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Past Not Over (Why Passover is the most widely observed Jewish holiday.)
The American Spectator ^ | 4/25/2005 | Jay D. Homnick

Posted on 04/24/2005 10:12:02 PM PDT by nickcarraway

My father, a psychologist, once attended a public lecture by a student of Freud named Dr. Reich. The presentation was to grapple with the peculiar fact that every major culture has in its historical record a facsimile of the Biblical Flood story. All recount a deluge that shrunk the Earth's inhabitants into a very small cadre of survivors who then rebuilt. Reich hypothesized that there is a deep-seated fear of global annihilation that undermines humanity's confidence in its own existence. People then project backwards to fashion a mythology mirroring their insecurity. Dad raised his hand and offered an alternative solution to the mystery.

"Perhaps," he said, "there was a Flood."

A tremor of shock rippled through the assemblage of mental health professionals. The ineffable had been uttered. The room was silent while the great man pondered. Finally he said this: "My teacher Freud told us that we will never know who is stronger, the polar bear or the tiger, because they can't live in each other's climate, so they can never meet. You and I are the polar bear and the tiger. In my world the possibility that a Flood occurred cannot be considered."

As Passover begins, it is noteworthy that this is the most widely observed Jewish holiday. Yet the vast majority of those celebrants think it primitive to believe that the events it was instituted to commemorate actually occurred. They make haste to explain that they are feting the laudable sentiment of freedom as well as the notion of Jewish independence. Please don't extrapolate from that an acceptance of the national historical record as rendered in Scripture. The idea that Jews emerged from slavery in Egypt as a people exactly 3317 years ago would be derided as absurd and obscurantist. And the further idea that they have a mission to the world to encourage it to be kinder, more just, and aware of a single omnipotent Deity is not merely ridiculous: it is elitist and self-serving and will only alienate the rest of humanity!

Historian Paul Johnson in his masterwork, History of the Jews, turns it around on the skeptics and points out how flimsy a position they must occupy. After he demonstrates with magnificent scholarship that "most of the intellectual and moral furniture" in the Western mind was laid out by the Jewish People, he points out that indeed they claimed to have been sent to do this from Day One.

The one who would scoff at the arrogance of the initial announced undertaking is now forced to write off its success as a coincidence. Usually in life, if someone tells you what he will do before he does it, it is sufficient to deliver results; we then accept the theory. And no experiment was ever undertaken in any laboratory involving billions of people over thousands of years in every corner of the globe: the amount of potential variables were well nigh infinite. Yet one small nation did all that after telegraphing its punch beforehand.

To me it seems that the greatest miracle ever achieved by Jews is the underappreciated one that we witness today. It is simply impossible for a nation to undergo a holocaust that kills six million out of about fourteen, severely traumatizes another two million, traps four or five million more in the slavery of the Soviet Union, and then accomplish what the Jews have in sixty years. They have their own country with the dominant army in its region, they have unprecedented levels of scholarship, both religious and secular, and maintain a powerful international presence in law, medicine, politics, science and art, not to mention business.

I repeat: it is IMPOSSIBLE! This cannot have happened. It goes against every predictive premise in history, sociology, science, and psychology. Yes, my friends, if you can believe that it happened now, as you must, don't be afraid to believe our carefully preserved national tradition of what transpired -- in the words of the liturgy -- "in those days, at this time."

The last word goes to George Washington, the father of our country, in his 1789 letter to the Jews of Savannah, Georgia:

"I rejoice that a spirit of liberality and philanthropy is much more prevalent today than it formerly was among the enlightened nations of the earth; and that your brethren will benefit thereby in proportion as it shall become still more extensive. Happily the people of the United States of America have, in many instances, exhibited examples worthy of imitation -- the salutary influence of which will doubtless extend much further, if gratefully enjoying those blessings of peace which (under favor of Heaven) have been obtained by fortitude in war, they shall conduct themselves with reverence to the Deity, and charity towards their fellow-creatures.

"May the same wonder-working Deity, who long since delivering the Hebrews from their Egyptian oppressors planted them in the promised land -- whose providential agency has lately been conspicuous in establishing these United States as an independent nation -- still continue to water them with the dews of Heaven and to make the inhabitants of every denomination participate in the temporal and spiritual blessings of that people...."


TOPICS: Constitution/Conservatism; Culture/Society; Editorial
KEYWORDS: freud; judaism; modernism; passover; philosophy; science
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1 posted on 04/24/2005 10:12:05 PM PDT by nickcarraway
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To: nickcarraway
3,000 years from now, scholars will ridicule accounts of America's founding as unfounded rubbish.

(Denny Crane: "Sometimes you can only look for answers from God and failing that... and Fox News".)
2 posted on 04/24/2005 10:23:18 PM PDT by goldstategop (In Memory Of A Dearly Beloved Friend Who Lives On In My Heart Forever)
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To: nickcarraway



Hebrew is the language of Liberty. (It really is)


3 posted on 04/24/2005 10:24:07 PM PDT by LauraleeBraswell ( We must stand behind TOM DELAY!)
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To: nickcarraway

Passover is about a promise and hope for the future in the form of the Messiah. Other than Messianic Jews, Jews missed out on the obvious fact that Jesus christ was and is the Messiah. The passover set the nation of Israel free from Pharoh and Jesus can set them free from their sins.


4 posted on 04/24/2005 10:31:30 PM PDT by connectthedots
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To: nickcarraway

Well, for one thing, it's quite a bit more fun that Yom Kippur.....


5 posted on 04/24/2005 10:38:46 PM PDT by cookcounty ("We the people are the rightful masters of both Congress and the Courts" ---Abe Lincoln, 1858.)
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To: connectthedots
Passover is about a promise and hope for the future in the form of the Messiah.

Really? Could you point out which section of the Haggadah you're basing this statement on? Thanks.

6 posted on 04/24/2005 10:43:32 PM PDT by ambrose (....)
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To: connectthedots
Passover is about a promise and hope for the future in the form of the Messiah. Other than Messianic Jews, Jews missed out on the obvious fact that Jesus christ was and is the Messiah. The passover set the nation of Israel free from Pharoh and Jesus can set them free from their sins.

Exactly!!!

7 posted on 04/24/2005 10:48:04 PM PDT by Dustbunny (The only good terrorist is a dead terrorist)
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To: nickcarraway
Interesting how the Passover and resulting destruction of the Egyptian army coincide with the end of the Holocaust and Germanys defeat.
8 posted on 04/24/2005 10:54:46 PM PDT by fso301
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To: LauraleeBraswell; connectthedots
I can't help but wonder what our world would be like, right now, if the numbers were reversed, and there were 1+ billion Jewish people with approximately 13 million Muslims.

Here are some interesting facts - speaking of "the odds" or statistical probability of certain events occurring.

The following are true facts and verified statistics:

The Global Islamic population is approximately 1,200,000,000 (that’s 1 billion, 200 million people) or 20% of the world population.

They received the following Nobel Prizes:

Literature:
1957 - Albert Camus
1988 - Najib Mahfooz
(Actually, Camus was not a Moslem but a Frenchman from North Africa(a pied noir, so to speak)

Peace:
1978 - Mohamed Anwar El-Sadat
1994 - Yaser Arafat

Physics:
1990 - Elias James Corey
1999 - Ahmed Zewail

Medicine:
1960 - Peter Brian Medawar
1998 - Ferid Mourad

The Global Jewish population is approximately 14,000,000 (thats 14 million people) or about 0.02% of the world population.

They received the following Nobel Prizes:

Literature:
1910 - Paul Heyse
1927 - Henri Bergson
1958 - Boris Pasternak
1966 - Shmuel Yosef Agnon
1966 - Nelly Sachs
1976 - Saul Bellow
1978 - Isaac Bashevis Singer
1981 - Elias Canetti
1987 - Joseph Brodsky
1991 - Nadine Gordimer World

Peace:
1911 - Alfred Fried
1911 - Tobias Michael Carel Asser
1968 - Rene Cassin
1973 - Henry Kissinger
1978 - Menachem Begin
1986 - Elie Wiesel
1994 - Shimon Peres
1994 - Yitzhak Rabin

Chemistry:
1905 - Adolph Von Baeyer
1906 - Henri Moissan
1910 - Otto Wallach
1915 - Richard Willstaetter
1918 - Fritz Haber
1943 - George Charles DE Hevesy
1961 - Melvin Calvin
1962 - Max Ferdinand Perutz
1972 - William Howard Stein
1977 - Ilya Prigogine
1979 - Herbert Charles Brown
1980 - Paul Berg
1980 - Walter Gilbert
1981 - Roald Hoffmann
1982 - Aaron Klug
1985 - Albert A. Hauptman
1985 - Jerome Karle
1986 - Dudley R. Herschbach
1988 - Robert Huber
1989 - Sidney Altman
1992 - Rudolph Marcus
2000 - Alan J. Heeger

Economics:
1970 - Paul Anthony Samuelson
1971 - Simon Kuznets
1972 - Kenneth Joseph Arrow
1975 - Leonid Kantorovich
1976 - Milton Friedman
1978 - Herbert A. Simon
1980 - Lawrence Robert Klein
1985 - Franco Modigliani
1987 - Robert M. Solow
1990 - Harry Markowitz
1990 - Merton Miller
1992 - Gary Becker
1993 - Robert Fogel

Medicine:
1908 - Elie Metchnikoff
1908 - Paul Erlich
1914 - Robert Barany
1922 - Otto Meyerhof
1930 - Karl Landsteiner
1931 - Otto Warburg
1936 - Otto Loewi
1944 - Joseph Erlanger
1944 - Herbert Spencer Gasser
1945 - Ernst Boris Chain
1946 - Hermann Joseph Muller
1950 - Tadeus Reichstein
1952 - Selman Abraham Waksman
1953 - Hans Krebs
1953 - Fritz Albert Lipmann
1958 - Joshua Lederberg
1959 - Arthur Kornberg
1964 - Konrad Bloch
1965 - Francois Jacob
1965 - Andre Lwoff
1967 - George Wald
1968 - Mars! hall W. Nirenberg
1969 - Salvador Luria
1970 - Julius Axelrod
1970 - Sir Bernard Katz
1972 - Gerald Maurice Edelman
1975 - Howard Martin Temin
1976 - Baruch S. Blumberg
1977 - Roselyn Sussman Yalow
1978 - Daniel Nathans
1980 - Baruj Benacerraf
1984 - Cesar Milstein
1985 - Michael Stuart Brown
1985 - Joseph L. Goldstein
1986 - Stanley Cohen [& Rita Levi-Montalcini]
1988 - Gertrude Elion
1989 - Harold Varmus
1991 - Erwin Neher
1991 - Bert Sakmann
1993 - Richard J. Roberts
1993 - Phillip Sharp
1994 - Alfred Gilman
1995 - Edwrd B. Lewis

Physics:
1907 - Albert Abraham Michelson
1908 - Gabriel Lippmann
1921 - Albert Einstein
1922 - Niels Bohr
1925 - James Franck
1925 - Gustav Hertz
1943 - Gustav Stern
1944 - Isidor Issac Rabi
1952 - Felix Bloch
1954 - Max Born
1958 - Igor Tamm
1959 - Emilio Segre
1960 - Donald A. Glaser
1961 - Robert Hofstadter
1962 - Lev Davidovich Landau
1965 - Richard Phillips Feynman
1965 - Julian Schwinger
1969 - Murray Gell-Mann
1971 - Dennis Gabor
1973 - Brian David Josephson
1975 - Benjamin Mottleson
1976 - Burton Richter
1978 - Arno Allan Penzias
1978 - Peter L Kapitza
1979 - Stephen Weinberg
1979 - Sheldon Glashow
1988 - Leon Lederman
1988 - Melvin Schwartz
1988 - Jack Steinberger
1990 - Jerome Friedman
1995 - Martin Perl

The Jews are not demonstrating with their dead on the streets, yelling and chanting and asking for revenge, the Jews are not promoting brain washing the children in military training camps, teaching them how to blow themselves up and cause maximum deaths of Jews and other non Muslims.

The Jews don't highjack planes, nor kill athletes at the Olympics, the Jews don't traffic slaves, nor have leaders calling for Jihad and death to all the Infidels.

The Jews don't have the economical strength of the Petroleum, nor the possibilities To force the world's media to see "their side" of the question.

Perhaps if the world's Muslims could invest more in normal education and less in blaming The Jews for all their problems, we could all live in a better world.

Israel, the 100th smallest country, with less than 1/1000th of the world's population, can lay claim to the following:

The cell phone was developed in Israel by Israelis working in the Israeli branch of Motorola, which has its largest development center in Israel.

Most of the Windows NT and XP operating systems were developed by Microsoft-Israel.

The Pentium MMX Chip technology was designed in Israel at Intel.

Both the Pentium-4 microprocessor and the Centrino processor were entirely designed, developed and produced in Israel.

The Pentium microprocessor in your computer was most likely manufactured in Israel.

Voice mail technology was developed in Israel.

Both Microsoft and Cisco built their only R&D facilities outside the US in Israel.

The technology for the AOL Instant Messenger ICQ was developed in 1996 by four young Israelis.

Israel has the fourth largest air force in the world (after the U.S., Russia and China). In addition to a large variety of other aircraft, Israel's air force has an aerial arsenal of over 250 F-16's. This is the largest fleet of F-16 aircraft outside of the US.

According to industry officials, Israel designed the airline industry's most impenetrable flight security. U. S.officials now look to Israel for advice on how to handle airborne security threats.

Israel's $100 billion economy is larger than all of its immediate neighbors combined.

Israel has the highest percentage in the world of home computers per capita.

Israel has the highest ratio of university degrees to the population in the world.

Israel produces more scientific papers per capita than any other nation by a large margin - 109 per 10,000 people -- as well as one of the highest per capita rates of patents filed.

In proportion to its population, Israel has the largest number of startup companies in the world. In absolute terms, Israel has the largest number of startup companies than any other country in the world, except the US (3,500 companies mostly in hi-tech).

With more than 3,000 high-tech companies and startups, Israel has the highest concentrationof hi-tech companies in the world -- apart from the Silicon Valley, US.

Israel is ranked #2 in the world for venture capital funds right behind the US.

Outside the United States and Canada, Israel has the largest number of NASDAQ listed companies.

Israel has the highest average living standards in the Middle The per capita income in 2000 was over $17,500, exceeding that of the UK.

On a per capita basis, Israel has the largest number of biotech startups.

Twenty-four per cent of Israel's workforce holds university degrees -- ranking third in the industrialized world, after the United States and Holland - and 12 per cent hold advanced degrees.

Israel is the only liberal democracy in the Middle East.

In 1984 and 1991, Israel airlifted a total of 22,000 Ethiopian Jews at risk in Ethiopia, to safety in Israel.

When Golda Meir was elected Prime Minister of Israel in 1969, she became the world's second elected female leader in modern times.

When the U. S. Embassy in Nairobi, Kenya was bombed in 1998, Israeli rescue teams were on the scene within a day -- and saved three victims from the rubble.

Israel has the third highest rate of entrepreneurship -- and the highest rate among women and among people over 55 - in the world.

Relative to its population, Israel is the largest immigrant-absorbing nation on earth. Immigrants come in search of democracy, religious freedom, and economic opportunity.

Israel was the first nation in the world to adopt the Kimberly process, an international standard that certifies diamonds as "conflict free."

Israel has the world's second highest per capita of new books.

Israel is the only country in the world that entered the 21st century with a net gain in its number of trees, made more remarkable because this was achieved in an area considered mainly desert.

Israel has more museums per capita than any other country.

Medicine... Israeli scientists developed the first fully computerized, no-radiation, diagnostic instrumentation for breast cancer.

An Israeli company developed a computerized system for ensuring proper administration of medications, thus removing human error from medical treatment.

Every year in U.S. hospitals 7,000 patients die from treatment mistakes.

Israel's Givun imaging developed the first ingestible video camera, so small it fits inside a pill. Used to view the small intestine from the inside, the camera helps doctors diagnose cancer and digestive disorders.

Researchers in Israel developed a new device that directly helps the heart pump blood, an innovation with the potential to save lives among those with heart failure. The new device is synchronized with the heart's mechanical operations through a sophisticated system of sensors.

Israel leads the world in the number of scientists and technicians in the workforce, with 145 per 10,000, as opposed to 85 in the U.S., over 70 in Japan, and less than 60 in Germany. With over 25% of its work force employed in technical professions. Israel places first in this category as well.

A new acne treatment developed in Israel, the ClearLight device, produces a high-intensity, ultraviolet-light-free, narrow-band blue light that causes acne bacteria to self-destruct -- all without damaging surroundings skin or tissue.

An Israeli company was the first to develop and install a large-scale solar-powered and fully functional electricity generating plant, in southern California's Mojave desert.

All the above while engaged in regular wars with an implacable enemy that seeks its destruction, and an economy continuously under strain by having to spend more per capita on its own protection than any other country on earth.

Could it possibly BE that the reason for which a BILLION Muslims want to eradicate 13 million Jews is that the contrast in achievement embarrasses Muslims perennially, decade by decade, century by century?

It is perfectly obvious to me that Jewish people are a people of LIFE. Muslims follow an ideology of DEATH. No wonder the former are the high achievers, while the latter are still hiding in caves, sitting on dusty stones, raging at the sky and scheming to blow up fellow Muslims, Jews, Christians, Buddhists and anyone else they can get close enough to, to commit such atrocities.

9 posted on 04/24/2005 11:11:41 PM PDT by CHARLITE (I lost my car keys............so now I have to walk everywhere.......)
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To: ambrose

*


10 posted on 04/24/2005 11:39:22 PM PDT by sully777 (If anyone asks, I'm a monger-monger.)
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To: ambrose

you might want to check the following website. It's very informative. Does an exce;;ent job showing the relationship of the Passover to Messiah-Jesus.

http://jesus-messiah.com/html/passover1.html


11 posted on 04/24/2005 11:40:14 PM PDT by connectthedots
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To: CHARLITE

Wow; that is quite a list of accomplishments. On the other hand, I'm not sure of the connection of that information to the posted article. One might also consider that it was a largely Christian alliance that defeated the Axis powers during WWII and may be a major reason why many of the people you list lived. Had it not been for the love of all men by those largely Christian nations, what would the world be like today?

I have nothing but great respect for Jews and the nation of Israel. I simply thinkthat the evidence is overwhelming that Jesu Christ is and was the Messiah. Messianic Jews agree.


12 posted on 04/24/2005 11:49:14 PM PDT by connectthedots
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To: CHARLITE
"Could it possibly BE that the reason for which a BILLION Muslims want to eradicate 13 million Jews is that the contrast in achievement embarrasses Muslims perennially, decade by decade, century by century?"

No. It's because Muhammad hated the Jews for exposing him for the false prophet he was and laughing at his rediculous attempts at making a "religion".

People are still laughing, and Muslims are still killing and will do so until they control the world. Muhammad stopped trying to be a prophet and realized that he had stumbled onto a good way to rob, steal, kill and conquer, enjoy the spoils of war and always have a willing army of bandits. Thw Mullah mafia know it's still a lucrative business which continues to serve them well, control whole countries, their wealth, and always have a willing army of nuts to control the masses, keeping them ignorant and poor, blaming their poverty on their enemies, while they bathe in pools of champaine.

13 posted on 04/25/2005 12:31:38 AM PDT by Nathan Zachary
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To: CHARLITE

An impressive list of achievement, although I am still saddenned by the fact that a certain economist by the name of Ludwig Von Mises (JEWISH, raised in Poland to German-born parents) never received the Nobel Prize in Econ.


14 posted on 04/25/2005 12:34:27 AM PDT by Clemenza (Alcohol Tobacco & Firearms: The Other Holy Trinity)
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To: CHARLITE
It's laughable, isn't it? And of those "Muslims" you mentioned, I suspect some of them are Christian Arabs.

The judgment of history will not look kindly upon Islam.

-ccm

15 posted on 04/25/2005 8:41:17 AM PDT by ccmay (Question Diversity)
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To: connectthedots; malakhi; Alouette
Hey look guys! Us silly Jews are so stupid. Passover is really about Jesus! Don't you just love it when Christians attempt to tell us what our religion means?
16 posted on 04/26/2005 11:24:55 AM PDT by Bella_Bru (www.JewsforJudaism.org)
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To: 1bigdictator; 1st-P-In-The-Pod; 2sheep; A Jovial Cad; A_Conservative_in_Cambridge; a_witness; ...
FRmail me to be added or removed from this Judaic/pro-Israel ping list.

WARNING: This is a high volume ping list

17 posted on 04/26/2005 11:40:18 AM PDT by Alouette (If I owned Hell and I owned Brooklyn, I'd live in Hell and rent out Brooklyn.)
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To: 1bigdictator; 1st-P-In-The-Pod; 2sheep; A Jovial Cad; A_Conservative_in_Cambridge; a_witness; ...
FRmail me to be added or removed from this Judaic/pro-Israel ping list.

WARNING: This is a high volume ping list

18 posted on 04/26/2005 11:40:52 AM PDT by Alouette (If I owned Hell and I owned Brooklyn, I'd live in Hell and rent out Brooklyn.)
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To: connectthedots; Dustbunny

It's both. To try to take the Messiah out of Passover certainly loses the rich prophetic meaning that God built into it, but to simply dismiss its commemorative function is equally wrong. Each illuminates the other. If that wasn't your intent, my apologies for saying so, but that is how you came across.


19 posted on 04/26/2005 12:05:05 PM PDT by Buggman (Baruch ata Adonai, Elohanu Mehlech ha Olam, asher nathan lanu et derech ha y’shua b’Mashiach Yeshua.)
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To: Bella_Bru; connectthedots
Hey look guys! Us silly Jews are so stupid. Passover is really about Jesus!

That's why they all celebrate Passover, dontcha know. (rolls eyes)

Don't you just love it when Christians attempt to tell us what our religion means?

Can you imagine the reaction if we started posting the same sort of condescending, dismissive crap on every Christian thread?

NEWSFLASH: Jews don't believe in Christianity. Get over it already.

20 posted on 04/26/2005 12:20:27 PM PDT by malakhi
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