"Elisha ben Abuya - After he adopted a worldview considered heretical by his fellow Tannaim and betrayed his people, the rabbis of the Talmud refrained from relating teachings in his name and(...)"Advis3r
A campaign has been instigated to remove Dan Sheldon from his UJS post, following a dispute with our own Mr Hoffman, after which Mr Sheldon was accused of slander. Funny thing to do when JH's avenues of criticism so often involve ugly words being thrown around like confetti.
Hello all, it has been a while. Just dropping in with a single post, don't worry.. I won't darken your doors for long. Firstly, I wanted to wish everybody in London and the other flashpoints health and safety. I hope all out there are being careful and looking after each other through all this madness.
Tomorrow I will be heading off to the annual Towersey folk festival, now in it's 46th year and still going strong, (even if it's just me and the lady going this year, the rest of the group having deserted us for the far cooler and more hip Shambala.) Day tickets are still available if anybody fancies a nice day out with some good tunes, fresh lemonade and a warm atmosphere. This is the website...... http://www.towerseyfestival.com/
As you may or may not have noticed I have ceased my blogging on this website. This is primarily due to the lack of discourse that tends to follow my posts, the response more often than not being a litany of anti-intellectual wishful thinking. Coupled with a highly personal attack on my character from the infinitely petty Avraham Reiss and his misleading and cow-towing website, I feel that the platform for debate at JC blogs has been whittled away by those who shout the loudest.
Remember a few weeks ago, when British Airways were shaking in fear at the prospect of immediate strike action. Remember the accusations they levelled at the union, that striking would cause permenant damage to BA finances... It's amazing how well they are now doing considering the Iceland volcano. Surely, if a few walkouts could potentially prompt the collapse of a national institution then they would be absolutely crippled by the prospect of the total grounding of their European flights.
I came across this article lurking somewhere around the bowels of the telegraph website. It is perhaps the most telling example of the failure in debate that has now resorted in the continuing assumption that the only way to tackle the issue of drug policy is through maintaining a black and white façade of prohibitionist nonsense.
‘To blog or not to blog,’ or perhaps it should be, ‘A blog in the hand is worth two in the bush,’ or perhaps even… ‘A blog a day keeps the doctor away.’
Tikkun Olam is a concept that has drifted in and out of fashion over the centuries. Generally associated with left-leaning political thought, the basic interpretation of Tikkun Olam is the manifestation of a desire to ‘repair,’ or ‘complete the world.’ It has led to many socially directed projects, not least the Yemin Orde youth village on Mt Carmel in Israel, which I will discuss later.
Tikkun Olam is a concept that has drifted in and out of fashion over the centuries. Generally associated with left-leaning political thought, the basic interpretation of Tikkun Olam is the manifestation of a desire to ‘repair,’ or ‘complete the world.’ It has led to many socially directed projects, not least the Yemin Orde youth village on Mt Carmel in Israel, which I will discuss later.
The talk contains an old rabbinical notion that any interpretation of scripture that bred hatred or disdain would be illegitimate, something that we could take on board when considering the relations between textual interpretation and politics.
In the week where Alastair Darling has been called to defend the motivations of Tony Blair in his decision to join the war in Iraq and full-body airport scanners have been rolled into service at airports across the UK, it is refreshing to see the efforts of Kartick Satyanarayan, whose work to provide sustainable incomes for individuals and families has had a profound effect across India.
ID card opponents likened to brutalised slaves, in need of a light dose of corporal punishment. That seems to be the message of the new IPS promo, one wonders if they actually understood the point of Spartacus?
Much like David Mitchell's character in the unrivalled Peep Show, I am a keen amateur student of ancient history and archaeology. Days when little stories like this emerge tend to be some of the best.
Remember that moment in Nineteen Eighty-Four where Winston’s entire day is shattered by the sudden announcement, ‘Oceania is at war with Eastasia, Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia.’ The sudden change in antagonists is nothing but a flash of a whim to Oceania itself, but to Winston it means a fortnight of hard work, rewriting history to make Oceania’s past more compatible with the present.
Sometimes a book comes along just at the right time in your life for you to read it and truly appreciate it. For me, Aaron Lansky’s 2005 semi-autobiographical project, ‘Outwitting History,’ was one such volume. The book’s tagline, ‘how a young man rescued a million books and saved a vanishing civilization,’ concisely sums up the events described within.
LATEST DISCUSSIONS
RE: Howard Jacobson the antisemite
"Elisha ben Abuya - After he adopted a worldview considered heretical by his fellow Tannaim and betrayed his people, the rabbis of the Talmud refrained from relating teachings in his name and(...)" Advis3r
RE: Howard Jacobson the antisemite
"Nearly two years on and still we wait. Come on Jonny, Ben showed you his, you show him yours" Real Real Zionist