Nissan 4
May goodness and kindness pursue me all the days of my life (Psalms 23:1).
What a strange expression! Goodness and kindness should pursue me, as though I was fleeing from them?!
Perhaps the Psalmist had in mind the verse: "You shall pursue righteousness, only righteousness" (Deuteronomy 16:20). Many people have things re versed. They pursue goodness and kindness for themselves, but leave righteousness to somehow catch up with them. The Torah dictates a different order. A person should pursue righteousness and allow goodness and kindness to catch up.
If we asked people for their goal for life, many would say, "to achieve happiness." While this answer is certainly understandable, happiness is not the primary goal of creation of man. Indeed, the Scripture states very clearly: "Man was created in order to toil" (Job 5:7). And the Talmud explains that this means to work on the Divine mission, to fulfill the Divine will. If our primary goal is happiness, we are certain to be frustrated. The average person's life is abundant in distressful happenings. If the primary goal is to do th Divine will, then those times of happiness that do occur can be enjoyed, and the times of ...   more »

by Rabbi Shimon Apisdorf
Putting the Seder into perspective.

The holiday of Passover marks the anniversary of the birth of the Jewish nation. The story of the Jewish nation is one of individuals who became a family who became a people. The great individuals who laid the spiritual foundation of Jewish peoplehood were Abraham and Sarah, their son and daughter-in-law Isaac and Rebecca, and their son and daughters-in-law Jacob, Rachel, and Leah.
From Jacob, Rachel, and Leah came a family of 70 people who, due to a famine in Israel, were forced to migrate to Egypt. In Egypt this family grew and prospered to such an extent that they eventually came to be seen as a threat by their Egyptian hosts. Respect and admiration turned to contempt, and finally to an organized program of enslavement and oppression. After 210 years, and a series of unheeded warnings by Moses to Pharaoh which resulted in the Ten Plagues, God liberated a nation which had grown from the original family of 70 people. Seven weeks later this newly conceived nation received the Torah at Mount Sinai.
The Haggadah is the story of the birth of the Jews as a people. It deals primarily ...   more »

BERLIN (Reuters) - The European Union should move toward forming a common army, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said in a newspaper interview published on Friday.
Asked how she saw the EU developing in the next 50 years, Merkel told daily newspaper Bild: "In the EU itself we must come closer to a common European army."
Germany holds the EU's rotating presidency for the first half of this year.
Last year, Polish President Lech Kaczynski said his country wanted a new 100,000-strong European Union army created to work with NATO in trouble spots in the world or to defend Europe.Reuters Pictures
Merkel is hosting a summit this weekend in Berlin where the bloc will celebrate its 50th anniversary and unveil a declaration setting out its values and achievements.
Merkel hopes the so-called "Berlin Declaration" will be a springboard for her revival of the European constitution, rejected by French and Dutch voters in 2005.
Merkel told Bild the EU's 27 member states often spent too long grappling with issues under the bloc's existing structure.
"To change that, we need the EU constitution, which suits the decision mechanism of the larger EU," she said.
Germany has vowed to present a "road map" for ...   more »

By Meredith Buel
Washington
A group of nuclear weapons specialists has issued ominous warnings before members of the U.S. Congress that terrorist groups like al-Qaida could launch a massive attack on the United States and currently there is little to deter or defend against such a strike. VOA correspondent Meredith Buel has details from Capitol Hill.
Sidney Drell, an arms control specialist and physicist at Stanford University, told members of the Senate Armed Services Committee the United States has entered, what he calls, a "dangerous time."
"I view us on the precipice of entering a new and more dangerous nuclear era with the spread of technology, which means, in particular, the enrichment of uranium, which makes it possible for more societies to enter the nuclear club," he said. "That raises the danger of nuclear weapons getting in the hands of terrorist groups and others unrestrained by the norms of civilized behavior as we know it and therefore these weapons become more likely to be used."
The dean of Georgetown University's school of Foreign Service, Robert Gallucci, agrees.
Gallucci, a former U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Political-Military Affairs, says the most dangerous threat is that a terrorist group will smuggle ...   more »

Texas farmers are stepping up their opposition to the Trans-Texas Corridor, a massive highway project that ultimately could take about half a million acres of the state out of agricultural production – and according to opponents possibly hasten the advent of a North American Union.
"Our members are overwhelmingly opposed to the Trans-Texas Corridor," said Farm Bureau President Kenneth Dierschke, a grain and cotton farmer from San Angelo. "There's never been any doubt that the impact on agriculture would be negative, but now we see a growing number of people who believe the TTC would be bad for all of Texas."
The organization has called the proposal a "disaster" for farm and ranch businesses that lie in its path, whose owners also are discovering that they have allies in their battle.
In fact, Republican Rep. Rick Hardcastle has filed legislation to delay construction of the controversial Trans-Texas Corridor because the "critical point for me is when the state disregards the personal property rights of hard-working Texans."
Hardcastle, whose district has little support for the project, filed House Bill 3831 in the Texas House of Representatives, which seeks to halt the project until specific improvements on Highway 35 are made. He ...   more »