ALERT

Time of Year to Find Beauty in Judaism—and in Life “Judaism is a strange mixture of the communal and the private. Places of worship at least remind us we are part of a larger whole with its benefits obligations and burdens. . .But if we don’t find anything there, we still need to feed our souls. . .There’s an existential obligation in Judaism, something only an individual can do. Yet one can do it anywhere. If the synagogue isn’t doing it for you, try the park, the sea shore or the desert.” Read more

Slice of Jewish Life in New York

“Starting this evening with Rosh Hashana services, Rabbi Simon Jacobson, a Lubavitcher rabbi from Crown Heights and founder of the Meaningful Life Center - a project known for blending religious teaching with tai chi, introductory kabbalah and Hasidic rap - will become a kind of Jewish mystic-in-residence at the traditional, Orthodox Community Synagogue. . . Rabbi Jacobson said he would offer his programs - which until now he has operated on an itinerant basis around the city - at the Sixth Street synagogue in hopes of creating a spiritual Starbucks.” Read more

An Israeli Year

“The Jewish year 5768, drawing to a close, was for better - and, unfortunately, for worse - a peculiarly Israeli year.” Read more

Foxman on Ahmadinejad U.N. Speech

“It is not that anything that comes from the mouth of Mr. Ahmadinejad shocks. After all, he has denied the Holocaust…It is, rather, the realization that the most lethal form of hatred that could be directed against the Jewish people was delivered from the platform of the United Nations and that no other such diatribe against any other religious or ethnic group could possibly flow from that august site.” Read more

Hundreds Protest a Dinner with Ahmadinejad

“The dinner, billed as an international dialogue, was sponsored by a collection of pacifist religious organizations including Quaker and Mennonite groups. The broad coalition of protesters outside said the event lent legitimacy to a dictator who supports terrorism and denies the Holocaust.” Read more

Tancredo Proposed Jihad Prevention Act

“So far, reaction to the “Jihad Prevention Act” has been muted on both sides, possibly because the media is providing wall-to-wall election coverage. Nonetheless, some prominent supporters have emerged. Having advocated similar measures in the past, the group Muslims Against Sharia praised Tancredo’s initiative. So did scholar Andrew Bostom, author of The Legacy of Jihad.” Read more

Israel Standing Alone Like Czechoslovakia 70 Years Ago

“Israel in 2008 stand alone just as the Czechoslovakia did 70 years ago. No one is going to lift a finger to stop Iran from acquiring the weapons needed to achieve its goal– the destruction of the state of Israel and the eviction of the Jewish people who may survive that destruction from their ancient homeland. Whatever hopes were invested in international sanctions are gone. There can be no longer any pretense to the contrary. The founders of Israel are gone and its fate is in the hands of their children and grand children. In a few months they will have to decide whether they will follow in the footsteps of their European predecessors or choose a different path.” Read the entirety of this searing commentary.

Larry King’s Gracious Treatment of Iranian Tyrant

“King’s gracious treatment of the Iranian tyrant can be interpreted within the context of CNN’s history of handling Iranian regime figures. The first notable episode was ten years ago when Christian Amanpour introduced the “irreversible” Iranian reform movement to the American public. She interviewed then President Mohammad Khatami and prepared the public for a rapprochement with the Iranian regime.” Read more

Ahmadinejad Warmly Received by 400 U.S. Students & Professors

“Booed by Columbia University students a year ago, President Ahmadinejad of Iran early yesterday received a much warmer reception from 400 American students and professors at the Hyatt hotel in Midtown Manhattan.” Read more

Erasing Ahmadinejad from the Map

“This coming year, Iran will celebrate three decades of a terrible social experiment. The lessons learned may not be kind to Ahmadinejad, nor to radical Islam. Age and folly and the brutality of self-righteousness are beginning to catch up with both of them.” Read in its entirety this guardedly optimistic prediction.

Modernized Taliban Thriving in Afghanistan

“Just one year ago, the Taliban insurgency was a furtive, loosely organized guerrilla force… Today it is a larger, better armed and more confident militia, capable of mounting sustained military assaults.” Read more

Young Muslims in a Modern Arab City

“…across much of the Arab world, there is an Islamic revival being driven by young people, where faith and ritual are increasingly the cornerstone of identity. But that is not true amid the ethnic mix that is Dubai (where)…Religion has become more of a personal choice and Islam less of a common bond than national identity… Dubai is, in some ways, a vision of what the rest of the Arab world could become - if it offered comparable economic opportunity, insistence on following the law and tolerance for cultural diversity.” Read more

Soft Jihad: Islam in America’s Public Schools

“With fatal terrorist attacks on the decline worldwide and al Qaeda apparently in disarray, it would seem a time for optimism in the global war on terrorism. But the war has simply shifted to a different arena. Islamists, or those who believe that Islam is a political and religious system that must dominate all others, are focusing less on the military and more on the ideological. It turns out that Western liberal democracies can be subverted without firing a shot.” Read more

“Will Terrorists Go Nuclear?” U.S. Book Says Maybe

“It is conceivable that terrorists will create enormous alarm without the necessity of possessing nuclear weapons,” he said, noting there has never been a nuclear terrorist attack.” Read more

CIA Intent Makes al-Qaeda Top Nuclear Concern

“Iran and North Korea both have the capability to produce nuclear weapons but al-Qaeda is the CIA’s top nuclear concern because it is most likely to use them, agency director Michael Hayden said Tuesday.” Read more

Bin Laden Forces Regroup in Yemen

“Yemen, the site of a car-bomb attack yesterday on the American Embassy, is quietly emerging as a base for Al Qaeda veterans of the Iraq war, who are seeking refuge there and are close to establishing the kind of safe haven the group enjoys on Pakistan’s border with Afghanistan.” Read more

Archbishop Tutu Speaks of Israeli Suffering

“Archbishop Desmond Tutu appealed to the UN Human Rights Council on Thursday to show the same concern for protecting Israelis from Palestinian attacks as it does for Palestinians suffering under Israeli occupation.” Read more

Danish T-Shirt Company Convicted of Supporting Terror Group

“The Danish High Court on Thursday convicted six Danish citizens of supporting terror, after they were found to have funnelled money from T-shirt and fragrance sales to the Palestinian terror group PFLP and the Colombian guerilla group FARC.” Read more

U.K’s First Sharia Courts

“Islamic law has been officially adopted in Britain, with sharia courts given powers to rule on Muslim civil cases.

The government has quietly sanctioned the powers for sharia judges to rule on cases ranging from divorce and financial disputes to those involving domestic violence.

Rulings issued by a network of five sharia courts are enforceable with the full power of the judicial system, through the county courts or High Court.” Read more

Revealing Reaction to Distribution of “Obsession” DVD

“The DVD Obsession is being packaged with the morning paper all over the country, and millions upon millions of copies have been distributed. That’s all to the good, but the reaction to it shows in numerous ways that many, if not most, Americans have no clue about what we’re up against.” Read more

World’s Largest Jewish Museum to Be Built in Moscow

“The committee for the Russian-Jewish Museum of Tolerance in Moscow approved a final architectural plan this week that would produce the world’s largest Jewish museum.

Baruch Gorin, the spokesman for Moscow’s Jewish communities, told Haaretz that the museum would be established in a historic building at the Jewish community center, which the community received from the Moscow municipality about five years ago.” Read more

Israel Issue Disappears from Presidential Race

“While the Jewish vote has not diminished in potential importance, research suggests that Israel figures little in the bedrock concerns of Jewish voters. In a wide-ranging poll conducted late last year, the American Jewish Committee asked a representative cross-section of U.S. Jews to choose the campaign issue most important to them.

A total of 23 percent of the respondents chose the economy and jobs. Health care was second, with 19 percent. Another 16 percent said the war in Iraq was the most important issue, with 14 percent choosing terrorism and national security.

Support for Israel trailed far behind, even with issues of immigration to the United States and the energy crisis, at 6 percent each.” Read more

Iran Launches New Round of War Games

“As part of the exercises, Iran will test its anti-aircraft systems and new weapons. The maneuvers are intended to maintain and upgrade the readiness of Iran’s military units as well as to thwart the possibility of a U.S. or Israeli attack, according to a government-controlled news agency.” Read more

U.S. Religious Groups Plan to Feast with Ahmadinejad

“Five American religious organizations have announced plans to host a dinner to break the Ramadan fast with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad during his upcoming visit to the United States.

The Mennonite Central Committee, the Quakers, the World Council of Churches, Religions for Peace and the American Friends Service Committee are sponsoring the meeting with President Ahmadinejad on September 25 in New York City. The dinner to break the Ramadan fast, called an Iftar, is being billed as an international global challenges and building peaceful societies. Read more

On Nov 4, Remember 9/11

“The next president must do one thing, and one thing only, if he is to be judged a success: He must prevent Al Qaeda, or a Qaeda imitator, from gaining control of a nuclear device and detonating it in America. Everything else - Fannie Mae, health care reform, energy independence, the budget shortfall in Wasilla, Alaska - is commentary. The nuclear destruction of Lower Manhattan, or downtown Washington, would cause the deaths of thousands, or hundreds of thousands; a catastrophic depression; the reversal of globalization; a permanent climate of fear in the West; and the comprehensive repudiation of America’s culture of civil liberties.” Read more

U.S. Remains Dangerously Vulnerable

“The United States remains “dangerously vulnerable” to chemical, biological and nuclear attacks seven years after 9/11, a forthcoming independent study concludes.” Read more

Jihad’s Advance Technologies

“Seven years after 9/11, it may well be that we are witnessing the beginning of the end of suicide terrorism and a shift toward advanced technologies that will enable jihadist bombers to carry out attacks and live to fight another day.” Read more

9/11 Rumors Widely Accepted in Arab World

“CAIRO - Seven years later, it remains conventional wisdom here that Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda could not have been solely responsible for the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and that the United States and Israel had to have been involved in their planning, if not their execution, too.” Read more

Muslim Immigrants Attack Three Jewish Teens in Paris

“Three Jewish teens were attacked by a group of Muslim African immigrants in Paris on Saturday evening, a French police spokeswoman said Sunday.” Read more

We Can’t Incite Murder of Jews?

“Muslim students at the University of Southern California are enraged by the school’s recent decision to remove from a student group’s website an Islamic text that encourages the murder of Jews.

Until recently, the website of the now-defunct Muslim Student Association, which is hosted on the university’s servers, had featured the full text of the hadiths, the words of Mohammed that are not found in the Koran.

One of those hadiths calls on Muslims to ‘fight against the Jews and…kill them,’ and promises that even the stones and the trees will assist Muslims in that gruesome task.

A statement issued by the Muslim Student Union at USC suggested that the hadith was being taken out of context, and called the school’s decision to remove it from the website unprecedented and unconscionable.” Read more

Security Chiefs Say Terror Groups Developing “Dirty Bomb”

“They are exploiting the political chaos in Pakistan in a bid to acquire nuclear material for a ’spectacular’ attack.

At least one plot has been uncovered involving Pakistani-based terrorists planning to use nuclear material against a major European target.

Osama bin Laden’s al-Qa’eda terror group, whose terrorist infrastructure is based in the province of Waziristan in northwest Pakistan, is known to be trying to acquire nuclear technology to use in terror attacks against the West.” Read more