JTF.ORG Forum
General Category => General Discussion => Topic started by: RonPrice on March 30, 2014, 09:30:16 PM
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Over the last fifteen years, 2000 to 2015, since my retirement from FT, PT and most volunteer work, after an employment-and-student life of half a century, 1950 to 2000, I have often written about the Jews and Judaism with comparisons and contrasts to a people and a religion I have now been associated with for more than 60 years, the Baha'is and the Baha'i Faith. The following post contains some of these comparisons and contrasts, among other aspects of both the Jewish world and the Baha'i world.
I put the following compilation together after watching Simon Schama's The Story of the Jews on SBSONE TV in Tasmania, on 23/3/'14 and 30/3/'14, 8:30 to 9:30 p.m. His interest in the identity of the Jew, now and in history, stimulated my own interest in the identity of the Baha'i, now and in history.-Ron Price, Pioneering Over Five Epochs, 24/3/'14 25/3/'15.
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OUR FRESHLY MINTED TEARS
Part 1:
The longer I have been a Baha’i the more and more I have seen parallels between the Baha’i experience and the Jewish experience, between what it means to be a Baha’i and what it means to be a Jew. While individual experiences, inevitably, vary greatly, certain overall themes are common between the two religions: a history of persecution; a body or writings and myths that separate the believer from non-believers and that give adherents a foundation of meaning and identity in their lives; a spiritual homeland of holy places and holy men and women who act as models and metaphors for living; the importance of written history and a transcendent Being as a source of order for man and society; the importance of Torah, or Law, written law, to bring daily life into conformity with the original teachings; a foundation in charismatic revelation and a transition to an institutional theocratic state; the place of vision and a sense of the future in history and; finally, the crucial interrelationship between the individual and the community.
I have found my Baha’i experience has been helpful in understanding general social and moral issues. I felt deeply conscious of being a Baha’i, and active in spelling out what it meant. Part of the effect of this consciousness has been to make me feel out-of-place, and separate; part of the effect, too, has made me feel integrated with, at one with, the social setting wherever I went. Another effect has been to give me many definitions of homeland: house, land, word processor, place of birth, the planet and a range of serendipitous locations where chance and circumstance has brought me to be. -Ron Price, Pioneering Over Five Epochs, 2014.
Part 2:
This Baha’i business
plays a role at so many
different levels, and in
such varying intensities.
We have our holocaust
on a much smaller scale,
and our freshly minted tears,
from innocent, bewildered
eyes; the world’s forgetfulness
will not debase this coin of gold
which enters through a portal
from which no man returns.
We have our prophets
who came to this same
grainy, parched, landscape
and its unquenchable sun,
and the crazed hot wind
which mutters so very, very
apocalyptically. They were
placed in this oven where
the heat consumes every
thing but compassion.1
Our combustible souls, too,
vanish in a puff, but not before
those prophets, speaking
redemptive words of glacial
austerity and honey-dew
from an unseen world
viewing the entirety of
complex human history.
1 Roger White, “A Desert Place”, Occasions of Grace, George Ronald, Oxford, p.97.
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I have a feeling this is yahtruth... And this person is capitalizing on things I have said, with out knowing what I believe, or what I'm doing. .. And is just trying to cause division. ..
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This is probably "Bernhard Laufer" who was actually Homo, Jr. (Alexander Sporn).
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He posts his resume here with all his personal information.
http://jtf.org/forum/index.php/topic,75186.msg629188.html#msg629188
My guess is soon people will call him Joshua Rosenberg although I doubt Joshua Rosenberg is from Tasmania.
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He posts his resume here with all his personal information.
http://jtf.org/forum/index.php/topic,75186.msg629188.html#msg629188
My guess is soon people will call him Joshua Rosenberg although I doubt Joshua Rosenberg is from Tasmania.
I don't think it's JR, I think JR wants back on the forum...
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...anyways
This other belief system seems to be most similar to the Druze religion, from what little I've seen. Anyways any ally against the planet's struggle against genocidal mudrats and those that bow to them is well received. I get why all you guys are calling troll, and so before anything, this is not a place to missionize for your religion. You can have your religion, and it doesn't seem to want me dead, so I don't care about it. I'm not joining though.
How's the muslim situation in Tazmania? From what I hear, the new "conservative" government is still letting boats from Indonesia in, just the press goes to the few they make an event of sending back.
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It has been nearly 4 months since I last posted on this thread. I'm not here to proselytize, convert or find enthusiasts for the Baha'i Faith. I take an interest in Judaism partly due to the fact that the world center for the Baha'i community is in Israel. Many, indeed, virtually all the Jews I've known in my life, have all been highly secularized, although I found Yaakov Malkin's description of secular Jews an interesting and useful one. This Professor of Aesthetics and Rhetoric at Tel Aviv University and the founder and academic director of Meitar College for Judaism as Culture[10] in Jerusalem, writes:
Today very many secular Jews take part in Jewish cultural activities, such as celebrating Jewish holidays as historical and nature festivals, imbued with new content and form, or marking life-cycle events such as birth, bar/bat mitzvah, marriage, and mourning in a secular fashion. They come together to study topics pertaining to Jewish culture and its relation to other cultures, in havurot, cultural associations, and secular synagogues, and they participate in public and political action coordinated by secular Jewish movements, such as the former movement to free Soviet Jews, and movements to combat pogroms, discrimination, and religious coercion. Jewish secular humanistic education inculcates universal moral values through classic Jewish and world literature and through organizations for social change that aspire to ideals of justice and charity.[11]
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The movement to free Soviet Jewry was not a Secular movement. It was a Religious JDL movement.
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I thank Binyamin Yisrael for his comment that: The movement to free Soviet Jewry was not a Secular movement. It was a Religious JDL movement." The Movement to Free Soviet Jewry, as I understand it and thanks to Wikipedia, "was an international human rights campaign that advocated for the right of Jews in the Soviet Union to emigrate." As Wikipedia continued: "The earliest organized effort was the Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry, founded by Jacob Birnbaum at Yeshiva University in 1964. The Union of Councils for Soviet Jews was formed in 1970 as an umbrella organization of all groups working to win the right to emigrate for oppressed Jewish citizens of the Soviet Union. The movement was represented in Israel by Nativ, a clandestine agency that sought to publicize the cause of Soviet Jewry and encourage their emigration to Israel."
As I said in my earlier post: "Today very many secular Jews take part in Jewish cultural activities, such as celebrating Jewish holidays as historical and nature festivals, imbued with new content and form, or marking life-cycle events such as birth, bar/bat mitzvah, marriage, and mourning in a secular fashion. They come together to study topics pertaining to Jewish culture and its relation to other cultures, in havurot, cultural associations, and secular synagogues, and they participate in public and political action coordinated by secular Jewish movements, such as the former movement to free Soviet Jews, and movements to combat pogroms, discrimination, and religious coercion. Jewish secular humanistic education inculcates universal moral values through classic Jewish and world literature and through organizations for social change that aspire to ideals of justice and charity." At this stage of my understanding of the freeing of Soviet Jews I find the question of its secularity quite complex.-Ron Price, Australia
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I thank Binyamin Yisrael for his comment that: The movement to free Soviet Jewry was not a Secular movement. It was a Religious JDL movement." The Movement to Free Soviet Jewry, as I understand it and thanks to Wikipedia, "was an international human rights campaign that advocated for the right of Jews in the Soviet Union to emigrate." As Wikipedia continued: "The earliest organized effort was the Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry, founded by Jacob Birnbaum at Yeshiva University in 1964. The Union of Councils for Soviet Jews was formed in 1970 as an umbrella organization of all groups working to win the right to emigrate for oppressed Jewish citizens of the Soviet Union. The movement was represented in Israel by Nativ, a clandestine agency that sought to publicize the cause of Soviet Jewry and encourage their emigration to Israel."
As I said in my earlier post: "Today very many secular Jews take part in Jewish cultural activities, such as celebrating Jewish holidays as historical and nature festivals, imbued with new content and form, or marking life-cycle events such as birth, bar/bat mitzvah, marriage, and mourning in a secular fashion. They come together to study topics pertaining to Jewish culture and its relation to other cultures, in havurot, cultural associations, and secular synagogues, and they participate in public and political action coordinated by secular Jewish movements, such as the former movement to free Soviet Jews, and movements to combat pogroms, discrimination, and religious coercion. Jewish secular humanistic education inculcates universal moral values through classic Jewish and world literature and through organizations for social change that aspire to ideals of justice and charity." At this stage of my understanding of the freeing of Soviet Jews I find the question of its secularity quite complex.-Ron Price, Australia
I have experience in putting things on Wikipedia. The people that have time to volunteer there are usually leftists, and if it isn't in a leftist news source, it won't get to wikipedia without a massive war. Obviously, they aren't going to write anything about the JDL.
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It has been more than 4 months since I last posted here or, indeed, since LKZ posted back on 24/7/'14. The subject still interests me, even in the form that it has moved on from in my initial post on this thread on 30/3/'14. The JDL, about which I knew little until this thread came into my life, opposes what it considers threats to the Jewish people, whether from Arabs, evangelizing Christians or pro-peace Jews. It claims about 13,000 members but some experts estimate there are only a few dozen active members.
"They're extremists," so I am informed at this link: http://www.apologeticsindex.org/j17.html That same link goes on to say: "The JDL really has been marginalized. Brian Levin, director of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University, San Bernardino, said that "None of the credible Jewish groups would have anything to do with these people."
I am also informed at that same link that: "The JDL was originally formed by Meir Kahane to mount an armed response to anti-Semitic acts in New York City; JDL gained notoriety when its members were linked to bombings, most of them aimed at Soviet targets in retaliation for the way that country treated its Jewish population."
I am happy to hear from anyone on this topic about which I have only begun to learn a few things. If anyone has any desire to continue the discussion on my original post at this thread on the subject of "Baha'is and Jews", I also look forward to hearing from them.-Ron Price, George Town, Tasmania, Australia
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It has been more than 4 months since I last posted here or, indeed, since LKZ posted back on 24/7/'14. The subject still interests me, even in the form that it has moved on from in my initial post on this thread on 30/3/'14. The JDL, about which I knew little until this thread came into my life, opposes what it considers threats to the Jewish people, whether from Arabs, evangelizing Christians or pro-peace Jews. It claims about 13,000 members but some experts estimate there are only a few dozen active members.
"They're extremists," so I am informed at this link: http://www.apologeticsindex.org/j17.html That same link goes on to say: "The JDL really has been marginalized. Brian Levin, director of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University, San Bernardino, said that "None of the credible Jewish groups would have anything to do with these people."
I am also informed at that same link that: "The JDL was originally formed by Meir Kahane to mount an armed response to anti-Semitic acts in New York City; JDL gained notoriety when its members were linked to bombings, most of them aimed at Soviet targets in retaliation for the way that country treated its Jewish population."
I am happy to hear from anyone on this topic about which I have only begun to learn a few things. If anyone has any desire to continue the discussion on my original post at this thread on the subject of "Baha'is and Jews", I also look forward to hearing from them.-Ron Price, George Town, Tasmania, Australia
It is no secret. Chaim, the host of this site, has been open as to his role in the activities of JDL. And to consider it on par with 'terrorism' of the arabs and leftists is absurd. What was done by JDL was to protect Jews when faced with antisemitism. JDL stood up to the Nazis who wanted to march in Skokie, IL. It was this group who made a stink about freeing the Jews trapped behind the Iron Curtian of USSR. I am not ashamed of associating with these proud Jews and I do not hide it from my community.
Jewish activism is something that the mainstream Jewish organization truly fears. The constant threat of pogroms has turned the Jewish people as a whole into jellyfish who are afraid of making a squeak lest it arouse the ire of the gentiles around us. Thus the media portrays Jews and Israel in an unflattering light. The Fogels were murdered and American media virtually ignored the story. The four rabbis just killed were not reported on correctly by the majority of international news sources because the gentiles do not respect the Jewish people.
We believe Jews deserve respect. We will not walk like sheep to the slaughter like so many of our Jewish brothers in Europe did. Jews who fight back, who arm themselves, and who do not take any disrespect lightly are more likely to be respected by the gentiles than the meek, begging, bending over, Jews who appear to represent the Jewish mainstream.
You can read about and listen to the Ask JTF programs (and even ask Chaim personal questions) where he talks about his experience with the organization. Of course JDL does not exist anymore and JTF does not attempt to replace JDL (at least as far as I understand). Also realize I am just a long time member and do not speak for the organization.
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Do a search of youtube and find a plethora of videos which explain our Rabbi Kahanes philosophy. It all comes down to the commandment to love our fellow Jews (and love gentiles also, but Jews are family and come first). He certainly never incited mobs to violence like the Al Sharptons and Jesse Jacksons of our current days. He simply spoke the truth to those who were too timid to admit it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YLqMIgGuUlU
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Th2AeT8YMsw
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Chaim spoke about why any remaining organization associated with the 'JDL' name have disassociated themselves from the great rabbi Meir Kahane.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J6PWouJix3I
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I hope you find this informative, the truth is sometimes blinding (discovering the falsehood you have been taught).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IpV9PmDjgS4
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The great rabbi published many books and letters which are studied to this day by students.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UY3QpWvYzLw
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An often hushed-up facet of the assassination of Rabbi Kahane (May his blood be avenged) is the fact that it was carried out by agents of Al Queda in America at the time. This constituted one of the first acts of domestic terrorism by the Al Queda organization. But as is the case in much of the media coverage they made it out to be a radical Jew killed by radical muslims. It turns out this organization was planning the 1993 World Trade Center bombing at the time. If only it was caught 9/11 could have been averted. And being a victim of 9/11 (my brother was in the building) I feel much anger at the intelligence agencies for overlooking the assassins of Rabbi Kahane.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V2dOPGC_Rn0
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I enjoy watching these videos. There is nothing in my mind more motivating than the Jewish pride I feel when learning and talking about Rabbi Kahane.
Here Chaim discusses relevant topics:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q1F6QBjIhZY
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vSIDx3eUyaI
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Since posting and initiating this thread it has acquired a rich tapestry of material; I thank all those who have participated.-Ron Price, Australia