RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.algemeiner.com/2018/08/29/antisemitism-in-france-has-moved-from-streets-into-homes-says-head-of-french-jewish-community/

Antisemitism in France has moved “from the streets directly into the homes of Jewish people,” the head of the country’s 465,000-strong Jewish community told The Algemeiner on Wednesday.

“The Jews in France feel threatened in their own homes,” Francis Kalifat — president of CRIF, the French Jewish communal body — said during a discussion of the antisemitism that has resulted in several deaths and injuries among French Jews over the past decade.

Kalifat underlined that “what used to be attacks on buildings, or insults thrown in the street, has evolved into the most violent acts.”

In the last eighteen months, two elderly Jewish widows in Paris — Sarah Halimi in April 2017 and Mireille Knoll in March 2018 — have been murdered in brutal antisemitic assaults, while several incidents of violent raids on Jewish homes involving gangs of mainly Muslim youths have also been reported.

Sadly, as Kalifat acknowledged, the problem is not new — though the pattern of Jewish response is changing.

Following what Kalifat called “the paroxysm” of antisemitic violence in 2012-13 — a year that witnessed the murders of a rabbi and three young children during a terrorist attack at a Jewish school in Toulouse — French aliyah to Israel climbed precipitously, with 8,000 Jews emigrating to Israel in 2015 alone. That trend has now slowed, Kalifat said, overshadowed by what some call an “internal aliyah.”

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/12921/canada-returning-jihadists

Canada’s intelligence service stated that some 60 “returnees” — fighters who had returned to Canada — “have the potential to pose a significant threat to our national security.” In other words, there are dozens of jihadis roaming free in Canada, without being apprehended or charged by authorities.

The noise surrounding the debate over jihadist returnees has been drowning out the country’s intelligence service assessment about the threat they pose to Canada’s national security — a threat that the Trudeau government is ill-prepared, ill-equipped and ideologically ill-suited to confront.

Prevention, investigation and prosecution of terrorists should be the top priority, ahead of rehabilitation and reintegration.

According to the website of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), under the section “National Security Threats – Terrorism”:

“Terrorism, including terrorist travel and the radicalization of Canadians, is the most prominent threat to Canadian interests and our national security. The intelligence community has never before faced a terrorist threat of this scope, scale, and complexity.”

The CSIS text, last modified on January 27, 2017, also notes that, despite ISIS’s huge losses, “its ideology continues to hold global appeal, including among susceptible Canadians,” and Canadians with extremist Muslim views “continue to engage in a range of terrorist activity, in Canada and abroad.”

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-crisis-of-democracy-is-overhyped-1535412315

As Turkish strongman Recep Tayyip Erdogan lashes out against the “interest-rate lobby” for his country’s economic crisis, as Nicaragua’s dictatorship mobilizes against its own people, and as Venezuela’s socialist utopia sinks deeper into chaos, it’s remarkable how often we hear that a “crisis of democracy” is the defining political story of our times. And as Vladimir Putin’s persistent economic failures force him toward deeply unpopular pension reforms, it is even more remarkable how many people attribute this ostensible crisis to Russian cunning and might.

Admittedly, there are signs that consent-based political systems aren’t operating as smoothly as they should, including the rise of extremism and anti-Semitism in the British Labour Party, the collapse of the political center in scandal-plagued Brazil, Viktor Orbán’s determination to build “illiberal democracy” in Hungary, and the disruptive and polarizing Trump administration in the U.S. More generally, according to Freedom House, civil liberties and political rights have declined in 113 countries and improved in only 62 since 2006.

But the failures of authoritarian states are often far graver than the problems that preoccupy the professional hand-wringers of the liberal West. There are no crises in the democratic world that match the economic meltdown in Iran, the hellish conditions in Syria, or the turmoil in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where efforts to eliminate an Ebola epidemic are hampered by armed militias.

http://www.aish.com/jw/s/Sir-Isaac-Newton-and-Judaism.html
The scientist’s recently disclosed private papers reveal his deep reverence for ancient Jewish wisdom.

Sir Isaac Newton was one of the greatest scientists of all time. Some of his most outstanding discoveries include the laws of optics or the physics of light, the three laws of motion, the laws of gravity, and calculus. He is also famous for his Principia Mathematica, the most widely read scientific work of all time, in which he explains the motions of the planets in a single mathematical system. Born in an age that embraced rationalism and shunned religious authority, Newton was also hailed as a hero of his era. Yet, recent divulgement of Newton’s personal writings challenges all common assumptions about his true identity.
Newton’s Private Beliefs

Newton’s private beliefs have been under the radar for hundreds of years, perhaps because of their unfavorable reception. Bernard Cohen’s book Franklin and Newton discusses the first time scientists discovered Newton’s personal manuscripts: He quotes John Maynard Keynes, the British great economist: “‘Upon his death in 1727, a very big box of unusual papers was discovered in his room. Bishop Samuel Horsley, who was also a scientist, was asked to inspect the box with view to publication. He saw the contents with horror and slammed the lid…’ shut.” The recent disclosure of Newton’s private manuscripts revealed that Newton was far from the archetype rationalist he was originally assumed to be.Isaac Newton’s writing featuring, the prayer, in Hebrew,
‘Blessed is His name for eternity.’

After being tucked away for 200 years, Newton’s manuscripts were finally auctioned off in 1936. Keynes, The Babson family in America, and Israeli Professor Avraham Shalom Yahuda bought the majority of them and donated them to university libraries around the world. These manuscripts have been made available in the past 25 years.
Newton’s “strange” interests

It’s no wonder that both Christian and secular-minded scientists who had originally revered Newton had little incentive to publicize their findings. Newton’s manuscripts revealed that he took a keen interest in “archaic” Jewish wisdom. Newton’s knowledge of Jewish thought was not superficial; he referred to rabbinic works such as the Aramaic Version of Esther, Vayikra Rabba, the commentaries of Sa’adia HaGaon, Ibn Ezra, Rashi, Sifra, R. Aharon ibn Hayyim; Seder Ma’amadot (about the daily sacrifices) the Bartinurah and Talmudic passages from the Babylonian and Jerusalem Talmud in Latin. One of Newton’s manuscripts was entitled “On Maimonides,” where he quoted the Latin translation of Maimonides’ Mishneh Torah. 1