fringe that attempts to speculate on margin'; the market, he implied, was well rid of such amateur speculators".
Klingaman writes about the nest day, Tuesday, October 22, "Although Manhattan was buffeted by 50mph winds...the stock exchange observed a rare and blessedly peaceful day. On the morning of Wednesday, October 23, ... Wall Street opened the day in a haze of uncertainty. Those who confidently expected Tuesday's half-hearted rally to continue were disappointed… By noon it was obvious that the market was heading for another sharp fall. And this time even the strongest nerves cracked".
Klingaman continued a page later, "Thursday, October 24...Anticipating disorder, [New York City, Police Commissioner] Grover Whelan dispatched a squadron of police wagons to the financial district and instructed them to block the narrow entrance from Broadway to Wall Street. On the floor of the exchange, nervous and exhausted brokers and clerks took up their
posts early. Nearly all the 1,100 members of the exchange were present, about 300 more than on a normal business day.
Matthew Josephson, who had forsaken a brief and not terribly successful career as a stockbroker to pursue writing… recalled more than forty years later: 'I heard -– and I can still hear it -– the sound of running feet, the sound of fear, as people hastened to reach posts of observation before the gong rang for the opening of trading'. In the words of one Wall Street old-timer, the market opened 'like a bolt out of hell'. Trading was already extraordinarily heavy, involving more than 1,600,000 shares in the first thirty minutes alone. Until 10:30 the market seemed uncertain, directionless. Then it plunged straight down, and no power on earth could stop it".
Thursday, October 24, 1929, the day before Hoshana Raba 5690, is generally recorded in the history books as the start of the Great Depression. A less than astute man could see that an era was ending that day. There were many severely less than astute people who still kept their money in the market, unwilling to believe the goose that laid the golden egg through the
decade previous had indeed died and was being served up with sauce.
However, a man steeped in the Jewish calendar would have realized that a Divine Judgment had been executed, even if he could not see the ultimate consequence of that Judgment. That was why the crash, bound to occur anyway, occurred when it did. It was a Divine Finger pointing out that something extremely Significant had occurred, and it was time to pay careful
attention.
It did not take long for the illusions of prosperity that had fooled Americans to disappear worldwide. Europe's economy fell apart as well. With the illusory bubble of prosperity gone, hunger and violence resurfaced, giving new hope to the Communists in Moscow for world revolution.
Capital ceased to flow from America to Germany, making it impossible for that country to continue on the strangely jiggered repayments of the war debt that had been initiated several years earlier. When this was no longer possible, the so-called Weimar Republic that existed in Germany at the time began to fall apart. The extremists in that country, both on the right and
the left, began to gain in power.
One of the corporals in the German Imperial army, a man who had immigrated to Germany from Austria and who had won an Iron Cross in combat, tried to establish himself as something more than a starving artist. He joined an organization of disgruntled unemployed workers known as the National Socialist German Workers' Party, which was abbreviated as
N.S.D.A.P. His membership card was #7. He was a charismatic individual who had a way with words who soon attracted the attention of Bolshevik agents looking for something to re-spark a Communist revolution in Germany, a revolution to succeed where the previous one failed in 5680 (1919).
In addition, his group attracted the attention of bankers looking for means of controlling events in the unstable, inflation-ridden country that succeeded the German Empire. This was the Union Bank in New York with its branch in the Netherlands and its German branch, the Thyssen Bank. Its American representative in Europe was Prescott Bush. His grandson is the president of the United States. His other grandson is governor of Florida.
Adolf Hitler's attempted coup d'etat in Bavaria in 5683 (1923) provoked nothing but laughter amongst Germany's politicians. His Bolshevik backers were furious with him. They had plans for him to attempt his coup d'etat the next day when they would have had more backing for him. But investors saw an opportunity to laugh all the way to the bank. They built him a house in the Bavarian mountains. And later, the Bolsheviks were not entirely unhappy to have someone like the Nazis, as they soon became known, for an enemy. Their violence and extremism, and willingness to combat the German Communists in street battles helped to keep membership in the Communist party up.
Hitler had a series of policies for Germany's rebirth and redevelopment that he expounded in a book called Mein Kampf, which he wrote while sitting in prison. One of his policies included expelling or killing all the Jews in Germany. Asked about this, he commented that if the Turks could get away with killing a million and a half Armenians, Germany could get away with killing
the Jews.
The great depression gave Hitler the opportunity he sought. Over the next three years, from 1930 to 1933 (5690 to 5693), his Nazi Party increased its number of seats in the German Reichstag. In 1933 (5693), the president of the German republic von Hindenberg asked Hitler to become reichskansler, or prime minister. When the German president died soon after, Hitler took the opportunity to have the offices of president and reichskansler combined into the position of "leader" -- Fuehrer. The politicians weren't laughing anymore.
Now, let us return to the reishit tzmichat geulatinu (first flowering of our redemption) that began to arise here in Eretz Yisrael after the British took over. The local organizations that pushed this, the Zionist parties, tried hard to get settlers for this country from Europe, America and the Soviet Union, but there was an economic depression here in the 5680's (1920's).
Life was still better in Europe, bad as it was, Jews like my father were beginning to prosper in America, and the Soviet Union had become a prison for its Jews. Jewish organizations pressed ahead anyway, using the little blue pishkeh (charity box) as their funding method when nothing else worked. We're still using that little blue pishkeh or modern variants of it today.
A Hebrew University was founded on Har HaTzofim, with its opening attended by the British High Commissioner, Sir Herbert Samuels. But European Jews sniffed contemptuously at the Zionist enterprise.
The following is taken from an essay written by Albert Montefiore Hyamson, then Controller of Labor for the Government of Palestine. The essay was written for the "Historian's History of the World", a publication of the Encyclopedia Britannica and was entitled "Palestine Freed from Turkish Rule". It is a good sample of what Jews generally felt about re-establishing a
Jewish State at that period of our history:
The impracticability, to say nothing less, of a scheme whereby a handful of farmers, shopkeepers, students and workingmen should, even if increased by such limited immigration as the economic state of the country rendered possible, be able to secure the government of a state, seven eighths of whose population were determinedly and ineradicably opposed to
such a government, was brushed aside by these idealists.
The absurd proposals for creating a majority of Jews in Palestine put forward by impractical Jewish men of letters, who fortunately had no influence in the Zionist Organization or otherwise in Jewish politics, created more attention and alarm than the statesmanlike proposals of that party in the organization which may be said to be inspired by the Hebrew philosopher Ahad Ha'Am (Asher Ginzberg)...
This was just a sentence and a half written by a man whose views were typical of the day but whose vested interest it was to defend his employer. Interestingly enough though, this same writer used the term "Palestinian" to describe Arabs a few paragraphs later in the same essay.
Arabs in this country rioted a number of times during this short interregnum between major conflicts. When Albert Hyamson wrote his essay on Palestine in 5685 (1925), the population was seven eighths Arab. A decade later, the proportion of Jews had more than doubled. When major fighting re-ignited in Europe in 5700 (1939), one third of the population of Eretz Yisrael
was Jewish.
We are warned in Parshat Eikev not to view our accession to this Land as the result of our own merit, and certainly not to view it as the result of our own efforts. If we fail to see the Hand of G-d in the success of the Zionist enterprise in the years before the declaration of the State in 5708 (1948), we are all fools indeed.
If you review the rain records for the years leading up to 5700, you find an increased amount of rain. This filled the borot, the aquifers of the land, and allowed for cultivation of food to feed the increasing population here. This was not the doing of human beings.
We can also ask ourselves: was the animus to hate Jews that afflicted Europe and the Arab world over the last 90 years really the doing of man? Or was it the hardening of the hearts of our enemies, that we not feel too comfortable in exile and remember Jerusalem with more than just sayings on Pesach? We face this question now as well. Every time I read an ad on Janglo
describing a furniture sale by Jews leaving to relocate in the United States, I get nervous. A little for me, but, mostly for them.
The War of Tisha B'Av started up again, not in Europe, but in Asia in the year 5691 (1931). The background of this is a short summary of the growth of Imperial Japan. In 5655 (1895), the Japanese had seized the island of Taiwan from China. In 5665 (1905), the Empire of Japan had successfully humiliated the Russians in battle, defeating their armies and their fleet. In
reality, this war finished off the Russian Empire.
Five years after their defeat of the Russians, the Japanese seized control of the Korean peninsula. When the War of Tisha B'Av began, they sided against Germany and seized German colonial holdings in the Pacific. But in 5691 (1931), when the rest of the world slid into economic depression, the Japanese invaded China.
The Japanese saw the depression as their opportunity, because the European powers that had taken over almost all of Asia in the previous century were seriously weakened. They erected a puppet state in Manchuria. They made plans to conquer south Asia. Europe and America, broke and weakened, watched with alarm but could do nothing. The Japanese solution to dealing with depressed world markets was to go to war and turn them into internal markets with plenty of business.
Two yeas later when Hitler took over Germany (1933), he got Germany out of recession by building for war. He brought hope to Germany by building roads across the breadth of the country, the famous Autobahnen. He erected a car company to make vehicles cheaply for Germans to ride on these roads and enjoy them -– Volkswagen -– the people's car. He brought
dictatorship and terror and terrible corruption, but he also brought prosperity. I don't know if he copied the Japanese, but arming for war was a profitable business, and it brought prosperity to Germany again.
Again, one should not dismiss the hand of G-d in all this. Why did Germany's neighbors not act to squelch this danger to their own lands, even when Hitler began to seize other territories and openly violate the treaty of Versailles? When reading the sad history of this decade, one has to wonder where all the sense of the British and the French had fled to. One has to wonder if it
were not Divine Will that this basic sense of self protection should be absent.
While the Japanese continued to conquer Chinese territory, the European continent slid back to violence. The Fascist dictator Mussolini seized portions of the Kingdom of the South Slavs, Yugoslavia, and eventually annexed Albania. A rebellion began in Spain against the secular republic there and evolved into a civil war in 5696 (1936). This civil war gave the Soviets and the Nazis a chance to test their weapons. Six months after this civil war ended, the Germans invaded Poland.
In general, we know most of the details of this conflict. It ended in Europe shortly after Lag B'Omer, 5705 (1945). We should note that Hitler killed himself on the eve of Lag B'Omer and the bonfire that was his funeral extended into that holiday. Note how we celebrate Lag B'Omer –- with bonfires in the night. Active fighting in the Pacific ended shortly before Elul, 5705. It
unveiled a new terror for the world, the atom bomb.
After the fight against the Nazis ended, Stalin worked hard to get an atom bomb, and he shortly had one. His armies occupied Eastern Europe, ending whatever hope there might have been for democratic regimes to flourish there. This included eastern Germany and the northeastern quarter of Austria. His agents started a civil war in Greece, attempting to take over the entire
Balkan Peninsula.
Stalin's ally, Mao Dze Dung, effectively took over the Chinese mainland in 5709 (1949). The very next year, the Communist government set up by Russia in the northern half of Korea invaded the southern half of the Korean Peninsula. The Americans came to the aid of their ally, South Korea. When the Americans got close enough to the Chinese border in 5711 (1950), the
Chinese invaded Korea, nearly driving the Americans off that peninsula entirely. In short, the War of Tisha B'Av entered its final phase, the war against the Communists. This stage of the conflict finally dictated the face of the world we live in now.
As I've pointed out earlier, Joseph Stalin really intended to conquer the world. What happened after the Nazis were defeated should show this intent. The United States was engaged world wide in a fight for its survival, but it could not go to open war against the Soviet Union because of fear of what the atom bombs and, later, nuclear bombs could do. Those of us over the
age of fifty all remember this conflict. Some of us fought in one or more of the open conflicts that broke out between 5711 (1950) and 5751 (1990) and all of us remember the constant balance of terror that burdened us.
Europe reached a balance of sorts, but for as long as Stalin lived; he kept testing the limits of that balance. In Asia, the Communists did what they could to seize land. A nationalist, Ho Chi Minh, managed to succeed in so weakening the French in Indochina that they left open control to local regimes.
The war against Communism mostly moved to Asia, with open conflicts being waged in Indochina and Korea and finally, Afghanistan. Lesser wars broke out all over the world with "revolutionaries" attempting to replace the ruling regimes with "peoples' democracies" of various varieties.
Outside of Asia, only Cuba fell to the Communists. There is only one more point that needs to be made about this conflict against Communism. After the death of Joseph Stalin in 5713 (1953), there was a qualitative change in the challenge from Communist Russia.
The succession to Stalin was unclear at first, and when it finally did become clear, with Nikita Khrushchev at the helm, the idea of world conquest seemed abandoned. This is so even though the bloodiest conflict against Communism was to take place in Vietnam long after Stalin's death. Although the rhetoric was not abandoned -– it was Khrushchev who said "we will bury you" -- the "kitchen debate" that occurred between him and then Vice President Richard Nixon would have been unthinkable between an American leader and Stalin.
In a thousand small ways, Nikita Khrushchev signaled that he wanted peace –- co-existence, not conquest. The ultimate proof of this was in the Cuba missile crisis of 5721 (1961). Khrushchev blinked. He backed down.
The exact date to the end of the War of Tisha B'Av cannot be defined with certainty. Reality is that wars in history tend to peter out. Sometimes there is a grand treaty, as in the treaty that ended the Thirty Years War 370 years ago in 5408 (1648).
But, more often than not, treaties tend to set the stage for a new version of a conflict, because they set to writing results of a previous conflict, thereby drawing the battle lines for the next one. Sometimes wars end with the destruction of one of the combatants entirely. The destruction of Carthage 2,200 years ago is an example of this. Once Carthage was destroyed by the Romans, there was no need for a treaty. The results were obvious.
The very next year, the outward trappings of the Soviet empire began to crumble. The wall that divided Berlin fell. Communist regimes were ousted from country after country in Europe. The Russians withdrew their soldiers from Eastern Europe.
Germany rapidly became the leading power on that continent, set to do what it had been set to do 80 years earlier -- take over Europe through its economic power. Finally, the Soviet Union collapsed entirely in the year 5751 (1991). This was the year that a huge aliya (immigration) of Russian Jews began to this country. At this point, we may say for certain that the War of Tisha B'Av ended. A new era had already begun with its focus on this part of the world.
Wars and rumors of wars rumbled across ancient Babylon. On Purim, 5751 (1991), the United States, now viewing itself as the world's sole superpower, ended a campaign in Iraq known as "Desert Storm". This was the opening of the Gulf War, which as I mentioned earlier, continues today.
This leads us finally to the rise of our own state. The history of Jews suffering in Displaced Persons camps after the Germans were defeated hardly needs repeating. At least six million had died at the hands of Hitler's S.S. in his death camps. A guilty world tried hard to entice these people to come to their countries. Only Eretz Yisrael remained closed.
For a few short years, much of the world that seemed to give us nothing but spit in our faces and dirt in our eyes, gave us sympathy and understanding. Miracles seemed to take place. Arab forces fled from smaller Jewish ones. By Tu B'Shvat, 5709 (1949), there was a State of Israel.
In the month of Sivan 5727 (1967), the Arabs gathered their forces around us and threatened attack. Our leaders, in a very rare show of courage, attacked first. Our forces solved the problem of fighting on a two front war by fighting on a three front one.
Our armies conquered the Sinai, liberated and reunited Jerusalem and even scaled the Heights of Golan, driving the Syrians away from their Russian supplied artillery. The Arabs in Judea and Samaria fled from before our soldiers and massed at the bridges of the Jordan River, ready to cross into being refugees again. Looking back, it becomes clear. Because we had faith in G-d, He delivered the enemy into our hands.
And then it all went wrong. A man with an eye-patch, who was a national hero at the time, handed control of the Temple Mount to the Arabs. He ordered the bridges on the Jordan blown up. The Arabs of Judea and Samaria, unable to cross the river, returned to their homes. The decisive victory was thrown away.
Very few saw the loss in the victory or the consequences. I know that I certainly didn't. Six years later, on Yom Kippur (1973), the enemy attacked again. Our forces, fearing to anger the United States, waited for the attack instead of attacking first. The day of the bent backed Jew, wheedling and begging before the world, has returned. In addition, the world's contempt for him has returned also.
In the War of the Day of Judgment, the man with the eye-patch, by now the Minister of Defense, tried to restrain a headstrong brutal young man from attacking and destroying the enemy across the Suez Canal. General Ariel Sharon won the day for us in a sad war that could have been a victory but wasn't.
Even that was stolen away. Sharon sold out to the United States and now vents his brutality on Jews. Nobody much talks about the fellow with the eye-patch these days. There are those who talk endlessly about the need for our government to withdraw to defensible borders, citing all kinds of "demographics" problems. Such people do not look at the facts of history.
They try to dismiss them instead. The facts of history are that in spite of demographics, our population has increased, and the percentage of the world's Jews living here has increased.
Israel is one of the most crowded countries on earth. Nearly fifty percent of the world's Jews live here. Six hundred thousand of them lived here in 5708 (1948). This was about three times the amount that Albert Hyamson talked about in his essay written twenty years earlier.
Six hundred thousand Jews were 5% of the world's total in 5708. Today, percentage-wise, nearly ten times that number, live here now. These are just numbers, the dry statistics.
So much for efforts of men and their governments.
But G-d, in His wisdom, has seen fit to cause prophecy to come about in our days. The lines of Isaiah 49:20: "the children of your bereavement shall yet say in your ears, 'The place is too tight for me; make room for me that I may sit'", appear to have come to pass. When I visited this country thirty one years ago as a young man, the neighborhood I live in now was just being built. Most of it didn't even exist. Lots of neighborhoods here are just like that. Jerusalem stretches nearly as far south as Bethlehem.
In other words, in order to see prophecy, all we need to do is open our eyes. It is all around us.
Faith is what we require now, not armies or arguments. Armies, arguments and even nuclear weapons, which we also possess, will do us no good without faith and courage. The beginning of that faith is to look at the world through a Jewish lens -– to perform the mitzvah of keeping the moadim, the dates and festivals of the Torah, and looking at the world through the calendar that we have –- the one given us through G-d's word in the Torah -– not the one of our enemies.
Some have written that we received a "period of grace" after the founding of our State that would last for 40 years. During that forty years we were supposed to repent, return to the Torah and thus bring the messiah early without many of the dramatic and disastrous prophecies in the Tanakh needing to come true. This didn't happen.
This period of grace ended in 5748 (1988). And in the last 18 years, we have seen a stunning reversal of our fortunes in this country. Every day, we argue over that reversal of our fortunes.
I've attempted to refocus the events of the last 90 years or so to show that the date Tisha B'Av as seen as the "birth of the messiah" was a finger pointing to a beginning date of the era we call the "birth pangs of the messiah" (reishit smichat geulateinu). In addition, and far more important, I've attempted to focus the events of the relatively recent past through a Jewish lens.
In the last few weeks, another event occurred that began on Tisha B'Av. This was Hurricane Katrina. The tropical depression that was to develop into this storm began on Tisha B'Av. It emerged as a major storm in the Caribbean just as the process of expelling Jews from Gush Katif was being completed. It struck as the Jewish graves there were disinterred.
The parallels between the forced homelessness of 10,000 Jews and hundreds of thousands of residents of New Orleans are scary. The reports of floating coffins eerily reflect the bodies removed from Jewish Gaza.
Like the Shoemaker-Levy comet, which fell apart under Jupiter's gravitational pull and collapsed into twenty-one separate asteroids on Tisha B'Av in 1994, Hurricane Katrina may have also been the Finger of G-d telling us to wake up and smell the heavenly coffee.
HaShem tends to show mercy and give more than one warning or sign. It doesn't say "signs and wonders" in Torah for nothing. However, I fear that we will soon see the strong Hand and outstretched Arm of HaShem as more than a mere shadow to be guessed at.
Shabbat Shalom and Shana Tova (Happy New Hebrew Year of 5766) from Liberated Yerushaliyim,
Mr. Reuven A. Kossover [mailto:hadas11@actcom.co.il]
ABOUT REUVEN KOSSOVER:
Reuven Kossover spent his formative years in Brooklyn, N.Y. where he earned a Bachelor's degree in political science and public administration. He moved to Minnesota to pursue graduate studies and lived there for twenty-two years, writing stories and managing restaurants. Presently, he lives in Jerusalem with his wife and family, working as a writer and business
consultant.
rb@rb.org.il
AN OMEN
copyright (c) 2005 by Dr. Yacov M. Tabak [mailto:tasysymt@netvision.net.il]
An annular solar eclipse took place on Erev Rosh Hashanah (Eve of the Jewish New Year) 5766 -- October 3, 2005. Hazal (Our Sages) determined that "likui hamah -- siman ra leovdei kochavim" [Babylonian Talmud/Tractate Sukkah 29a] -- solar eclipses bode ill for the nations of the world.
Lunar eclipses on the other hand are worrisome for Israel (since we are the ones whose fortunes wax and wane...). Note where this eclipse is first to be observed:
The path of the annular eclipse begins in the North Atlantic at 08:41 UT. Rushing southeast, the antumbra quickly reaches the northern coast of Spain and Portugal (08:51 UT). Bisecting the Iberian Peninsula, the antumbra engulfs Madrid (08:56 UT) which lies near the central line. The annular phase will last 04m 11s from this capital city with 90% of the Sun's surface being obscured by the Moon.
This is from the website http://www.spaceweather.com/. I am grateful to my sister-in-law for the reference.
Madrid (gematria = 258) is the key take-off point for Milhemet Gog Umagog (War of Gog and Magog) [ki kibetzam ka'amir Gorna (258) -- Micha 4:11-12]. Please read the chapter carefully.
It describes Bat-Zion as a woman in trepidation and pangs of childbirth, who goes forth from the Kiryah (Israel's military headquarters), dwells in the field (as armies do), gets as far as
Bavel (Iraq) and at that point is saved by G-d.
How?
The Nations sit in judgement on Bat-Zion at a conference, decide that Bat-Zion is guilty ("techenaf" in Hebrew) and as punishment they want to gaze on Zion themselves (i.e. come here to Israel). They do not understand G-d's strategy in that He gathered them together at Gorna (a threshing floor, but the gematria equivalent of Madrid: A correlation first pointed out to me
by my son the day after then Secretary of State Baker announced this venue for the post-Gulf-War Conference).
The Nations end up getting thoroughly threshed, i.e. crushed, which the commentators identify as the outcome of the Gog Umagog (Gog and Magog) conflict!
http://israndjer.blogspot.com/2005/11/questions-ww3-whats-coming.html
This scenario in detail took place in 1991-92 with the first Madrid Conference, except that then the Nations did not decide on an invasion of Israel.
This time around, the Quartet - United States, Russia, United Nations, and European Union -- imposing its "road map" on Israel, was constituted on April 10, 2002, again in Madrid. Remember, important events happen twice -- even this one. If, on the day before Rosh HaShanah (Jewish New Year) 5766, a bad omen for the Nations of the world is first observed at
Madrid, it may well be that this is the year whose developments will lead to the finale of Gog Umagog (Gog and Magog).
This is not the first indication of the importance of 5766, but it may be a very powerful pointer. That would mean that the finale, preceded by a nine-month gestation-like occupation of Israel by a coalition of Christians and Moslems (see Zechariah 14), could take place on the night of Hoshana Rabbah, 5767.
Recall the January 15/Hoshanah Rabbah interval chart I prepared 4 years ago? Human gestation is an average 38 weeks -- 266 days. The interval in 2006 is 271 days. The year of the Gulf War 1991 it was 264 days. It does not match perfectly, but it is close. Humans do not deliver babies after an exact interval either.
So, if the U.N./Quartet convenes -- most appropriately but not necessarily in Madrid, delivers an ultimatum to Israel to destroy yishuvim (Jewish Pioneering Communities) in Yehuda and Shomron and perhaps even in the Old City of Jerusalem -- chas vechalilah [Heaven Forbid], delivers a deadline that this destruction must be initiated by January 15, 2006, and threatens to invade and do it themselves if we do not [since the Gaza precedent now shows that we know how], hold on to your hat.
Plan to be in Eretz Yisrael (Land of Israel) for Sukkot (Tabernacles), 5767 (Shabbat, October 7 -- Shabbat, October 14, 2006).
It will be the safest place at the world-wide finale.
Shavua Tov and Chag Sameach from Liberated Yerushaliyim,
Dr. Yacov M. Tabak [mailto:tasysymt@netvision.net.il]
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