Cool It, Everybody

Link.

NEW YORK (CBS) ― Police are mobilizing a massive presence in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn in the wake of increased tension between African American and Jewish communities.

Leaders from both communities have come together recently to preach cooperation among residents of the neighborhood where African Americans and Hassidic Jews live side by side. But recent violence has showed that religion and race don't always mix.

"I definitely feel [like there's unrest] because I see it everyday. I'm around here a lot and that's what I'm hearing," said Crown Heights resident Anthony Rios.

Another resident, Joe Morgenstein, agreed, saying he hears "a lot of racial slurs all day" in the community.

Since 1991, when riots broke out after a 7-year-old black boy was killed by a Hassidic driver, Crown Heights has been hurt off-and-on by periodic tension. In the past month, 20-year-old Andrew Charles, who is black, was beaten up, and the suspect is Jewish.

Then last week, 16-year-old Alon Sherman, who is Jewish, had his jaw broken while being allegedly robbed by two black teens. The attackers were arrested Thursday. Namor Clarke, 17, and Basean Parker, 14, will be charged as adults for last Friday's assault on Sherman, officials said...

this is a funny visual - george W and some Frum cats

Oh word? Moses was all high up? - not Moishe's words

High on Mount Sinai, Moses was on psychedelic drugs when he heard God deliver the Ten Commandments, an Israeli researcher claimed in a study published this week.

Such mind-altering substances formed an integral part of the religious rites of Israelites in biblical times, Benny Shanon, a professor of cognitive psychology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem wrote in the Time and Mind journal of philosophy.

"As far Moses on Mount Sinai is concerned, it was either a supernatural cosmic event, which I don't believe, or a legend, which I don't believe either, or finally, and this is very probable, an event that joined Moses and the people of Israel under the effect of narcotics," Shanon told Israeli public radio on Tuesday.

Moses was probably also on drugs when he saw the "burning bush," suggested Shanon, who said he himself has dabbled with such substances.

"The Bible says people see sounds, and that is a clasic phenomenon," he said citing the example of religious ceremonies in the Amazon in which drugs are used that induce people to "see music."

He mentioned his own experience when he used ayahuasca, a powerful psychotropic plant, during a religious ceremony in Brazil's Amazon forest in 1991. "I experienced visions that had spiritual-religious connotations," Shanon said.

He said the psychedelic effects of ayahuasca were comparable to those produced by concoctions based on bark of the acacia tree, that is frequently mentioned in the Bible.

You have heard of Jewish Gangsters, what do you know about Jewish Pirates?

From Boing Boing

A forthcoming, untitled book by historian Ed Kritzler argues that many of the "Spanish" pirates of the Caribbean were in fact Ladino-speaking Sephardic Jews who took to the seas to flee/avenge the Inquisition.

While some Jews, like Samuel Pallache, took up piracy in part to help make a better life for expelled Spanish Jews, Kritzler said others were motivated by revenge for the Inquisition.

One such pirate was Moses Cohen Henriques, who helped plan one of history's largest heists against Spain. In 1628, Henriques set sail with Dutch West India Co. Admiral Piet Hein, whose own hatred of Spain was fueled by four years spent as a galley slave aboard a Spanish ship. Henriques and Hein boarded Spanish ships off Cuba and seized shipments of New World gold and silver worth in today's dollars about the same as Disney's total box office for "Dead Man's Chest."

Henriques set up his own pirate island off the coast of Brazil afterward, and even though his role in the raid was disclosed during the Spanish Inquisition, he was never caught, Kritzler told The Journal.

Sarkozy realizes he needs to stem tide of anti-semitism in France

and people are against this, Fu&4ing amazing.

PARIS (Reuters) - French President Nicolas Sarkozy, facing a tide of criticism over his call for schoolchildren to "adopt" Jewish child victims of the Holocaust, hit back on Friday saying France had to raise children "with open eyes".

In a speech praising faith that also drew fire from secularists, Sarkozy told France's Jewish community on Wednesday that every 10-year-old schoolchild should be "entrusted with the memory of a French child victim of the Holocaust".

The proposal unleashed a storm of protest from teachers, psychologists and his political foes who said it would unfairly burden children with the guilt of previous generations and some could be traumatized by identifying with a Holocaust victim.

More than 11,100 French Jewish children were deported from France to Auschwitz and other Nazi death camps in eastern Europe during the German World War Two occupation.

"The emotional burden can have negative consequences for a child who is developing," Gilles Moindrot, general secretary of the Snuipp-FSU trade union which represents most primary school teachers, said in a statement...