by Rabbi Yonassan Gershom
(This material is excerpted from Chapter Four of Jewish Themes in Star Trek by Yonassan Gershom. Copyright 2004 by Yonassan Gershom. All rights reserved. Posted here with the author's permission.)
...We come now to the most famous Jewish influence on Vulcan culture, the "live long and prosper" hand gesture. This "Vulcan salute, " as it has come to be called, was invented on the set by Leonard Nimoy during the filming of the second-season opener, "Amok Time." In this episode, Spock goes into something like a male estrus cycle, called pon farr in the Vulcan language. Comparing himself to a salmon swimming upstream to spawn, Spock tells Kirk that he must return to Vulcan to mate with his betrothed bride, T'Pring, or die trying. The wedding ceremony would be the first glimpse of Spock's homeworld in the series.
 Nimoy felt that there should be some kind of distinctive greeting among Vulcans, analogous to a handshake or a bow. Alan Dean Foster's novelization, based on an early script, has Spock kneeling before the Vulcan matriarch, T'Pau, who places her hands on his shoulders, like royalty dubbing a knight. But Nimoy didn't care for this. Previous episodes had ...   more »

By Stan Goodenough
Jun 24, 2007


As expected, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has tried to capitalize on the “new reality” created by the Hamas takeover of Gaza by pushing Israel into agreeing to initiate an express track towards the creation of a Palestinian state.
The American reportedly made her move during Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s trip to Washington last week.
According to reports in the Israeli press Sunday, Rice tried to nudge Israel into negotiating a final status solution with PA chairman Mahmoud Abbas – but then holding its implementation in abeyance until he was strengthened in his position as “Palestinian” leader.
Although Olmert is ready to help bolster Abbas, and has himself chosen to see the Hamas putsch as useful for helping restart the dead-in-the-water diplomatic process, he was not prepared to agree to what has been coined a “shelf agreement.”
At least not yet.
For Rice – who appears to have been given President George W. Bush’s blessing to set the direction and pace of the land-for-peace process – it is increasingly important to clinch some kind of a deal between Israel and the “Palestinians” before the current administration is rendered a lame duck.
The secretary ...   more »

By Stan Goodenough
Jun 24, 2007
The Israeli government Sunday set the Jewish state once more on course towards destruction by opening the door for the creation of a Fatah-controlled Palestinian state in Judea and Samaria.
In their weekly cabinet meeting, all except two of the ministers approved a proposal by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to recognize the newly appointed Palestinian Authority and release hundreds of millions of dollars in suspended tax funds to help get PA chairman Mahmoud Abbas on his feet.
Israel’s move – which is wholeheartedly approved by the US administration – comes after Abbas showed himself incapable of exercising what authority he had been given over the previously Hamas-controlled PA.
As such, Olmert has moved to establish an artificial Israel-and-US-created entity, and has provided it with a temporary life-support system in the hope that by doing so the Arabs on the street will swing their support behind Fatah and away from Hamas.
Apparently lost behind this smokescreen is the reality that Abbas and his Fatah are antisemitic terrorists whose hands are drenched with the blood of Jews, and who remain as committed as Hamas to eradicating the Jewish state from the Middle East albeit as secularites ...   more »

The Palestinian Authority intelligence chief on Sunday accused Iran of close involvement in Hamas' violent takeover of Gaza, saying Teheran funded the group and trained hundreds of their gunmen.
The intelligence chief, Tawfiq Tirawi, said the battle for Gaza earlier this month was carefully orchestrated. "It was a joint program with Iran," he said.
In implied criticism of Syria, he noted that Hamas' leadership is based there. He said that a month before the battle for Gaza began, the Syrian-based leaders of Hamas met with the heads of the Hamas military wing in an undisclosed Arab capital. "In this meeting, they discussed all the details of the operation." Tirawi told a news conference.
Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri dismissed the allegations of Hamas-Iran cooperation as "baseless fabrication," and denied Hamas fighters had been trained in Iran.
On Saturday, Hamas hardliner Mahmoud Zahar was quoted as telling a German news magazine that he had personally carried $42 million in cash from Iran across the Gaza-Egypt border.
Tirawi warned that Hamas militants are hoarding weapons in the West Bank and might try to target Palestinian government installations there. The West Bank is a stronghold of the rival Fatah movement of moderate Palestinian ...   more »