RUTHFULLY YOURS

http://dailycaller.com/2018/04/09/social-justice-warriors-are-a-big-problem-for-theology/

In a new book that provides a powerful theological basis for something now ritualistically called “the social justice movement,” Jewish reformers among others seized on the concept of “healing the world.” Leftists in the Jewish community call it tikkun olam or “healing of the world.” Believers assert that Jews must endeavor to make the world a place better than what we now experience. As a consequence, an overwhelming number of Jews embrace this movement and the actions that result from it as biblically mandated. However, there is one problem as Jonathan Newmann in his book To Heal The World? points out, the bible says no such thing.

Tikkun Olam is an invention of the Jewish left, diluted from practice and vague sentiments of “doing good.” According to Newmann, religious history has been twisted by liberals to support a left wing agenda partly upheld with Marxist ideology: Frankfurt School post modernism, SDS fervor and Gramsci logic. It would be one thing if tikkun olam actually produced a virtuous society or adherence to a common culture despite its misrepresentation, but there isn’t any evidence to suggest that is true.

https://amgreatness.com/2018/06/24/mazel-and-may-i-add-tov-and
Mazel and, May I Add, Tov . . . and Farewell

EXCERPTS

“Steve Kanfer, who died quietly in his sleep Wednesday night at the age of 85, almost nothing was beyond his expertise, his knowledge, or his talent; the man was not so much a polymath as a poly-abled master of just about anything he tried—writer, essayist, TV writer, wit, bon vivant, host, devoted husband of his wife May Kanfer, father of two, grandfather, mimic, musician, craftsman and one of the titans of Manhattan arts criticism during his heyday at Time magazine, where he reviewed films and edited the Books section with grace and style for decades.”

” He was a man of formidable knowledge—his study in Hastings-on-Hudson, N.Y. was crammed floor to ceiling with books on every conceivable subject. He wrote biographies of Groucho (another spot-on impersonation), Brando, Bogie, and (Lucille) Ball, along with studies of the Jewish Rialto (Stardust Lost) and a history of the Jewish Catskills (A Summer World). And yet, he was always interested in what you were doing, what you were writing, how your family was. He took joy not in his own accomplishments, but in those of his friends. It was entirely characteristic of him that, in the end, he slipped away from us in the middle of the night, without waiting for, or wanting, applause—which we the bereaved must now supply posthumously.

“But he could also be fierce, especially regarding Jewish issues. A close friend of Elie Wiesel, Steve had a clear-cut opinion about the moral rightness of Israel and no patience with attacks on it. Remarkably, for a New York Jewish intellectual, he was a political and cultural conservative, which is to say he believed in the superiority of Judeo-Christian Western civilization and sought to preserve, protect, and defend it from all its enemies, including radical Muslims, cultural Marxists, and the New York Times.”

“He was, as far as I could tell over the course of nearly 40 years, afraid of absolutely nothing and nobody and would take on all comers in the pages not only of Time, but also City Journal, the New Leader, and elsewhere. Thanks to his formidable erudition, he was equally at home debating politics, history, music, as well as literature, especially American literature—and always from the standpoint of a moral humanist, equal parts the Jewish Jesuit Naphta (in his burning intellectualism) and the expansive Settembrini (in his love for people and his appreciation of the human comedy) in Mann’s The Magic Mountain. And we were all Hans Castorp, the “pure fools” learning at his feet.”

“But above else, Steve Kanfer was an American—not just a patriot in the political sense, but an American in the old-fashioned sense. From his Old Country ancestors, he inherited the Jewish love of learning and respect for tradition; from his New York upbringing he had the American skepticism of pigeonholes and categorization, and contempt for arbitrary limits; for Steve, there were no limits to understanding, only a failure of the will and the imagination.”

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2018/06/heroic_and_inspiring_stories_from_the_greatest_generation.html
Two recent nonfiction books highlight the bravery of the previous generations. These adventure stories bring to the forefront those who seemingly have been erased from history. Thanks to Corey Mead, who wrote The Lost Pilots, and Carole Avriett, the author of Coffin Corner Boys, people will know about these heroes.

Coffin Corner Boys is a compelling read about a B-17 crew who escaped from Nazi-occupied France after their plane was shot down. This book is a reminder of the Greatest Generation’s spirit, valor, and patriotism. The Coffin Corner is a particular position in the flying configuration where they flew “low squadron, low group, flying #6 in the bomber box formation [while] they were exposed to hostile fire.”

On March 16, 1944, the ten-member crew had to bail out of their plane after it was shot down by the Germans. Each crewmember had to endure severe cold, wetness, hunger, and exhaustion. Irv Baum and Ted Badder had the misfortune of landing by two Frenchmen who turned them in to the Nazis for two thousand francs.

Baum, who was Jewish, tried denying that he was “[a] Hebrew. I was told, ‘You’re lying’ and at the same moment was backhanded across the face hard enough to break open the corner of my left eye. We were sent to a processing camp near Frankfurt, where they questioned us about the names of our crew. I kept saying it was a crew I didn’t usually fly with, so I didn’t know any of them. About midnight, about five of us were taken outside. Then six or seven guards came out with rifles, lined us up and the officer, yelled, ‘Ready. Aim. Fire.’ But nothing happened. They put us back into our cells, and I spent a sleepless night.”

https://www.investigativeproject.org/7489/the-horrors-of-honor-violence-terrorism-at-home

She was a 15-year-old student at San Antonio’s Taft High School with a soft smile and dark eyes. Like most girls her age in Texas, she favored blue jeans. Unlike most girls her age in Texas, in 2017 she was promised in marriage to a man 10 years her senior, who would pay her parents $20,000 to take her as his wife.

But the Iraqi-born Maarib Al Hishmawi had no intention of marrying so young, least of all to a man so much older and whom she hardly even knew. She refused.

Her parents, who had moved to the United States from their native Iraq two years prior, were furious. They “choked her almost to the point of unconsciousness,” said Bexar County Sheriff Javier Salazar. They beat her with broomsticks. Her mother, 33-year-old Hamdiya Sabah Al Hismawi, threw hot oil on her body.

Maarib escaped, running away from home in January. Claiming they feared she’d been kidnapped, her parents called in local police and the FBI to help track her down. But even from the start, Salazar told CBS News, it was clear to him that “this wasn’t an ordinary missing persons case.” When police found her in an undisclosed location some weeks later, Maarib explained her story. She and her five brothers were taken in by Child Protective Services and her parents immediately taken into custody. Her father blamed Maarib for his arrest.

This is not just a story about domestic abuse. It is a story about cultural mores, institutionalized violence against women and girls (and occasionally young men) in the name of family honor. And it happens to thousands of them every year, not just in places like Afghanistan and Somalia and Iraq, but in America, England, the Netherlands, Scandinavia, France, and elsewhere across the Western world.

http://swtotd.blogspot.com/

“Grand Strategy: The alignment of potentially infinite aspirations with necessarily limited capabilities.”“This, then, is a book about the ‘mental’ Hellespont that divide such leadership,on one shore, from common sense on the other. There ought to be free and frequent crossings between them, for it’s only with such exchanges that grand strategies – alignments of means with ends – become possible.” JohnLewis Gaddis

This is a short book (313 pages), with a large sweep of (mostly) Western Civilization, especially of its military leaders and observers. Professor Gaddis is the Robert A. Lovett Professor of Military and Naval History at Yale. As well, the book is, as Victor Davis Hanson wrote in a review for The New York Times, “…a thoughtful; validation of the liberal arts, an argument for literature over social science, an engaging reflection on university education and some timely advice for Americans that lasting victory comes from winning what you can rather than all that you want.”

In ten essays, Professor Gaddis carries us from Xerxes, Pericles and Octavian to the Founders, Napoleon and Bismarck. He juxtaposes Augustine with Machiavelli, Elizabeth I with Philip II and Clausewitz with Tolstoy. He focuses on three U.S. Presidents: Lincoln, Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt, showing us why Lincoln and FDR were successful, while Wilson failed to realize his dream “to make the world safe for Democracy.”

He cites maxims. Isaiah Berlin quoting the Greek poet Archilochus of Paros: “The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing.” Augustine: “The higher glory is to stay war itself with a word, than to slay men with a sword.” Machiavelli: “…a man who wants to make a profession of good in all regards must come to ruin among so many who are not good.” Clausewitz, author of the unfinished On War: “war…must be subordinate to politics and therefore to policy.” F. Scott Fitzgerald, who said brilliance is the ability “to hold opposing ideas in [one’s] mind, while retaining the ability to function.”

Once the beating heart of world Jewish life, Europe has given way to the United States and Israel as home to the overwhelming majority of Jews. In fact, 21st-century Europe is once again shedding its Jewish population as it becomes an increasingly harder place for them to build their lives.

How did this come to pass? How can it be that less than a century after the Holocaust wiped out most of European Jewry, the continent’s remaining Jews face an increasingly hostile environment?

This is just one of the many question Jamie Kirchick tackles in his new book, The End of Europe: Dictators, Demagogues, and the Coming Dark Age. In this podcast, Kirchick joins Jonathan Silver to discuss the book. They begin by examining the roots of Europe’s current economic and geopolitical discontents. But the conversation soon turns to the present situation faced by Europe’s Jews as the continent struggles to deal with a growing immigration crisis and resurgent populism on both the Left and the Right. As they explore the post-Cold War history of Europe, the decline of its cultural confidence, and the perilous future of European Jewry, Kirchick and Silver push us to consider the prospect of a Europe without Jews and what that would augur for the continent and the world.