by Lori Palatnik
Understanding the mystical attraction of song.
Let's face it, unless it's somebody's birthday, when do people sit around singing together?
Yet singing is fun, kids love it, and for everyone it's a real release. And when it's done on Shabbat, it can be another extension of the tremendous pleasure that Shabbat has to offer.
We can even understand the pleasure of singing from a look at the Hebrew language. Lezamer means "to sing," sharing the same root as the word lizmor which means "to prune." The fact that they come from the same word is no accident.
When we prune a bush we are removing old, dead growth that is inhibiting its growth; we're shaping the bush to bring out its own beauty. The same thing happens to us with song.
When we sing, we "prune" away the excess baggage that we carry around, revealing our essence. The harmony of music releases the disharmony within us.
Thus we fill Shabbat with song. We revel in the pleasure of getting rid of the excess, the disharmonious things that have accumulated during the past six days, leaving us, as "Shalom Aleichem," the first song of Shabbat says, with a ...   more »

If anyone in the Cracow ghetto stood a chance of surviving the Holocaust, it was Avraham Shapiro*. At 22 years old, he was a smart and resourceful young man whose mind had been honed during years of yeshiva study. He understood that the Germans were out to annihilate every Jew, and he took the precautions necessary to save himself and his middle-aged parents. He got expertly counterfeited papers identifying the three members of his family as foreign nationals. He built and stocked a bunker in a remote place underneath the ghetto. And he procured a map of the sewers and planned out an escape route for the day the ghetto would be liquidated. His master scheme was to escape to the safety of Hungary.
Then one day an 18-year-old neighbor named Chaya Rivka knocked on the Shapiros' door holding a baby. The baby, who was 20 months old and who could neither stand nor sit up by himself, was her nephew Chaim. His parents had been shipped off to Treblinka. Chaya Rivka knew that the Shapiros had foreign citizenship papers. She calculated that of all the doomed Jews in the ghetto, the Shapiros had the best chance to escape. She ...   more »

By Aluf Benn and Gideon Alon  
Israeli and Palestinian leaders are embroiled in a bitter dispute over what topics should be on the agenda of next week's trilateral summit. The summit, involving Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas and U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, is scheduled to take place in Jerusalem on Monday.    
Despite the dispute, Rice is insisting on holding the meeting to demonstrate progress in Israeli-Palestinian relations.
According to government sources, however, Olmert is refusing to discuss three major elements of any final-status agreement - Palestinian refugees, the status of Jerusalem and an Israeli withdrawal to the pre-1967 armistice lines - because he believes that raising any of these issues would doom the talks to failure.
"There is no doubt that Abu Mazen [Abbas] will have to make compromises on these issues, given Israel's positions, and it is not clear that he can get them past the Palestinian street," one source said.
Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni also believes that final-status issues should not be discussed now, lest they cause the talks to fail and spark renewed violence, as was the case after the Camp David summit of July 2000. She believes the ...   more »

Israel on Thursday began broadcasting live images of a contentious construction project on the Internet in an effort to allay Muslim fears that the work would damage nearby Islamic shrines.
Israel began excavations last week to lay the ground to repair an earthen ramp leading to the hilltop compound known as the Temple Mount to Jews and as the Noble Sanctuary to Muslims. The work sparked immediate protests at the site and condemnation from across the Muslim and Arab world.
Three cameras at the site began broadcasting live images on Thursday and will work around the clock, Israel Antiquities Authority spokeswoman Osnat Goaz said.
"They film all angles of the works so people can view what's going there all hours of the day," she said. "The works do not go anywhere near any holy site and everybody can see that from the cameras."
However, angry Muslims said they were not satisfied with the cameras.
"This procedure is not enough," said Ismail Radwan, a spokesman for the militant Palestinian group Hamas. "The Zionist enemy is engaging in trickery and continuing its digging. We don't trust these procedures."
Original Source
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By Donald Macintyre in Jerusalem
Published: 15 February 2007
The planned walkway at the centre of the furious dispute over Jerusalem's holiest site could be further delayed by the discovery of a Byzantine mosaic.
The geometric patterned fragment was exposed by archaeological workers yesterday at the bottom of an underground shaft where one of the walkway pillars is intended to go, as The Independent examined excavation work in the area.
"We have a real time discovery," reported Gideon Avni, director of excavations and surveys at the Israel Antiquities Authority.
Dr Avni said further excavations would now be needed to see whether the mosaic, probably from the fifth or sixth century AD, was part of a larger decorated room or house. He said it was too early to say whether the pillar would have to be moved. If the fragment turned out not to extend further, it could possibly be extracted and exhibited.
The discovery was the latest in a series of twists in the conflict over access through the Mugrabi Gate to the compound sacred to Jews as the Temple Mount and to Muslims as Haram al-Sharif - noble sanctuary.
Seventeen policemen and 23 Palestinians were injured last Friday during ...   more »

by Nissan Ratzlav-Katz
(IsraelNN.com) 35 Knesset members from various political factions are calling on the IDF to renew civilian access to the tomb of the Biblical Joseph in Shechem. The site, at which Jews have gathered for prayer over the generations, has been closed to visitors for the past three years due to the dangers posed by Arab terrorists in the region.
In a letter to IDF Central Command Officer Maj.-Gen. Yair Naveh, the parliamentarians requested that the military authorities reopen Joseph's Tomb to Jewish visitors, taking whatever steps are necessary to ensure secure access.
The letter, initiated by National Union MK Uri Ariel, was signed by legislators from the United Torah Judaism, Shas, Likud, Kadima, Pensioners and Yisrael Beiteinu parties. All the MKs of the National Union-National Religious Party signed the letter, as did MK Moshe Sharoni, chairman of the Pensioners party, most of the Likud MKs, including presidential candidate MK Reuven Rivlin, and United Torah Judaism MKs, and five out of the twelve MKs from Shas.
MK Ariel emphasized that even the Oslo Accords, which turned over civilian and military control of Shechem (Nablus) to the Palestinian Authority, recognized that Joseph's Tomb is a sanctified site for Jews. ...   more »

By Ofri Ilani  
The wind ruffles the leaves of the date sapling in its planter, and Dr. Elaine Soloway quickly shields it. "There's only one plant like this in the world, and I'm still worried about it," she says. Methuselah - that is the sapling's name - is indeed unique. In 2005, Soloway, from Kibbutz Ketura in the Arava, germinated it from a 2,000-year-old date seed found at Masada.
For the past two millennia, since approximately the time of the Great Revolt of the Jews against the Romans, in 66-73 C.E., the seed lay dormant, until Soloway and her team breathed life into it, making it the oldest seed ever to germinate.
For two years, the seed was kept in isolation in a plant nursery to protect it from the modern diseases to which it would have been vulnerable. Now that it is stronger, Soloway is planning on transplanting it. "I think it has a future," she says.    
Last week, Methuselah underwent chronological testing, using the radioactive isotope Carbon-14, which confirmed that the tree grew from a seed that lived when the Romans ruled the land.
If the sapling continues to flourish, Soloway believes they will be able ...   more »

Jeremy Page in Delhi
India, China and Russia account for 40 per cent of the world’s population, a fifth of its economy and more than half of its nuclear warheads. Now they appear to be forming a partnership to challenge the US-dominated world order that has prevailed since the end of the Cold War.
Foreign ministers from the three emerging giants met in Delhi yesterday to discuss ways to build a more democratic “multipolar world”.
It was the second such meeting in the past two years and came after an unprecedented meeting between their respective leaders, Manmohan Singh, Hu Jintao and Vladimir Putin, during the G8 summit in St Petersburg in July.
It also came only four days after Mr Putin stunned Western officials by railing against American foreign policy at a security conference in Munich.
Background
Bizarre Love Triangle
Icy blast from Putin hints at a new Cold War
China's latest export: web censorship
The foreign ministers, Pranab Mukherjee, Li Zhao Xing and Sergei Lavrov, emphasised that theirs was not an alliance against the United States. It was, “on the contrary, intended to promote international harmony and understanding”, a joint communiqué stated.
Their formal agenda covered issues ranging from ...   more »

Lawyers representing a Massachusetts school district named as a defendant in a parent's civil rights complaint have said teachers at Estabrook Elementary School have a "legitimate state interest" in teaching the homosexual lifestyle, and parents have no input into those decisions.
The arguments came in a recent hearing on the district's motion to dismiss the complaint filed by David Parker, a parent whose concern over the school's promotion of the homosexual agenda to grade-schoolers prompted a meeting with school officials, for which they had him arrested for trespassing.
According to a report from the activist group MassResistance.org, those arguments echoed the claims made earlier in the case when a brief in support of the school's position was filed by a collection of homosexual advocacy organizations.
"The state must fight 'discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation' in ways that 'do not perpetuate stereotypes,'" the lawyers for the school district argued. They also explained to the judge that, in their opinion, parents have no right to control what ideas the school presents to elementary schoolchildren, and if parents disagree with that dictate, they can take their children elsewhere.
"Once I have elected to send my child to public school, my fundamental ...   more »

By Graham Keeley in Barcelona
Heinrich Himmler, the head of the Nazi SS, made a secret wartime mission to an abbey in Spain in search of what he believed was the Aryan Holy Grail, a new book claims.
Himmler visited the famous Montserrat Abbey near Barcelona where he thought he would find the Grail which Jesus Christ was said to have used to consecrate the Last Supper.
According to The Desecrated Abbey, by Montserrat Rico Góngora, the Reichsführer-SS thought if he could lay claim to the Holy Grail it would help Germany win the war and give him supernatural powers.
The book claims that, far from being the King of the Jews, Himmler shared the outlandish belief with other leading Nazis that Jesus Christ was actually descended from Aryan stock.
Góngora writes that Himmler, Hitler's right-hand man, believed Jacob was of Aryan blood and his descendants, including Jesus Christ, were Aryan too.
Góngora has interviewed a former monk who was ordered by his superiors to greet Himmler during the visit in 1940.
Now a pensioner living in an old people's home near Barcelona, Andreu Ripol Noble was at the time the only German-speaker in the abbey and was asked to ...   more »

By Katherine Boyle
Religion News Service   
WASHINGTON - A delegation of 13 U.S. Christian leaders will travel to Iran to meet with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad Feb.
17-25 to foster dialogue between Iran and the U.S. and promote a diplomatic solution to tensions between the two countries
The group has arranged meetings with Christian and Muslim religious leaders, women serving in the Iranian parliament and former Iranian President Mohammad Khatami. Several delegation members met with Ahmadinejad during his trip to New York City last fall, when the idea for the visit to Iran was born.
The trip was organized by the Mennonite Central Committee and the American Friends Service Committee, a Quaker group. Others participating include  Sojourners/Call to Renewal; the Episcopal, Catholic and United Methodist churches; the National Council of Churches and Pax Christi USA.
The leaders also hope to use person-to-person exchanges between Iranians and Americans to help each group overcome cultural and religious stereotypes.
"People in our country and people in their country have many misunderstandings," said Mary Ellen McNish, general secretary of the American Friends Service Committee. "We want to try to forgive each other and come to an understanding about how we can go forward ...   more »

Feb. 9, 2007 — Around 106 years ago, someone slipped a copy of the world’s smallest complete Bible in a child’s boot and stuffed it into a cottage chimney cavity to ward off evil. Now British archaeologists have identified the book, which a renovator discovered while working on the cottage in central England's Ewerby.
In addition to the rarity of the book, the find represents one of the most recent instances of anti-witchcraft using a shoe amulet, according to British Archaeology editor Mike Pitts, who reports on the discovery in his latest issue.
The cottage also was part of the Winchelsea Estate, which is owned by the Finch-Hatton family. Denys Finch-Hatton inspired the famous book "Out of Africa," and was played by Robert Redford in the film of the same name.
The small Bible, however, is the current star of the estate. It is just around 1-inch wide and less than a half an inch thick.
"The Bible is complete but not illustrated," said Adam Daubney, Lincolnshire Finds Liaison Officer.
Pitts added that it is "said to be the smallest complete Bible ever printed."
The book, published in 1901 by David Bryce & Son of Glasgow, was created at the ...   more »