Jewneric: A New Platform for the Jewish Voice

We are on the approach to the Pentecost, also known as Shavuot. On the holiday of Shavuot there is a well known custom not to eat any meat. There is a lesser known custom of the day prior to Shavuot not to eat any meat or any milk. Both customs are of the same origin: we personally go through the process of receiving the Torah, first we are made aware that there are restrictions on what we can eat and thus we become vegans until we are told what is permissible. Next we are told which animals are Kosher (allowing milk) and only lastly we are told how to properly slaughter them. It seems rather presumptuous to believe that we only need permission to eat mammals, fowl, fish and insects. Aren't all God's creatures precious? What gives us the right to kill any living thing for any purpose, including vegetation? Deuteronomy 20:19 declares a similitude between man and tree.1 Certainly, the Torah had no confusion about plants being alive. This is clear based on the simple words used for reproduction such as "seed" and "fruit." It is worth the moment to point out that the fruit that one eats, the apple, the orange, the watermelon is the embryo of the plant; you are eating the impregnated womb: the fruit is the embryonic fluid and the seed is the zygote. ...

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This morning I had the privilege of hearing a true giant speak, Natan Sharansky, about his newest book, Defending Identity, which goes on sale tomorrow. Sharansky spoke about the changes in nationalist vs. religious or other personal identity from Communist Russia on to post-war Europe and now in Israel and America. The statement that hit ...

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According to an announcement by the official Bahrain News Agency on Thursday, King Hamad ibn Isa Al-Khalifah has issued a decree appointing Houda Ezra Nonoo, a Jewish woman, as an ambassador. Where she will be posted has not yet been officially stated, but she confirmed in a phone interview with the Associated Press that she will serve as ambassador to the United States. Believed to be the first Jew ever ...

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In the past few articles, I've postulated that people who follow pro-sports do so to try to be part of a team. I've also postulated that people holding on to old Jewish culture (such as Yiddish, the Catskills or gefilte fish) as an essence of Judaism are living in the past. If anything I said in those two article offended your sensitivities, I suggest you rethink your priorities. If what ...

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I've been tagged in a meme post by Jason Unger and now have to keep the progress going. The trick is figuring out how to tailor this question to fit Jewneric's theme. The Original Question: What Would You Do For $1 Million? Jewneric's Mission Statement is: "Jewneric is a Jewish blog which brings together a global community of diverse personalities to create a new forum for the Jewish voice." Our theme (as told to prospective contributors): Write about anything you want so long as it be Jewish somehow. Write about what you love, what you are passionate about, what you are an expert it, just keep it Jewish somehow. ...

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I wish I had seen this last week. It's good to see that Google is using its resources as one of the largest and most powerful information gateways to spread the word and strengthen awareness of the Holocaust in an age in which people have been using the power of the internet to spread lies and false accusations and plant ...

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The Catskill Mountains and Other Jewish Past-Perfect Had-Beens Some of the reasons that the average person follows pro-sports (according to what we discussed) included an internal need to be part of a club and societal pressures. This week we will get a little closer and offend people more fiercely by reminding people that in the good old days racism was accepted, smoking was encouraged and the word "depression" was still politically correct. Not everything in our past is good. Even if something was good that doesn't mean it should be kept part of the present. The Model-T Ford was a breakthrough in automotive technology, but it belongs in a museum, not on the highway. Similarly there are nostalgic aspects of Jewish culture which should be put in a museum. ...

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Ask any Jewish Chicago Cubs fan if he finds a connection between his faithfulness to the Cubs and his Judaism. If the answer is not "yes," then you've asked someone deficient in caring about the Cubs or his religion. The Cubs are celebrating 100 years since their last World Championship. This makes them the most ridiculed franchise in baseball. ...

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The first sociological experiment was done by a French Jew named Emile Durkheim. Durkheim wanted to prove that the one thing that everyone was SURE was psychological was in fact social, specifically suicide. Durkheim was SURE that it was in fact caused primarily by social surroundings and situations. In 1897 he published his study "la Suicide," where he concluded that those most integrated in society were the least likely to kill themselves. He went into many different reasons and how they relate to different causes of suicide, but one concept always stuck out to me. Between Protestants, Catholics and Jews, the Protestants had the highest suicide rate, then the Catholics and last the Jews. Why? Durkheim's theory (simplified to a ridiculous degree, so please forgive me) was that those who had aggressive community involvement did not kill themselves, and of those three religions Jews had the most social and community based activities. Jews were the most involved in community therefore less likely to be suicidal. In a social theory class I once took, the professor explained it in even more simple terms. "Jews just have too much going on to have time to kill themselves." ...

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On April 10, 2008, Justice Gabriel Bach came to speak at Touro Law in Central Islip, New York. Who is he? He is a former Justice to the Israeli Supreme Court, and also was a prosecutor of Adolf Eichmann. Born in Germany in 1927, Justice Bach was educated in Berlin. In 1938, exactly two weeks before Kristallnacht (Night of Broken Glass), the Bach family moved to Holland. During the short time that his family lived in Holland, Hitler had planned to invade on seven separate occasions but postponed his plans due to weather, astrology and other reasons. He was later told by a non-Jewish friend that he was the only Jew out of his school in Holland that had survived. Justice Bach was admitted to the bar in 1950 in Lincoln’s Inn, England, and was appointed as the State-Attorney of Israel in 1969 after serving in the Israeli Army and working his way up the totem pole in the State-Attorney’s office for 16 years. In May, 1960, Adolf Eichmann often referred to as the “architect of the Holocaust,” was the head of the Gestapo, and was in effect an accomplice to every single one of the eleven million murders during the Holocaust. After the Holocaust, he went into hiding, and was captured in Buenos Aires by the Israeli Mossad as part of a covert operation and was to be prosecuted in Jerusalem as a war criminal. Justice Bach was appointed to the position of the lead advisor to the police bureau. During the trial, said Justice Bach, Eichmann was kept in a glass box (shown below) at all times to ensure his safety. This man, being the orchestrator of the biggest atrocity of all time, was one who many in Israel, whether survivors or others, wanted dead. He had no sympathy, no emotions, nothing. ...

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