The United Nations Resolution 181 (II). Future government of Palestine on 29 November 1947. Created a Palestinian State. Arabs rejected it.

UNITED NATIONS

A

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	General Assembly
		A/RES/181(II) 29 November 1947

Resolution 181 (II). Future government of Palestine

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The General Assembly,

Having met in special session at the request of the mandatory Power to constitute and instruct a special committee to prepare for the consideration of the question of the future government of Palestine at the second regular session;

Having constituted a Special Committee and instructed it to investigate all questions and issues relevant to the problem of Palestine, and to prepare proposals for the solution of the problem, and

Having received and examined the report of the Special Committee (document A/364) ^1/ including a number of unanimous recommendations and a plan of partition with economic union approved by the majority of the Special Committee,

Considers that the present situation in Palestine is one which is likely to impair the general welfare and friendly relations among nations;

Takes note of the declaration by the mandatory Power that it plans to complete its evacuation of Palestine by 1 August 1948;

Recommends to the United Kingdom, as the mandatory Power for Palestine, and to all other Members of the United Nations the adoption and implementation, with regard to the future government of Palestine, of the Plan of Partition with Economic Union set out below;

Requests that

(a) The Security Council take the necessary measures as provided for in the plan for its implementation;

(b) The Security Council consider, if circumstances during the transitional period require such consideration, whether the situation in Palestine constitutes a threat to the peace. If it decides that such a threat exists, and in order to maintain international peace and security, the Security Council should supplement the authorization of the General Assembly by taking measures, under Articles 39 and 41 of the Charter, to empower the United Nations Commission, as provided in this resolution, to exercise in Palestine the functions which are assigned to it by this resolution;

(c) The Security Council determine as a threat to the peace, breach of the peace or act of aggression, in accordance with Article 39 of the Charter, any attempt to alter by force the settlement envisaged by this resolution;

(d) The Trusteeship Council be informed of the responsibilities envisaged for it in this plan;

Calls upon the inhabitants of Palestine to take such steps as may be necessary on their part to put this plan into effect;

Appeals to all Governments and all peoples to refrain from taking action which might hamper or delay the carrying out of these recommendations, and

Authorizes the Secretary-General to reimburse travel and subsistence expenses of the members of the Commission referred to in Part I, Section B, paragraph 1 below, on such basis and in such form as he may determine most appropriate in the circumstances, and to provide the Commission with the necessary staff to assist in carrying out the functions assigned to the Commission by the General Assembly.

Thanksgiving Turkey Drumstick Jack-O-Lantern Pumpkin Pie Table Song - A Lone Pumpkin Grew

Thanksgiving is upon us soon and we sing traditional holiday songs at our Thanksgiving dinner.

Here are the words to one of our classic favorites...

Oh a lone pumpkin grew on a green pumpkin vine.

He was round

he was fat

he was yellow.

"No silly jack-o-lantern shall I make," he said.

"I'm determined to become a useful fellow."

So he raised up his head

when the cook came around

and at once he was chosen the winner.

His fondest wish came true

he was proud pumpkin pie

and the glory of the great thanksgiving dinner...

For the glory of the jack is in the lantern

as he sits up on the gatepost oh so high;

and the glory of the turkey is the drumstick

but the glory of the pumpkin is the pie.

Here we are singing the song in 2006:

Here's a YouTube 2009 home video of the song -- we don't know the folks -- it sounds like our familiar melody and we endorse it.

My Jewish Standard Dear Rabbi Zahavy Column for October 2016: Binging at Weddings and Not Believing in Sin

My Jewish Standard Dear Rabbi Zahavy Column for October 2016: 
Binging at Weddings and Not Believing in Sin

Dear Rabbi Zahavy,

I went to a big Orthodox Jewish family wedding recently in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. The music was so loud that some of my relatives, who had expected it, brought along earplugs. There was so much food at the smorgasbord and the main meal that the next day I weighed myself and saw I had gained more than three pounds in one night.

I’m tempted to turn down invitations to future frum family simchas just to keep my hearing intact and my waistline under control. Is that a reasonable course of action?

Binging in Bergenfield

Dear Binging,

Sure you can skip family weddings to preserve your health and well-being, and you should do that if you have no other solution. But some of your kin seem to have found modalities that allow them to participate and preserve their hearing. Surely ear plugs are an option for you too. Why not avail yourself of them?

And regarding the food, you know that you do not have to eat all of it! One possible alternative is to attend the smorg and the chuppah and gracefully decline the elaborate dinner that follows. Who needs to drive home at midnight from Brooklyn anyway? Of course, doing that you will miss the chance to bond and share at greater length with your family. But with such loud bands, how much schmoozing could you do with the relatives anyway?

My Puffin Foundation Lecture on Religion and Terrorism

2023 update: I will never forget it. It changed our world. 9/11 is a terrible day for us all. Every year. I saw the second plane hit while I was driving in to work from the hill across the river. I saw the towers fall a short time later from my office window in Jersey City. Just know well that the terrorists acted in the name of Islam. Do not ever minimize or forget this. See the last five pages of my PPT for salient details: MAKING AN ACT OF TERROR INTO A SACRED COSMIC RITUAL. Awful horrible unforgivable.

My lecture presentation link is here:

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1KrlfOTUK4hLW21pwiMcBdAOxG_8SDEuW

My numerous blog posts about terrorism and religion are linked here.

Rabbi Dr. Zev Zahavy - Yahrzeit Number 11

Photos

Rabbi Dr. Zev Zahavy

New York City 

September 8, 1918 - May 1, 2012

Nine Minute ZZ Slideshow
edited by Barak Zahavy
200+ ZZ Sermons cited in the New York Times - Download PDF

edited by Tzvee Zahavy

The Mishnah in a new and affordable English Edition

A new English translation of Mishnah edited by Robert Goldenberg (OBM), Shaye Cohen, and Hayim Lapin has been published for a hard to justify or afford price of $645.

In the Introduction two of the editors heap high praise on Rev. Herbert Danby's classic translation, which I edited and released and is now available in a beautiful new edition for $29. Here is what the other editors say about Danby.

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The Rev. Herbert Danby

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[From page 8] "In 1933, the Clarendon Press of Oxford University published The Mishnah Translated from the Hebrew with Introduction and Brief Explanatory Notes, by Herbert Danby, a volume of some 900 pages. It is a mark of the quality of Danby's work that it remains in print almost ninety years later. Our translation is completely independent of his, but we are aware that we are walking in his footsteps. For the Hebrew-less reader, unaccustomed to Mishnaic rhetoric and technical terminology, Danby's translation, [is] excellent in itself...

"Danby was a master translator, but the modern reader demands more from a translation than Danby provides. The goal of our Mishnah translation is to equal Danby's in quality and to surpass it in utility. In tribute to Herbert Danby, a philo-Semitic Christian Hebraist, we have retained almost unchanged his index of biblical passages and his table of weights, measures, and currency. We would have liked to retain his subject index, but we reluctantly came to the conclusion that it is too closely keyed to Danby's own translation and notes for it to be usable in a new setting.

"For biographical information about the Rev. Danby and an appreciation of his work, see the excellent article by Shalom Goldman in the journal Modern Judaism ("The Rev. Herbert Danby (1889-1953): Hebrew Scholar, Zionist, Christian Missionary," Modern Judaism-A Journal of Jewish Ideas and Experience, 27:2 (May 2007), pp. 219-245)."

From Goldman's article - we garner these insights:

"Danby’s most useful and widely-used contribution to the study of Jewish texts was his Mishnah translation. This translation quickly became a standard text in the English-speaking world and it remains in print seventy years after its publication. When, in 1988, Yale University Press published a new translation of the Mishnah, its editor, Jacob Neusner, made it clear that ‘‘publishing this fresh translation of the Mishnah constitutes no criticism of the great and pioneering translation by Herbert Danby. His translation has one fundamental flaw . . .He does not make the effort to translate the Hebrew into English words following the syntax of Mishnaic Hebrew . . . that is what the present translation, into American English, provides.’’ While Neusner’s translation takes us closer to the syntactical structure of the Hebrew of the Mishnah, Danby’s translation renders that text more immediately accessible and for that reason it remains the translation of record."

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My reaction is that it's good to see nice words about a classic Mishnah English Translation by Danby. But mystifying and a bit disappointing that the editors of the $645 edition have nothing to say in their introduction about numerous other recent and brilliant translations of Mishnah into English by for instance - Rabbi Steinsalz, or the edition by Artscroll (Schottenstein Edition of the Mishnah Elucidated - Complete 23 Volume Set), or the academic work edited by Jacob Neusner (which I contributed to), or the set by Pinhas Kehati, or editions rendering Mishnah into English by dozens of other scholars and rabbis.

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I recommend you go immediately and get the new edition from Amazon for $36. It is a gorgeous book.