You may encounter anti-semitism where you don’t expect it.

In the January issue of Angie’s List, New York City New Jersey edition, on p. 15, is an item about an insurance adjuster accused of fraud. (Angie’s List is an organization intended to help people find trustworthy repairmen, doctors, contractors, etc.)

A woman in West Park, Fla., hired Abraham Blumberg, CEO of National Loss Consultants in Miami, to negotiate her claim to fix a leaky roof after a storm.

The insurance company issued a check to Blumberg for $5,000, but the woman was not successful in getting her portion of the money from Blumberg,

Eventually Blumberg pleaded guilty to pocketing more than $360,000 in insurance claims from 82 victims, according to the Florida Department of Financial Services.

He was sentenced to 364 days in jail and 30 years of probation. The state revoked his license.

In case readers didn’t conclude that Blumberg was Jewish, Angie’s List ran a photograph of him.

With a full beard. And wearing a skullcap.

My name is Aron Adler.

I am 25 years old, was born in Brooklyn NY, and raised in Efrat Israel. Though very busy, I don’t view my life as unusual. Most of the time, I am just another Israeli citizen. During the
day I work as a paramedic in Magen David Adom, Israel’s national EMS service. At night, I’m in my first year of law school. I got married this October and am starting a new chapter of life together with my wonderful wife Shulamit.

15-20 days out of every year, I’m called up to the Israeli army to do my reserve duty. I serve as a paramedic in an IDF paratrooper unit. My squad is made up of others like me; people living normal lives who step up to serve whenever responsibility calls. The oldest in my squad is 58, a father of four girls and grandfather of two; there are two bankers, one engineer, a holistic healer, and my 24 year old commander who is still trying to figure out what to do with his life. Most of the year we are just normal people living our lives, but for 15-20 days
each year we are soldiers on the front lines preparing for a war that we hope we never have to fight.

This year, our reserve unit was stationed on the border between Israel, Egypt and the Gaza Strip in an area called “Kerem Shalom.” Above and beyond the “typical” things for which we train - war, terrorism, border infiltration, etc., - this year we were confronted by a new challenge. Several years ago, a trend started of African refugees crossing the Egyptian border from Sinai into Israel to seek asylum from the atrocities in Darfur.

What started out as a small number of men, women and children fleeing from the machetes of the Janjaweed and violent fundamentalists to seek a better life elsewhere, turned into an organized industry of human trafficking. In return for huge sums of money, sometimes entire life savings paid to Bedouin “guides,” these refugees are promised to be transported from
Sudan, Eritrea, and other African countries through Egypt and the Sinai desert, into the safe haven of Israel.

We increasingly hear horror stories of the atrocities these refugees suffer on their way to freedom. They are subject to, and victims of extortion, rape, murder, and even organ theft, their bodies left to rot in the desert. Then, if lucky, after surviving this gruesome experience whose prize is freedom, when only a barbed wire fence separates them from Israel and their goal, they must go through the final death run and try to evade the bullets of the Egyptian soldiers stationed along the border. Egypt’s soldiers are ordered to shoot to kill anyone trying to cross the border OUT of Egypt and into Israel. It’s an almost nightly event.

For those who finally get across the border, the first people they encounter are Israeli soldiers, people like me and those in my unit, who are tasked with a primary mission of defending the lives of the Israeli people. On one side of the border soldiers shoot to kill. On the other side, they know they will be treated with more respect than in any of the countries they
crossed to get to this point.

The region where it all happens is highly sensitive and risky from a security point of view, an area stricken with terror at every turn. It’s just a few miles south of the place where Gilad Shalit was kidnapped. And yet the Israeli soldiers who are confronted with these refugees do it not with rifles aimed at them, but with a helping hand and an open heart. The refugees
are taken to a nearby IDF base, given clean clothes, a hot drink, food and medical attention. They are finally safe.

Even though I live Israel and am aware through media reports of the events that take place on the Egyptian border, I never understood the intensity and complexity of the scenario until I experienced it myself.

In the course of the past few nights, I have witnessed much. At 9:00 PM last night, the first reports came in of gunfire heard from the Egyptian border. Minutes later, IDF scouts spotted small groups of people trying to get across the fence. In the period of about one hour, we picked up 13 men - cold, barefoot, dehydrated - some wearing nothing except underpants. Their bodies were covered with lacerations and other wounds. We gathered them in a room, gave them blankets, tea and treated their wounds. I don’t speak a word of their language, but the look on their faces said it all and reminded me once again why I am so proud to be a Jew and an Israeli. Sadly, it was later determined that the gunshots we heard were deadly, killing three others fleeing for their lives.

During the 350 days a year when I am not on active duty, when I am just another man trying to get by, the people tasked with doing this amazing job, this amazing deed, the people witnessing these events, are mostly young Israeli soldiers just out of high school, serving their compulsory time in the IDF, some only 18 years old.

The refugees flooding into Israel are a heavy burden on our small country. More than 100,000 refugees have fled this way, and hundreds more cross the border every month. The
social, economic, and humanitarian issues created by this influx of refugees are immense. There are serious security consequences for Israel as well. This influx of African refugees poses a crisis for Israel. Israel has yet to come up with the solutions required to deal with this crisis effectively, balancing its’ sensitive social, economic, and security issues, at the same time striving to care for the refugees.

I don’t have the answers to these complex problems which desperately need to be resolved. I’m not writing these words with the intention of taking a political position or a tactical stand on the issue. I am writing to tell you and the entire world what’s really happening down here on the Egyptian/Israeli border. And to tell you that despite all the serious problems created by this national crisis, these refugees have no reason to fear us. Because they know, as the entire world needs to know, that Israel has not shut its eyes to their suffering
and pain. Israel has not looked the other way. The State of Israel has put politics aside to take the ethical and humane path as it has so often done before, in every instance of human suffering and natural disasters around the globe. We Jews know only too well about suffering and pain. The Jewish people have been there. We have been the refugees and the persecuted so many times, over thousands of years, all over the world.

Today, when African refugees flood our borders in search of freedom and better lives, and some for fear of their lives, it is particularly noteworthy how Israel deals with them, despite the enormous strain it puts on our country on so many levels. Our young and thriving Jewish people and country, built from the ashes of the Holocaust, do not turn their backs on humanity. Though I already knew that, this week I once again experienced it firsthand. I am overwhelmed with emotion and immensely proud to be a member of this nation.

With love of Israel,

Aron Adler writing from the Israel/Gaza/Egyptian border.

from the Internet…....

Talmud Study is now Mandatory in South Korea

The following article was translated by The Muqata from YNET.

Close to 50 million people live in South Korea, and everyone learns Gemara (Talmud) in school.
“We tried to understand why the Jews are geniuses, and we came to the conclusion that it is because they study the Talmud,” said the Korean ambassador to Israel. And this is how “Rav Papa” became a more well known scholar in Korea than in Israel.

It is doubtful if the Aramaic scholars, Abbaye and Rava, imagined their discussions of Jewish law in the Beit Midrash in Babylon would be taught hundreds of years later in East Asia. Yet it turns out that the laws of an “egg born on a holiday” (”ביצה שנולדה ביום טוב”), is actually very interesting to the South Koreans, who have required that Talmud study be part of their compulsory school curriculum.

Almost every home in South Korea now contains a Korean-translated Talmud. But unlike in Israel, the Korean mothers teach the Talmud to their children. In a country of close to 49 million people who believe in Buddhism and Christianity, there are more people who read the Talmud-or at least own their own copy at home- than there are in the Jewish state of Israel. Much more.

“So we too will become geniuses”

“We were very curious about the high academic achievements of the Jews,” explains South Korea’s Ambassador to Israel, Young Sam Mah, who was recently a host on the program “Culture Today.”

“Jews have a high percentage of Nobel laureates in all fields: literature, science and economics. This is a remarkable achievement. We tried to understand what is the secret of the Jewish people? How they-more than other people-are able to reach those impressive accomplishments. Why are Jews so intelligent? The conclusion we arrived at is that one of your secrets is that you study the Talmud.”

“Jews study the Talmud at a young age, and it helps them, in our opinion, to develop mental capabilities. This understanding led us to teach our children as well. We believe that if we teach our children Talmud, they will also become geniuses. This is what stands behind the rationale of introducing Talmud Study to our school curriculum.”

Young says that he himself studied the Talmud at a very young age: “It is considered very significant study,” he emphasized. The result is that more Koreans have Talmud sets in their homes than do the Jews in Israel.

“I, for example, have two sets of the Talmud: the one my wife bought me, and the second was a gift from my mother.”

Groupies of Jews

Koreans don’t only like the Talmud because they see it as promoting genius, but because they found values that are ​​close to their hearts.

“In the Jewish tradition, family values ​​are very, very important,” explains the South Korean Ambassador.

“You see it even today in your practice of the Friday evening family meal. In my country we also focus on family values. The respect for adults, and respect and appreciation for the elderly, parallels the high esteem in my country for the elderly.”

Another very significant issue is the respect for education. In the Jewish tradition, parents have a duty to teach their children, and they devote to it lots of attention. For Korean parents, their children’s education is a top priority.

Sir Moses Haim Montefiore (1784-1885), a British Jewish banker and philanthropist, defender of human rights, and sheriff of London,

was once seated at dinner next to an important personality and an anti-Semite.

He told Sir Moses that he had just returned from Japan, where they “have neither pigs nor Jews.”

Montefiore replied instantly: “Accordingly, you and I should go there so they can have a sample of each.”

Iranian president Mahmud Ahmadinejad calls President Obama and tells him,

“Barack, I had a wonderful dream last night. I could see America, the whole beautiful country,

and on each house I saw a banner.”

“What did it say on the banners?” Obama asks.

Mahmud replies, “UNITED STATES OF IRAN.”

Obama says, “You know, Mahmud, I am really happy you called,

because believe it or not, last night I had a similar dream. I could see all of Tehran,

and it was more beautiful than ever, and on each house flew an enormous banner.”

“What did it say on the banners?” Mahmud asks.

Obama replies, “I don’t know. I can’t read Hebrew.”

From “A Lifetime Burning in Every Moment”

“From the Journals of Alfred Kazin”

“They are all individualists and all intellectuals. They want to talk about everything, they want to discuss everything,
they want to debate everything—and they come to totally different conclusions.”

by Alan Dershowitz - Nov 11, 2011

Imagine your son or daughter is admitted to the University of Chicago, one of the world’s most elite institutions of learning, and tells you that he has been lucky enough to have a course with one of the university’s most prominent professors, John Mearsheimer, the R. Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Then imagine your child tells you that his favorite professor has just recommended that everyone should read a “fascinating and provocative” book that makes the following assertions of fact:

While the Holocaust “was not at all an historical narrative,” the “accusations of Jews making matzo out of young Goyim’s blood,” may be true (page 175, 185).

Jews caused the recent credit crunch, which the author calls “the Zio-punch” (page 22).

The American media “failed to warn the American people of the enemy within” because of money (page 27).

“[M]ore and more Jews are being pulled into an obscure, dangerous and unethical fellowship” (page 21).

If Iran and Israel fight a nuclear war that kills millions of people, “some may be bold enough to argue that ‘Hitler might have been right after all’” (page 179).

The “new Jewish religion…could well be the most sinister religion known to man…” (page 149).

The author of the book containing these statements has told students that he cannot “say whether it’s right or not to burn down a synagogue. I can say that it is a rational act.” He has also apologized to the Nazis for having earlier compared them to Israel:

“Many of us including me tend to equate Israel to Nazi Germany. Rather often I myself join others and argue that Israelis are the Nazis of our time. I want to take this opportunity to amend my statement. Israelis are not the Nazis of our time and the Nazis were not the Israelis of their time. Israel is in fact far worse than Nazi Germany and the above equation is simply meaningless and misleading.”

He has written that we “must begin to take the accusation that the Jewish people are trying to control the world very seriously,” and that “with Fagin and Shylock in mind, Israeli barbarism and organ trafficking seem to be just other events in an endless hellish continuum.”

The scenario described above—a prominent professor endorsing the content of a blatantly anti-Semitic book—is not imaginary. John Mearsheimer has in fact written a glowing endorsement (this “fascinating and provocative” book “should be widely read.”) of a virulently anti-Semitic book by an infamously bigoted author.

The book is titled The Wandering Who? and has just been published by Gilad Atzmon, a British saxophonist and well-known bigot, who acknowledges that many of the “insights” in his book come from a man who “was an anti-Semite” and a hater of “almost everything that fails to be Aryan masculinity” (page 89-90). He declares himself a “proud self-hating Jew” and writes of his “contempt” of “the Jew in me” (page 94). Mearsheimer’s endorsement appears prominently on the first page of the book. He is not merely defending Atzmon’s right to publish this anti-Semitic book; he is endorsing the book’s content.

Mearsheimer was joined in his endorsement of this anti-Semitic book by Richard Falk, the Milibank Professor of International Law Emeritus at Princeton University. Falk’s endorsement, which appears on the cover of The Wandering Who?, calls the book “absorbing,” “moving,” and “transformative.” He says the book has “integrity” and should not only “be read but reflect[ed] upon and discuss[ed] widely.” One wonders precisely which part of the book Falk wants his students to discuss widely: that the Holocaust is “not an historical narrative”? That Jews may be guilty of “making matzo out of young Goyim’sblood”? or the possibility that “Hitler may have been right after all”?

I have certainly seen strong academic endorsements of books that are extreme in their hatred of Israel, but never in my long professional life have I encountered prominent American academics endorsing blatant anti-Semitism. A red line has been crossed for the first time, and this dangerous and unprecedented crossing must be noted and responded to.

Professor Mearsheimer should neither be fired nor censured for his endorsement of the world’s oldest bigotry, because his academic freedom gives him the right to endorse anti-Semitic views and to endorse any book he chooses.

But unless Mearsheimer publicly withdraws his endorsement, he should be shunned by his colleagues and his students for collaborating with evil. Mearsheimermay not be an anti-Semite himself, but he has given aid and comfort to anti-Semitism by urging his students to take seriously the content of The Wandering Who?

The sad reality is that Mearsheimer is not being shunned. He is being supported by his colleague, Brian Leiter, the Llewellyn Professor of Jurisprudence at the University of Chicago Law School, who says that the criticism of Mearsheimer is “hysterical” because Atzmon’s“positions [do not mark him] as an anti-Semite [but rather as] cosmopolitan.” Mearsheimer is also being supported by my Harvard colleague, Professor Stephen Walt and several other American academics.

Therein lies the shame—and the danger.

Alan Dershowitz is the Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law at Harvard Law School.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LeGYAfh9A1k