Nilo

Grande Templo Israelita

Rio de Janeiro

Frederick Wiseman

"At Berkeley" (Trailer)

Montanha

Grécia

Sócrates

Vida

Agalychnis callidryas, also knows as a red-eyed frog

Alemanha

Fania Oz-Salzberger 

Nilo

Leonard Cohen

"So long, Marianne"

"Come over to the window, my little darling,
I'd like to try to read your palm.
I used to think I was some kind of Gypsy boy
before I let you take me home.
Now so long, Marianne, it's time that we began
to laugh and cry and cry and laugh about it all again.

Well you know that I love to live with you,
but you make me forget so very much.
I forget to pray for the angels
and then the angels forget to pray for us.

Now so long, Marianne, it's time that we began ...

We met when we were almost young
deep in the green lilac park.
You held on to me like I was a crucifix,
as we went kneeling through the dark.

Oh so long, Marianne, it's time that we began ...

Your letters they all say that you're beside me now.
Then why do I feel alone?
I'm standing on a ledge and your fine spider web
is fastening my ankle to a stone.

Now so long, Marianne, it's time that we began ...

For now I need your hidden love.
I'm cold as a new razor blade.
You left when I told you I was curious,
I never said that I was brave.

Oh so long, Marianne, it's time that we began ...

Oh, you are really such a pretty one.
I see you've gone and changed your name again.
And just when I climbed this whole mountainside,
to wash my eyelids in the rain!

Oh so long, Marianne, it's time that we began..."

Tu B'Shevat

Ari Shavit

"The Tragedy and Triumph of Israel"

 

Vida

Sophie Tucker

"My Yiddishe Mamma"

"Ich vill bay aych a kashe freygen,
Zugt mir ver es ken,
Mit vifl tayere farmaygns,
Bensht Gott allamen?
Men kriegt dus nit far kayne gelt,
Dus krigt men nur im zist,
Und der vus hot verloren,
Der vays shoyn vus ich mayn.

A yiddishe mamma,
Nisht du kein besser in der welt.
A yiddishe Mamma
Oy vey tzis bisser ven zie fehlt,
Vie shayn und lichtig tzis in Hois,
Ven die mama's du,
Vie traurig finster tzvert,
Ven Gott nehmt ihr oyf Oylam habu.

In vasser und fayer,
Vollt sie geloffn fahr ihr kind,
Nisht halt'n ihr tayer.
Dos iz geviss der greste Zind.
Oy vie gliklach und raych
Is der Mensch vus hut,
Az a tayere matune geschenkt fun Gott,
Wie an altechke Yiddishe Mamma,
Mamma, oy Mamme mein"

Moshe Halbertal

"The Personhood of God" (Yochanan Muffs)

Amy-Jill Levine

"Innoculated against hate" (2009)

 

Egipto

Múmia de Katebet (Século 13 AEC)

Espanha

Anna Freud

Toledo

(Damasquinado)

Serge Gainsbourg

 "Je t'aime... moi non plus" (1969)

Vida

(Shoebill couple)

Marte

In a place where there are no men, strive to be a man.

Ethics of the Fathers, 2:5

Spike Jonze

Sophie Tucker

"Some of These Days" (1926)

Ariel Sharon: 1928-2014

One of Israel’s legendary military commanders and most influential politicians leaves a legacy that was nearly great

By Benny Morris | January 11, 2014 8:20 AM

Some years ago, a cameraman proposed to Ariel Sharon that he photograph him holding a sheep. As the photographer later told it, one of Sharon’s sons, Gilad, who was on hand, advised against it. But Sharon, then about 70, thought about it for a moment and then agreed. The picture became iconic: the politician, flanked by animals, standing on hay in rough brown boots, a sheep slung over his shoulders.

Sharon agreed because he liked the image of farmer-general, à la Cincinnatus, the fifth-century B.C.E. Roman who abandoned the plow to lead the legions in defense of the republic and then returned to his humble plow. (Sharon’s plow, incidentally, was not so humble—a thousand-acre farm, Havat Shikmim, in Israel’s south, practically the only such spread in Israel.) Also because David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s founding prime minister and great leader, had once, famously, been photographed holding a lamb. And, of course, because Sharon was something of a showman. During his now-legendary military exploits, he took care to be photographed from every angle. (Photographs of Gen. Sharon in the Yom Kippur War of 1973, with a white bandage wound around his head, are also iconic.)

But while Sharon grew up in the agricultural village of Kfar Malal, northeast of Tel Aviv, and loved running Havat Shikmim, which he bought in 1972, sheep-farming was really a pastime, as was Ben-Gurion’s sojourn in rural Sdeh Boker. The passions that consumed Sharon throughout his 85 years were the army, in which he served more or less continuously from 1947 until 1973, and politics, where he starred from 1973 until 2006, when he suffered a brain hemorrhage and fell into a coma while serving as prime minister.

Sharon, perhaps, had hoped to follow Ben Gurion into the ranks of “great”—and he might have made it had illness not cut his career short. To be sure, he manifested military greatness during his years in the Israel Defense Forces. True, in the early 1970s, political, disciplinary, and personal calculations had blocked his appointment as chief of the general staff of the IDF; he was always seen as uncontrollable and something of a maverick and distrusted by the powers that be. But in his decades of service, he clearly demonstrated his mettle as the IDF’s best field commander. From 1953 to 1955, as the leader of Unit 101 and then of Paratroop Battalion 890, Sharon fashioned the ethos and tactics of IDF commando operations. In the 1967 Six Day War, Sharon, by then a divisional commander, brilliantly conquered the Umm Katef-Abu Agheila Egyptian fortification complex in the Sinai. In 1970 and 1971, as OC Southern Command, he successfully uprooted Palestinian guerrillas—terrorists—from the Gaza Strip, a campaign that often involved brutal tactics. (A retired Israeli police chief once told me that he had witnessed Sharon personally executing a captured terrorist in Gaza prison’s courtyard.) In 1973, overcoming some hesitancy among his superiors, Sharon led the game-changing assault across the Suez Canal that forced Egypt, which had launched the Yom Kippur War together with Syria, to beg for a ceasefire.

In politics, too, he had repeatedly exhibited both his maverick streak and his bulldozer credentials. He got things done, whatever the legal and practical impediments, and often he got them done in his own way. But his political legacy remains ambiguous on a number of levels.

A product of the Labor movement, Sharon was a Mapainik at heart: Mapai was the pragmatic socialist party, led by Ben Gurion, that had led the Zionist enterprise to statehood and ruled Israel between 1948 and 1977. But in 1973, Sharon jumped ship and helped bring Menachem Begin’s Likud—then called Gahal—to power. From the late 1970s into the 1990s he was instrumental in expanding Israeli settlements in the West Bank and Gaza—though in 1982, as Begin’s defense minister, he efficiently oversaw Israel’s uprooting of the Sinai settlements as part of the Israeli commitments in the Israel-Egypt peace treaty.

But 1982 was decisive to Sharon’s political career in another way. He planned and then carried out Israel’s invasion of southern Lebanon, culminating in the siege of Beirut and eviction of the Palestine Liberation Organization from Lebanon—and the massacre, by Lebanese Christian militiamen, of several hundred Palestinians in the refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila. Sharon was held partially responsible for the massacre by an Israeli commission of inquiry and ousted from the defense ministry and was demonized by both the press and the public in the West, as well as by many Israelis.

Nevertheless, through the 1980s and 1990s, Sharon inched his way back into political respectability. By 2001, when he was elected prime minister at the head of the Likud, he had recast his image, emerging as a responsible elder statesman with a security-defense background that most Israelis could trust. Like the ex-Gen. Yitzhak Rabin, with whom Sharon enjoyed very good relations through the decades, here was a man who could—cautiously—advance toward peace but also be depended upon to safeguard Israeli security. His appearance—a smiling, overweight, white-haired teddy bear, a man who was photographed with his sheep—certainly helped. So did the occasional leaks by former aides and secretaries about his abundant sense of humor, warmth, and many personal kindnesses.

From the moment he assumed the premiership, in 2001, Sharon showed the promise of political greatness. Starting in 2002, he orchestrated the Israeli military’s efficient suppression of the Palestinian Second Intifada—a rebellion against Israel’s occupation of the territories, but also a terrorist war against Israel itself, that began in September 2000. And he did this at a relatively low cost in terms of Arab civilian life—most Israelis killed in the Second Intifada were civilians, but most Arabs killed in the Second Intifada were gunmen.

But Sharon then proceeded—somewhat belatedly, left-wingers would say—to veer toward conciliation, apparently under the influence of the Intifada and out of recognition that continued Israeli rule over the West Bank and Gaza Strip would, inexorably, lead to the emergence of a single state with an Arab majority between the Jordan and the Mediterranean, an outcome that would necessarily spell an end to the Zionist dream of a democratic Jewish state.

In the summer of 2005, he orchestrated the unilateral Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, which meant not just the pullout of all troops but also the politically challenging and psychologically traumatic uprooting of a dozen or so Jewish settlements. (Four settlements from the northern West Bank were evacuated besides.) Sharon abruptly lost his Likud base of support—so in November that year, while still prime minister, he set up a new centrist political party, Kadima. Most observers, and his rightist opponents, believed that Sharon intended, in the absence of a peace agreement with the Palestinians, to affect a complete separation from the Palestinians by unilaterally withdrawing from the bulk of the West Bank as well.

Sharon grew up with an instinctive, essential distrust of his Arab neighbors in Kfar Malal; after all, in 1921, a few years before Sharon was born, they burned the moshav to the ground. As an adult, Sharon gradually extended this distrust to encompass “the Arabs” in general. Indeed, in 1978, he voted in Cabinet against the evolving Israel-Egypt peace agreement negotiated between Prime Minister Menachem Begin—aided by ex-generals Moshe Dayan and Ezer Weizmann—and President Anwar Sadat. (In the decisive vote, in the Knesset in 1979, Sharon voted “aye.”) And in the early 2000s he had had little hope that the Palestinian Arabs under Yasser Arafat, and then Mahmoud Abbas, would ever acquiesce in Israel’s existence or sign a definitive peace treaty with the Jewish state.

So, as part of his “separation” policy, he proceeded to build a security fence between “old” Israel—that is, pre-1967 Israel—and the West Bank. Such a pullback to the fence would have left the Palestinians in possession of about 90 percent of the West Bank—though it also would have left the problem of dozens of Israeli settlements “stranded” inside Palestinian territory. It is unclear how Sharon intended to deal with this or how he thought he would overcome the inevitable resistance of the right wing. In any event, his stroke put paid to this possibility.

When Sharon disappeared from the political arena, in January 2006, both Palestinian and Jewish extremists rejoiced. But there was a real sense of shock, sadness, and loss among most Israelis, who felt—probably correctly—that the only political figure willing and able to extricate—liberate—Israel from the West Bank and thus able to change the course of the country’s history, was gone. His actual passing, after eight years in a coma, is anti-climactic. What comes next, for Israelis and Arabs—and for everyone else, including the Americans—is anyone’s guess.

http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/158153/ariel-sharon-obituary?all=1

Essaouira

Amy-Jill Levine

"Reassessing Jewish-Christian Relations" (2001)

Ariel Sharon

(1990)

Vida

A female Halictus ligatus bee covered in pollen from an unknown plant

Marte

Sunset over the rim of Gusev Crater

Oriente

Lhasa

Talmude

"Students of the Talmud", Trnava, Czechoslovakia, Roman Vishniac (1937)

Sinagoga de Ponta Delgada

Messina

Leonard Cohen

"Famous Blue Raincoat"

"It's four in the morning, the end of December
I'm writing you now just to see if you're better
New york is cold, but I like where I'm living
There's music on Clinton Street all through the evening.

I hear that you're building your little house deep in the desert
You're living for nothing now, I hope you're keeping some kind of record.

Yes, and Jane came by with a lock of your hair
She said that you gave it to her
That night that you planned to go clear
Did you ever go clear?

Ah, the last time we saw you you looked so much older
Your famous blue raincoat was torn at the shoulder
You'd been to the station to meet every train
And you came home without Lili Marlene

And you treated my woman to a flake of your life
And when she came back she was nobody's wife.

Well I see you there with the rose in your teeth
One more thin gypsy thief
Well I see Jane's awake --

She sends her regards.
And what can I tell you my brother, my killer
What can I possibly say?
I guess that I miss you, I guess I forgive you
I'm glad you stood in my way.

If you ever come by here, for Jane or for me
Your enemy is sleeping, and his woman is free.

Yes, and thanks, for the trouble you took from her eyes
I thought it was there for good so I never tried.

And Jane came by with a lock of your hair
She said that you gave it to her
That night that you planned to go clear"

Berlim

Alexanderplatz (1903)

Giora Feidman

"The Klezmer's Freilach"

Grécia

Vida

Kafka

"Quem foi Kafka?" (2006)

Córdoba

Jewish Quarter ("La Judería")

Simon Schama

(2000)

Marte

Shlomo Artzi - "At ve' Ani"

(Eurovision, 1975)

When to the sessions of sweet silent thought
I summon up remembrance of things past,
I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought,
And with old woes new wail my dear time's waste:
Then can I drown an eye, unused to flow,
For precious friends hid in death's dateless night,
And weep afresh love's long since cancelled woe,
And moan the expense of many a vanished sight:
Then can I grieve at grievances foregone,
And heavily from woe to woe tell o'er
The sad account of fore-bemoanèd moan,
Which I new pay as if not paid before.
But if the while I think on thee, dear friend,
All losses are restored and sorrows end.

 William Shakespeare

George Steiner

(2000)

Oriente

"Seven wonders of the buddhist world" (BBC)

Vida

Vittoria Veneto Synagogue

Esparta

Rio Eurotas

O Sol

St. Bartholomew's Day massacre

The St. Bartholomew's Day massacre (Massacre de la Saint-Barthélemy in French) in 1572 was a targeted group of assassinations, followed by a wave of Roman Catholic mob violence, both directed against the Huguenots (French Calvinist Protestants), during the French Wars of Religion.

 

Moshe Halbertal

"Hartman, Soloveitchik and Leibowitz"

Grécia

The Greek "Renaissance" - Colonization and Tyranny 1/2

The Greek "Renaissance" - Colonization and Tyranny 2/2

Síria

(Esta semana)

América

"Be My Baby", The Ronettes
 

Kadavumbagam Synagogue

Cochin, India

Vida

Veneza

Emunah

"Three Concepts of Faith", Moshe Halbertal (2012)

 

Talmude

"Berakhot", Venice, Printed by Daniel Bomberg, 1520-1523

Paulo

"St. Paul", El Greco (1608-1614)

Lvov

Philo

Lei

 Professor Christine Hayes:

"Divine Law: A Tale of Two Concepts (And Three Responses)."

CLICAR

O Sol

"Bridge Over Troubled Water"

Simon & Garfunkel

"When you're weary
Feeling small
When tears are in your eyes
I will dry them all

I'm on your side
When times get rough
And friends just can't be found
Like a bridge over troubled water
I will lay me down
Like a bridge over troubled water
I will lay me down

When you're down and out
When you're on the street
When evening falls so hard
I will comfort you

I'll take your part
When darkness comes
And pain is all around
Like a bridge over troubled water
I will lay me down
Like a bridge over troubled water
I will lay me down

Sail on Silver Girl,
Sail on by
Your time has come to shine
All your dreams are on their way

See how they shine
If you need a friend
I'm sailing right behind
Like a bridge over troubled water
I will ease your mind
Like a bridge over troubled water
I will ease your mind"

 

 

Minyan

Grécia

"A single action is better than a thousand groans"

- Rabbi Sholom DovBer of Lubavitch (1860-1920)

 

 

Bernard Malamud

Vida

(Pitbull Katydid)

Kabbalah

"Music and Kabbalah", Moshe Idel

Sobrevivência

Rav Steinsaltz (2007)

O Deserto

A Mula

"Chad Gadyo"

Cantor Moshe Oysher 

Universal Declaration of Human Rights

PREAMBLE

Whereas recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world,

Whereas disregard and contempt for human rights have resulted in barbarous acts which have outraged the conscience of mankind, and the advent of a world in which human beings shall enjoy freedom of speech and belief and freedom from fear and want has been proclaimed as the highest aspiration of the common people,

Whereas it is essential, if man is not to be compelled to have recourse, as a last resort, to rebellion against tyranny and oppression, that human rights should be protected by the rule of law,

Whereas it is essential to promote the development of friendly relations between nations,

Whereas the peoples of the United Nations have in the Charter reaffirmed their faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person and in the equal rights of men and women and have determined to promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom,

Whereas Member States have pledged themselves to achieve, in co-operation with the United Nations, the promotion of universal respect for and observance of human rights and fundamental freedoms,

Whereas a common understanding of these rights and freedoms is of the greatest importance for the full realization of this pledge,

Now, Therefore THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY proclaims THIS UNIVERSAL DECLARATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS as a common standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations, to the end that every individual and every organ of society, keeping this Declaration constantly in mind, shall strive by teaching and education to promote respect for these rights and freedoms and by progressive measures, national and international, to secure their universal and effective recognition and observance, both among the peoples of Member States themselves and among the peoples of territories under their jurisdiction.

Article 1.

• All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.

Article 2.

• Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status. Furthermore, no distinction shall be made on the basis of the political, jurisdictional or international status of the country or territory to which a person belongs, whether it be independent, trust, non-self-governing or under any other limitation of sovereignty.

Article 3.

• Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person.

Article 4.

• No one shall be held in slavery or servitude; slavery and the slave trade shall be prohibited in all their forms.

Article 5.

• No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.

Article 6.

• Everyone has the right to recognition everywhere as a person before the law.

Article 7.

• All are equal before the law and are entitled without any discrimination to equal protection of the law. All are entitled to equal protection against any discrimination in violation of this Declaration and against any incitement to such discrimination.

Article 8.

• Everyone has the right to an effective remedy by the competent national tribunals for acts violating the fundamental rights granted him by the constitution or by law.

Article 9.

• No one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest, detention or exile.

Article 10.

• Everyone is entitled in full equality to a fair and public hearing by an independent and impartial tribunal, in the determination of his rights and obligations and of any criminal charge against him.

Article 11.

• (1) Everyone charged with a penal offence has the right to be presumed innocent until proved guilty according to law in a public trial at which he has had all the guarantees necessary for his defence.
• (2) No one shall be held guilty of any penal offence on account of any act or omission which did not constitute a penal offence, under national or international law, at the time when it was committed. Nor shall a heavier penalty be imposed than the one that was applicable at the time the penal offence was committed.

Article 12.

• No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks.

Article 13.

• (1) Everyone has the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each state.
• (2) Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country.

Article 14.

• (1) Everyone has the right to seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution.
• (2) This right may not be invoked in the case of prosecutions genuinely arising from non-political crimes or from acts contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations.

Article 15.

• (1) Everyone has the right to a nationality.
• (2) No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his nationality nor denied the right to change his nationality.

Article 16.

• (1) Men and women of full age, without any limitation due to race, nationality or religion, have the right to marry and to found a family. They are entitled to equal rights as to marriage, during marriage and at its dissolution.
• (2) Marriage shall be entered into only with the free and full consent of the intending spouses.
• (3) The family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to protection by society and the State.

Article 17.

• (1) Everyone has the right to own property alone as well as in association with others.
• (2) No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his property.

Article 18.

• Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance.

Article 19.

• Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.

Article 20.

• (1) Everyone has the right to freedom of peaceful assembly and association.
• (2) No one may be compelled to belong to an association.

Article 21.

• (1) Everyone has the right to take part in the government of his country, directly or through freely chosen representatives.
• (2) Everyone has the right of equal access to public service in his country.
• (3) The will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of government; this will shall be expressed in periodic and genuine elections which shall be by universal and equal suffrage and shall be held by secret vote or by equivalent free voting procedures.

Article 22.

• Everyone, as a member of society, has the right to social security and is entitled to realization, through national effort and international co-operation and in accordance with the organization and resources of each State, of the economic, social and cultural rights indispensable for his dignity and the free development of his personality.

Article 23.

• (1) Everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favourable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment.
• (2) Everyone, without any discrimination, has the right to equal pay for equal work.
• (3) Everyone who works has the right to just and favourable remuneration ensuring for himself and his family an existence worthy of human dignity, and supplemented, if necessary, by other means of social protection.
• (4) Everyone has the right to form and to join trade unions for the protection of his interests.

Article 24.

• Everyone has the right to rest and leisure, including reasonable limitation of working hours and periodic holidays with pay.

Article 25.

• (1) Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.
• (2) Motherhood and childhood are entitled to special care and assistance. All children, whether born in or out of wedlock, shall enjoy the same social protection.

Article 26.

• (1) Everyone has the right to education. Education shall be free, at least in the elementary and fundamental stages. Elementary education shall be compulsory. Technical and professional education shall be made generally available and higher education shall be equally accessible to all on the basis of merit.
• (2) Education shall be directed to the full development of the human personality and to the strengthening of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms. It shall promote understanding, tolerance and friendship among all nations, racial or religious groups, and shall further the activities of the United Nations for the maintenance of peace.
• (3) Parents have a prior right to choose the kind of education that shall be given to their children.

Article 27.

• (1) Everyone has the right freely to participate in the cultural life of the community, to enjoy the arts and to share in scientific advancement and its benefits.
• (2) Everyone has the right to the protection of the moral and material interests resulting from any scientific, literary or artistic production of which he is the author.

Article 28.

• Everyone is entitled to a social and international order in which the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration can be fully realized.

Article 29.

• (1) Everyone has duties to the community in which alone the free and full development of his personality is possible.
• (2) In the exercise of his rights and freedoms, everyone shall be subject only to such limitations as are determined by law solely for the purpose of securing due recognition and respect for the rights and freedoms of others and of meeting the just requirements of morality, public order and the general welfare in a democratic society.
• (3) These rights and freedoms may in no case be exercised contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations.

Article 30.

• Nothing in this Declaration may be interpreted as implying for any State, group or person any right to engage in any activity or to perform any act aimed at the destruction of any of the rights and freedoms set forth herein.

Elie Wiesel

"On writing 'Night'"

Filosofia

"The School of Athens", Raphael  (1510)

Vida