Jewish date: 23 ’Adhar 5770 (Parashath Wayyaqhel-Fequdhe).
Today’s holiday: Feast of Frances of Rome (Roman Catholicism).
Worthy cause of the day: “Alliance for Justice: Call for Investigation of Missing Torture Emails”, “MoveOn.org Political Action: Tell the party establishment to stay out”, and “CARE: Voices Against Violence”.
Topic 1: “When Court Jews Defend Moral Cowards”. This article by Rav Shmuley Boteach has much less to do with court Jews than moral cowards who defend the indefensible. Particularly taking a beating is Pope Pius XII, who is infamous for his failure to do much of anything against the Nazis and all their moral atrocities during World War II. Religion is supposed to be about what is true, not what would be politically expedient to believe or what we want to believe. Do note that all glossing over the Armenian genocide and Pius XII’s indifference is actually doing is making people angry.
Topic 2: More anti-Semitism: “What New Settlement?” and “Jerusalem on the Media Frontline”. Both of these articles deal with dishonesty in reporting, the first with the untenable claim that adding 112 housing units to a preexisting city in Israel constitutes a “new settlement” and the second attacking the assumption that anything the government of Israel does regarding Arabs living in Jerusalem is necessarily not for their benefit. Meanwhile, Muslims have been rioting on the Temple Mount, including throwing stones at Jews worshipping at the Western Wall, and blaming Jews and Israel for their temper tantrum and Israeli police trying to restore the peace. This indecent, rationalizing sort of behavior is precedented; after all, Yasser ‘Arafat launched second intifada and made the excuse that ’Ari’el Sharon was somehow to blame for simply taking a stroll around the Temple Mount.
Topic 3: Other articles which I wish to note but do not have time to discuss: “Al-Qaida calls on US Muslims to attack America”, “Scientology in the spotlight amid fresh allegations”, and “Top home-school texts dismiss Darwin, evolution”.
Topic 4: For today’s religious humor, courtesy of Barry and Nancy: “The economy is hitting us all pretty hard”:
Probably this was totally unintentional.
Peace.
Aaron
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hi aaron
ReplyDeletePope Pius XII was not jusy a priest: he was the leader of a giant transnational organization with reach in all the theatres of war and with relative freedom of speech. He was the self-avowed moral authority for hundreds of millions of people, and as such he could and should have done a lot more than he did. The Catholic Church had the ears and hearts of many millions of Catholics worldwide, including those members of the SS, the police battallions and the German Army who were guilty of the most heinous crimes. There is no record of the Church making an injunction to Catholics to refrain from persecution and killing Jews. Period. There is no record of field priests telling the men who came back from an “Aktion” literally with the blood of dozens of Jews on their uniforms that what they had done that day was illegal, that it was a crime and a mortal sin. No injunction to refrain from doing the same the following day. No excommunications, or even a threat of excommunication. No one should be surprised if these soldiers and policemen, who had the motto “God with us” engraved on their belt buckles, went on killing given this implicit “green light” from their religious authorities. And no one should be surprised about this silence given the silence of Pope Pius XII.
ReplyDeleteGabriel Wilensky
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