All going well, Israel’s Lunar Lander is due to land on the Moon on April 11. Here’s an illustration of its amazing journey through space. Quite a technological feat.
Israel’s election – a backgrounder | AIR
On December 24, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu announced that new elections would take place on April 9. This briefing examines how Israeli elections work, the reasons for the early elections; and analyses recent polling data.
Benny Morris on Why He’s Written His Last Word on the Israel-Arab Conflict | Haaretz
After 30 years, he’s giving up. “This is the last book I will write about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,” declares historian Benny Morris, sitting on the balcony of his home, overlooking distant lush hilltops covered with cypresses and pines. A pioneer in researching the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and one of the most prominent Israeli historians of his generation, he has had his fill of the exhausting and bloody cycle that he has documented for the past three decades. “The decades of studying the conflict, which led to nine books, left me with a feeling of deep despair. I’ve done all I can,” he says. “I’ve written enough about a conflict that has no solution, mainly due to the Palestinians’ consistent rejection of a solution of two states for two peoples.”
This weary feeling about the bitter encounter between the two sparring peoples is given profound expression in the new Hebrew edition of his book, “One State, Two States: Resolving the Israel/Palestine Conflict” (first published in English in 2009). In the book, Morris describes for what he says is the last time another chapter in the history of relations between Israel and the Palestinians. Given the circumstances, he concludes his research with an incisive political essay that could be read as an indictment. “It’s a historical essay that has a political purpose and a political explanation,” he admits. “My aim is to open readers’ eyes to the truth. The objective is to expose the goals of the Palestinian national movement to extinguish the Jewish national project and to inherit all of Palestine for the Arabs and Islam.”
Experiences and perceptions of antisemitism – Second survey on discrimination and hate crime against Jews in the EU
In December 2018, The EU completed a survey of 16,500 people who identified as being Jewish across twelve of its states.
In their words,
The findings make for a sobering read. They underscore that antisemitism remains pervasive across the EU – and has, in many ways, become disturbingly normalised. The important information provided herein can support policymakers across the EU in stepping up their efforts to ensure the safety and dignity of all Jewish people living in the EU.
The full report may be downloaded from here.
Half of evangelicals support Israel because they believe it is important for fulfilling end-times prophecy | Washington Post
Well before he was asked to offer a prayer at Monday’s ceremony marking the U.S. Embassy’s move from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, earning the enmity of Mitt Romney, Pastor Robert Jeffress offered tangential insight into why he and many evangelicals think the move was so important.
“Jerusalem has been the object of the affection of both Jews and Christians down through history and the touchstone of prophecy,” Jeffress told CNN last year. “But, most importantly, God gave Jerusalem — and the rest of the Holy Land — to the Jewish people.”
The latter half of that quote hints at the deep religious meaning of the existence of Israel for Jeffress and other Christians. As University of North Texas professor Elizabeth Oldmixon told Vox last year, the issue of recognizing Jerusalem is inextricable from that belief.
“The tenet of Christian Zionism is that God’s promise of the Holy Land to the Jews is eternal. It’s not just something in antiquity,” Oldmixon said. “When we talk about the Holy Land, God’s promise of the Holy Land, we’re talking about real estate on both sides of the Jordan River. So the sense of a greater Israel and expansionism is really important to this community. Jerusalem is just central to that. It’s viewed as a historical and biblical capital.”
Polling bolsters Oldmixon’s explanation. In December, LifeWay Research conducted a poll evaluating the views of evangelical Americans on issues related to Israel and the politics of the Middle East. (The definition used to identify evangelicals, we’ll note, was more specific than most polls necessitate.) Among the questions was one about the biblical promise of the Holy Land to Abraham and his descendants. Two-thirds of respondents strongly agreed that the promise was an eternal one from God. (read more)
Lifeway’s full report may be downloaded from here.
Verses and Reality – What the Koran really says about Jews | AIR
The question of the Koran’s attitude toward Jews is not merely a theoretical-academic matter. Because of the centrality of the Koran in the life of the Muslim and of Muslim communities past and present, this question has had, and still has in our day, a fundamental influence on the formation of attitudes toward Jews. True, this is not the only factor and more everyday ones also come into play. But the topic remains an important one to study and become familiar with.
Anti-Semitic incidents were on the rise even before shooting | NZ Herald
NEW YORK (AP) — Swastikas scrawled into Jewish students’ notebooks. Headstones toppled and desecrated by vandals at Jewish cemeteries. Jews falsely blamed for challenges facing the nation.
The shooting rampage that killed 11 people at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life Synagogue on Saturday is being decried as the deadliest attack on Jews in U.S. history, allegedly carried out by a virulently anti-Semitic gunman. The carnage, however unprecedented, is not an aberration.
Year after year, decade after decade, anti-Semitism proves to be among the most entrenched and pervasive forms of hatred and bigotry in the United States.
Jews make up only about 2 percent of the U.S. population, but in annual FBI data they repeatedly account for more than half of the Americans targeted by hate crimes committed due to religious bias. The Anti-Defamation League identified 1,986 anti-Semitic incidents in the U.S. in 2017, up from 1,267 in 2016, and also reported a major increase in anti-Semitic online harassment.
Why You Should Know about—and Read—Jacob Neusner | Logos.com
Jacob Neusner
NZFOI receives no commissions for any product sales through this article. We partly reproduce it, here merely to raise awareness of Neusner’s writings amongst our readers who may never have heard of him.
If you don’t know who Jacob Neusner is, it’s time to bone up. Apart from his exceptional prolific publishing output (and that’s an understatement; see point one below), he was known both for his highly acerbic nature to some and his deeply affectionate loyalty to others. He was also, as my final point suggests, the consummate scholar, but not in the way you’d expect.
Neusner was one of those incredibly brilliant individuals who always seem destined to create havoc through their combination of ingenuity, intellect, and industriousness. Neusner possessed all three. He related how he was never intellectually challenged in his youth until he encountered the Talmud in October 1954. Although raised Jewish, he began learning Hebrew much later than his Jewish peers. Still, he ended up resetting the paradigm for the study of Judaism, from its earlier apologetic form to rigorous critical inquiry through the use of academic methods.
The similarities between Jewish and Christian biblical commentaries | CJN
Maimonides in Cordoba
Jewish life in Europe in the Middle Ages was often precarious. Medieval Jews were expelled from England, France, Spain and Portugal. They were forced to participate in public disputations that were usually rigged – they had to defend Judaism without being accused of blasphemy against Christian doctrines. They were accused of and punished for such fabricated crimes as ritual murder and host desecration. Crusaders on their way to the Holy Land to kill Muslim “infidels” often practised on Jewish infidels along the way, decimating a number of Jewish communities.
But on a day-to-day basis, Jews, the only tolerated minority in medieval Christendom, had many rights, including the right of self-government. In recent generations scholars, have also highlighted the intellectual connections between medieval Jews and Christians, especially in the area of Bible commentary.
