Here's the thing about Shavuot -- we are celebrating the gift of the giving of the Torah to us, the Jewish people, on Mount Sinai. And since every single one of us, waiting at the bottom of the mountain with eager anticipation of this great gift, is unique, we all receive the Torah in the way we can best understand it. That's what I was explaining to my 7th grade Jewish studies class before inviting them to my third annual Shavuot dinner and late night learning session.
For four years, I was a Jewish studies teacher at a Los Angeles community day school (students are primarily from Reform and Conservative elementary feeder schools), where I started the tradition of inviting students over for a huge Shavuot feast that lasts until 11:45 p.m. The highlights of the evening include my various homemade cheesecakes (a traditional food on Shavuot) and the special guests I bring in to learn with us.
I accidentally started this tradition my first year at this school, when I was explaining to the class about the custom to stay up all night learning Torah on Shavuot as a tikkun (fixing) for the Jews who overslept the morning the ...   more »

The scenes were flashed around the globe: lines of burnt-out Egyptian vehicles stretching across the desert, Syrian bunkers blown up and abandoned on the Golan Heights, Jordanian tanks smoldering on the roads to Hebron and Nablus, and the Israeli flag fluttering along the Suez Canal, atop Mount Hermon, and over the Temple Mount. In six short but intense days starting on June 5, 1967, Israeli forces had accomplished one of the greatest victories in military history, decimating the combined Arab armies and conquering territories more than three times the size of the Jewish state. Israel and the Middle East - one might even say the world - would never be the same.
For the Arab world, the impact of the Six-Day War was both far-reaching and profound. It sounded a death-knell for pan-Arabism, the secular nationalist movement that had dominated the region's politics for the previous 50 years. Egyptian President Gamal Abdul Nasser, the venerated embodiment of that idea, had been humiliated, as had the forces of Baathist Syria and Iraq. No longer would Nasser, or indeed any other pan-Arab leader, effectively demand Arab unity or command the allegiance of millions in the so-called Arab street.
In place of the ...   more »

By Julie Stahl
CNSNews.com Jerusalem Bureau Chief
May 14, 2007

Jerusalem (CNSNews.com) - Israel cannot tolerate ongoing rocket attacks on its southern communities, Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni said on Monday.
She spoke one day after government ministers decided to step up operations against attacks from the Gaza Strip. They will not launch a full-scale military invasion, however.
The violence isn't all directed at Israel: Clashes among Palestinian factions -- Hamas and Fatah -- continued in Gaza on Monday, despite a truce mediated overnight by Egypt.
Two Palestinians were reported killed on Monday, bringing the total number of dead to seven since renewed violence between Hamas and Fatah erupted over the weekend.
The clashes, sparked by the assassination of a senior Fatah militant, are the worst since Hamas and Fatah formed a unity government in March. The fighting has sparked fresh fears of a Palestinian civil war.
Also on Monday, Palestinian Authority Interior Minister Hani Al-Qawasmi resigned. His ministry is responsible for overseeing the security forces.
Most P.A. forces are loyal to P.A. Chairman Mahmoud Abbas while the Executive Force in Gaza is committed to Hamas.
Abbas reportedly deployed thousands of extra troops in the Gaza Strip recently, raising tensions ...   more »

As the number of Christian residents in the Holy Land continues to drop, an adviser to Jerusalem Mayor Uri Lupolianski called on the government on Sunday to ease restrictions on family reunification for Christian Arabs living in the capital.
"The first ones who will disappear from the city are the Christians," Motti Levy, the mayor's adviser for Christian and Arab affairs, told The Jerusalem Post in a telephone interview.
"Our task as a municipality is to ease matters for the dwindling Christian population, and not to make things harder for them," he said.
About 10,000 Christians live in Jerusalem.
Levy noted that the ongoing exodus comes as the increasingly-educated and professional Christian residents emigrate to the West for better job opportunities and a higher quality of life.
"They are victims of their own success," he said.
In unusually frank language, the former Foreign Ministry official conceded that the economic situation in the capital was "not good" and equated the exit of middle-class Christians to that of Israelis leaving the city for better jobs in central Israel, or a better quality of life in the suburbs.
"So long as our situation in Jerusalem deteriorates, the Christians are the first who are ...   more »

Central Bureau of Statistics data shows despite drop, Jerusalem remains Israel's largest city, with over 730,000 residents. Sixty-four percent of residents are Jews, as opposed to 32 percent Muslims. In special Knesset meeting, prime minister says will work to strengthen capital
Yoav Friedman Latest Update:
Jerusalem loses some 6,000 residents a year, a Central Bureau of Statistics report revealed on Monday.  
Demography  
Hamas may conquer Jerusalem within 12 years, says mayor / Ronny Sofer  
Uri Lupolianski warns cabinet ministers that demographic shift could lead to Palestinian group gaining control of Israel’s capital. As government discusses 40-year anniversary of city's reunification, Olmert promises to invest in its development     
In 2006, some 10,900 people moved to the capital, while the number of Jerusalemites moving out was estimated at 17,300, half of whom were aged 20-34.  
According to the data, Jerusalem is the largest city in Israel, both in terms of area, with a 31,000 acre jurisdiction, and population, with 732,100 residents.  
At the end of 2006, 469,400 (some 64 percent) of the capital's residents were Jews, 239,100 (32 percent) were Muslims, 14,700 (2 percent) were Christians and 8,700 (about 1 percent) were not classified by religion.  ...   more »

Likud MK Yisrael Katz proposed a bill Monday that would ensure maintaining the Jewish majority in Jerusalem.
The bill proposes to merge the communities around the capital into a 'Jerusalem Regional Council,' while still maintaining the communities' municipal independence.
The proposal followed the special cabinet meeting held Sunday on Jerusalem, in which Jerusalem Mayor Uri Lupolianski warned that within 12 years Hamas could take over the city demographically, without firing a shot.
"Jerusalem could, God forbid, end up not under Jewish sovereignty, but rather that of Hamas," Lupolianski said at the meeting, ahead of the 40th anniversary of the unification of the capital.
Hamas, Lupolianski said, "knows that it is possible to capture Jerusalem through demography within 12 years. We need a plan, and not crumbs, so that Jerusalem will remain Israel's capital forever."
Katz explained that according to his bill, residents of Ma'aleh Adumim, Givat Ze'ev, Beitar Ilit and Mevaseret Zion would be able to vote for both a Jerusalem mayor and their own municipality.
According to the lawmaker, several coalition members were in favor of the bill. If it passed, he said, the Jewish majority would get a boost and there would not be a demographic revolution in ...   more »

Hizbullah leader: 'Resistance' is stronger today than before, UNIFIL force can't stop us
Yaakov Lappin
Hizbullah "could launch between 1000 and 3000 rockets daily," its secretary general Hassan Nasrallah claimed in an interview with a Dubai statellite TV station last week.  
Nasrallah's comments were reproduced on Hizbullah's Arabic language website on Saturday, under the heading: "We could launch... 3000 rockets daily in a war in July."  
Last week, the UN's Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon, said he was disturbed by the levels of arms being smuggled to Hizbullah via the Syrian-Lebanese border. Ki-moon told the UN Security Council that evidence of the smuggling of arms was "detailed and substantial." 
During his interview, Nasrallah boasted that Hizbullah had amassed tens of thousands of rockets since the war last summer, adding that the international UNIFIL force stationed in southern Lebanon would be unable to stop Hizbullah from attacking Israel.  
"When I said Hizbullah possesses more than 12 thousand missiles and then I said that we have more than 20 thousand rockets, this means that maybe we have 30 thousand or 80 thousand rockets or maybe more," Nasrallah told the 'Qalam Rasas' program on Dubai Satellite TV.  
While Hizbuallah fired between ...   more »

By Gunther Latsch
A mysterious decimation of bee populations has German beekeepers worried, while a similar phenomenon in the United States is gradually assuming catastrophic proportions. The consequences for agriculture and the economy could be enormous.
 DDP
Is the mysterous decimation of bee populations in the US and Germany a result of GM crops?
Walter Haefeker is a man who is used to painting grim scenarios. He sits on the board of directors of the German Beekeepers Association (DBIB) and is vice president of the European Professional Beekeepers Association. And because griping is part of a lobbyist's trade, it is practically his professional duty to warn that "the very existence of beekeeping is at stake."
The problem, says Haefeker, has a number of causes, one being the varroa mite, introduced from Asia, and another is the widespread practice in agriculture of spraying wildflowers with herbicides and practicing monoculture. Another possible cause, according to Haefeker, is the controversial and growing use of genetic engineering in agriculture.
As far back as 2005, Haefeker ended an article he contributed to the journal Der Kritischer Agrarbericht (Critical Agricultural Report) with an Albert Einstein quote: "If the bee disappeared off the surface of the globe ...   more »

The House votes to expand the law for sexuality and gender bias. The White House says that's unnecessary.
By Richard Simon, Times Staff Writer
WASHINGTON — A long-stalled bill that would expand the federal hate crime law to cover violent acts based on a victim's gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or disability is headed for approval in the Democratic-controlled Congress but faces a White House veto threat.
The House on Thursday approved the measure, the first major expansion of the hate crime statute since it was enacted in 1968. Senate approval is expected soon, putting the controversial bill on the president's desk for the first time since it was proposed nearly a decade ago.
Under intense pressure from conservative religious organizations to derail the bill, the White House on Thursday called it "unnecessary and constitutionally questionable," issuing the latest in a string of veto threats aimed at the congressional Democratic majority.
The measure was spurred by a number of high-profile incidents, including the 1998 killing of Matthew Shepard, a gay college student who was brutally beaten in Wyoming and left to die tied to a fence.
Shepard's mother, Judy, who lobbied for the bill's passage, addressed House Democrats shortly before ...   more »

First came the bird flu. Now China’s pigs are succumbing to a violent infection. Is a human disease next?
May 10, 2007 - In an outbreak reminiscent of the early stages of SARS and bird flu, pigs are growing sick and dying across China’s southeastern Guangdong province. Roughly 3,000 pigs have been infected on hundreds of family farms and about 300 have died. Early reports from Chinese scientists attribute the outbreak to porcine respiratory and reproductive syndrome (PRRS), which first appeared 18 years ago and was originally called Mystery Swine Disease. But certain symptoms of the current outbreak, including massive hemorrhaging, are not consistent with PRRS, and might indicate that the disease—most likely caused by a virus—has mutated. The outbreak has renewed fears that a viral pandemic is in the making in southern China. Richard Webby, an influenza researcher at St. Jude Research Hospital in Memphis, Tenn., and Marie Gramer, a veterinarian and expert on swine influenza at the University of Minnesota, spoke by phone with NEWSWEEK’s Barrett Sheridan on the risks of the recent outbreak, and China’s response. Excerpts:
NEWSWEEK: Is an epidemic in pigs more dangerous to humans than one in, say, birds?
Richard Webby: We think so. ...   more »

By Joe Kovacs
© 2007 WorldNetDaily.com

President George W. Bush stands with an actor in period garb today during a tour of the Jamestown Settlement, in Jamestown, Va. The president and Mrs. Bush joined the celebration honoring the 400th anniversary of the settlement, but made no specific mention of its strong Christian heritage.
President Bush commemorated America's 400th anniversary during a ceremony at the Jamestown Settlement in Virginia today, but made no specific mention of the Christian faith, the spread of which was the primary purpose for creation of the settlement.
"The story of Jamestown will always have a special place in American history," Bush said. "It's the story of a great migration from the Old World to the New. It is a story of hardship overcome by resolve. It's a story of the Tidewater settlement that laid the foundation of our great democracy."
As WND has reported, the Jamestown settlement, which predated the Plymouth, Mass., Pilgrims by 13 years, was founded with the primary instruction from King James of England that its members propagate the Gospel of Jesus Christ. This year is the celebration of the 400th anniversary of that founding.
"Today we celebrate that moment as a great ...   more »

By Paul L. Williams Ph.D., (author of THE DAY OF ISLAM)
With the able assistance of Douglas Hagmann, Bill Krayer and Michael Travis
Friday, May 11, 2007  
Dr. Paul Williams at the entrance of Islamberg
Situated within a dense forest at the foothills of the Catskill Mountains on the outskirts of Hancock, New York, Islamberg is not an ideal place for a summer vacation unless, of course, you are an exponent of the Jihad or a fan of Osama bin Laden.
The 70 acre complex is surrounded with "No trespassing" signs; the rocky terrain is infested with rattlesnakes; and the woods are home to black bears, coyotes, wolves, and a few bobcats.  
Muslim Lane
The entrance to the community is at the bottom of a very steep hill that is difficult to navigate even on a bright sunny day in May. The road, dubbed Muslim Lane, is unpaved and marred by deep crevices that have been created by torrential downpours. On a wintry day, few, save those with all terrain vehicles, could venture forth from the remote encampment.
A sentry post has been established at the base of the hill.
The sentry, at the time of this visit, ...   more »