Obama extends best wishes for Rosh Hashanah

From: http://content.usatoday.com/


President Obama has taped a special message for the Jewish holidays, including renewed hope for Middle East peace talks.

A transcript:

As Jews in America and around the world celebrate the first of the High Holy Days I want to extend my warmest wishes for the New Year. L'shana Tova Tikatevu -- may you be inscribed and sealed in the Book of Life.

Rosh Hashanah marks the beginning of the spiritual calendar and the birth of the world. It serves as a reminder of the special relationship between God and his children, now and always. And it calls us to look within ourselves -- to repent for our sins; recommit ourselves to prayer; and remember the blessings that come from helping those in need.

Today, those lessons ring as true as they did thousands of years ago. And as we begin this New Year, it is more important than ever to believe in the power of humility and compassion to deepen our faith and repair our world.

At a time when too many of our friends and neighbors are struggling to keep food on the table and a roof over their heads, it is up to us to do what we can to help those less fortunate.

At a time when prejudice and oppression still exist in the shadows of our society, it is up to us to stand as a beacon of freedom and tolerance and embrace the diversity that has always made us stronger as a people.

And at a time when Israelis and Palestinians have returned to direct dialogue, it is up to us to encourage and support those who are willing to move beyond their differences and work towards security and peace in the Holy Land. Progress will not come easy, it will not come quick. But today we had an opportunity to move forward, toward the goal we share -- two states, Israel and Palestine, living side by side in peace and security.

The scripture teaches us that there is "a time to love and a time to hate, a time for war and a time for peace." In this season of repentance and renewal, let us commit ourselves to a more hopeful future.

Michelle and I wish all who celebrate Rosh Hashanah a sweet year full of health and prosperity.

(Posted by David Jackson)

Dutch police use 'decoy Jews' to stop anti-Semitic attacks

Dutch police are to use "decoy Jews", by dressing law enforcers in Jewish religious dress such as skullcaps, in an effort to catch anti-Semitic attackers.

Bruno Waterfield

From: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/

Photo: GETTY IMAGES

Lodewijk Asscher, Amsterdam's mayor, has ordered the new decoy strategy to cut the number of verbal and physical attacks on Jews, amid fears that anti-Semitic "hate crime" is on the rise.

"Jews in at least six Amsterdam neighbourhoods often cannot cross the street wearing a skullcap without being insulted, spat at or even attacked," according to local reports.

Amsterdam police already disguise officers as "decoy prostitutes, decoy gays and decoy grannies" in operations to deter street muggings and attacks on homosexuals or the city's red light district.

Police in the Dutch city of Gouda have claimed the use of officers disguised as apparently frail old age pensioners has helped cut street crime.

"If we receive several reports of street robbery in a certain location, we send out the granny. That soon quietens things down," said a spokesman.

Secret television recordings by the Jewish broadcasting company, Joodse Omroep, broadcast at the weekend, have shocked Amsterdam, a city which prides itself on liberalism and which is home to the Anne Frank museum.

The footage showed young men, often of immigrant origin, shouting and making Nazi salutes at a rabbi when he visited different areas of the Dutch capital.

'Among the Righteous:' Arabs Saving Jews in the Holocaust

Posted By Robert Satloff

From: http://mideast.foreignpolicy.com/

"Among the Righteous: Lost Stories from the Holocaust in Arab lands," is a new documentary I made in partnership with MacNeil-Lehrer Productions, airing tonight on PBS. It retells largely forgotten stories from World War II in North Africa of Arabs who saved their Jewish neighbors from the Holocaust -- a story which Holocaust historiography has largely left untouched. The documentary digs into history to uncover not only cases of Jewish persecution in North Africa similar to the Jewish experience in Europe, but also stories of the "righteous" Arabs that protected Jews. Filmed in eight different countries stretching from Morocco to Israel, the documentary reveals surprising discoveries about the past that can help challenge how Arabs and Jews alike view this part of Holocaust history.

The documentary airs tonight on PBS at 10 p.m. eastern time.

Robert Satloff is executive director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

View from the Lab: Who is a Jew? DNA can hold the key

Steve Jones examines the complex issues of identity

By Steve Jones
From http://www.telegraph.co.uk/

An ultra-Orthodox Jew is silhouetted against a floodlit fountain as he performs the Tashlich ceremony - casting away of sin - at the shores of a lake Photo: GETTY

Who is a Jew? As the recent passport row shows, that question can be murky, with elements of belief, values, descent and nationality mixed in.

It also has dark reminders of a terrible time in history when Jewish blood meant death; and science, or pseudo-science, claimed to be able to sniff it out.

Things have changed. A decade ago, I was passing through Ben Gurion airport in Tel Aviv carrying a box filled with small tubes. Alerted by the Syrian stamp in my passport, the security staff gave me a hard time. After emptying my case, she asked what was in the box. I replied, irritably: "Arab spit". "What?" she said. "I'm a geneticist, I explained, I have been sampling Palestinian DNA. At once, her face brightened – ah, DNA. Had I heard the then novel stuff on the shared male chromosomes of priestly Jewish families such as the Cohens? I had, and we parted on amicable terms.

The conversation gave me pause for thought. Joseph Mengele himself wrote his doctoral thesis on the relationship between jaw shape and racial identity. His ideas were pernicious rubbish and even 20 years later the thought of a genetic test for Jewish descent would have been treated with horror. Now, one has emerged and is not despised but hailed by many Jews themselves.

A scan of half a million variable sites across the genomes of several hundred Europeans and Americans, each aware from their family history of having had a recent Jewish or a non-Jewish ancestry, gave an absolute separation between Jews and others: even a single Jewish grandparent was enough to provide an unambiguous identity, written in DNA. A carefully chosen sample of just 300 of those sites does almost as well, and a test based on that would be cheap.

Judaism is inherited down the female line – as are mitochondria. Their DNA shows that today's Jews from the largest group, the eight million Ashkenazim – most of whom once found their home in central and eastern Europe, and who now represent the majority of American Jews – have few grandmothers. Around half descend from just four women who bear mitochondrial types found almost exclusively in that population. Two million trace their descent from just one of those ancient predecessors.

In 1650, there were only 100,000 Ashkenazim in Europe, a number then further reduced by pogroms. In 18th-century central Europe, though, came massive expansion of that population, largely because of their relatively good living conditions. In Frankfurt, Jewish life expectancy was at aged 48, compared to 37 among non-Jews. By 1800, Jews numbered two million and by 1900 almost four times as many.

Much of the growth occurred in the Rhine Valley – modern-day Germany. The increase was concentrated among a few well-off families, many of whom had 10 children while the poorest classes had far fewer. As a result, the majority of today's Ashkenazim derive from a small proportion of that population, two million from one mother, quite literally their shared Eve, who probably lived – unknown and unrecognised – in an affluent household in a German or Polish village three centuries ago. A shared close identity through mothers, grandmothers, and more is, for millions of Ashkenazim, a genetical fact.

For others, though, the story is murkier. A separate great centre of Jewish tradition and culture grew up in Spain. Most of the Sephardim arrived after the peninsula fell under Roman control in the second century BC. In 711 AD, a Muslim army invaded. The Jews flourished under a tolerant regime, often as lawyers, merchants and the like. Then the Church returned. After a century of persecution, they were expelled in 1492. The Sephardim were scattered over much of Europe, the Middle East, and the New World.

Their mitochondria, unlike those of the Ashkenazim, give no sign of a recent bottleneck. Their DNA show instead how porous the boundaries of faith may be. Threatened by the Inquisition, thousands of Spanish Jews left to places such as Turkey. Others converted, or pretended to do so – and one Portuguese village maintained a secret Jewish culture, marrying among themselves for five centuries.

Y chromosomes reveal much leakage across the religious divide. A fifth of all the male lineages of modern Spain are of Jewish origin, which means that millions of devout Spanish Catholics have Sephardic ancestry, while the Sephardim themselves, with their unique and ancient Jewish ritual, present a wider range of genetic variation than do their Ashkenazi cousins. Plenty of those with one faith have biological roots in the other. My wife, as it happens, comes from a Sephardic family and has relatives with surnames such as Cardozo and Pexiota. After 40 years here, she has still not got round to obtaining a British passport. In spite of the double helix, identity remains a confusing thing.

Auschwitz death camp sign stolen

It is the first time the sign has been stolen in the camp's history

The infamous Arbeit Macht Frei sign at the entrance to the Auschwitz Nazi death camp in Poland has been stolen, officials there say.

The sign was taken from above the gate overnight. Police are looking for the culprits.

It is the first time the sign, made by prisoners, has been stolen since it was erected in the early 1940s.

More than a million people - 90% of them Jews - were murdered by the Nazis at Auschwitz during World War II.

"It's a terrible thing," Auschwitz official Pawel Sawicki told the BBC.

"It had to be planned - it's obvious it wasn't someone who just came along to do it," he said.

The missing sign, which is occasionally removed by officials for conservation work, has been replaced by a replica.

During the Holocaust, hundreds and thousands of prisoners passed under the sign, whose words mean "Work Sets You Free", but the vast majority were murdered or worked to death.

12 Things You Didn't Know About Judaism

posted by Brad Hirschfield

Now that Rosh Hashanah, one of the best known Jewish holidays, has arrived we have a chance to start again, to discover new things about ourselves, each other and even about ancient traditions like Judaism. While there's a lot to learn (just think of Jews who've studied the Torah over the centuries), every journey starts somewhere. With that in mind, here are 12 things most people don't know about Judaism. From sacred time to sacred sex, you may be surprised by what you learn.

1. Judaism isn't about being Jewish; it's a spiritual-ethical technology for being a good person. From the very beginning, the Bible tells the story of the first humans, Adam and Eve, who were not Jewish - they were simply two people trying to make a good life in the world as they found it. That's what Judaism is all about.

2. You don't need to be Jewish to get into Heaven. For those people concerned about the after-life, even the most ancient and traditional understandings of Judaism embrace the notion that all those who live ethical lives, no matter what tradition they follow, will be "close to God" in the world to come.

3. Being part of the Chosen People is not about being better than anyone else. While the Bible and most of subsequent Jewish tradition view the Jews as chosen, they make no claims about Jews being inherently better than other people. Judaism teaches that Jews have a mission, which is to draw close to God and be a blessing to the entire human race - to be a light to the nations.

4. Once a Jew, always a Jew. Who's a Jew? Well, if you have a Jewish parent, that may be your answer. From the time of Abraham until the time of Jesus (about 1,500 years), having a Jewish father made someone a Jew. For the next 1,900 years after that, having a Jewish mother made someone Jewish. That rule changed, for many Jews, about 20 years ago. Now depending on denomination, it's the mother if one is Orthodox or Conservative, or either parent if one is Reform or Reconstructionist. The other way to become a Jew is through conversion. Either way, once a Jew, always a Jew. You never stop being Jewish and nobody can take your Jewishness from you, no matter how you do Jewish.

5. Conversion to Judaism is more a leap of belonging than a leap of faith. Joining the Jewish people is just that, committing one's self to sharing the destiny of a community. Not all converts, let alone all born-Jews, agree about they believe or how they should practice, but they all share that feeling of connection to a shared destiny as Jews.

6. There is no "Jewish Pope", no single spiritual authority for Jews. All Jews are spiritually equal. While communities may elect chief rabbis, that is what they are -- the elected officials over the community which empowers them. Judaism has accepted and even celebrated degrees of diversity unknown in other monotheistic traditions, and still does.

7. Kabala is not a different religion. Kabala, Hebrew for that which is received, is the mystical thread of Judaism, dating back thousands of years. Like all mystical traditions, it privileges personal experience and is therefore attractive to a wide range of people. While far more complex than special water, or red thread bracelets, it does embrace the power of ritual to directly transform one's life.

8. Kosher does not mean "blessed by a rabbi". Like people of many faiths, Jews traditionally recite a blessing before eating, acknowledging the sacred source of all things, and the sacredness of acts such as eating. But that's not what makes food kosher. Kosher means fit for use, according to Jewish tradition. In the case of food, it means eating according to a biblically-rooted code which asks that people eat with reverence for all life, and nurture the awareness that there is a connection between what we put in our mouths and how we act in the world.

9. The hole in the sheet for sex is a myth. While there is a range of attitudes towards human sexuality in Judaism, no community advocates that people make love through a hole in a bed sheet. In fact, Judaism overwhelmingly embraces sex not only for procreation, but for pleasure. It even teaches that the optimum time for making love is on the Sabbath, and imagines that the holiness of the day and of great sex are a good match for each other.

10. The idea that Jews have horns is based on a simple misreading of a Biblical verse. While this misconception has often been used by anti-Semites to link Jews to devils, its origins and use by artists like Michelangelo in his famous sculpture of Moses are far less hostile. It grows out of a poor translation of Exodus 34:30, which describes Moses as having an aura of light. The Hebrew word for the aura can be misunderstood as having horns.

11. Chanukah both is, and is not, the Jewish Christmas. Chanukah is far more than a holiday seeking gift-giving parity with the day celebrating Jesus' birth. It recalls an ancient fight for religious freedom and celebrates the deep spiritual light that can be found even when we least expect it. Like Christmas, Chanukah comes at the coldest and darkest time of the year, seeking to remind us that the light can be found in the most unexpected places - for Jews, in a small flask of oil which burned longer than anyone expected and for Christians, in the form of a little baby in a Bethlehem manger.

12. Rosh Hashanah is not the beginning of the Jewish year, not exactly anyway. While the Jewish ritual calendar does begin anew on Rosh Hashanah, what the day really celebrates is the birthday of the world. It's not about things starting again for the Jews, but about the fact that we all get to start again, be Adam and Eve again. Rosh Hashanah celebrates that renewal is possible and that second chances are real.

Judaism is a living tradition. It began more than 3,000 years ago and remains a work in progress. What one fact about Judaism, or whatever faith interests you, would you share with others? That sharing helps keeps a tradition alive. Give it a shot!

Rambo Rabbi Training Chosen Guns

Well, the New York Post earned its fifty cents today. Let's start with the cover, which at first glance seems like a work of fantasy but actually documents a real-life, tough-talking rabbi and his plastic pistol-packing "God Squad." Jewish security forces are hardly new to New York (Hasidic communities like the Satmar Jews in Williamsburg have their own private patrols, for instance), but none have produced a training video as uplifting as this one. A mix of Wes Anderson, Adam Sandler, and the "Sabotage" video, it depicts Rabbi Gary Moscowitz, who was an NYPD cop for nine years and holds a black belt in karate, training his fellow Jews to defend their synagogues. Enjoy!

Moscowitz is founder of the International Security Coalition of Clergy, whose mission is to train Jews in self-defense and advance fighting techniques in the event of a terrorist attack on a synagogue. He says business was slow for his Coalition until May, when the FBI arrested a group accused of plotting to blow up synagogues in The Bronx. But now Moscowitz's 100-hour synagogue self-defense course is in high demand. With his course, you'll learn how to:

• execute a somersault while drawing a gun
• use a table as cover from gunfire
• take down a terrorist by the neck

Moscowitz tells the Post, "Jews are not like Christians. If I turn my cheek, I'm coming around to make a kick." The rabbi says the NYPD isn't qualified to guard synagogues because they don't know members of the congregation, so they can't stop a terrorist who wants to put "a yarmulke on, say, 'Happy holidays,' and blow the place up." NYPD spokesman Paul Browne says Moscowitz was fired from the force in the early 1990s, but claimed not to know details. Regarding the Rabbi's criticism of the NYPD, Browne cryptically added, "Blessed are the tight of lip, for they shall resist speaking ill of the ill-informed."

By John Del Signore

FBI arrest four in alleged plot to bomb Bronx synagogues, shoot down plane

BY Michael Daly, Alison Gendar and Helen Kennedy
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITERS

Keivom/News

James Cromitie is the alleged leader of the plot, the criminal complaint states.

Keivom/News

David Williams was one of three others busted with Cromitie.

The FBI and NYPD busted a four-man homegrown terror cell Wednesday night that was plotting to blow up two Bronx synagogues while simultaneously shooting a plane out of the sky, sources told the Daily News.

The idea was to create a "fireball that would make the country gasp," one law enforcement said.

Little did they know the plastic explosives packed into their car bombs and the plane-downing Stinger missile in their backseat were all phony - supplied by undercover agents posing as Pakistani militants linked to Al Qaeda.

"If there can be any good news from this terror scare it's that this group was relatively unsophisticated, penetrated early, and not connected to another terrorist group," said Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.). "This incident shows that we must always be vigilant against terrorism, foreign or domestic."

The suspects - three U.S.-born citizens and one Haitian immigrant - at least three of whom were said to be jailhouse converts to Islam, were angry about the deaths of Muslims in Afghanistan, sources told The News.

"They wanted to make a statement," a law enforcement source said. "They were filled with rage and wanted to take it out on what they considered the source of all problems in America - the Jews."

The group's alleged ringleader, James Cromitie, according to the complaint, discussed targets with an undercover agent. "The best target [the World Trade Center] was hit already," he allegedly told the agent. Later, he rejoiced in a terrorist attack on a synagogue.

"I hate those motherf-----s, those f---ing Jewish bastards. . . . I would like to get [destroy] a synagogue."

The men allegedly parked car bombs wired to cell phones outside the Riverdale Temple and nearby Riverdale Jewish Center. They were also heading to Stewart Air National Guard Base in Newburgh, Orange County, when the law swooped in on them.

Sources said their plan was to shoot down a cargo plane headed to Iraq or Afghanistan with a surface-to-air guided missile while simultaneously calling the cell phones and blowing up the Riverdale synagogues.

Sources said the four men were arrested after a year-long investigation that began when an informant connected to a mosque in Newburgh said he knew men who wanted to buy explosives.

FBI agents supplied them with what they billed as C-4 plastic explosives and a Stinger missile.

The weaponry was all phony.

"The bombs had been made by FBI technicians," said Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly. "They were totally inert."

Witnesses said an NYPD 18-wheeler blocked a black SUV on Independence Ave. in Riverdale and then officers broke in the darkened windows and yanked out the four men from inside the car.

Among those arrested was Cromitie, of Newburgh, who is the son of an Afghan immigrant and his African-American wife.

Cromitie, who also called himself Abdul Rahman, has served a long stretch in prison.

David Williams, Onta Williams and Leguerre Payen - his alleged henchmen - were busted with him. Cromitie allegedly recruited them at the Newburgh mosque.

The undercover informant who promised to arm them posed as a member of Jaish-e-Mohammed, an anti-India Pakistani group with connections to Al Qaeda, said Joseph Demarest, assistant director of the New York FBI field office.

"This shows the real risks we face from homegrown terror and jailhouse converts, and the need for constant vigilance," said Rep. Pete King (R-L.I.).

The four alleged terrorists are expected to be arraigned Thursday in White Plains Federal Court.

"These guys were angry, they had intent and they were searching for capacity," a senior federal law enforcement official told The News. But, the official added, "It's not exactly Al Qaeda."

Richard Williams, who identified himself as Onta Williams' uncle, said he doesn't believe his nephew would be involved in the plot.

"I spoke to him last week, he gave no indication that anything was wrong," Williams told The News Wednesday night outside his Newburgh home.

Mayor Bloomberg hailed the joint investigation that took down the wanna-be mass murderers.

"While the bombs these terrorists attempted to plant tonight were - unbeknownst to them - fake, this latest attempt to attack our freedoms shows that the homeland security threats against New York City are sadly all too real and underscores why we must remain vigilant in our efforts to prevent terrorism," Bloomberg said.

agendar@nydailynews.com

With Joe Kemp in Newburgh, N.Y., Kerry Burke in New York and James Gordon Meek in Washington