Volume 50 Number 51
Produced: Mon Dec 12 4:33:13 EST 2005
Subjects Discussed In This Issue:
Artscroll Missing
[Yisrael Medad]
Davening Time
[Yisrael Medad]
Escorting a Guest Out
[Bernard Raab]
Kaddish for Musaf and Friday Night
[David Ziants]
Limmud UK
[Yisrael Medad]
Pictures and articles about the Israeli Nobel Prize winner
[Jacob Richman]
TV News
[Bernard Raab]
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From: Yisrael Medad <ybmedad@...>
Date: Sun, 11 Dec 2005 19:46:16 +0200
Subject: Artscroll Missing
Another element of uneveness.
We here in Eretz-Yisrael have begun saying the special additional
supplication of Aneinu Boreh Olam for rain. In our siddurim it appears
as an insert for Shma Koleinu. Even the all-Hebrew editions made for EY
lack it.
Yisrael Medad
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From: Yisrael Medad <ybmedad@...>
Date: Fri, 09 Dec 2005 14:54:13 +0200
Subject: Davening Time
I have an idea.
I went into the VirtualCantor site and all the davening there is timed.
All we need is someone to count up all the elements and find out how
long it comes out. Since he is doing it not that fast, we have a median
number to measure against.
Yisrael Medad
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From: Bernard Raab <beraab@...>
Date: Sun, 11 Dec 2005 23:50:01 -0500
Subject: Escorting a Guest Out
I must say that this discussion has been a revelation to me. I have been
escorting guests out my entire life without realizing that I was
observing a halacha in the process. In fact, I cannot think of anyone I
know who would not escort a visitor to the door, including those who do
not know the word "halacha". It just seems to be a widely accepted
courtesy.
But now that I know it to be halacha, I have to be concerned with the
details that never worried me before. The exception of visitors to the
sick has been noted. In the hospital, hooked up to various tubes or
instruments, it seems fairly obvious that you would be patur from this
obligation. But if you are free from such encumberances and are mobile,
are you again obligated? Up to now, I would have said "if you feel up to
it", but what does halacha say?
What about visitors to your office? Up to now, I would have said
visitors from outside your company do get escorted to the front door or
to the elevator, either by you or your shaliach, while internal visitors
are on their own. But what does halacha say?
b'shalom--Bernie R.
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From: David Ziants <dziants@...>
Date: Sun, 11 Dec 2005 13:00:56 +0200
Subject: Re: Kaddish for Musaf and Friday Night
Baruch Schwartz wrote:
> http://www.virtualcantor.com/146 kaddish (before musaf--slower).mp3
> properly belongs to maariv on Friday night", and that "this kaddish has
> only recently begun to be sung on Shabbat morning, either after the
> leyning or before musaf, or both (!), but only in North America--and
> even there, not in shuls where the tzibbur is particular about nusah.
In my childhood community in London, England (1960s and 1970s) they
always used this half kaddish Friday night tune for after leyning as
well. Because this is what I heard on a regular basis, I always assumed
that this tune belonged to after leyning as much as it belonged to
Friday night. With this thread I have learnt something new.
Here in Israel, especially as the shuls rarely have professional
hazzanim, this Friday night tune is used only some of the time on Friday
night, and no one really minds. Generally it seems that the shlichai
tzibur who were brought up in the UK, use the "official" tune more than
those from American. I think this might be because, unlike the
Americans, those from England in my current community tend to come from
the large United Synagogue communities in England (United Synagogue in
England is orthodox), where the shuls are more formal.
David Ziants
Ma'aleh Adumim, Israel
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From: Yisrael Medad <ybmedad@...>
Date: Fri, 09 Dec 2005 14:47:54 +0200
Subject: Limmud UK
I will be attending Limmud UK at Nottingham University over Chanukah and
making some presentations. If anybody has been there and can give me
some "feel" for how it is, atmosphere, any "heads-up", etc., I'd
appreciate it. If anyone else will be in attendance, I'd like to know
that as well.
You can reply off-list.
Yisrael Medad
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From: Jacob Richman <jrichman@...>
Date: Sun, 11 Dec 2005 07:27:05 +0200
Subject: Pictures and articles about the Israeli Nobel Prize winner
Hi Everyone!
Congratulations to Professor Israel (Robert) Aumann for winning the
Nobel Prize in Economics.
I posted articles and pictures on my site at:
http://www.jr.co.il/pictures/israel/history/nobel-prize.htm
Please pass the good news around.
Shavua Tov,
Jacob
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From: Bernard Raab <beraab@...>
Date: Mon, 12 Dec 2005 00:56:43 -0500
Subject: TV News
>From: Frank Silbermann:
>
>In V50 N29 Bernard Raab (<beraab@...>) noted the extremely
>biased anti-Israel reporting in even "the best news organizations" (his
>description) such as NPR and the BBC, but dismissed the notion that
>these are controlled by antisemites, arguing:
>
> > ... I believe the real culprit in most cases is the need to
> > "tell a story" to a public suspected of miniscule attention span.
> > ... the "news" must be put in context ...new developments
> > have to be explained as part of an ongoing story. In TV especially,
> > the "story" must be one which can be told in a single sound-bite,
> > which means there is no room for subtelty. Thus Israel is always
> > going to described as the "occupier" of "Palestinian territory".
> > There is simply no time, or desire, to complicate the story with
> > historical details.
>
>The miniscule attention span might apply to viewers of Fox News, but not
>to consumers of NPR and the BBC. Even if it did, it would be quite easy
>to tell a simple story in which "the civilized Israelis are willing to
>give land in exchange for peace and acceptance of the Jewish State, but
>savage and intolerant Arabs don't want concessions on those terms."
No news organization could make such a statement, unless it were a
government-controlled station functioning as a propaganda broadcaster.
What we might hope for is for the reporter to remind the listeners how
Israel came to occupy these "occupied territories". But that would be
tiresome and the report would not be as "punchy". Even NPR and BBC
require ratings to exist.
>No, Bernard's explanation is unpersuasive, but the accusation of
>antisemitism is also wrong. (To refute it, one need only note that the
>news media always take the Jews' side when doing a story about the
>Holocaust.)
Well I suppose they could support the Nazi position, but even an
anti-Semite would find that problematic today. The best that they could
do would be to deny the Holocaust, but Holocaust deniers cannot
generally get jobs in the mainstream media today. My point was that
anti-Semitism is probabaly NOT a major factor in most news organizations
today.
>The only explanation which is consistent with _all_ the facts and
>observations (including stories having nothing to do with Jews, Israel
>or religion) is that the people running most news organizations lean
>left politically, and they use their positions to try to move public
>opinion in a leftward direction.
>
>Leftists were pro-Israel in the 1950s when there was still hope the
>country might become a Soviet satellite. It was only when the Soviet
>Union decided it was in their interest to court the Arabs that the Left
>became anti-Israel. After the fall of the Soviet Union the Left remain
>anti-Israel, partly because it would be embarassing to try to to
>withdraw so much anti-Israel propaganda, and partly because Israel
>remains an ally of the hated United States. _That_ (and not
>antisemitism or simpleminded viewers) is the reason for the news media's
>anti-Israel bias.
I think it is undeniable that the news media are in general left
leaning, although there are powerful rightward examples in the press, in
TV news, and most especially in talk radiio, which is basically
dominated by conservatives. But Frank's assertion above implies that
these left-leaning media are, or were, Communists or Communist
sympathizers (and I thought Joe McCarthy was dead), and are too
embarassed now to withdraw their anti-Israel attitudes. The fact is, the
leftist media and basically all the US media were pro-Israel until the
six-day war and for some time thereafter, well after the Soviets had
cozied up to the Arabs. Eventually, the liberal bias to favor the
downtrodden and the underdog reversed this to favor the Arabs. As for
the "hated United States", are we now talking about the Arab media?
b'shalom--Bernie R.
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End of Volume 50 Issue 51
