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Japanese Used School Girl Panties vending machines
uckinfuglyfug Wed Jan 11, 2012 8:40 am
Vending machines in Japan offer for sale panties purportedly worn by schoolgirls.
underwear that has supposedly been previously worn by schoolgirls is being offered for sale in vending machines in Japan. Though we don't know the current price for such items, in 1993 they sold for the equivalent of US $50 apiece.
We'd read that this practice ended in 1993 and reported as much in the original of this article (which was penned in 2001), but since that time numerous readers living in Japan have written to say that not only haven't the machines gone away, but that they've themselves seen them.
Japan is home to a thriving bura-sera industry — of which traffic in the soiled panties of schoolgirls represents only one part — with "bura-sera" or "buru-sera" the term for a specific male fascination relating to that country's schoolgirls. "Buru" is anglicized Japanese (Japlish) for "bloomers" and "sera" for "sailor"; the term refers to the sailor suit, the predominant style of girls' junior and high school uniforms. Dozens, if not hundreds, of magazines are exclusively devoted to bura-sera photographs, pictures that feature girls clad in school garb, holding up their skirts to display their panties. Usually in such photos the girls' faces are hidden, but that is not always the case.
Girlish youth and innocence are considered sexy in Japan, a culture with a long history of regarding women more as sex toys than as people. This obsession with untouched adolescence results in the sad sight of women in their thirties emitting girlish giggles and clutching teddy bears in an effort to maintain their appeal to the opposite sex. Although it can fairly be said Western society also prizes youth in a woman, there the fascination has to do more with the looks of a girl than it does with her immaturity and presumed sexual innocence. A pretty 26-year-old who would be considered lovely in the West would in Japan be viewed by many as hopelessly long in the tooth.
Western society looks for firm, youthful bodies housing the attitudes of grown women — we like them young, but we don't like them to act young. In the West, a teen's sex appeal is dependent upon her ability to look and act much older, thus the fascination with makeup and plunging necklines, accoutrements that make her appear less of a child and more of a woman. In Japan, this ideal is reversed — sexy in the Land of the Rising Sun adds up to childlike behavior and modes of dress that express this ideal. Sometimes this amounts to the adoption of clothing styles highly reminiscent of high school uniforms, but even when a girl dons an evening gown, she will strive to look like a kinderling caught parading in Mom's finery. Likewise, childish outbursts, pouting, and tantrums are viewed as charmingly erotic because such actions work to further the violated schoolgirl image.
In a sexual culture so dominated by roricon (Japlish for "Lolita complex"), buru-sera fetishism finds its footing. Those whose way of life has taught them to lust for young girls find outlet for their interest through viewing suggestive photos of teen girls and handling items previously worn by them.
For a price, girls supplying buru-sera items for resale will don a new pair of panties at a porn shop in the morning on their way to school, then change back into their own underwear at the end of the day at the same shop, leaving its proprietor with a saleable item. Girls can also turn a profit on their own used undies by offloading them to the same people. Generally, the more worn the item, the higher the price it will fetch. Porn shops featuring buru-sera items also vend girls' used school uniforms.
There is no guarantee that all the panties marketed as having been worn by schoolgirls actually have been. Such details are not scrupulously vetted; no regulatory body checks to ensure the veracity of claims made about these items. However, it is clear that at least some of the used undies do come from teen girls, thus this "underwear of a Japanese schoolgirl" story is no myth.
Japan has a tradition of vending through machines what Western society would view as unusual consumables. In addition to the many items one would typically expect to find offered for sale in this manner, porn magazines, disposable cameras, new pantyhose, horoscopes, and many other goods are routinely mechanically vended.
Part of the appeal of such machines is attributable to a matter of convenience, but concern for privacy also fuels the mania. There is less chance of embarrassment in buying condoms from a machine than from a store where the sale must be rung up and bagged by a clerk. Likewise, purchases of "pink" videos (what in the West are termed "blue movies") are less likely to be blush-producing experiences when these transactions can be effected without anyone else's looking on.
There was thus a waiting market for "schoolgirl panties" machines, in that those looking to obtain such items would not have to brave a bura-sera shop to fulfill their desires. These mechanical points of sale appeared in 1993 in Chiba City (Chiba Prefecture), in an area known for its porn magazine and adult video vending machines. Almost immediately, an outcry was raised against them, but there was a problem in getting them removed: Whereas sellers required licences to distribute other types of goods, no such requirement was on the books for soiled underwear, because no one had foreseen the possibility of trade in such an item. These machines existed outside the law in the sense that no specific statute existed that could be invoked to combat them.
The solution was as creative as it is odd-sounding. After searching the rule books, the police have finally charged the three entrepreneurs with violating the Antique Dealings Law, which stipulates that dealers need a license. Used panties as antiques? The Antique Dealings Law is a statute which stipulates that an antique dealer or a dealer in second-hand items must obtain permission from local authorities. Lacking those permissions, the items could not be vended. In September 1993, three businessmen were charged with selling used panties without a permit under the provenance of this law. The police say that some of the underwear was bought from second hand dealers. The trio may also be charged with swindling, if it can be shown that the panties on sale had not really been worn by female students.
Click Me to see pictures of vending machines in Japan
Click Me to see more pictures of vending machines in Japan
http://www.theranter.com/forum/vBull...read.php?t=841
underwear that has supposedly been previously worn by schoolgirls is being offered for sale in vending machines in Japan. Though we don't know the current price for such items, in 1993 they sold for the equivalent of US $50 apiece.
We'd read that this practice ended in 1993 and reported as much in the original of this article (which was penned in 2001), but since that time numerous readers living in Japan have written to say that not only haven't the machines gone away, but that they've themselves seen them.
Japan is home to a thriving bura-sera industry — of which traffic in the soiled panties of schoolgirls represents only one part — with "bura-sera" or "buru-sera" the term for a specific male fascination relating to that country's schoolgirls. "Buru" is anglicized Japanese (Japlish) for "bloomers" and "sera" for "sailor"; the term refers to the sailor suit, the predominant style of girls' junior and high school uniforms. Dozens, if not hundreds, of magazines are exclusively devoted to bura-sera photographs, pictures that feature girls clad in school garb, holding up their skirts to display their panties. Usually in such photos the girls' faces are hidden, but that is not always the case.
Girlish youth and innocence are considered sexy in Japan, a culture with a long history of regarding women more as sex toys than as people. This obsession with untouched adolescence results in the sad sight of women in their thirties emitting girlish giggles and clutching teddy bears in an effort to maintain their appeal to the opposite sex. Although it can fairly be said Western society also prizes youth in a woman, there the fascination has to do more with the looks of a girl than it does with her immaturity and presumed sexual innocence. A pretty 26-year-old who would be considered lovely in the West would in Japan be viewed by many as hopelessly long in the tooth.
Western society looks for firm, youthful bodies housing the attitudes of grown women — we like them young, but we don't like them to act young. In the West, a teen's sex appeal is dependent upon her ability to look and act much older, thus the fascination with makeup and plunging necklines, accoutrements that make her appear less of a child and more of a woman. In Japan, this ideal is reversed — sexy in the Land of the Rising Sun adds up to childlike behavior and modes of dress that express this ideal. Sometimes this amounts to the adoption of clothing styles highly reminiscent of high school uniforms, but even when a girl dons an evening gown, she will strive to look like a kinderling caught parading in Mom's finery. Likewise, childish outbursts, pouting, and tantrums are viewed as charmingly erotic because such actions work to further the violated schoolgirl image.
In a sexual culture so dominated by roricon (Japlish for "Lolita complex"), buru-sera fetishism finds its footing. Those whose way of life has taught them to lust for young girls find outlet for their interest through viewing suggestive photos of teen girls and handling items previously worn by them.
For a price, girls supplying buru-sera items for resale will don a new pair of panties at a porn shop in the morning on their way to school, then change back into their own underwear at the end of the day at the same shop, leaving its proprietor with a saleable item. Girls can also turn a profit on their own used undies by offloading them to the same people. Generally, the more worn the item, the higher the price it will fetch. Porn shops featuring buru-sera items also vend girls' used school uniforms.
There is no guarantee that all the panties marketed as having been worn by schoolgirls actually have been. Such details are not scrupulously vetted; no regulatory body checks to ensure the veracity of claims made about these items. However, it is clear that at least some of the used undies do come from teen girls, thus this "underwear of a Japanese schoolgirl" story is no myth.
Japan has a tradition of vending through machines what Western society would view as unusual consumables. In addition to the many items one would typically expect to find offered for sale in this manner, porn magazines, disposable cameras, new pantyhose, horoscopes, and many other goods are routinely mechanically vended.
Part of the appeal of such machines is attributable to a matter of convenience, but concern for privacy also fuels the mania. There is less chance of embarrassment in buying condoms from a machine than from a store where the sale must be rung up and bagged by a clerk. Likewise, purchases of "pink" videos (what in the West are termed "blue movies") are less likely to be blush-producing experiences when these transactions can be effected without anyone else's looking on.
There was thus a waiting market for "schoolgirl panties" machines, in that those looking to obtain such items would not have to brave a bura-sera shop to fulfill their desires. These mechanical points of sale appeared in 1993 in Chiba City (Chiba Prefecture), in an area known for its porn magazine and adult video vending machines. Almost immediately, an outcry was raised against them, but there was a problem in getting them removed: Whereas sellers required licences to distribute other types of goods, no such requirement was on the books for soiled underwear, because no one had foreseen the possibility of trade in such an item. These machines existed outside the law in the sense that no specific statute existed that could be invoked to combat them.
The solution was as creative as it is odd-sounding. After searching the rule books, the police have finally charged the three entrepreneurs with violating the Antique Dealings Law, which stipulates that dealers need a license. Used panties as antiques? The Antique Dealings Law is a statute which stipulates that an antique dealer or a dealer in second-hand items must obtain permission from local authorities. Lacking those permissions, the items could not be vended. In September 1993, three businessmen were charged with selling used panties without a permit under the provenance of this law. The police say that some of the underwear was bought from second hand dealers. The trio may also be charged with swindling, if it can be shown that the panties on sale had not really been worn by female students.
Click Me to see pictures of vending machines in Japan
Click Me to see more pictures of vending machines in Japan
http://www.theranter.com/forum/vBull...read.php?t=841
uckinfuglyfug- Posts : 90
Join date : 2010-02-19
Re: Japanese Used School Girl Panties vending machines
mugglez Wed Jan 11, 2012 9:07 am
el kabong wrote:The Sick Mind & Degenerate Mentality of eternalspirit aka uckinfuglyfug
:
The David Icke forums most prolific poster.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iaysTVcounI
An X-Ray of his Cranial Cavity:
mugglez- Posts : 503
Join date : 2011-07-03
Location : Afwhereistan
Re: Japanese Used School Girl Panties vending machines
uckinfuglyfug Wed Jan 11, 2012 9:33 am
IF YOU WANT PANTIES YOU'RE TALKING TO THE WRONG BLOKE ASK SNOOPOOPSALOTOFGAS AKA ELKABONG SHE/HE IT MAY POOP IN EM FOR YOU. sO YOU'LL GET TWICE AS MUCH POOP AND A LONGER LASTING EFFECT..YOU'LL BE FILLING YOUR OWN PANTS THOUGH WITH ALL THEM SOCK PUPPETS
uckinfuglyfug- Posts : 90
Join date : 2010-02-19
Re: Japanese Used School Girl Panties vending machines
sharky Wed Jan 11, 2012 9:42 am
The Eternal Jew
http://forum.davidicke.com/showthread.php?t=191709
One of the biggest cover-ups in History is the massive misrepresentations/lies of and about the Jews. Their history, their beliefs, their culture etc.........
Over 300 years ago, King Louis XIV of France asked Blaise Pascal, the great Christian philosopher, to give him proof of God. Pascal answered, “Why the Jews, your Majesty, the Jews!”
http://www.simpletoremember.com/arti...ewish-history/
Quote:
That the Jewish nation—such a tiny group of people—survived two thousand years of exile and persecution was nothing short of a supernatural phenomenon. Pascal wasn’t the only one who was so amazed by the survival of the Jewish people. Other thinkers, philosophers and historians have noticed something unusual about the Jews.
Mark Twain, an agnostic and self-acknowledged skeptic, penned this in 1899 in Harper’s Magazine:
“The Egyptian, Babylonian, and the Persian rose, filled the planet with sound and splendor, then faded to dream-stuff and passed away. The Greek and Roman followed, made a vast noise and they are gone. Other peoples have sprung up, and held their torch high for a time, but it burned out and they sit in twilight now or have vanished. The Jew saw them all, beat them all, and is now what he always was, exhibiting no decadence, no infirmities of age, no weakening of his parts, no slowing of his energies, no dulling of his alert and aggressive mind. All things are mortal, but the Jew. All other forces pass, but he remains. What is the secret of his immortality?”....................4) Anti-Semitism
(TOP)
The term “anti-Semitism” itself is very curious. Why not refer to the hatred and persecution of Jews by more generic terms like religious bigotry, xenophobia, or racism? The Jews are the only group in the world with a unique term for their persecution. Why? The world seems to realize that anti-Semitism isn’t simply one more unfortunate example of hatred in the world, but is instead a phenomenon specific to the Jews.
There are four different aspects to anti-Semitism which characterize it as being a hatred like no other:
1) Universality
2) Intensity
3) Longevity
4) Irrationality
Universality:
The universal scope of anti-Semitism can be seen in the fact that Jews have been expelled from virtually every country in which they have resided. Jews were expelled from England in 1290, France in 1306 and 1394, Hungary in 1349 and 1360, Austria in 1421, from various places in Germany throughout the 14th, 15th and 16th centuries, from Lithuania in 1445 and 1495, Spain in 1492, Portugal in 1497, and from Bohemia and Moravia in 1744-45. Between the 15th and 18th centuries, Jews were not permitted to enter Russia, and when they were finally admitted, they were restricted to one area, the Pale of Settlement.
Parallel to these atrocities in Europe were various levels of anti-Semitism at the hands of the Arabs. From Islam’s inception in the 7th century, the Jews living in Arab countries were constantly made to feel like second-class citizens. Violent outbreaks sporadically occurred throughout the following 1300 years and reached a climax during the years 1948 and 1967. During that period, almost all of the Jews living in Aden, Algeria, Egypt, Iraq, Syria and Yemen, over 500,000 in all, were forced to flee, fearing for their lives, in the wake of pogroms, assaults and massacres.
Even as far away as Ethiopia, where a small community of Jews were cut off from the rest of the Jewish people for over 2000 years, we find evidence of persecution from the neighboring peoples. There has even been evidence of anti-Semitism in Japan—a country where virtually no Jews ever lived!
Jewish Persecution Timeline
Intensity:
The ultimate example is the Holocaust (acknowledged throughout the world as the ultimate manifestation of evil in all of history)—the only time an entire people (i.e., men, women and children) had a campaign of complete annihilation waged against them.
Longevity:
Most of the world’s great powers, even those with only a small percentage of Jews among them, regarded the Jews as a central enemy. This phenomenon began as early as the Greek persecutions of Jews during the Second Temple period. It continued with the late Roman Empire, the Arabs, and the Christian world for over 15 centuries (most notably with the frequent occurrence of blood libels all throughout the Middle Ages) and more recently with the Nazis and the Soviet Union, as well as the Arabs today.
FULL LIST OF EMPIRES AGAINST THE JEWS:
Egyptian Empire,
Chaldean Empire,
Babylonian Empire,
Greek Empire,
Roman Empire,
Byzantine Empire,
Spanish Empire,
Ottoman Turkish Empire,
British Empire,
Austro-Hungarian Empire,
German Empire,
French Empire,
Russia Empire,
Soviet Empire,
Nazi Empire
Irrationality:
We are the only people ever accused of “deicide” (killing a god)—this has been claimed as one of the major causes of anti-Semitism for almost 2000 years. Despite the fact that eating blood is as strong a prohibition as that against eating pork, Jews were constantly persecuted throughout the Middle Ages through blood libels, the charge that we drank the blood of non-Jewish children. We were attacked in pogroms for well-poisoning and once even for air-poisoning.
The Jews in Germany were accused of having brought Socialism and Communism to Germany, of being responsible for Germany losing World War I, and of causing the economic problems of the 1920’s. This paranoia existed in spite of the fact that the percentage of Jews in Germany at the time was only 0.8%. Many nations have even hurt themselves with their persecution of the Jews, most notably Spain (economically) and Germany (with science, culture, military, etc.).
A forgery purporting to be the conspiratorial discussions of Jewish elders plotting to take over the world, “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion” was, next to the Bible, the best-selling book in the world during the 1920’s. It has since been printed in numerous languages. Since 1987 it is being widely distributed in Japan…
Of all the extreme fanaticism that plays havoc in man’s nature, there is none as irrational as anti-Semitism. The Jews cannot vindicate themselves in the eyes of these fanatics. If the Jews are rich, they are victims of theft and extortion. If they are poor, they are victims of ridicule. If they take sides in a war, it is because they wish to gain advantage from the spilling of non-Jewish blood. If they espouse peace, it is because they are scared and anxious by nature or traitors to their country. If the Jew dwells in a foreign land he is persecuted and expelled. If he wishes to return to his own land, he is prevented from doing so. - Lloyd George, 1923
Whatever we do, that is precisely what is cited as the reason for the hatred against us. At the same time that Jews in America were accused of being communists, Jews in Russia were being labeled as capitalists. The more one studies anti-Semitism, the more obvious it becomes that the innumerable “explanations” offered throughout the various societies in which Jews have resided are not reasons at all (i.e. whose absence would necessarily result in no more persecutions), but rather excuses.
But as my research into Jewish history progressed, I was surprised, depressed, and to some extent overwhelmed by the perpetual and irrational violence which pursued the Jews in every country and to almost every corner of the globe. If, therefore, persecution, expulsion, torture, humiliation, and mass murder haunt these pages, it is because they also haunt the Jewish story.
- Martin Gilbert, “Jewish History Atlas” Oxford 1985
It has been prophesied in the Torah that Jews will be persecuted:
“Among those nations you shall find no respite, no rest for your foot. There God will make you cowardly, destroying your outlook and making life hopeless. You will live in constant suspense. Day and night, you will be terrified, never sure of your existence. In the morning you will say, ‘If only it were night,’ and in the evening you will say, ‘If only it were morning!’ Such will be the dread that your heart will feel and the sights that your eyes will see” (Deut. 28:65-67).
No other form of racial hatred comes close to anti-Semitism in its virulence, its intensity and its irrationality.
As Professor Michael Curtis of Rutgers University put it:
“The uniqueness of anti-Semitism lies in the fact that no other people in the world have ever been charged simultaneously with alienation from society and with cosmopolitanism, with being capitalistic exploiters and also revolutionary communist advocators. The Jews were accused of having an imperious mentality, at the same time they’re a people of the book. They’re accused of being militant aggressors, at the same time as being cowardly pacifists. With being a chosen people, and also having an inferior human nature. With both arrogance and timidity. With both extreme individualism and community adherence. With being guilty of the crucifixion of Jesus and at the same time held to account for the invention of Christianity.” (Colloquium on anti-Semitism, 1987)
If we look at the history of anti-Semitism, we see one unceasing chain of slaughter, pogroms, pillaging, expulsion, etc. There are horrendous levels of violence that lead up to the worst thing that can be done to a hated people: Genocide. Most nations in history have not been subjected to even one genocide. But in almost every generation there’s an attempted Jewish genocide somewhere in the world on a macrocosmic or microcosmic scale.
Jewish Persecution Timeline
http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Op-EdCo...aspx?id=245708
the 7 Wonders of the Jewish World By NATAN SLIFKIN
11/15/2011 22:37
http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Op-EdCo...aspx?id=245708
Quote:
A new list: The 7 Wonders of the Jewish World, with “world” not being a geographical location, but the full realm of Jewish experience.
Since ancient times, cultures have perceived significance in the number seven. In antiquity, a list was compiled of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. In the 19th century, lists were compiled of the Seven Wonders of the Middle Ages and the Seven Wonders of the Medieval Mind.
More recently, Mohandas Gandhi made a list of the Seven Blunders of the World, and just last week many Israel supporters were disappointed when the Dead Sea did not win enough votes to make the new list of the Seven Wonders of the Natural World. Meanwhile, the Israel Tourism Ministry is arranging a vote for the Seven Wonders of Israel.
But I would like to propose a different list: The Seven Wonders of the Jewish World, with “world” not being a geographical location, but rather the full realm of the Jewish experience.
1. Monotheism
There is an old ditty which goes, “How odd of God, to choose the Jews.” One of the many rejoinders is: “It’s not so odd; the Jews chose God.” Yet it is that very choosing of God which is odd and remarkable. As archeologist and Egyptologist Henri Frankfort wrote, “The dominant tenet of Hebrew thought is the absolute transcendence of God. God is not in nature. Neither earth nor sun nor heaven is divine; even the most potent natural phenomena are but reflections of God’s greatness... it needs an effort of the imagination to realize the shattering boldness of a contempt for imagery at the time, and in the particular historical setting, of the Hebrews.”
Aside from its role in shaping religion, monotheism also laid the foundation for the rise of science; as several historians of science have noted, the idea that disparate phenomena all follow fundamental “laws” flowed from monotheism. And the billions of adherents of Christianity and Islam are all adopting a monotheism initiated by the Jewish People.
2. The Land of Israel
The land of Israel, promised to Abraham, is small. It does not host the greatest waterfalls or the tallest mountains. But it is nevertheless remarkable within the natural world. Geographically, the land of Israel is at the junction of three continents: Europe, Asia and Africa. Within its tiny area, it houses an incredible diversity of landscapes: snowy slopes, tropical beaches, arid deserts and green forests. As a result of all this, the land of Israel is home to an astonishingly diverse range of flora and fauna. It is the southernmost range of many northern species, the westernmost range of eastern species, and the northernmost range of southern species. As the Midrash states, Israel is the center of the world.
3. Torah
Literally meaning “teaching,” the word Torah is often used in the narrow sense of referring to the Five Books of Moses. But in its broadest sense, it refers to the entire gamut of Jewish teachings. This marvelous body of literature chronicles a nation’s efforts over millennia to connect with the Divine, to improve the individual, to regulate society and to stretch the mind. Scripture, Talmud, midrash, philosophy, mysticism, law, ethics – it encompasses every intellectual taste and every aspect of our lives.
4. The calendar
The wonder of the Jewish calendar is not limited to the way in which it manages to synchronize three entirely unrelated natural phenomena: the rotation of the earth on its axis, the revolution of the moon around the earth, and the revolution of the earth around the sun.
The very contents of the Jewish calendar are so much richer than in the joke which describes it as consisting of two types of events: “They tried to kill us, we won, let’s eat,” and “They tried to kill us, we didn’t win, let’s not eat.”
We celebrate national salvation and religious freedom; we observe days of solemnity, repentance and introspection; and we mourn the loss of people and precious elements of our heritage. Most wonderful of all is the Sabbath, during which, miraculously, I am able to resist checking my e-mail for a full twenty-four hours.
5. Jewish survival
The Jewish People, never large in number, have been faced with hatred for over 3,000 years. We have been exiled from our home and forced into servitude and exile among hostile nations. We have suffered persecution in every one of the numerous countries in which we have lived. Nations faced with far fewer existential threats have disappeared, and yet we have survived.
Mark Twain famously asked, “The Egyptian, the Babylonian, and the Persian rose, filled the planet with sound and splendor, then... passed away. The Greek and the Roman followed. The Jew saw them all, beat them all, and is now what he always was, exhibiting no decadence, no infirmities of age, no weakening of his parts... What is the secret of his immortality?”
And we made it back to our homeland after 2,000 years of exile, an event completely unparalleled in world history.
6.The State of Israel
Like every citizen of Israel, and especially like every oleh (immigrant), I could rant endlessly about the shortcomings of the State of Israel (though unlike the citizens of our neighboring countries, I could do so without fear of being thrown in prison). But this would be a smallminded perspective that does not take into account the incredible challenges that the state overcomes.
Despite having to absorb an enormous number of immigrants in a short span of time, and having to devote a ridiculously large amount of resources to national defense, Israel has managed to create a vibrant democracy, an oasis of prosperity, producing astonishing accomplishments in every field, all while successfully repelling repeated attempts at annihilation.
7.Global significance
Although numbering only 0.2% of the total world population today, and never having numbered much more than that, the Jewish People have always had an inexplicably large impact upon the world. The spread of monotheism is the most significant example, but we have also made disproportionate contributions in every sphere of knowledge and endeavor. Meanwhile, the United Nations is obsessed with Israel, condemning it more than every other country put together. If anything, we’re too significant for our own good.
Those are the Seven Wonders of the Jewish World as I see them, which I think are much more wonderful than the Seven Wonders of the ancient world.
Dispersed among the Nations, the Jews brought a great many benefits to a great many people. As a Gentile I thank them.
http://www.jinfo.org/
"And the remnant of Jacob shall be in the midst of many peoples, as dew from the Lord, as showers upon the grass..." MICAH 5:6*
Quote:
The Jews started it all - and by "it" I mean so many of the things we care about, the underlying values that make all of us, Jew and Gentile, believer and atheist, tick. Without the Jews, we would see the world with different eyes, hear with different ears, even feel with different feelings. And not only would our sensorium, the screen through which we receive the world, be different: we would think with a different mind, interpret all our experience differently, draw different conclusions from the things that befall us. And we would set a different course for our lives.
By "we" I mean the usual "we" of late-twentieth-century writing: the people of the Western world, whose peculiar but vital mentality has come to infect every culture on earth, so that, in a startlingly precise sense, all humanity is now willy-nilly caught up in this "we." For better or worse, the role of the West in humanity's history is singular. Because of this, the role of the Jews, the inventors of Western culture, is also singular: there is simply no one else remotely like them; theirs is a unique vocation. Indeed, as we shall see, the very idea of vocation, of a personal destiny, is a Jewish idea.
Our history is replete with examples of those who have refused to see what the Jews are really about, who - through intellectual blindness, racial chauvinism, xenophobia, or just plain evil - have been unable to give this oddball tribe, this raggle-taggle band, this race of wanderers who are the progenitors of the Western world, their due. Indeed, at the end of this bloodiest of centuries, we can all too easily look back on scenes of unthinkable horror perpetrated by those who would do anything rather than give the Jews their due.
But I must ask my readers to erase from their minds not only the horrors of history - modern, medieval, and ancient - but (so far as one can) the very notion of history itself. More especially, we must erase from our minds all the suppositions on which our world is built - the whole intricate edifice of actions and ideas that are our intellectual and emotional patrimony. We must reimagine ourselves in the form of humanity that lived and moved on this planet before the first word of the Bible was written down, before it was spoken, before it was even dreamed ...
... All evidence points to there having been, in the earliest religious thought, a vision of the cosmos that was profoundly cyclical. The assumptions that early man made about the world were, in all their essentials, little different from the assumptions that later and more sophisticated societies, like Greece and India, would make in a more elaborate manner. As Henri-Charles Puech says of Greek thought in his seminal Man and Time: "No event is unique, nothing is enacted but once ... every event has been enacted, is enacted, and will be enacted perpetually; the same individuals have appeared, appear, and will appear at every turn of the circle."
The Jews were the first people to break out of this circle, to find a new way of thinking and experiencing, a new way of understanding and feeling the world, so much so that it may be said with some justice that theirs is the only new idea that human beings have ever had. But their world view has become so much a part of us that at this point it might as well have been written into our cells as a genetic code. We find it so impossible to shed - even for a brief experiment - that it is now the cosmic vision of all other peoples that appears to us exotic and strange.
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Adapted with permission of the publisher from A History of the Jews, by Paul Johnson (HarperCollins, New York,
1987, p. 585; http://www.harpercollins.com).
In his Antiquities of the Jews, Josephus describes Abraham as 'a man of great sagacity' who had 'higher notions of virtue than others of his time'. He therefore 'determined to change completely the views which all then had about God'. One way of summing up 4,000 years of Jewish history is to ask ourselves what would have happened to the human race if Abraham had not been a man of great sagacity, or if he had stayed in Ur and kept his higher notions to himself, and no specific Jewish people had come into being. Certainly the world without the Jews would have been a radically different place. Humanity might have eventually stumbled upon all the Jewish insights. But we cannot be sure. All the great conceptual discoveries of the intellect seem obvious and inescapable once they have been revealed, but it requires a special genius to formulate them for the first time. The Jews had this gift. To them we owe the idea of equality before the law, both divine and human; of the sanctity of life and the dignity of the human person; of the individual conscience, and so of personal redemption; of the collective conscience, and so of social responsibility; of peace as an abstract ideal and love as the foundation of justice, and many other items that constitute the basic moral furniture of the human mind. Without the Jews it might have been a much emptier place. Above all, the Jews taught us how to rationalize the unknown. The result was monotheism...
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Adapted with permission of the publisher from On Two Wings: Humble Faith and Common Sense at the American Founding, by Michael Novak (Encounter Books, San Francisco, CA,2002, pp. 8-12; http://www.encounterbooks.com).
"The Bible was the one book that literate Americans in the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries could be expected to know well," Robert Bellah has written. "Biblical imagery provided the basic framework for imaginative thought in America up until quite recent times and, unconsciously, its control is still formidable." As a design for the Seal of the United States, Jefferson suggested "a representation of the children of Israel in the wilderness, led by a cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night." He later concluded his second inaugural address with this same image: "I shall need ... the favor of that Being in whose hands we are, who led our fathers, as Israel of old, from their native land and planted them in a country flowing with all the necessaries and comforts of life." The image of "God's American Israel" made available four fresh perspectives, brought to intense focus by the Americans in a new and historically original way.
The first of these new perspectives was a narrative of purpose and progress. The Gentiles of the ancient world believed in cycles of time as regular (they thought) as the circular movements of the stars. They believed in eternal recurrence. But the Americans of 1770-1799 did not believe that time is cyclical, going nowhere, spinning in circles pointlessly. They believed that history had a beginning and was guided by Providence for a purpose... Time (in the view of the founders) was created for the unfolding of human liberty, for human emancipation. This purpose requires humans to choose for or against building cities worthy of the ideals God sets before them: liberty, justice, equality, self-government, and brotherhood...
... History, in this sense - open, purposive, contingent in liberty - is not a Greek or Roman idea. It is Hebraic; its source springs from the Biblical historians and prophets. Probably most of the humans who had ever lived before the arrival of Judaism on the world stage never even heard of "progress." The literature of Greece and Rome looks backwards, to golden ages of the past; the movement of time is circular. For Jews and Christians, by contrast, history is heading somewhere new: toward the New Kingdom of God, a kingdom of justice and love and peace, a new city on a hill...
... Second, Hebrew metaphysics held that everything in creation in all its workings and purposes is intelligible - suffused with reason, not absurd - in the eyes of a divine and loving Creator, Who created from nothing everything that is, and saw that it was good, and loved it; a Creator Who is more powerful than earthquakes, floods, erupting volcanos, hurricanes or anything else in the world, and different from them. One should not mistake this God for any part of His creation - as the Mayan Indians seem to have done, identifying God with rain and snakes and frogs and jackals (powerful forces in the dark, all of them). On the one hand, the world is not in itself divine. On the other, its Creator cannot be touched, tasted, heard, seen, or smelled. The Creator is independent of the world; therefore, the world can be looked into, investigated, and experimented with without infringing on His divinity. Strictly speaking, the Creator is beyond human categories, cannot be expressed in words that are like other words, imagined from the things of this world, or named as other things are named. He is not part of the material world. Seeking Him, it is better to aim one's mind in the direction of Spirit and Truth rather than matter, toward an Ineffable One Whom we do not name...
...Third, cherishing humble and weak things most of all, the Creator made at least two creatures to know Him, to love Him, and in total freedom (and not as slaves) to walk with Him - "male and female, He made them" (Genesis 1:27). "The God who gave us life, gave us liberty at the same time," Jefferson wrote summarizing the Biblical metaphysic. Liberty is the human condition established by the Bible, nearly every chapter of which turns upon its axis. What will Adam, King David, Peter, Saul, do next? Liberty is the axis of the universe, the ground of the possibility of love, human and divine... Moreover, the American tradition clearly distinguished a false idea of liberty - license - from the true liberty exercised in reflection and deliberate choice. Despite this high calling, men and women fail often, are vulnerable to human weakness, and are in want of checks and balances against their frailties.
Fourth, in Hebrew metaphysics the brief span of a human life is experienced as a time of suffering, testing whether humans can remain faithful to God's purposes in creating them - whether we will (or will not) show grace under pressure. In the Bible, the bright red thread of human history is not just liberty but liberty on trial...
...This drama of liberty gave birth to two "whig" theories of history, one Protestant and one Catholic. Nowadays, even secular people interpret history in the light of progress, rights, and liberty. Yet unbelievers received these concepts neither from the Greeks and Romans nor from Enlightened Reason, but via the preaching of Jesus Christ, from whom the Gentiles learned the essential outlook of the Hebrews: that the Creator gave humans a special place among all other creatures, and made them free, and endowed them with incomparable responsibility and dignity.
This sequence of related conceptions - that time had a beginning and is measured for progress (or decline) by God's standards; that everything in the world is intelligible, and that to inquire, invent, and discover is an impulse of faith as well as of reason; that the Creator endowed us with liberty and inviolable dignity, while the Divine Judge shows concern for the weak and the humble; that life is a time of duty and trial; and that history is to be grasped as the drama of human liberty - all these are the background that make sense of the Declaration of Independence. America and Israel, the first Israel and the second, shed light on each other...
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27-11-2011, 08:31 PM #4
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http://www.jlaw.com/Articles/JewBusEthI.html
Jewish Business Ethics: An Introductory Perspective]
Quote:
Many of us have a mistaken idea of what is within the compass or scope of our religious traditions. People know that lighting Chanukah candles is something you talk about with a rabbi, observance of the Shabbat, the laws of Kashrut, etc., but many people have an attitude that if I don't tell the rabbi how to run his business, the rabbi shouldn't tell me how to run mine. Very often, we live fragmented dichotomized lives where what we do in the office from 9 to 5 (or if you're a workaholic from 8 to 7), is our own private affair and then at home we observe the holidays, or the rituals of Judaism, on the weekends, or three-days-a-year, or whatever.
And yet we find in the Talmud a very interesting statement. The Talmud discusses what types of questions people are asked by God after their deaths. They come up to heaven, God asks them a variety of questions. The very first question that we are held accountable for after our deaths is "Nasata V'netata Be'emunah" which means "did you conduct your business affairs with honesty and with probity?" The second question is "did you set aside time for the study of the Torah, etc." But question #1 is were we ethical in the conduct of our business. If you look throughout the Torah, you will see a constant juxtaposition between the ritual commands of Judaism and the ethical obligations between one human being and another. One verse may say, don't eat meat and milk and the other verse will say, do not cheat, do not misrepresent, do not engage in fraud, because they are all part of the same religious structure. The notion of a dichotomy between ritual behavior and social behavior is a dichotomy that is totally foreign to Judaism because all of them are part of the same God-given basis of morality.
We know that the Torah has 613 mitzvot. Of course, none of us can do all of them but one of the mitzvot in the Torah is a mitzvah that says "Kedoshim Tiyu, be holy." Now, what does that mean? I mean, basically, is 'be holy' something that simply says do the other 612? Or is there some extra dimension that this mitzvah entails? The great commentator, the Ramban, tells us that "Kedoshim Tiyu" is a requirement of a Jew not to just obey the letter of the law but to obey the spirit of the law as well. Ramban posits that it is entirely possible for a person to be 100 percent observant, keeping all the mitzvot and yet in the famous immortal phrase, he can be a "Naval B'rshut HaTorah" he can be a repulsive, disgusting individual within the confines of the law. It is not enough just to obey the law. One must go beyond the law and embrace the ethical imperatives that are within that legal structure. This is the concept of going "Lifnim Mishurat HaDin" going beyond the law, not just confining oneself to the law.
Let me give you a story which illustrates how this works in the business context. There was a rabbi, Rabba Bar Chanah who once hired workmen to transport barrels of wine for him. They were negligent and as a result, the barrels of wine broke and this man incurred a severe financial loss. He took the workers to court, suing them for the value of the wine that was destroyed and the workers' only defense was, "You know, we can't afford it. We don't have the money. What are you going to do about it?" So the courts found in favor of the workers. So, Rabba Bar Chanah questioned the court and said, "Is this the law? Is it not the law that I am entitled to recover for their negligence?" And the court told him, "For you, this is the law. You are a righteous person and because you are a righteous person, you have to take into account the equities of the situation, the unfairness, the fact that these are people who need the money, etc., and, therefore, you are compelled by virtue of your righteous status to go beyond pressing your exact legal rights." Well then, and perhaps this is an ancient example of chutzpah, they turned around and sued him for their wages. They said, "Well, wait a second, you didn't pay us our wages for that day." So, he was dumbfounded. He said, "Okay, it's one thing to say I can't recover from you but are you going to recover from me when you broke my wine because of your negligence?" Astoundingly, the court said, "Yes! That's a good idea. You have to pay." And, once again, he asked, "Is this the law?" And they told him, "For you, that's the law. These are people who need the money and therefore, you must go beyond the law."
Part of the problem in American society - there are many, many structural problems in American society and many good points as well - is that too many of us are obsessed with asserting our rights to the fullest. Alexander de Toqueville remarked over 200 years ago that Americans are a litigious society, that we go to court over the smallest drop of the hat, we stand on our rights, we've become a rights oriented society rather than an obligation oriented society. Judaism teaches, above all, don't always press your claims to the fullest, deal with the other person in a spirit of tolerance, a spirit of acceptance, a spirit of compromise. But I'm not going to talk about that today. I'm not going to talk about going beyond the letter of the law. I'm going to talk about the law because what I want you to see is how high a moral standard the law itself requires us to adhere to. And then, keep in mind that the righteous individual goes beyond that letter of the law to embrace the spirit. But, we're not even going to talk about the spirit because the law itself has a high enough standard of morality that I think many of you would be quite surprised.
We say in the Shma, "You shall love the Lord your God with all of your heart, with all of your soul, and with all of your might." All of your heart, all of your soul we understand. What is the reference to all of your might? Rashi interprets that the verse means, you should love God with all of your money. So he then raises the question, if God already says you must love God with all of your soul even to the extent of giving up your life, if necessary, then why is it necessary to say you should serve God with all of your money? Rashi comments that there are some people who prefer their money to their lives and, therefore, if the verse would simply say you serve God with your life they wouldn't necessarily infer you serve God with all of your money. This is of course reminiscent of the famous Jack Benny joke when he is approached by the mugger who says, your money or your life and he says let me think about it a little bit. We have a similar idea here. The Torah has to address both types of people.
But, what is the concept of serving God with all of your possessions? Certainly, God does not require us to take oaths of poverty. God does not require us to renounce material wealth. So, how does one serve God with all of his possessions?
The short answer is: with the probity and integrity by which we amass those possessions.
Business ethics is the arena where the ethereal transcendent teachings of holiness and spirituality confront the often grubby business of making money and being engaged in the rat race that often comprises the marketplace. It is the acid test of whether religion is truly relevant or religion is simply relegated to an isolated sphere of human activity. It is business ethics, one could posit, above all, that shows God co-exists in the world rather than God and godliness being separate and apart.
And the meaning of serving God with all your possessions, therefore, means that in the conduct of our business in the accumulation of our wealth, there is also a mechanism to serve God.
We find on Yom Kippur we spend an entire day beating our breasts, confessing our sins over and over and over again, and sometimes we don't even know what we've done wrong. Rambam tells us that we often fail to realize that every sin has many implications. For example, if you confess to God, I'm sorry for any murders I've committed, you might think, "Well I haven't killed anybody." Keep in mind, however, the Talmud says, that humiliating somebody publicly is tantamount to murder. There are all sorts of repercussions. Maybe I didn't do the murder by shooting somebody but I did something else. Perhaps I did not take the steps I could have as a member of society to cut down on the crime rate. There are all sorts of dimensions to what sins are. After a whole day of beating one's breasts, we come to the end of Yom Kippur which is the prayer of Neilah, the final moments in which we beseech God.
Neilah doesn't have a lengthy confessional. The Vidui is only a few short paragraphs. But if you look at Neilah you'll notice that the one thing that it stresses is theft. We ask God for His forgiveness for the appropriation of other people's property, the appropriation of theft. You see how severe the notions of appropriating other people's property are. The Talmud says that only a minority of people commit sexual offenses, most people sin in matters of theft, and that will become clear as I go on, and all people sin with respect to evil gossip that they say about others.
When we come to the business area, the two sins we will encounter most often are theft, as broadly defined, and lashon ha'ra - defamation regarding competitors and the like.
What I propose to do is to examine through the prism of Jewish law four relational contexts in the business ethics area. One is our responsibilities vis-a-vis our competitors, and that's whether I have a store or whether I'm a lawyer or a doctor, anyone that's trying to get the same people as I, is my competitor. What are my responsibilities? Two, my responsibilities to my clients and to my customers. Three, my obligations towards employees and my co-workers. And, four, my responsibility as an observant Jew toward the government and the legal system as a whole, what are my obligations? Each of these topics can be not only the subject of a talk or article but the object of an entire book or course. A quick skimming of the surface, however, should give us all a flavor of the Jewish sensitivity to these vital areas. Future installments will attempt to provide this basic skimming.
Let me end with this thought: our Rabbis teach us that through adherence to ethics in our business, we bring the redemption, we bring Messiah because we create a peaceful world, a world where we're not looking after number one, a world where we have a shared sense of community and that, in turn paves the way for the Messiah, paves the way for the ultimate redemption of the Jewish people that we hope and pray for, that the light of Chanukah commemorates. Torah teaches us to live in this world. We know that in this world, the world is a mixture of good and evil and we know that we live in a world where other people don't play by the same rules. But the test of a moral person is not whether he behaves morally when others are behaving morally to him. The test of an ethical and moral person is one who can adhere to those values even if everyone else fails to adhere to them. As we have just celebrated Chanukah, may we all come to recognize that the little bit of light that we can bring into our personal lives can pierce through a whole lot of darkness, and that should be our goal this year and in the coming years.
http://www.jlaw.com/Articles/
The Impact of Jewish Values
on Marketing and Business Practices
http://www.jlaw.com/Articles/impactjewish.html
Quote:
Judaism, which relies on the Torah for its written law, has had a great impact on marketing and business. The Torah is replete with precepts dealing with business, and the Talmud, the source of Jewish oral law, elaborates and expands Torah law. The process is ongoing and rabbinical authorities today build on the decisions of their predecessors to apply Jewish law to modern problems. Some of the issues examined in this paper include: honesty in the marketplace, fair pricing, employer-employee relations, and environmental issues. Jewish law is not only concerned with practical legal advice but in encouraging individuals to go beyond the requirements of the law and practice the "way of the pious." Judaism does not have a negative attitude towards business and wealth -- indeed, most of the Talmudic sages had occupations and some were quite wealthy -- but riches must be acquired honestly and used to help the poor, the needy, and the stranger.
Introduction
Jewish culture, values, and ideas have permeated many aspects of modern life including the modern marketplace. This impact of Judaism on marketing and business is manifested not only in such areas as business ethics, but also in the organization's perceived social responsibility, and in a positive attitude towards business and wealth (when obtained and used in a proper manner). Numerous articles and books have been written describing applications of Jewish law from antiquity to the modern era and their continued relevance to the business problems of contemporary society (see, e.g., Elon 1975; Friedman 2000; Jung and Levine 1987; Levine 1980, 1987; Levine and Pava 1999; Tamari 1987, 1991; Wagschal 1991; Warhaftig 1987). To understand this impact, one must first examine Jewish law, tradition, and culture, especially those principles relevant to the marketplace.
GOING TO THE SOURCES
The Hebrew Bible, particularly the Pentateuch (i.e., the Torah), contains the written law and, to the believer, is the word of God. The precepts in the Torah are the foundations of Jewish law and are cited by rabbinical authorities as a kind of constitution to this very day. According to Jewish tradition, the Torah contains 613 precepts, many of which deal with business practices. The Torah is revered by other religions; the Talmud and the Midrash, however, are distinctly Jewish. Thus, to understand the impact of Judaism on marketing and business one must examine the Talmud and Midrash, as well as the Torah.
The Talmud, which is the compilation of Jewish oral law, expounds on the Hebrew Bible and consists of the Mishna and Gemara. The Mishna, originally an ancient oral tradition, was compiled and edited in written form about 1800 years ago by Rabbi Judah the Nasi (President of the Sanhedrin). The Gemara, which was completed about 1500 years ago, consists mainly of commentaries on the Mishna. There were two academies, in Israel and Babylon, independently studying the Mishna. Thus, there are two versions of the Talmud: the Jerusalem Talmud, a product of the academies in Israel, and the Babylonian Talmud, a product of the academies in Babylon. The Babylonian Talmud is considerably larger than that of the Jerusalem Talmud, and it is more authoritative.
The Talmud is primarily concerned with halacha (Jewish law) but also provides a detailed record of the beliefs of the Jewish people, their philosophy, traditions, culture, and folklore, i.e., the aggadah (homiletics). The Midrash, a separate scripture which records the views of the Talmudic sages, is mainly devoted to the exposition of Biblical verses but is also rich in philosophy, folklore, and legends. It should be noted that, other than the few individuals who headed academies, the overwhelming majority of the scholars referred to in the Talmud had secular occupations, such as beer brewer, farmer, farm worker, peddler, physician, wood chopper, merchant, blacksmith, gravedigger. Indeed, some were known by their occupations, for example, Rabbi Yochanan the Shoemaker (haSandlar). Even in later times, many of the great Jewish Biblical and Talmudic commentators had ordinary occupations, e.g.: Rabbi Shlomo ben Yitchak (1040 -- 1105), known as Rashi, was a vintner in France; Rabbi Abraham ibn Ezra (1089 -- 1164) was a poet and astronomer from Spain; Rabbi Moshe ben Maimon (1134 -- 1204), known as Maimonides, was a physician and philosopher in Egypt; and Rabbi Ovadiah Sforno (1470 -- 1550) was a physician in Italy.
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Judaism sees nothing wrong with business and making a profit as long as the firm realizes that it has other responsibilities as well. Jeremiah (9:23) stressed that God demands that people practice "lovingkindness, justice, and righteousness." The same can be asked of any organization.
CONCLUSION
The Psalmist (Psalms 15) describes some of the attributes of a virtuous individual. We cannot help but notice that these same attributes are just as important for an organization: "One who walks in total integrity, deals righteously, and speaks the truth from his heart. One who has no slander on his tongue, who has done his fellow human no evil nor cast disgrace upon his close one… Whoever does these things shall never falter." Achieving the highest level of ethical behavior in the marketplace and practicing the social responsibility that must accompany success in business are the hallmarks of the 'way of the pious.'
Indeed, business ethics occupies such an important place in Jewish law, culture, and tradition that the Talmud (T. Shabbos 31a) has as the very first question an individual is asked in the next world at the final judgment: "Were you honest in your business dealings?"
http://forum.davidicke.com/showthread.php?t=191709
One of the biggest cover-ups in History is the massive misrepresentations/lies of and about the Jews. Their history, their beliefs, their culture etc.........
Over 300 years ago, King Louis XIV of France asked Blaise Pascal, the great Christian philosopher, to give him proof of God. Pascal answered, “Why the Jews, your Majesty, the Jews!”
http://www.simpletoremember.com/arti...ewish-history/
Quote:
That the Jewish nation—such a tiny group of people—survived two thousand years of exile and persecution was nothing short of a supernatural phenomenon. Pascal wasn’t the only one who was so amazed by the survival of the Jewish people. Other thinkers, philosophers and historians have noticed something unusual about the Jews.
Mark Twain, an agnostic and self-acknowledged skeptic, penned this in 1899 in Harper’s Magazine:
“The Egyptian, Babylonian, and the Persian rose, filled the planet with sound and splendor, then faded to dream-stuff and passed away. The Greek and Roman followed, made a vast noise and they are gone. Other peoples have sprung up, and held their torch high for a time, but it burned out and they sit in twilight now or have vanished. The Jew saw them all, beat them all, and is now what he always was, exhibiting no decadence, no infirmities of age, no weakening of his parts, no slowing of his energies, no dulling of his alert and aggressive mind. All things are mortal, but the Jew. All other forces pass, but he remains. What is the secret of his immortality?”....................4) Anti-Semitism
(TOP)
The term “anti-Semitism” itself is very curious. Why not refer to the hatred and persecution of Jews by more generic terms like religious bigotry, xenophobia, or racism? The Jews are the only group in the world with a unique term for their persecution. Why? The world seems to realize that anti-Semitism isn’t simply one more unfortunate example of hatred in the world, but is instead a phenomenon specific to the Jews.
There are four different aspects to anti-Semitism which characterize it as being a hatred like no other:
1) Universality
2) Intensity
3) Longevity
4) Irrationality
Universality:
The universal scope of anti-Semitism can be seen in the fact that Jews have been expelled from virtually every country in which they have resided. Jews were expelled from England in 1290, France in 1306 and 1394, Hungary in 1349 and 1360, Austria in 1421, from various places in Germany throughout the 14th, 15th and 16th centuries, from Lithuania in 1445 and 1495, Spain in 1492, Portugal in 1497, and from Bohemia and Moravia in 1744-45. Between the 15th and 18th centuries, Jews were not permitted to enter Russia, and when they were finally admitted, they were restricted to one area, the Pale of Settlement.
Parallel to these atrocities in Europe were various levels of anti-Semitism at the hands of the Arabs. From Islam’s inception in the 7th century, the Jews living in Arab countries were constantly made to feel like second-class citizens. Violent outbreaks sporadically occurred throughout the following 1300 years and reached a climax during the years 1948 and 1967. During that period, almost all of the Jews living in Aden, Algeria, Egypt, Iraq, Syria and Yemen, over 500,000 in all, were forced to flee, fearing for their lives, in the wake of pogroms, assaults and massacres.
Even as far away as Ethiopia, where a small community of Jews were cut off from the rest of the Jewish people for over 2000 years, we find evidence of persecution from the neighboring peoples. There has even been evidence of anti-Semitism in Japan—a country where virtually no Jews ever lived!
Jewish Persecution Timeline
Intensity:
The ultimate example is the Holocaust (acknowledged throughout the world as the ultimate manifestation of evil in all of history)—the only time an entire people (i.e., men, women and children) had a campaign of complete annihilation waged against them.
Longevity:
Most of the world’s great powers, even those with only a small percentage of Jews among them, regarded the Jews as a central enemy. This phenomenon began as early as the Greek persecutions of Jews during the Second Temple period. It continued with the late Roman Empire, the Arabs, and the Christian world for over 15 centuries (most notably with the frequent occurrence of blood libels all throughout the Middle Ages) and more recently with the Nazis and the Soviet Union, as well as the Arabs today.
FULL LIST OF EMPIRES AGAINST THE JEWS:
Egyptian Empire,
Chaldean Empire,
Babylonian Empire,
Greek Empire,
Roman Empire,
Byzantine Empire,
Spanish Empire,
Ottoman Turkish Empire,
British Empire,
Austro-Hungarian Empire,
German Empire,
French Empire,
Russia Empire,
Soviet Empire,
Nazi Empire
Irrationality:
We are the only people ever accused of “deicide” (killing a god)—this has been claimed as one of the major causes of anti-Semitism for almost 2000 years. Despite the fact that eating blood is as strong a prohibition as that against eating pork, Jews were constantly persecuted throughout the Middle Ages through blood libels, the charge that we drank the blood of non-Jewish children. We were attacked in pogroms for well-poisoning and once even for air-poisoning.
The Jews in Germany were accused of having brought Socialism and Communism to Germany, of being responsible for Germany losing World War I, and of causing the economic problems of the 1920’s. This paranoia existed in spite of the fact that the percentage of Jews in Germany at the time was only 0.8%. Many nations have even hurt themselves with their persecution of the Jews, most notably Spain (economically) and Germany (with science, culture, military, etc.).
A forgery purporting to be the conspiratorial discussions of Jewish elders plotting to take over the world, “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion” was, next to the Bible, the best-selling book in the world during the 1920’s. It has since been printed in numerous languages. Since 1987 it is being widely distributed in Japan…
Of all the extreme fanaticism that plays havoc in man’s nature, there is none as irrational as anti-Semitism. The Jews cannot vindicate themselves in the eyes of these fanatics. If the Jews are rich, they are victims of theft and extortion. If they are poor, they are victims of ridicule. If they take sides in a war, it is because they wish to gain advantage from the spilling of non-Jewish blood. If they espouse peace, it is because they are scared and anxious by nature or traitors to their country. If the Jew dwells in a foreign land he is persecuted and expelled. If he wishes to return to his own land, he is prevented from doing so. - Lloyd George, 1923
Whatever we do, that is precisely what is cited as the reason for the hatred against us. At the same time that Jews in America were accused of being communists, Jews in Russia were being labeled as capitalists. The more one studies anti-Semitism, the more obvious it becomes that the innumerable “explanations” offered throughout the various societies in which Jews have resided are not reasons at all (i.e. whose absence would necessarily result in no more persecutions), but rather excuses.
But as my research into Jewish history progressed, I was surprised, depressed, and to some extent overwhelmed by the perpetual and irrational violence which pursued the Jews in every country and to almost every corner of the globe. If, therefore, persecution, expulsion, torture, humiliation, and mass murder haunt these pages, it is because they also haunt the Jewish story.
- Martin Gilbert, “Jewish History Atlas” Oxford 1985
It has been prophesied in the Torah that Jews will be persecuted:
“Among those nations you shall find no respite, no rest for your foot. There God will make you cowardly, destroying your outlook and making life hopeless. You will live in constant suspense. Day and night, you will be terrified, never sure of your existence. In the morning you will say, ‘If only it were night,’ and in the evening you will say, ‘If only it were morning!’ Such will be the dread that your heart will feel and the sights that your eyes will see” (Deut. 28:65-67).
No other form of racial hatred comes close to anti-Semitism in its virulence, its intensity and its irrationality.
As Professor Michael Curtis of Rutgers University put it:
“The uniqueness of anti-Semitism lies in the fact that no other people in the world have ever been charged simultaneously with alienation from society and with cosmopolitanism, with being capitalistic exploiters and also revolutionary communist advocators. The Jews were accused of having an imperious mentality, at the same time they’re a people of the book. They’re accused of being militant aggressors, at the same time as being cowardly pacifists. With being a chosen people, and also having an inferior human nature. With both arrogance and timidity. With both extreme individualism and community adherence. With being guilty of the crucifixion of Jesus and at the same time held to account for the invention of Christianity.” (Colloquium on anti-Semitism, 1987)
If we look at the history of anti-Semitism, we see one unceasing chain of slaughter, pogroms, pillaging, expulsion, etc. There are horrendous levels of violence that lead up to the worst thing that can be done to a hated people: Genocide. Most nations in history have not been subjected to even one genocide. But in almost every generation there’s an attempted Jewish genocide somewhere in the world on a macrocosmic or microcosmic scale.
Jewish Persecution Timeline
http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Op-EdCo...aspx?id=245708
the 7 Wonders of the Jewish World By NATAN SLIFKIN
11/15/2011 22:37
http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Op-EdCo...aspx?id=245708
Quote:
A new list: The 7 Wonders of the Jewish World, with “world” not being a geographical location, but the full realm of Jewish experience.
Since ancient times, cultures have perceived significance in the number seven. In antiquity, a list was compiled of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. In the 19th century, lists were compiled of the Seven Wonders of the Middle Ages and the Seven Wonders of the Medieval Mind.
More recently, Mohandas Gandhi made a list of the Seven Blunders of the World, and just last week many Israel supporters were disappointed when the Dead Sea did not win enough votes to make the new list of the Seven Wonders of the Natural World. Meanwhile, the Israel Tourism Ministry is arranging a vote for the Seven Wonders of Israel.
But I would like to propose a different list: The Seven Wonders of the Jewish World, with “world” not being a geographical location, but rather the full realm of the Jewish experience.
1. Monotheism
There is an old ditty which goes, “How odd of God, to choose the Jews.” One of the many rejoinders is: “It’s not so odd; the Jews chose God.” Yet it is that very choosing of God which is odd and remarkable. As archeologist and Egyptologist Henri Frankfort wrote, “The dominant tenet of Hebrew thought is the absolute transcendence of God. God is not in nature. Neither earth nor sun nor heaven is divine; even the most potent natural phenomena are but reflections of God’s greatness... it needs an effort of the imagination to realize the shattering boldness of a contempt for imagery at the time, and in the particular historical setting, of the Hebrews.”
Aside from its role in shaping religion, monotheism also laid the foundation for the rise of science; as several historians of science have noted, the idea that disparate phenomena all follow fundamental “laws” flowed from monotheism. And the billions of adherents of Christianity and Islam are all adopting a monotheism initiated by the Jewish People.
2. The Land of Israel
The land of Israel, promised to Abraham, is small. It does not host the greatest waterfalls or the tallest mountains. But it is nevertheless remarkable within the natural world. Geographically, the land of Israel is at the junction of three continents: Europe, Asia and Africa. Within its tiny area, it houses an incredible diversity of landscapes: snowy slopes, tropical beaches, arid deserts and green forests. As a result of all this, the land of Israel is home to an astonishingly diverse range of flora and fauna. It is the southernmost range of many northern species, the westernmost range of eastern species, and the northernmost range of southern species. As the Midrash states, Israel is the center of the world.
3. Torah
Literally meaning “teaching,” the word Torah is often used in the narrow sense of referring to the Five Books of Moses. But in its broadest sense, it refers to the entire gamut of Jewish teachings. This marvelous body of literature chronicles a nation’s efforts over millennia to connect with the Divine, to improve the individual, to regulate society and to stretch the mind. Scripture, Talmud, midrash, philosophy, mysticism, law, ethics – it encompasses every intellectual taste and every aspect of our lives.
4. The calendar
The wonder of the Jewish calendar is not limited to the way in which it manages to synchronize three entirely unrelated natural phenomena: the rotation of the earth on its axis, the revolution of the moon around the earth, and the revolution of the earth around the sun.
The very contents of the Jewish calendar are so much richer than in the joke which describes it as consisting of two types of events: “They tried to kill us, we won, let’s eat,” and “They tried to kill us, we didn’t win, let’s not eat.”
We celebrate national salvation and religious freedom; we observe days of solemnity, repentance and introspection; and we mourn the loss of people and precious elements of our heritage. Most wonderful of all is the Sabbath, during which, miraculously, I am able to resist checking my e-mail for a full twenty-four hours.
5. Jewish survival
The Jewish People, never large in number, have been faced with hatred for over 3,000 years. We have been exiled from our home and forced into servitude and exile among hostile nations. We have suffered persecution in every one of the numerous countries in which we have lived. Nations faced with far fewer existential threats have disappeared, and yet we have survived.
Mark Twain famously asked, “The Egyptian, the Babylonian, and the Persian rose, filled the planet with sound and splendor, then... passed away. The Greek and the Roman followed. The Jew saw them all, beat them all, and is now what he always was, exhibiting no decadence, no infirmities of age, no weakening of his parts... What is the secret of his immortality?”
And we made it back to our homeland after 2,000 years of exile, an event completely unparalleled in world history.
6.The State of Israel
Like every citizen of Israel, and especially like every oleh (immigrant), I could rant endlessly about the shortcomings of the State of Israel (though unlike the citizens of our neighboring countries, I could do so without fear of being thrown in prison). But this would be a smallminded perspective that does not take into account the incredible challenges that the state overcomes.
Despite having to absorb an enormous number of immigrants in a short span of time, and having to devote a ridiculously large amount of resources to national defense, Israel has managed to create a vibrant democracy, an oasis of prosperity, producing astonishing accomplishments in every field, all while successfully repelling repeated attempts at annihilation.
7.Global significance
Although numbering only 0.2% of the total world population today, and never having numbered much more than that, the Jewish People have always had an inexplicably large impact upon the world. The spread of monotheism is the most significant example, but we have also made disproportionate contributions in every sphere of knowledge and endeavor. Meanwhile, the United Nations is obsessed with Israel, condemning it more than every other country put together. If anything, we’re too significant for our own good.
Those are the Seven Wonders of the Jewish World as I see them, which I think are much more wonderful than the Seven Wonders of the ancient world.
Dispersed among the Nations, the Jews brought a great many benefits to a great many people. As a Gentile I thank them.
http://www.jinfo.org/
"And the remnant of Jacob shall be in the midst of many peoples, as dew from the Lord, as showers upon the grass..." MICAH 5:6*
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The Jews started it all - and by "it" I mean so many of the things we care about, the underlying values that make all of us, Jew and Gentile, believer and atheist, tick. Without the Jews, we would see the world with different eyes, hear with different ears, even feel with different feelings. And not only would our sensorium, the screen through which we receive the world, be different: we would think with a different mind, interpret all our experience differently, draw different conclusions from the things that befall us. And we would set a different course for our lives.
By "we" I mean the usual "we" of late-twentieth-century writing: the people of the Western world, whose peculiar but vital mentality has come to infect every culture on earth, so that, in a startlingly precise sense, all humanity is now willy-nilly caught up in this "we." For better or worse, the role of the West in humanity's history is singular. Because of this, the role of the Jews, the inventors of Western culture, is also singular: there is simply no one else remotely like them; theirs is a unique vocation. Indeed, as we shall see, the very idea of vocation, of a personal destiny, is a Jewish idea.
Our history is replete with examples of those who have refused to see what the Jews are really about, who - through intellectual blindness, racial chauvinism, xenophobia, or just plain evil - have been unable to give this oddball tribe, this raggle-taggle band, this race of wanderers who are the progenitors of the Western world, their due. Indeed, at the end of this bloodiest of centuries, we can all too easily look back on scenes of unthinkable horror perpetrated by those who would do anything rather than give the Jews their due.
But I must ask my readers to erase from their minds not only the horrors of history - modern, medieval, and ancient - but (so far as one can) the very notion of history itself. More especially, we must erase from our minds all the suppositions on which our world is built - the whole intricate edifice of actions and ideas that are our intellectual and emotional patrimony. We must reimagine ourselves in the form of humanity that lived and moved on this planet before the first word of the Bible was written down, before it was spoken, before it was even dreamed ...
... All evidence points to there having been, in the earliest religious thought, a vision of the cosmos that was profoundly cyclical. The assumptions that early man made about the world were, in all their essentials, little different from the assumptions that later and more sophisticated societies, like Greece and India, would make in a more elaborate manner. As Henri-Charles Puech says of Greek thought in his seminal Man and Time: "No event is unique, nothing is enacted but once ... every event has been enacted, is enacted, and will be enacted perpetually; the same individuals have appeared, appear, and will appear at every turn of the circle."
The Jews were the first people to break out of this circle, to find a new way of thinking and experiencing, a new way of understanding and feeling the world, so much so that it may be said with some justice that theirs is the only new idea that human beings have ever had. But their world view has become so much a part of us that at this point it might as well have been written into our cells as a genetic code. We find it so impossible to shed - even for a brief experiment - that it is now the cosmic vision of all other peoples that appears to us exotic and strange.
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Adapted with permission of the publisher from A History of the Jews, by Paul Johnson (HarperCollins, New York,
1987, p. 585; http://www.harpercollins.com).In his Antiquities of the Jews, Josephus describes Abraham as 'a man of great sagacity' who had 'higher notions of virtue than others of his time'. He therefore 'determined to change completely the views which all then had about God'. One way of summing up 4,000 years of Jewish history is to ask ourselves what would have happened to the human race if Abraham had not been a man of great sagacity, or if he had stayed in Ur and kept his higher notions to himself, and no specific Jewish people had come into being. Certainly the world without the Jews would have been a radically different place. Humanity might have eventually stumbled upon all the Jewish insights. But we cannot be sure. All the great conceptual discoveries of the intellect seem obvious and inescapable once they have been revealed, but it requires a special genius to formulate them for the first time. The Jews had this gift. To them we owe the idea of equality before the law, both divine and human; of the sanctity of life and the dignity of the human person; of the individual conscience, and so of personal redemption; of the collective conscience, and so of social responsibility; of peace as an abstract ideal and love as the foundation of justice, and many other items that constitute the basic moral furniture of the human mind. Without the Jews it might have been a much emptier place. Above all, the Jews taught us how to rationalize the unknown. The result was monotheism...
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Adapted with permission of the publisher from On Two Wings: Humble Faith and Common Sense at the American Founding, by Michael Novak (Encounter Books, San Francisco, CA,
2002, pp. 8-12; http://www.encounterbooks.com)."The Bible was the one book that literate Americans in the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries could be expected to know well," Robert Bellah has written. "Biblical imagery provided the basic framework for imaginative thought in America up until quite recent times and, unconsciously, its control is still formidable." As a design for the Seal of the United States, Jefferson suggested "a representation of the children of Israel in the wilderness, led by a cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night." He later concluded his second inaugural address with this same image: "I shall need ... the favor of that Being in whose hands we are, who led our fathers, as Israel of old, from their native land and planted them in a country flowing with all the necessaries and comforts of life." The image of "God's American Israel" made available four fresh perspectives, brought to intense focus by the Americans in a new and historically original way.
The first of these new perspectives was a narrative of purpose and progress. The Gentiles of the ancient world believed in cycles of time as regular (they thought) as the circular movements of the stars. They believed in eternal recurrence. But the Americans of 1770-1799 did not believe that time is cyclical, going nowhere, spinning in circles pointlessly. They believed that history had a beginning and was guided by Providence for a purpose... Time (in the view of the founders) was created for the unfolding of human liberty, for human emancipation. This purpose requires humans to choose for or against building cities worthy of the ideals God sets before them: liberty, justice, equality, self-government, and brotherhood...
... History, in this sense - open, purposive, contingent in liberty - is not a Greek or Roman idea. It is Hebraic; its source springs from the Biblical historians and prophets. Probably most of the humans who had ever lived before the arrival of Judaism on the world stage never even heard of "progress." The literature of Greece and Rome looks backwards, to golden ages of the past; the movement of time is circular. For Jews and Christians, by contrast, history is heading somewhere new: toward the New Kingdom of God, a kingdom of justice and love and peace, a new city on a hill...
... Second, Hebrew metaphysics held that everything in creation in all its workings and purposes is intelligible - suffused with reason, not absurd - in the eyes of a divine and loving Creator, Who created from nothing everything that is, and saw that it was good, and loved it; a Creator Who is more powerful than earthquakes, floods, erupting volcanos, hurricanes or anything else in the world, and different from them. One should not mistake this God for any part of His creation - as the Mayan Indians seem to have done, identifying God with rain and snakes and frogs and jackals (powerful forces in the dark, all of them). On the one hand, the world is not in itself divine. On the other, its Creator cannot be touched, tasted, heard, seen, or smelled. The Creator is independent of the world; therefore, the world can be looked into, investigated, and experimented with without infringing on His divinity. Strictly speaking, the Creator is beyond human categories, cannot be expressed in words that are like other words, imagined from the things of this world, or named as other things are named. He is not part of the material world. Seeking Him, it is better to aim one's mind in the direction of Spirit and Truth rather than matter, toward an Ineffable One Whom we do not name...
...Third, cherishing humble and weak things most of all, the Creator made at least two creatures to know Him, to love Him, and in total freedom (and not as slaves) to walk with Him - "male and female, He made them" (Genesis 1:27). "The God who gave us life, gave us liberty at the same time," Jefferson wrote summarizing the Biblical metaphysic. Liberty is the human condition established by the Bible, nearly every chapter of which turns upon its axis. What will Adam, King David, Peter, Saul, do next? Liberty is the axis of the universe, the ground of the possibility of love, human and divine... Moreover, the American tradition clearly distinguished a false idea of liberty - license - from the true liberty exercised in reflection and deliberate choice. Despite this high calling, men and women fail often, are vulnerable to human weakness, and are in want of checks and balances against their frailties.
Fourth, in Hebrew metaphysics the brief span of a human life is experienced as a time of suffering, testing whether humans can remain faithful to God's purposes in creating them - whether we will (or will not) show grace under pressure. In the Bible, the bright red thread of human history is not just liberty but liberty on trial...
...This drama of liberty gave birth to two "whig" theories of history, one Protestant and one Catholic. Nowadays, even secular people interpret history in the light of progress, rights, and liberty. Yet unbelievers received these concepts neither from the Greeks and Romans nor from Enlightened Reason, but via the preaching of Jesus Christ, from whom the Gentiles learned the essential outlook of the Hebrews: that the Creator gave humans a special place among all other creatures, and made them free, and endowed them with incomparable responsibility and dignity.
This sequence of related conceptions - that time had a beginning and is measured for progress (or decline) by God's standards; that everything in the world is intelligible, and that to inquire, invent, and discover is an impulse of faith as well as of reason; that the Creator endowed us with liberty and inviolable dignity, while the Divine Judge shows concern for the weak and the humble; that life is a time of duty and trial; and that history is to be grasped as the drama of human liberty - all these are the background that make sense of the Declaration of Independence. America and Israel, the first Israel and the second, shed light on each other...
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27-11-2011, 08:31 PM #4
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http://www.jlaw.com/Articles/JewBusEthI.html
Jewish Business Ethics: An Introductory Perspective]
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Many of us have a mistaken idea of what is within the compass or scope of our religious traditions. People know that lighting Chanukah candles is something you talk about with a rabbi, observance of the Shabbat, the laws of Kashrut, etc., but many people have an attitude that if I don't tell the rabbi how to run his business, the rabbi shouldn't tell me how to run mine. Very often, we live fragmented dichotomized lives where what we do in the office from 9 to 5 (or if you're a workaholic from 8 to 7), is our own private affair and then at home we observe the holidays, or the rituals of Judaism, on the weekends, or three-days-a-year, or whatever.
And yet we find in the Talmud a very interesting statement. The Talmud discusses what types of questions people are asked by God after their deaths. They come up to heaven, God asks them a variety of questions. The very first question that we are held accountable for after our deaths is "Nasata V'netata Be'emunah" which means "did you conduct your business affairs with honesty and with probity?" The second question is "did you set aside time for the study of the Torah, etc." But question #1 is were we ethical in the conduct of our business. If you look throughout the Torah, you will see a constant juxtaposition between the ritual commands of Judaism and the ethical obligations between one human being and another. One verse may say, don't eat meat and milk and the other verse will say, do not cheat, do not misrepresent, do not engage in fraud, because they are all part of the same religious structure. The notion of a dichotomy between ritual behavior and social behavior is a dichotomy that is totally foreign to Judaism because all of them are part of the same God-given basis of morality.
We know that the Torah has 613 mitzvot. Of course, none of us can do all of them but one of the mitzvot in the Torah is a mitzvah that says "Kedoshim Tiyu, be holy." Now, what does that mean? I mean, basically, is 'be holy' something that simply says do the other 612? Or is there some extra dimension that this mitzvah entails? The great commentator, the Ramban, tells us that "Kedoshim Tiyu" is a requirement of a Jew not to just obey the letter of the law but to obey the spirit of the law as well. Ramban posits that it is entirely possible for a person to be 100 percent observant, keeping all the mitzvot and yet in the famous immortal phrase, he can be a "Naval B'rshut HaTorah" he can be a repulsive, disgusting individual within the confines of the law. It is not enough just to obey the law. One must go beyond the law and embrace the ethical imperatives that are within that legal structure. This is the concept of going "Lifnim Mishurat HaDin" going beyond the law, not just confining oneself to the law.
Let me give you a story which illustrates how this works in the business context. There was a rabbi, Rabba Bar Chanah who once hired workmen to transport barrels of wine for him. They were negligent and as a result, the barrels of wine broke and this man incurred a severe financial loss. He took the workers to court, suing them for the value of the wine that was destroyed and the workers' only defense was, "You know, we can't afford it. We don't have the money. What are you going to do about it?" So the courts found in favor of the workers. So, Rabba Bar Chanah questioned the court and said, "Is this the law? Is it not the law that I am entitled to recover for their negligence?" And the court told him, "For you, this is the law. You are a righteous person and because you are a righteous person, you have to take into account the equities of the situation, the unfairness, the fact that these are people who need the money, etc., and, therefore, you are compelled by virtue of your righteous status to go beyond pressing your exact legal rights." Well then, and perhaps this is an ancient example of chutzpah, they turned around and sued him for their wages. They said, "Well, wait a second, you didn't pay us our wages for that day." So, he was dumbfounded. He said, "Okay, it's one thing to say I can't recover from you but are you going to recover from me when you broke my wine because of your negligence?" Astoundingly, the court said, "Yes! That's a good idea. You have to pay." And, once again, he asked, "Is this the law?" And they told him, "For you, that's the law. These are people who need the money and therefore, you must go beyond the law."
Part of the problem in American society - there are many, many structural problems in American society and many good points as well - is that too many of us are obsessed with asserting our rights to the fullest. Alexander de Toqueville remarked over 200 years ago that Americans are a litigious society, that we go to court over the smallest drop of the hat, we stand on our rights, we've become a rights oriented society rather than an obligation oriented society. Judaism teaches, above all, don't always press your claims to the fullest, deal with the other person in a spirit of tolerance, a spirit of acceptance, a spirit of compromise. But I'm not going to talk about that today. I'm not going to talk about going beyond the letter of the law. I'm going to talk about the law because what I want you to see is how high a moral standard the law itself requires us to adhere to. And then, keep in mind that the righteous individual goes beyond that letter of the law to embrace the spirit. But, we're not even going to talk about the spirit because the law itself has a high enough standard of morality that I think many of you would be quite surprised.
We say in the Shma, "You shall love the Lord your God with all of your heart, with all of your soul, and with all of your might." All of your heart, all of your soul we understand. What is the reference to all of your might? Rashi interprets that the verse means, you should love God with all of your money. So he then raises the question, if God already says you must love God with all of your soul even to the extent of giving up your life, if necessary, then why is it necessary to say you should serve God with all of your money? Rashi comments that there are some people who prefer their money to their lives and, therefore, if the verse would simply say you serve God with your life they wouldn't necessarily infer you serve God with all of your money. This is of course reminiscent of the famous Jack Benny joke when he is approached by the mugger who says, your money or your life and he says let me think about it a little bit. We have a similar idea here. The Torah has to address both types of people.
But, what is the concept of serving God with all of your possessions? Certainly, God does not require us to take oaths of poverty. God does not require us to renounce material wealth. So, how does one serve God with all of his possessions?
The short answer is: with the probity and integrity by which we amass those possessions.
Business ethics is the arena where the ethereal transcendent teachings of holiness and spirituality confront the often grubby business of making money and being engaged in the rat race that often comprises the marketplace. It is the acid test of whether religion is truly relevant or religion is simply relegated to an isolated sphere of human activity. It is business ethics, one could posit, above all, that shows God co-exists in the world rather than God and godliness being separate and apart.
And the meaning of serving God with all your possessions, therefore, means that in the conduct of our business in the accumulation of our wealth, there is also a mechanism to serve God.
We find on Yom Kippur we spend an entire day beating our breasts, confessing our sins over and over and over again, and sometimes we don't even know what we've done wrong. Rambam tells us that we often fail to realize that every sin has many implications. For example, if you confess to God, I'm sorry for any murders I've committed, you might think, "Well I haven't killed anybody." Keep in mind, however, the Talmud says, that humiliating somebody publicly is tantamount to murder. There are all sorts of repercussions. Maybe I didn't do the murder by shooting somebody but I did something else. Perhaps I did not take the steps I could have as a member of society to cut down on the crime rate. There are all sorts of dimensions to what sins are. After a whole day of beating one's breasts, we come to the end of Yom Kippur which is the prayer of Neilah, the final moments in which we beseech God.
Neilah doesn't have a lengthy confessional. The Vidui is only a few short paragraphs. But if you look at Neilah you'll notice that the one thing that it stresses is theft. We ask God for His forgiveness for the appropriation of other people's property, the appropriation of theft. You see how severe the notions of appropriating other people's property are. The Talmud says that only a minority of people commit sexual offenses, most people sin in matters of theft, and that will become clear as I go on, and all people sin with respect to evil gossip that they say about others.
When we come to the business area, the two sins we will encounter most often are theft, as broadly defined, and lashon ha'ra - defamation regarding competitors and the like.
What I propose to do is to examine through the prism of Jewish law four relational contexts in the business ethics area. One is our responsibilities vis-a-vis our competitors, and that's whether I have a store or whether I'm a lawyer or a doctor, anyone that's trying to get the same people as I, is my competitor. What are my responsibilities? Two, my responsibilities to my clients and to my customers. Three, my obligations towards employees and my co-workers. And, four, my responsibility as an observant Jew toward the government and the legal system as a whole, what are my obligations? Each of these topics can be not only the subject of a talk or article but the object of an entire book or course. A quick skimming of the surface, however, should give us all a flavor of the Jewish sensitivity to these vital areas. Future installments will attempt to provide this basic skimming.
Let me end with this thought: our Rabbis teach us that through adherence to ethics in our business, we bring the redemption, we bring Messiah because we create a peaceful world, a world where we're not looking after number one, a world where we have a shared sense of community and that, in turn paves the way for the Messiah, paves the way for the ultimate redemption of the Jewish people that we hope and pray for, that the light of Chanukah commemorates. Torah teaches us to live in this world. We know that in this world, the world is a mixture of good and evil and we know that we live in a world where other people don't play by the same rules. But the test of a moral person is not whether he behaves morally when others are behaving morally to him. The test of an ethical and moral person is one who can adhere to those values even if everyone else fails to adhere to them. As we have just celebrated Chanukah, may we all come to recognize that the little bit of light that we can bring into our personal lives can pierce through a whole lot of darkness, and that should be our goal this year and in the coming years.
http://www.jlaw.com/Articles/
The Impact of Jewish Values
on Marketing and Business Practices
http://www.jlaw.com/Articles/impactjewish.html
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Judaism, which relies on the Torah for its written law, has had a great impact on marketing and business. The Torah is replete with precepts dealing with business, and the Talmud, the source of Jewish oral law, elaborates and expands Torah law. The process is ongoing and rabbinical authorities today build on the decisions of their predecessors to apply Jewish law to modern problems. Some of the issues examined in this paper include: honesty in the marketplace, fair pricing, employer-employee relations, and environmental issues. Jewish law is not only concerned with practical legal advice but in encouraging individuals to go beyond the requirements of the law and practice the "way of the pious." Judaism does not have a negative attitude towards business and wealth -- indeed, most of the Talmudic sages had occupations and some were quite wealthy -- but riches must be acquired honestly and used to help the poor, the needy, and the stranger.
Introduction
Jewish culture, values, and ideas have permeated many aspects of modern life including the modern marketplace. This impact of Judaism on marketing and business is manifested not only in such areas as business ethics, but also in the organization's perceived social responsibility, and in a positive attitude towards business and wealth (when obtained and used in a proper manner). Numerous articles and books have been written describing applications of Jewish law from antiquity to the modern era and their continued relevance to the business problems of contemporary society (see, e.g., Elon 1975; Friedman 2000; Jung and Levine 1987; Levine 1980, 1987; Levine and Pava 1999; Tamari 1987, 1991; Wagschal 1991; Warhaftig 1987). To understand this impact, one must first examine Jewish law, tradition, and culture, especially those principles relevant to the marketplace.
GOING TO THE SOURCES
The Hebrew Bible, particularly the Pentateuch (i.e., the Torah), contains the written law and, to the believer, is the word of God. The precepts in the Torah are the foundations of Jewish law and are cited by rabbinical authorities as a kind of constitution to this very day. According to Jewish tradition, the Torah contains 613 precepts, many of which deal with business practices. The Torah is revered by other religions; the Talmud and the Midrash, however, are distinctly Jewish. Thus, to understand the impact of Judaism on marketing and business one must examine the Talmud and Midrash, as well as the Torah.
The Talmud, which is the compilation of Jewish oral law, expounds on the Hebrew Bible and consists of the Mishna and Gemara. The Mishna, originally an ancient oral tradition, was compiled and edited in written form about 1800 years ago by Rabbi Judah the Nasi (President of the Sanhedrin). The Gemara, which was completed about 1500 years ago, consists mainly of commentaries on the Mishna. There were two academies, in Israel and Babylon, independently studying the Mishna. Thus, there are two versions of the Talmud: the Jerusalem Talmud, a product of the academies in Israel, and the Babylonian Talmud, a product of the academies in Babylon. The Babylonian Talmud is considerably larger than that of the Jerusalem Talmud, and it is more authoritative.
The Talmud is primarily concerned with halacha (Jewish law) but also provides a detailed record of the beliefs of the Jewish people, their philosophy, traditions, culture, and folklore, i.e., the aggadah (homiletics). The Midrash, a separate scripture which records the views of the Talmudic sages, is mainly devoted to the exposition of Biblical verses but is also rich in philosophy, folklore, and legends. It should be noted that, other than the few individuals who headed academies, the overwhelming majority of the scholars referred to in the Talmud had secular occupations, such as beer brewer, farmer, farm worker, peddler, physician, wood chopper, merchant, blacksmith, gravedigger. Indeed, some were known by their occupations, for example, Rabbi Yochanan the Shoemaker (haSandlar). Even in later times, many of the great Jewish Biblical and Talmudic commentators had ordinary occupations, e.g.: Rabbi Shlomo ben Yitchak (1040 -- 1105), known as Rashi, was a vintner in France; Rabbi Abraham ibn Ezra (1089 -- 1164) was a poet and astronomer from Spain; Rabbi Moshe ben Maimon (1134 -- 1204), known as Maimonides, was a physician and philosopher in Egypt; and Rabbi Ovadiah Sforno (1470 -- 1550) was a physician in Italy.
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Judaism sees nothing wrong with business and making a profit as long as the firm realizes that it has other responsibilities as well. Jeremiah (9:23) stressed that God demands that people practice "lovingkindness, justice, and righteousness." The same can be asked of any organization.
CONCLUSION
The Psalmist (Psalms 15) describes some of the attributes of a virtuous individual. We cannot help but notice that these same attributes are just as important for an organization: "One who walks in total integrity, deals righteously, and speaks the truth from his heart. One who has no slander on his tongue, who has done his fellow human no evil nor cast disgrace upon his close one… Whoever does these things shall never falter." Achieving the highest level of ethical behavior in the marketplace and practicing the social responsibility that must accompany success in business are the hallmarks of the 'way of the pious.'
Indeed, business ethics occupies such an important place in Jewish law, culture, and tradition that the Talmud (T. Shabbos 31a) has as the very first question an individual is asked in the next world at the final judgment: "Were you honest in your business dealings?"
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The Eternal Jew
NO I'M NOT. I GOT SOME JEWISH RELATIVES THOUGH, BUT I AM 100% GENTILE.
The Eternal Jew
NO I'M NOT. I GOT SOME JEWISH RELATIVES THOUGH, BUT I AM 100% GENTILE.
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Re: Japanese Used School Girl Panties vending machines
mugglez Thu Jan 12, 2012 2:54 pm
[/quote][quote="uckinfuglyfug" aka eternalspirit]
vending machines in Japan offer for sale panties purportedly worn by schoolgirls.
underwear that has supposedly been previously worn by schoolgirls is being offered for sale in vending machines in Japan. Though we don't know the current price for such items, in 1993 they sold for the equivalent of US $50 apiece.
where oh where has our little crack ho gone?
Narcissistic Personality Disorder
By Psych Central Staff
http://psychcentral.com/disorders/sx36.htm
Narcissistic Personality Disorder is characterized by a long-standing pattern of grandiosity (either in fantasy or actual behavior), an overwhelming need for admiration, and usually a complete lack of empathy toward others. People with this disorder often believe they are of primary importance in everybody's life or to anyone they meet. While this pattern of behavior may be appropriate for a king in 16th Century England, it is generally considered inappropriate for most ordinary people today.
People with narcissistic personality disorder often display snobbish, disdainful, or patronizing attitudes. For example, an individual with this disorder may complain about a clumsy waiter's "rudeness" or "stupidity" or conclude a medical evaluation with a condescending evaluation of the physician.
In laypeople terms, someone with this disorder may be described simply as a "narcissist" or as someone with "narcissism." Both of these terms generally refer to someone with narcissistic personality disorder.
Symptoms of Narcissistic Personality Disorder
In order for a person to be diagnosed with narcissistic personality disorder (NPD) they must meet five or more of the following symptoms:
•Has a grandiose sense of self-importance (e.g., exaggerates achievements and talents, expects to be recognized as superior without commensurate achievements)
•Is preoccupied with fantasies of unlimited success, power, brilliance, beauty, or ideal love
•Believes that he or she is "special" and unique and can only be understood by, or should associate with, other special or high-status people (or institutions)
•Requires excessive admiration
•Has a very strong sense of entitlement, e.g., unreasonable expectations of especially favorable treatment or automatic compliance with his or her expectations
•Is exploitative of others, e.g., takes advantage of others to achieve his or her own ends
•Lacks empathy, e.g., is unwilling to recognize or identify with the feelings and needs of others
•Is often envious of others or believes that others are envious of him or her
•Regularly shows arrogant, haughty behaviors or attitudes
mugglez- Posts : 503
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Re: Japanese Used School Girl Panties vending machines
cotaltunt Fri Jan 13, 2012 9:23 am
sniffs the air ewwwww soiled panties
cotaltunt- Posts : 20
Join date : 2012-01-11
Re: Japanese Used School Girl Panties vending machines
MoMo Fri Jan 13, 2012 9:55 am
cotaltunt wrote:sniffs the air ewwwww soiled panties
so...................you are a 'cunning linguist' eh? well done!
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Re: Japanese Used School Girl Panties vending machines
cotaltunt Fri Jan 13, 2012 9:59 am
I lick em cleanel kabong wrote:cotaltunt wrote:sniffs the air ewwwww soiled panties
so...................you are a 'cunning linguist' eh? well done!
i order panties online saves the air fayer to Japan, leaves me more money for more panties.
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Join date : 2012-01-11
Re: Japanese Used School Girl Panties vending machines
MoMo Fri Jan 13, 2012 10:05 am
cotaltunt wrote:I lick em cleanel kabong wrote:cotaltunt wrote:sniffs the air ewwwww soiled panties
so...................you are a 'cunning linguist' eh? well done!
i order panties online saves the air fayer to Japan, leaves me more money for more panties.
Here is a delightful soundtrack for your debauchery.
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Re: Japanese Used School Girl Panties vending machines
cotaltunt Fri Jan 13, 2012 10:20 am
I can almost smell those panties from those pics
i'm saving up to go on a panty crawl in japan, it's a national favourite past time, akin to a pub crawl we do in England difference being we visit as many panty vending machines until we can't sniff no more and end up legless panting on the floor, see the similarity?
me thinks me was a panty wearing japanese girl in a previous lifetime.
i'm saving up to go on a panty crawl in japan, it's a national favourite past time, akin to a pub crawl we do in England difference being we visit as many panty vending machines until we can't sniff no more and end up legless panting on the floor, see the similarity?
me thinks me was a panty wearing japanese girl in a previous lifetime.
cotaltunt- Posts : 20
Join date : 2012-01-11
Re: Japanese Used School Girl Panties vending machines
mugglez Fri Jan 13, 2012 10:45 am
cotaltunt wrote:I can almost smell those panties from those pics
i'm saving up to go on a panty crawl in japan, it's a national favourite past time, akin to a pub crawl we do in England difference being we visit as many panty vending machines until we can't sniff no more and end up legless panting on the floor, see the similarity?
me thinks me was a panty wearing japanese girl in a previous lifetime.
good newz 4 u, smell-a-vison has been invented so soon the Aroma-net will be availiable.
you naughty boy.......
uckinfuglyfug prefers mens undergarments...like these ga/uyz............
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Re: Japanese Used School Girl Panties vending machines
cotaltunt Sat Jan 14, 2012 10:42 am
mikey mikey has a bigger collection of panties than me i read he works as a panty machine filler, can he get mes a job?
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Join date : 2012-01-11
Re: Japanese Used School Girl Panties vending machines
MoMo Sat Jan 14, 2012 10:53 am
cotaltunt wrote:mikey mikey has a bigger collection of panties than me i read he works as a panty machine filler, can he get mes a job?
yo!! dude!! who the fuk knowz? ya gotta ask mikey mike hisself.....................
MoMo- Posts : 1856
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Re: Japanese Used School Girl Panties vending machines
cotaltunt Sat Jan 14, 2012 11:04 am
el kabong wrote:cotaltunt wrote:mikey mikey has a bigger collection of panties than me i read he works as a panty machine filler, can he get mes a job?
yo!! dude!! who the fuk knowz? ya gotta ask mikey mike hisself.....................
I rob his panties collection when he's not looking and busy filling machines..
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Re: Japanese Used School Girl Panties vending machines
sharky Sat Jan 14, 2012 1:44 pm
soundz like a plan........
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