As a Jew, it is forbidden to try to convert anyone. You have to be turned away 3 times by a Rabbi before you convert. You have to study for a year, go before a board of elders, go through the Mikvah which is similar to baptism in that it is a purification ritual where you are submersed in water. Once you are a Jew, you can try to convert a million times to anything you want but you are still considered a Jew. People think that being god's chosen people is somehow better. We have over 2000 commandments. For instance, you MUST teach your child to swim. You MUST teach your child an occupation. It goes on and on. It is not a cake walk by any means.

On a side note I thought I would share a bit of humor, every year, you re-read the Torah. There is a Far Side where god is making snakes with clay by rolling it between his hands and he says, "Gee, this is easy". I had a joke with my ex husband when they read about the serpent in Genesis. I would without saying anything take my hands and pretend to make a snake of clay because he knew that Far Side. He is quite the straight man comedy wise and as you know it's a very serious part of the Torah/Bible and I would see if I could crack him up every year by doing that. I usually did and he would smack me and smile and tell me to knock it off.

"Israel is a modern democracy and America's and Europe's ally in the Middle East. All Israeli citizens - Christians, Muslims and Jews - have freedom of religion and the right to vote. Ten Arabs and 16 women are in Israel's parliament, and both men and women have access to education, modern health care and good jobs. Israel, like the U.S. and European Union, is a true democracy based on freedom and equality."

"Israeli schools, books and teachers teach peace, tolerance and respect. In a region where there is so much hate and violence, Israelis want the next generation to have hope and a better future."

"America's and Europe's ally, Israel, is a democracy in the Middle East. All Israeli citizens - Christians, Muslims and Jews , men and women - have freedom of speech, religion and the right to vote. Today, Israel is reaching out its hand in peace -with a bold initiative that will give Palestinians the entire Gaza territory -and a hopeful future. Israel, a true democracy, is looking for peace."



http://www.pro-israel.org/homepage/houseresolutionfeb11.pdf

What more to admire about Jews?

The words "Live Long and Prosper" comes from the original Jewish
Hebrew text and so does the Spock hand sign!

http://youtu.be/tRckNYCtKMs



And Elvis!!

Gaza is not a as you call it "prison."

Any maritme blockade is absolutely and totally LEGAL according to International Law because Israel and Gaza are at WAR.

If peace were declared by Hamas then there would be no need for a maritime blockade.

Gazans very often cross over into Israel for medical treatment because Israel's hospitals have excellent facilities and Gaza and West Bank together with Israel co-operate with each other in medical expertise, agricultural expertise, etc., etc.

Things have improved much more since this 2010 video, now with construction materials being imported into Gaza.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S9zwP4LDUYM

__________________________________

Another:

Despite the naval blockade on the Gaza Strip, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) ensures the daily transfer of nearly 6,000 tons of goods and roughly 260 truckloads via Kerem Shalom, an Israel-Gaza land crossing.

Lawfully enforcing the naval blockade on the Gaza Strip allows the Israeli Navy to halt rocket and missile attacks into Israel by Hamas, Islamic Jihad and other terrorist organizations in the Gaza Strip.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IPd_cLpjShY&feature=channel_video_title

___________________________________________

And another: (I have at least a hundred clips!)

In order to protect Israeli civilians from attacks by the terrorist organization Hamas, the IDF lawfully enforces a naval blockade on the Gaza Strip. Given previous attempts by the terrorist organization in smuggling weapons via land and sea and the inherent difficulties in conducting inspections at sea, it is critical that Israeli forces inspect all goods and material marked for Gaza prior to their transfer into the Strip.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A-Mh4cuLQ8w&feature=channel_video_title

____________________________________________________



SO THAT IS WHAT I LOVE ABOUT JEWS - EVEN TO THEIR ENEMIES THEY GRANT COMPASSION!

And a grand idea :-) I love learning about
other cultures.
You present some cool stuff.

I love Jews
Jews love me
Lets have one big jewish family
Cooking matzo ball soup and eating kosher bread
Marrying outside the jewish race you're cosidered dead.

Some thing I like about Jews:

God is defined as formless, the sum of all knowledge and existence,
infinite and unknowable in entirety, the ultimate in kindness and
compassion. Their vision of Monotheism is consistent with all other
monotheistic views of H God - Christian, Muslim, Taoist, Buddhist,
and Pantheism.

Jews believe one of the most important things to avoid is harming others
through speech. (Lashon Hara)

Jews do not take the bible literally but vigorously interpret and
reinterpret the Bible and there is no unique best opinion on these
interpretations.

There is no central authority other than God - no pope or other
religious bureaucracy.

There is no such thing as original sin for Jews.

Jews don't believe that anyone needs to be "saved" by any external
force but that people are in a position to always behave morally
and ethically individually and if you do live a moral and ethical
life that you will be at peace with God, one with God, and in
harmony with nature.

Jews have the highest regard for education both for self but
particularly for their children and this includes all forms of
education not merely religious education.

There is not tithing for Jews but everyone is expected to be as
charitable as possible according to their means and the most noble
form of charity is anonymous charity.

All people are to live and be buried in the most modest way
possible so as not to be pretentious.

Jews don't have any codified belief in heaven or hell. There is
no threat of eternal damnation for Jews. Afterlife is largely
undefined and only represents a transformation to a completely
different state of being distinctly different from human existence
in the new age. It is similar to ideas of reincarnation but in
non-human and non-animal form.

Jews toast happy occasions with the simple phrase "L'chaim" - To Life!

Jews have persevered through the most astounding trials and have
retained their heritage, ideals, culture and history despite being
exiled, mistreated and misunderstood throughout history. They are
remarkably resilient and positive and their optimism is uplifting.

As noted earlier - they have a great sense of self-deprecating
and humble humor! So many great comedians have been Jewish.

Jews are a fascinating people with a beautiful religion!

This morning I googled this!!...18 Reasons Why It's Great to be Jewish...

You are part of an extraordinary people...

The Jewish Value System - It emphasizes honesty...

Freedom & Dignity - Belief in freedom is woven into the fabric of Judaism...

Making life meaningful...

Jewish family life - Stable, strong, supportive of community...

Good deeds - Judaism connects belief with action...

Life on earth - Emphasizes life as it is lived rather than afterlife...

Theology - One God...

Connection to the external force - Prayer...

Community...

Jewish Holidays - They are deeply meaningful...

Shabbat - One of the great institutions of the World, a day of rest made special...

The power of positive thinking...

Comfort - on a more profound level...

Study - Jewish books abound...

The Torah - Jewish text...

Holiness - Incorporating it into everyday life...

Jews are wonderful people - Varied, kind, caring, compassionate, understanding, creative, sharp, funny, generous.....It's nice to be with Jews!

That is interesting!
Hope some of the Twisters here sit up and take note!

That would be the day!

This is actually a sign done among the priestly class of Jews known as the Cohens (sp). It's not make up by Leonard. He just used it in Star Trek. It's a real thing.

Leonard peeked!

What Is the Jewish Festival of Hanukkah?

Hanukkah is a Jewish holiday celebrated for eight days and nights. It starts on the 25th of the Jewish month of Kislev, which coincides with late November-late December on the secular calendar. This year it starts on 20 December and the last night is 28 December.

According to Jewish law, Hanukkah is one of the less important Jewish holidays. However, Hanukkah has become much more popular in modern practice because of its proximity to Christmas.

Hanukkah falls on the twenty-fifth day of the Jewish month of Kislev. Since the Jewish calendar is lunar based, every year the first day of Hanukkah falls on a different day – usually sometime between late November and late December.

Because many Jews live in predominately Christian societies, over time Hanukkah has become much more festive and Christmas-like. Jewish children receive gifts for Hanukkah – often one gift for each of the eight nights of the holiday. Many parents hope that by making Hanukkah extra special their children won't feel left out of all the Christmas festivities going on around them.

Hanukkah Traditions

Every community has its unique Hanukkah traditions, but there are some traditions that are almost universally practiced. They are: lighting the hanukkiyah, spinning the dreidel and eating fried foods.

• Lighting the hanukkiyah: Every year it is customary to commemorate the miracle of the Hanukkah oil by lighting candles on a hanukkiyah. The hanukkiyah is lit every night for eight nights. Learn more about the hanukkiyah in the article, What Is a Hanukkiyah?

• Spinning the dreidel: A popular Hanukkah game is spinning the dreidel, which is a four-sided top with Hebrew letters written on each side. Read The Hanukkah Dreidel to learn more about the dreidel, the meaning of the letters and how to play the game. Gelt, which are chocolate coins covered with tin foil, are part of this game.

• Eating fried foods: Because Hanukkah celebrates the miracle of oil, it is traditional to eat fried foods such as latkes and sufganiyot during the holiday. Latkes are pancakes made out of potatoes and onions, which are fried in oil and then served with applesauce. Sufganiyot (singular: sufganiyah) are jelly-filled (jam-filled for those in UK) donuts that are fried and sometimes dusted with confectioners’ sugar before eating. Learn more about Hanukkah food traditions in the article, Hanukkah Food Traditions.

Source of this article and traditional Hanukkah recipes can be found on:

http://judaism.about.com/od/holidays/a/hanukkah.htm









The Roots of Historic Hanukkah

A Minor Holiday Marks A Political Event

Each year starting on the 25th day of the month of Kislev, Jews celebrate the eight-day festival known as Hanukkah, a Hebrew word that means "to dedicate." While some misinformed Christians liken Hanukkah to a Jewish Christmas, nothing could be further from the truth.

The Historic Hanukkah Commemorates A Jewish Revolt

Hanukkah is actually a minor festival for which there is no basis in the Jewish Bible. Instead Hanukkah is a more of a nationalistic, historical holiday that commemorates the defeat of Syrian Greeks in the Seleucid Empire by a priestly family called the Maccabees in 165 B.C.

The Maccabees were a family of priests from the Judean countryside, not part of the Jewish priestly caste that inhabited Jerusalem. Hence, unlike the urban priests who tried to assimilate and get along with their occupiers, the Maccabees resisted domination by the Seleucid Empire.

The Jerusalem priests essentially had traded Jewish national sovereignty for the right to worship as they pleased at the Second Temple, the heart of Jewish life. Even this meager sop to Jewish identity was lost during the reign of the Seleucid king Antiochus IV Epiphanes, who claimed to be a god and demanded that all his subjects worship him. His soldiers took over the Temple in Jerusalem and erected a bust of Antiochus there as a religious idol.
Worse still, the Seleucid soldiers sacrificed pigs to the god-king in violation of Jewish religious dietary laws known as kashrut (kosher), which classified pigs as unclean animals because they ate offal and other refuse. According to Jewish law, the soldiers' actions defiled the Temple and made it unfit for worship.

Slaughter of the Innocents

The greatest blow however, came when Antiochus forbade the Jews to circumcise their newborn sons. For centuries circumcision had been a visible sign of Jews' relationship with God, a symbol of the covenant between the Almighty and the people known as Israel.
In one gruesome episode, Antiochus' soldiers slaughtered newborn sons they found circumcised and then hung the babies' corpses around their mothers' necks as a warning. It's hardly surprising that such an outrage would spur the Jews, under the leadership of Judas Maccabees, to rebel against Antiochus and retake the Jerusalem Temple by force.

As they gained more power and prestige, the Maccabees became the Hasmonean (pronounced "hash-mo-knee-an") dynasty of priest-kings. The Hasmoneans ruled Judea from around 160 B.C. until A.D. 70 when Roman legions under Titus, son of the Roman emperor Vespasian, destroyed the Second Temple and crushed Jewish independence.

The Maccabees' exploits are recounted by historian Flavius Josephus in his tome, Antiquities of the Jews, Book 12, Chapter 7, and in an extra-biblical writing known as the Book of Maccabees. In the Apocrypha of the Christian Bible, the book is divided into 1 and 2 Maccabees, but the book is omitted completely from the Jewish Bible. Biblical historians consider 1 Maccabees the more reliable of the two books because its events can be verified from other historical records.

The Omission of Hanukkah and the Maccabees for Political Reasons
The Book of the Maccabees probably was eliminated from the Jewish canon for political reasons, according to David Shasha, executive director of the Sephardic Heritage Center in Brooklyn, NY.
Shasha wrote in the center's newsletter, Sephardic Heritage Update:
"The rabbis who canonized the Hebrew Scriptures at Yavneh circa 100 CE neglected to include the Book of Maccabees in their Bible. ... The rabbis saw the Hasmonean dynasty as usurpers to the Priestly offices in the Temple and the monarchy. The Hasmoneans ... did not come from the Zadokite lineage and took it upon themselves to lead the rebellion against Antiochus and the Syrian Greeks."

In other words, the rabbis who canonized the Jewish scriptures thought the Maccabees had no right to revolt and reclaim the Temple. Consequently the rabbis sought to discredit the Hasmonean influence on Jewish culture during the time of the Pharisees, Shasha noted.

The Non-Historic Hanukkah Holiday Is a Talmudic Legend

While the rabbis could discredit the Maccabean records, they couldn't eliminate Hanukkah as a holiday because it had become so popular. Instead, Shasha wrote, the rabbis developed an after-the-fact tale that a single bottle of sacred oil -- barely enough to keep the Temple candelabrum lit for one day -- lasted through the eight days of re-dedication ceremonies in 1 Maccabees 4:42-56.
This story was included in the Talmud, the Jewish collection of wisdom and interpretation, to give the Jews some rabbinic sanction, if not biblical authority, for the eight-day festival that remains popular today.

Source:
http://ancienthistory.about.com/od/biblicalhistory/a/The-Roots-Of-Historic-Hanukkah.htm

Leonard Nimoy describes his Jewish roots here:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/05/21/leonard-nimoy-describes-h_n_864911.html

"The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the one"

Top 30 Hottest Jewish Women Under 40



http://www.ranker.com/list/top-30-hottest-jewish-women-under-40/greg

Hollywood's Sexiest Jewish Men



http://www.shalomlife.com/culture/14718/hollywoods-sexiest-jewish-men-you-voted/

anyone remember Esther and Abi Ofarim?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=di3BGeXpf5o

Esther & Abi Ofarim - Morning Of My Life
a Cover of the BEE-GEE-Song

Uzi and the Styles - Morning Train

http://youtu.be/VLWSldnQ1Dc

Marcel Dadi (20 August 1951 - 17 July 1996) was a Tunisia-born Jewish French guitarist known for his finger-picking style which faithfully recreated the instrumental styles of American guitarists such as Chet Atkins, Merle Travis and Jerry Reed. He became a personal friend of country star Chet Atkins.

Born in Sousse, Dadi released several LPs and some instructional videos before his early death. His recordings featured a mix of compositions by his American heroes and original compositions of his own in a similar style. A feature of his early LPs was that they included a tablature booklet, allowing guitarists to learn the tunes for themselves. Dadi often recorded tunes dedicated to his friends, such as "Roger Chesterfield," dedicated to Roger C. Field with whom he first went to Nashville in 1975 to visit Chet Atkins.

Dadi died when N93119, the Boeing 747 on TWA Flight 800, exploded off the coast of Long Island. He was returning from the United States to France after being honored at Nashville's Country Music Hall of Fame. He is buried in Jerusalem, Israel.

=-=-=-=

Saturday Night Shuffle

http://youtu.be/eA9ltJSzPQk

Swingy Blues playlist

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yYYzUmLjntc&feature=list_related&playnext=1&list=AVGxdCwVVULXcEy6j4niJjTlpv9pnz7LfR

Je Te Veux

http://youtu.be/ztji4KYcLcs

Marcel teaching Merle Travis' Fuller Blues

http://youtu.be/zQFF5Hddiik

WTF are you trying to say? That Russia is a concentration camp for Russians, China is a concentration camp for Chinese, and America is a concentration camp for Americans?

This is a ludircuous statemetn. Go back to not taking life seriously or replace your picture right away. You can't do both at the same time. It's like playing at Wimbledon with your self being on both sides of the court.

And mostly, ... ah, never you mind.

that Guy was good!!!!!!!!!!

You ever lived in Israel, the great European democracy? If you are an arab, you are stopped by securitat every one mile, on the average, asked to show papers, IDs, and if you smirk or giggle, they take you in and search your body cavitats, first stripping you and putting on rubber gloves.

Try doing that to Black people in America.

Try doing that to Muslims in France.

This is not democracy and freedom for all denominations. It is more like hell of abominations.

I am Jewish, proudly so, and I hate Zionism and the State of Israel.

In fact, if you are Jewish and take the TRUE RELIGIOUS side of Judaism as your moral guidance, you must decry the modern Israel, it's in the book. It's one of the 2000 commandments, right there beside the play-dough snakes.

If you are Jewish in your heart, and want the best for your people, and are fiercely patriotic, of course you will support Israel as a viable state for Jews, whether it means calling the wrath of the entire planet upon our heads just once more or not.

I think Jews like Israel because it is an emotional thing to have our homeland back for ourselves. Because we have been a nation, a well defined, clearly separate nation for two thousand years without having a country of our own. Now we have Israel, of course it feels like having a piece of god in our hearts.

But it is not God that gave us Israel, but satan. Israel, by its sheer force of existence and need to fight off wars and terror, by its sheer presence of being an eyesore in an arab sea, is the ONLY reason that calls the wrath of the world on the JEWS since Hitler has come and gone.

Okay... so we want Israel, we love it, but it's destroying us...

Hey. "Israel is like a woman to me. You can't live with her, and you can't live without her."

JEWS had many ways of classifying themselves: by race (Ashkenazi or Sephardic), by religion (Reform, Orthodox, modern Orthodox, Frum, Lebowitch, etc. etc.), by degree of compliance to the covenant (Kosher, Kosher at home, secular, completely secular, etc.), by brains (stupid and smart) by political ideation (Zionist, Relgiously guided, secular, reasonable, etc.), and now... a new one:

A new way for Jews to be classified is:

"I want the stupidity but yet our heart's desire of supporting Israel as a Jewish state"

and

"I wish to give up Israel for it costs our nation too much in public rep and may lead to another holocaust eventually, it has a very strong potential for it."

The beauty of this division is that it is independent from all or mostly all other classificational divisions; you can be tall, short, fat, slim, orthodox or secular, sephardic or ashkenazi, doesn't matter, you have the same chance and the same freedom to join either the pro- or the anti-israel side as a Jew, nothing can influence your choice that is a pre-existing Jewish quality, but your conscience, which is not an exclusively Jewish quality.

I like this.

I also like the fact that it is a division that is not opposable. Jews have allowed all classificiations that entered the mainstream of Jewish life. Except for one, and I am fully happy that it became an exception: The "Jews for Jesus" movement, which is the most despicable movement any Jew ever thought up. In essence, not in practice, but in basic ideological and theological essence, the only thing that separates Jews from Christians is the belief or lack of it that Jesus was God. If you want to udnermine that, you are undermining Judaism in its basic tenets. So I am glad we kicked the butt of those in favour of J4J.

But Israel is a real stupid mistake many people, many nations, a politically fertile situation in history, and many emotions created.

Of course, now there is also the catastrophy of how to roll up and ship the Jews and their belongings out of Israel, and where to ship the cargo once we got the crates filled.

Indeed, where?

Are we, Jews, so really much of a trouble for the world?

Should we apologize for existing?

-------

I tell you folks, it's not easy being a conscientious, thinking, ethical, and reasonable Jew these days.

A classic case of "damned if you Jew, damned if you Don't."