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Ask JTF for Sunday, October 11, 2009

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Trace:
Shalom Chaim,

As you may know, Elvis Presley's maternal grandmother was Jewish, which made him a Jew by the Halachic laws. Elvis was raised as a Christian but he never tried to hide his Jewish heritage and in fact he actually used to wear a Chai necklace; he also supposedly had a wristwatch that had a cross and a Star of David on it to represent both sides of his family. What do you think about Elvis? Do you think he was a good influence on American kids? I'm aware that towards the end of his life he was addicted to prescription drugs but at least he did not advocate drugs or violence in his music. Compared to today's insane rap noise, Elvis seems like pretty good music for teenagers to listen to.

Secularbeliever:
Chaim since you have been telling old stories of JDL it made me think of some of my experiences there.  One man, who I never met and who somewhat proceeded me was Avraham Herschkovitz.  He and his wife tried to hijack an Arab airliner in retalliation for Arab hijackings.  While I never met him, I remember going to a demonstration on his behalf at the prison in Danbury, Connecticut where he was serving his sentence.  People who visited him during the demonstration came out and announced that he knew we were there and appreciated it.  At the time, unable to contemplate such an existence of that as a prisoner (I know I still cannot really appreciate it) I failed to understand how important that was.

Whatever, became of Mr. Hershkovitz.  I know he got out of prison and I believe he went to Israel.  His wife had gotten out earlier.  Did they do well in Israel, have a family etc?  Why was he able to get into Israel when you cannot?  Has Israel changed for the worse since then in that respect?    Are there any parallels to your situation or to that of Pollard, anything that you have learned from him?  Just curious as to your thoughts?

t_h_j:
Hello Chaim,

What is your opinion of the cult of scientology, and why is such an obvious scam so attractive to so many people?
thanks

Avicenna:
I’m  responding to your false claim that Muslims copied Brahmagupta to get credit for Algebra. Khwarizmi is the father of Algebra and his accomplishments in the subject were independent of Brahmagupta’s achievements. His book on Algebra was translated and spread in Europe. During the Islamic golden age Muslim nations were the most advanced in the world and at the same time Europeans were the most backward. In fact, Europeans were scientifically far behind the Middle East for 5,000 years up until 1500 AD.  It’s only been in the last 500 years that they’ve had this lead. During the Islamic golden age Muslims made accomplishments in mathematics, architecture, astronomy, chemistry, physics, and medicine and the Europeans translated and learned their achievements. That was a major reason why the Renaissance.

In 2007 Jordanian 8th graders scored higher than Israeli 8th graders in science: http://nces.ed.gov/timss/table07_3.asp. In 2008 Iran ranked 5th in the world in the international math olympiad whereas Israel ranked 27th http://www.imo-official.org/results.aspx. Jewish achievements in nobel prizes means nothing because people like Obama can win so it has no credibility.

imaknick:
Why do so many blacks like rabbi abraham joshua heschel?

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