Tikkun Olam

For years there has been an on-and-off, unofficial debate among Jewish and non-Jewish scholars as well as lay people on whether or not Jews constituted a race, ethnic group, or are just a group of people living all over the world in different cultures, united only by a common religion.  Let's examine, if only superficially, what these concepts are. Here below are a few definitions of race : 1. A local geographic or global human population distinguished as a more or less distinct group by genetically transmitted physical characteristics.   2. A group of people united or classified together on the basis of common history, nationality, or geographic distribution: the German race. 3. A genealogical line; a lineage. 4. Humans considered as a group .  Okay, so what is an ethnic group ? Here's a definition , with "Hebrews" or "Israelites" as one example: Noun 1. ethnic group - people of the same race or nationality who share a ...

(nablopomo day 4) It turns out the Jews are not only a religion, but were a genetically-linked ethnic group all along, as reported in Bloomberg BusinessWeek .  Gil Atzmon, Li Hao, Itzik Pe-er, Edward Burns and others did the complex genetic analysis entitled Abraham's Children in the Genome Era at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York. The purpose of the study was to find genetic markers for various diseases, such as heart disease, diabetes and cancer.  But the study also showed that all groups of Jews are related to each other, and--despite the Arabs' contention that Jews have and had no connection to the land of Israel, rather  that they are European--that Jews have Middle Eastern origins , and that the two groups, Middle Eastern and European Jews, apparently split off from each other approximately 2,500 years ago. Also read Aish's article about this discovery.  It's interesting that the study shows that, despite some theories that Ashkenazic ...

This is very unusual for me, posting motzei Shabbat (Sat. night, after the Sabbath is over), but I have to, because of that darn Nablopomo. I knew I shouldn't have gotten into this. . . I do have something to write about, however. And you could say it is even on this month's topic of "Best." Mainly because, Shabbat is the BEST (see, I'm highlighting it so you'll know it's the theme) day of the week, any way you look at it! The focus of the week is Shabbat, if not exactly at the beginning of the week, then mid-week: by Tuesday afternoon we're already thinking about it, what to cook, what's doing, if anything, in the community or at the shul--who's available to invite--when we do invite someone over. . . which I hadn't really planned on doing this Shabbat: we just got through the a very busy week of Chanukah, with end-to-end Shabbat dinners (this year there were 2 Shabbatot Chanukah ) with lots of people, the first Shabbat at a friend...