Jew on a Jet Video: Exterior of a 737 Plane Adorned with Israeli model Bar Refaeli

We note this as religion news - an indication of the decline in global morals that heralds the imminent arrival of the redemption of the Messianic age.

Livni to Olmert: No No Coalition with Netanyahu

Arutz Sheva tells the story of the "note" that Livni passed to Olmert while on TV in front of open microphones saying,

“I have no intention of being in a unity [government] headed by Bibi, and do not hint in that direction,” Livni scribbled hurriedly. “What you are saying leads there and this is not Kadima’s position,” she wrote, underlining the word ‘not.’

The story of the note's publication is a bit hazy.

The note which Livni then passed was visible on the TV screen but its content is not clear from the video and seems to have reached Channel 2 in a different way. Channel 2’s Internet news website states that the contents of the note “reached” it but does not say how.

Right wing Arutz Sheva's wishful thinking spin is that this paves, "the way for the formation of a coalition based only on Likud and parties to its political right."

Pope to Jewish Leader Bobble Head Dolls: Holocaust Denial is a Bad Thing

You gotta admire the Pope for his courage to get up and say last week in front of an audience of Jewish leader bobble head dolls that the denial of the Holocaust is "altogether unacceptable"!

No shoes were thrown at him. Man, that guy has guts.

Pope meets Jews, says denial unacceptable

Pope Benedict XVI, responding to the controversy over his decision to lift the excommunications of four traditionalist bishops, one of whom denies the Holocaust, today met at the Vatican with American Jewish leaders travelling under the auspices of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations.

The pope, speaking in English, rejected Holocaust denial, saying, "It is beyond question that any denial or minimization of this terrible crime is intolerable and altogether unacceptable.''...

Clergy Speak for Evolution

Bravo. Mainstream clergy this weekend have banded together to support science and evolution.

Here is what the Clergy Letter Project says.

This year represents the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin (12 February 1809) and the 150th anniversary of the publication of his seminal work On the Origin of Species in 1859. This backdrop provides a rich opportunity to demonstrate that religion and science have much to offer one another. Please join us and congregations all around the world iin celebrating Evolution Weekend 2009!

13 -15 February 2009 -- Evolution Weekend

Evolution Weekend is an opportunity for serious discussion and reflection on the relationship between religion and science. One important goal is to elevate the quality of the discussion on this critical topic - to move beyond sound bites. A second critical goal is to demonstrate that religious people from many faiths and locations understand that evolution is sound science and poses no problems for their faith. Finally, as with The Clergy Letter itself, which has now been signed by more than 11,000 members of the Christian clergy in the United States, Evolution Weekend makes it clear that those claiming that people must choose between religion and science are creating a false dichotomy.

Through sermons, discussion groups, meaningful conversations and seminars, the leaders listed [see site] will show that religion and science are not adversaries.

Postscript:  Read Origin of Species.

The Australian: Ian Buruma's Urgent Report on Antisemitism in Asia

Of course, the antisemitic stories that circulate in Asia are "myths" - that is untrue narratives. Still, it's not a rosy picture that Ian Buruma paints of the spread of antisemitism in Asia. This is something we all ought to know about and start working to combat before the stories become "myths" - that is stories that people accept as true because they are part of their faith systems. This is an important article by a writer of substance.

Asia's Jewish myths
Ian Buruma

A CHINESE bestseller titled The Currency War describes how Jews are planning to rule the world by manipulating the international financial system. The book is reportedly read in the highest government circles. If so, this does not bode well for the international financial system, which relies on well-informed Chinese to help it recover from the present crisis.

Such conspiracy theories are not rare in Asia. Japanese readers have shown a healthy appetite over the years for books such as To Watch Jews is to See the World Clearly, The Next Ten Years: How to Get an Inside View of the Jewish Protocols and I'd Like to Apologise to the Japanese - A Jewish Elder's Confession (written by a Japanese author, of course, under the made-up name of Mordecai Mose). All these books are variations of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the Russian forgery first published in 1903, which the Japanese came across after defeating the tsar's army in 1905.

The Chinese picked up many modern Western ideas from the Japanese. Perhaps this is how Jewish conspiracy theories were passed on as well. But Southeast Asians are not immune to this kind of nonsense either. Former Malaysian prime minister Mahathir Mohamed has said that "the Jews rule the world by proxy. They get others to fight and die for them." And a recent article in a leading business magazine in The Philippines explained how Jews had always controlled the countries they lived in, including the US today.

In the case of Mahathir, a twisted kind of Muslim solidarity is probably at work. But, unlike European or Russian anti-Semitism, the Asian variety has no religious roots. No Chinese or Japanese has blamed Jews for killing their holy men or believed that their children's blood ended up in Passover matzos. In fact, few Chinese, Japanese, Malaysians, or Filipinos have ever seen a Jew, unless they have spent time abroad.

So what explains the remarkable appeal of Jewish conspiracy theories in Asia? The answer must be partly political. Conspiracy theories thrive in relatively closed societies, where free access to news is limited and freedom of inquiry curtailed. Japan is no longer such a closed society, yet even people with a short history of democracy are prone to believe that they are victims of unseen forces. Precisely because Jews are relatively unknown, therefore mysterious, and in some way associated with the West, they become an obvious fixture of anti-Western paranoia.

Such paranoia is widespread in Asia, where almost every country was at the mercy of Western powers for several hundred years. Japan was never formally colonised, but it too felt the West's dominance, at least since the 1850s, when American ships laden with heavy guns forced the country to open its borders on Western terms.

The common conflation of the US with Jews goes back to the late 19th century, when European reactionaries loathed America for being a rootless society based only on financial greed. This perfectly matched the stereotype of the rootless cosmopolitan Jewish moneygrubber. Hence the idea that Jews run America.

One of the great ironies of colonial history is the way in which colonised people adopted some of the same prejudices that justified colonial rule. Anti-Semitism arrived with a whole package of European race theories that have persisted in Asia well after they fell out of fashion in the West.

In some ways, Chinese minorities in Southeast Asia have shared some of the hostility suffered by Jews in the West. Excluded from many occupations, they too survived by clannishness and trade. They too have been persecuted for not being "sons of the soil". And they too are thought to have superhuman powers when it comes to making money. So when things go wrong, the Chinese are blamed not just for being greedy capitalists, but also, again like the Jews, for being communists, as both capitalism and communism are associated with rootlessness and cosmopolitanism.

As well as being feared, the Chinese are admired for being cleverer than everybody else. The same mixture of fear and awe is often evident in people's views of the US and, indeed, of the Jews. Japanese anti-Semitism is a particularly interesting case.

Japan was able to defeat Russia in 1905 only after a Jewish banker in New York, Jacob Schiff, helped Japan by floating bonds. So The Protocols of the Elders of Zion confirmed what the Japanese already suspected: Jews really did pull the strings of global finance. However, instead of wishing to attack them, the Japanese, being a practical people, decided they would be better off cultivating those clever, powerful Jews as friends.

As a result, during World War II, even as the Germans were asking their Japanese allies to round up Jews and hand them over, dinners were held in Japanese-occupied Manchuria to celebrate Japanese-Jewish friendship. Jewish refugees in Shanghai, though never comfortable, at least remained alive under Japanese protection.

This was good for the Jews of Shanghai. But the very ideas that helped them to survive continue to muddle the thinking of people who really ought to know better by now.

Times: Venezuela's Jews, the Pope and the Jews, Geert and the Muslims

The Times puts three loosely related stories on page A8 today, all three of concern to us, in particular the first. My daughter-in-law's sister and her family are living now in Venezuela.

Venezuela’s Jews, Already Uneasy, Are Jolted by Attack

By SIMON ROMERO

The Jewish community is apprehensive amid attacks on Jewish institutions following President Hugo Chávez’s expulsion of the Israeli ambassador....

The warm welcome that Mr. Chávez has extended to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran has also troubled Jews.

The tensions intensified last month when Mr. Chávez expelled the Israeli ambassador to protest the war in Gaza, and senior officials attended a rally at the Sheik Ibrahim Mosque here in Caracas. “Our revolution is also the revolution for a Free Palestine,” Tareck El Aissami, the interior minister, said at the rally.

On the sidelines of the televised rapprochement on Thursday at the synagogue, one observer, León Benaim, summed up his view of the attack and the government’s reaction to it.
“The motive was simple,” said Mr. Benaim, 73, a Moroccan Jew who moved to Venezuela three decades ago. “It is to threaten and frighten the Jewish community so that we leave.”

Pope Calls Any Denial of Holocaust ‘Intolerable’

By RACHEL DONADIO

The remarks to a Jewish group were among the pope’s strongest since a bishop’s comments set off outrage....

Abraham Foxman, the national director of the Anti-Defamation League, who also attended the audience, said he had hoped the pope would go even further, and excommunicate Bishop Williamson once again.

“You can’t condemn anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial and then reinstate someone who’s a Holocaust denier,” Mr. Foxman said. He called the pope’s statements “significant and very important,” but said they “did not bring closure.”

Britain Refuses Entry to Dutch Lawmaker Whose Remarks and Film Have Angered Muslims

By JOHN F. BURNS

Geert Wilders, who has compared the Koran to “Mein Kampf,” was ordered to leave Britain on the grounds that his presence endangered public security....

Officials said they were acting under immigration rules adopted last year to screen out visitors who posed a security threat. In a letter handed to Mr. Wilders at Heathrow, the Home Office said he posed “a genuine, present and sufficient threat to the fundamental interests of society.” But he told reporters that Prime Minister Gordon Brown was “the biggest coward in Europe.”

“Democracy means differences and debate,” he said. “Of course I will come back.”

Mortgage Crisis Explained by David Faber of CNBC in Brilliant "House of Cards"

No matter that you don't know a mortgaged backed security from a collateralized debt obligation. You know that the mortgage companies, the banks and Wall Street created a monster financial mess that is causing a ton of suffering.

How did this happen? The basics of the mortgage crisis are all explained by David Faber of CNBC in his brilliant documentary, "House of Cards." [CNBC site page.]

We watched it tonight. Faber goes for interviews far and wide to tell the story with clarity and persistence. He speaks to the mayor of Narvik Norway, to former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan, to contrarian investor Kyle Bass and to a whole lot of others, from financial scoundrels to ordinary hurting folk.

And guess what. Like a great professor, he translates complexity, teaches us what happened, when, where and how it happened and then he leaves it up to us to reflect on what needs to be done next.

TTB Rating: Must see! The best 2 hours you can invest in your economic education. And woven into a great story too.

Others agree, for instance Newsday rates the show GRADE A(+) in a full review, check it out.

Check out the Promo Preview Video or the Cramer Promo. Good work by all involved: An Emmy, Peabody, and Dupont award winner, David Faber is the anchor and co-producer of CNBC's acclaimed original documentaries as well as a contributor to CNBC's "Squawk on the Street." James Jacoby is writer and producer of CNBC's "House of Cards." Jill Landes is co-producer. James Segelstein is senior producer. Mitch Weitzner is the Executive Producer of CNBC's Long Form Unit. Jonathan Wald is the Senior Vice President, Business News at CNBC.
SHOW TIMES

Saturday, February 14th  7p | 10p ET
Sunday, February 15th  9p ET
Monday, February 16th  8p | 12a ET
Sunday, March 1st  Midnight ET
Sunday, March 15th  9p ET

Times: See the Valmadonna Trust Library of Rare Hebrew and Aramaic Books at Sotheby’s Auction House

"A copy of the Babylonian Talmud (1519-23) made by the Christian printer Daniel Bomberg in Venice, was created with the advice of a panel of scholars that codified many aspects of how the Talmud is displayed and printed."

The collection is on display to the public through next Thursday, on view for the large institutional libraries and collectors who might be prepared to pay at least $40 million for what Sotheby’s, echoing scholars in the field, describes as “the finest private library of Hebrew books and manuscripts in the world.”

We say: Bad timing. Sorry but in this economic climate I doubt that the library, no matter how breathtaking, will fetch $40 million.

Also the Times' article is a bit imprecise when it says, "These are all books written in Hebrew or using Hebrew script, many of them rare or even unique." The Talmud is written mostly in Aramaic. True enough the script is the same as that used for Hebrew. The Samaritan Torah in the collection is written in a script that 99% of Hebrew readers could not make out. True, the article does call it an "ancient Hebrew script resembling inscriptions on archaeological finds rather than the letters that came to define mainstream Hebrew."

This to us at the Talmudic blog is the kind of imprecision that is just barely excusable, especially since you have a big fact checking desk over there at the Times whose job it is to know the difference between Hebrew and Aramaic and make sure the reports it publishes are clear about that.

Tzvee Likes the Google Translation Machine

We found traffic to our blog coming from a European blog called Lucerna wikipedie. So to find out what they were saying about us we turned to Google Translate. There we were told to "Enter text or a webpage URL."

The neat choice that I found recently is "Detect language" - the first on the source drop-down menu on the Google Translate page. In the case of the blog in question, I did not originally detect myself that the blog was written in Czech - so the automatic detection was more useful than trial and error.

In some languages the translation engine is not especially thorough and I suspect not entirely accurate. Certainly the style of the translated result lacks fluidity. But for my purposes it is usually fine. I'm curious to know how people use my blog posts. In particular I want to see if antisemites are misusing content that we post, not that there is anything we can do about that, to paraphrase the famed Jerry Seinfeld qualifier.

The link in this case is from a Czech Wikipedia centric blog to our Tzvee's Talmudic Blog post regarding Timothy Geithner, where we established by our own independent research that contrary to information that had been posted in Wikipedia, he is not Jewish.

While we were on the subject - we have added the Google Translate gadget to our blog. It's on the side in the right hand column of every page now.--->

This makes our webpage instantly available in other languages, it offers instant access to automatic translations of our content.

It's nice to see the blog in Hebrew! Try it.......--->

Also try the Google "Translated Search" page, available as one of the tabs at Google Translate.

That's a facility that is a bit more complex. It offers some promising assistance. In a rare case of technical writing Google actually tries to explain what "Translated Search" does for you as follows:

How does this work?
1. Search for Dubai tours from English to Arabic.
2. We translate your query into "جولات دبي" and find Arabic web page results.
3. Finally, we translate the Arabic web page results back into English for you.

Other things you can search for
St. Petersburg restaurants - (Санкт-Петербург рестораны) in Russian pages
Beijing apartments - (北京公寓) in Chinese pages

Tzipi Livni on the Beach

Israel's Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni (C) walks on the beach in Tel Aviv February 7, 2009 (Reuters photo). No, that is not Tzvee or neighbor Henry, with her on the beach. And yes, Tzipi Livni is Jewish, a mainly secular Jew.

We are rooting for Tzipi to form a new vibrant centrist government.

For those of you truly tasteless and awful web surfers who are looking for more revealing photos of Livni via a Google search query, that includes Tzipi Livni with the terms swimsuit, bikini, topless or nude, sorry to disappoint you.

לאלו מכם אשר מחפשים יותר של לבני חושפים תמונות באמצעות שאילתת חיפוש אשר כוללת ציפי לבני עם תנאי ביקיני, ללא חזיה או עירום, מצטערת לאכזב אותך