Monthly Archives: September 2021

Reliance nears investment in Google-backed Glance InMobi – Mint

Posted: September 27, 2021 at 5:47 pm

Reliance Industries Ltd. is in talks to buy a stake in Indian mobile content provider Glance InMobi Pte, according to people familiar with the matter.

The conglomerate is considering investing about $300 million in the unicorn backed by Alphabet Inc.s Google, the people said, asking not to be identified as the information is private. The transaction could be completed as soon as in the next few weeks, one of the people said.

Glance InMobi pushes curated news and entertainment content onto phone lock screens and also runs a short-video app. Reliances investment could involve strategic co-operation along with the financial element, a different person said.

Such a deal would give Reliance access to valuable lock-screen real estate on the affordable mobile phones its co-developing with Google and slated to hit the market in time for the Diwali shopping season in end October. It would also give Reliance strategic entry into short-video content, a category where users are skyrocketing.

Deliberations are ongoing and Reliance could decide not to proceed with the investment, the people said. A representative for Glance did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment, while a Reliance representative declined to comment.

Google agreed last year to invest $4.5 billion in a partnership with Reliance, which included plans for a low-cost smartphone as part of Reliance Chairman Mukesh Ambanis efforts to build a local technology titan. The phone was set for its debut earlier this month, but the launch was delayed due to the global shortage of semiconductors.

Glance InMobi was founded in 2019 and has about 130 million daily active users. Its Roposo app offers short videos in a dozen Indian languages. The company, whose backers also include Peter Thiels Mithril Capital, agreed to acquire e-commerce startup Shop101 in June.

This story has been published from a wire agency feed without modifications to the text. Only the headline has been changed.

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Googles Plan for the Future of Work: Privacy Robots and Balloon Walls – The New York Times

Posted: at 5:47 pm

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. Googles first office was a cluttered Silicon Valley garage crammed with desks resting on sawhorses.

In 2003, five years after its founding, the company moved into a sprawling campus called the Googleplex. The airy, open offices and whimsical common spaces set a standard for what an innovative workplace was supposed to look like. Over the years, the amenities piled up. The food was free, and so were buses to and from work: Getting to the office, and staying there all day, was easy.

Now, the company that once redefined how an employer treats its workers is trying to redefine the office itself. Google is creating a post-pandemic workplace that will accommodate employees who got used to working from home over the past year and dont want to be in the office all the time anymore.

The company will encourage but not mandate that employees be vaccinated when they start returning to the office, probably in September. At first, the interior of Googles buildings may not appear all that different. But over the next year or so, Google will try out new office designs in millions of square feet of space, or about 10 percent of its global work spaces.

The plans build on work that began before the coronavirus crisis sent Googles work force home, when the company asked a diverse group of consultants including sociologists who study Generation Z and how junior high students socialize and learn to imagine what future workers would want.

The answer seems to be Ikea meets Lego. Instead of rows of desks next to cookie-cutter meeting rooms, Google is designing Team Pods. Each pod is a blank canvas: Chairs, desks, whiteboards and storage units on casters can be wheeled into various arrangements, and in some cases rearranged in a matter of hours.

To deal with an expected blend of remote and office workers, the company is also creating a new meeting room called Campfire, where in-person attendees sit in a circle interspersed with impossible-to-ignore, large vertical displays. The displays show the faces of people dialing in by videoconference so virtual participants are on the same footing as those physically present.

In a handful of locations around the world, Google is building outdoor work areas to respond to concerns that coronavirus easily spreads in traditional offices. At its Silicon Valley headquarters, where the weather is pleasant most of the year, it has converted a parking lot and lawn area into Camp Charleston a fenced-in mix of grass and wooden deck flooring about the size of four tennis courts with Wi-Fi throughout.

There are clusters of tables and chairs under open-air tents. In larger teepees, there are meeting areas with the dcor of a California nature retreat and state-of-the-art videoconferencing equipment. Each tent has a camp-themed name such as kindling, smores and canoe. Camp Charleston has been open since March for teams who wanted to get together. Google said it was building outdoor work spaces in London, Los Angeles, Munich, New York and Sydney, Australia, and possibly more locations.

Employees can return to their permanent desks on a rotation schedule that assigns people to come into the office on a specific day to ensure that no one is there on the same day as their immediate desk neighbors.

Despite the companys freewheeling corporate culture, coming into the office regularly had been one of Googles few enduring rules.

That was a big reason Google offered its lavish perks, said Allison Arieff, an architectural and design writer who has studied corporate campuses. They get to keep everyone on campus for as long as possible and theyre keeping someone at work, said Ms. Arieff, who was a contributing writer for the Opinion section of The New York Times.

But as Googles work force topped 100,000 employees all over the world, face-to-face collaboration was often impossible. Employees found it harder to focus with so many distractions inside Googles open offices. The company had outgrown its longtime setup.

In 2018, Googles real estate group began to consider what it could do differently. It turned to the companys research and development team for built environments. It was an eclectic group of architects, industrial and interior designers, structural engineers, builders and tech specialists led by Michelle Kaufmann, who worked with the renowned architect Frank Gehry before joining Google a decade ago.

Google focused on three trends: Work happens anywhere and not just in the office; what employees need from a workplace is changing constantly; and workplaces need to be more than desks, meeting rooms and amenities.

The future of work that we thought was 10 years out, Ms. Kaufmann said, Covid brought us to that future now.

Two of the most rigid elements in an office design are walls and the heating and cooling systems. Google is trying to change that. It is developing an array of different movable walls that can be packed up and shipped flat to offices around the world.

It has a prototype of a fabric-based overhead air duct system that attaches with zippers and can be moved over a weekend for different seating arrangements. Google is also trying to end the fight over the office temperature. This system allows every seat to have its own air diffuser to control the direction or amount of air blowing on them.

If a meeting requires privacy, a robot that looks like the innards of a computer on wheels and is equipped with sensors to detect its surroundings comes over to inflate a translucent, cellophane balloon wall to keep prying eyes away.

A key part of our thinking is moving from whats been our traditional office, said Ms. Kaufmann.

Google is also trying to reduce distractions. It has designed different leaf-shaped partitions called petals that can attach to the edge of a desk to eliminate glare. An office chair with directional speakers in the headrest plays white noise to muffle nearby audio.

For people who may no longer require a permanent desk, Google also built a prototype desk that adjusts to an employees personal preferences with a swipe of a work badge a handy feature for workers who dont have assigned desks because they only drop into the office once in a while. It calibrates the height and tilt of the monitor, brings up family photos on a display, and even adjusts the nearby temperature.

In the early days of the pandemic, it seemed daunting to move a 100,000-plus person organization to virtual, but now it seems even more daunting to figure out how to bring them back safely, said David Radcliffe, Googles vice president for real estate and workplace services.

The Landscape of the Post-Pandemic Return to Office

In its current office configurations, Google said it would be able to use only one out of every three desks in order to keep people six feet apart. Mr. Radcliffe said six feet would remain an important threshold in case of the next pandemic or even the annual flu.

Psychologically, he said, employees will not want to sit in a long row of desks, and also Google may need to de-densify offices with white space such as furniture or plants. The company is essentially unwinding years of open-office plan theory popularized by Silicon Valley that cramming more workers into smaller spaces and taking away their privacy leads to better collaboration.

Real estate costs for the company arent expected to change very much. Though there will be fewer employees in the office, theyll need more room.

There will be other changes. The company cafeterias, famous for their free, catered food, will move from buffet style to boxed, grab-and-go meals. Snacks will be packed individually and not scooped up from large bins. Massage rooms and fitness centers will be closed. Shuttle buses will be suspended.

Smaller conference rooms will be turned into private work spaces that can be reserved. The offices will use only fresh air through vents controlled by its building management software, doing away with its usual mix of outside and recirculated air.

In larger bathrooms, Google will reduce the number of available sinks, toilets and urinals and install more sensor-based equipment that doesnt require touching a surface with hands.

A pair of new buildings on Googles campus, now under construction in Mountain View, Calif., and expected to be finished as early as next year, will give the company more flexibility to incorporate some of the now-experimental office plans.

Google is trying to get a handle on how employees will react to so-called hybrid work. In July, the company asked workers how many days a week they would need to come to the office to be effective. The answers were divided evenly in a range of zero to five days a week, said Mr. Radcliffe.

The majority of Google employees are in no hurry to return. In its annual survey of employees called Googlegeist, about 70 percent of roughly 110,000 employees surveyed said they had a favorable view about working from home compared with roughly 15 percent who had an unfavorable opinion.

Another 15 percent had a neutral perspective, according to results viewed by The New York Times. The survey was sent out in February and the results were announced in late March.

Many Google employees have gotten used to life without time-consuming commutes, and with more time for family and life outside of the office. The company appears to be realizing its employees may not be so willing to go back to the old life.

Work-life balance is not eating three meals a day at your office, going to the gym there, having all your errands done there, said Ms. Arieff. Ultimately, people want flexibility and autonomy and the more that Google takes that away, the harder it is going to be.

Google has offices in 170 cities and 60 countries around the world, and some of them have already reopened. In Australia, New Zealand, China, Taiwan and Vietnam, Googles offices have reopened with occupancy allowed to exceed 70 percent. But the bulk of the 140,000 employees who work for Google and its parent company, Alphabet, are based in the United States, with roughly half of them in the Bay Area.

Sundar Pichai, chief executive of Alphabet, said at a Reuters conference in December that the company was committed to making hybrid work possible, because there was an opportunity for tremendous improvement in productivity and the ability to pull in more people to the work force.

No company at our scale has ever created a fully hybrid work force model, Mr. Pichai wrote in an email a few weeks later announcing the flexible workweek. It will be interesting to try.

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Letter to the Editor – Masks: one of the three best defenses in modern germ warfare – The Havre Daily News

Posted: at 5:45 pm

Editor,

Im a CASA volunteer and a Havre Public School bus driver.

In each of these positions, I am not only entrusted with helping ensure childrens safety. I am also required by law to report instances of suspected child neglect and abuse as I see them.

The most egregious offenses are those that negligently threaten childrens well-being and safety and those that abusively deny protections that place children in jeopardy. These can include the absence of proper clothing for weather conditions, proper diet for healthy development, and access to education and age-appropriate activities, as well as exposure to criminal elements.

I have two questions for social services, law enforcement and the courts in regard to COVID-19 and the delta variant.

Are parents guilty of negligence for failing to provide children with masks and to teach them to wear the masks properly?

Are parents and other adults guilty of abuse for demanding that children not be required to wear masks in enclosed quarters with very little social distancing?

Drivers frequently refer to their buses as germ factories and petri dishes because of the back-and-forth exchange of germs and sicknesses between us and our riders.

After suffering nearly monthly bouts of the common cold during my first four years as a driver, I have not suffered a single cold-related sneeze, sniffle or cough since wearing my mask religiously. Surprisingly, my youthful riders are quick to put the masks on and keep them on until the end of their rides.

We have a federal mandate requiring students to be masked while on school buses. While a mandate is an executive order and a law is a legislative act, they each carry the weight of the law and are identically enforceable.

When are prosecutions appropriate for people who insist on flouting the requirements intended to keep our children and themselves safe?

Kids have accounted for more than 30 percent of new coronavirus cases nationwide in recent weeks, and the percentage continues to rise.

More than 1 in every 500 Americans have died of COVID.

More than 1 in every 336 residents of Hill County have died of COVID.

More than 1 in every 280 Blaine County residents have died of COVID.

When is enough enough, and when does enforcement take effect?

Sincerely,

Alan Sorensen

Havre

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Ancient Greek Medicine: Who Was Hippocrates And What Was The Hippocratic Oath? – BBC History Magazine

Posted: at 5:45 pm

Early medicine in ancient Greece borrowed numerous ideas from ancient Egypt, with many people seeking supernatural explanations for their ailments, such as curses and the judgment of the gods. If someone became unwell, they would typically end up in an asclepeion a temple dedicated to the god of medicine, Asclepius. The patient would sleep there and hope to be visited by Asclepius overnight, who would tell them their cure.

Upon waking the next day, the patient would report their dreams to priests, who would prescribe them a treatment usually based on prayer, exercise, bathing and herbal remedies. If they were cured, the grateful worshippers would leave behind a model of their affected body part in the temple as an offering of thanks. However, a desire to seek more pragmatic explanations for peoples ailments grew as time went on.

Join us as we explore one of the worlds greatest civilisations from the birth of democracy and the ancient Olympics to warfare, the rights of women and the whims of the gods.

Take me to todays highlights

One of the most notable physicians to advocate science and reason was Hippocrates (c460c375 BC), who helped further the theory of the four humours, and was one of the first doctors to accurately describe conditions such as epilepsy. Whereas some people believed that the disorder was a result of demonic possession, the Kos-born physician instead determined that the cause lay inside the human brain.

Thanks to the work of Hippocrates and his adherents down the generations, distinctions now also began to be made between acute (short and sudden) and chronic (long-lasting) diseases, while emphasising the importance of observation.

Physicians would also regularly take checks of their patients progressing symptoms, as well as their pulse, temperature and excretions. In addition, the Hippocratic school pioneered important new techniques: a collection of writings attributed to the physicians followers (known as the Hippocratic Corpus) features the earliest known reference to an endoscopy using a rectal speculum.

Humourism was a prevalent concept in ancient Greece. Though the theory is believed to have originated much earlier, Hippocrates is often credited with refining and popularising it.

The core belief was that the human body was made up of four fluids blood, yellow bile, black bile and phlegm and that these corresponded with the four elements of earth, fire, wind and water. If any of these became imbalanced, you could become ill.

The humours were also believed to be connected with temperature and weather. Blood was associated with moisture and warmth; if you suffered from redness, perspiration and swelling, you were said to have too much blood in your body.

To solve the problem, doctors would practise bloodletting, achieved by cutting the skin or by using leeches. Fainting was usually seen as a sign that the treatment was working, but death could occur if too much blood was drained.

The four humours theory did not die out with the ancient Greeks. In fact, humourism would remain part of western medicine until as late as the 19th century, when germ theory (the idea that pathogens cause disease) and other medical discoveries took hold.

As medicine was still a developing field, physicians were often viewed with suspicion. Hippocrates, however, developed a code of ethics that helped turn medicine into a respected profession, and ensured that physicians came to be seen as important members of society.

The so-called Hippocratic Oath laid out basic ground rules for a doctors bedside manner, as well as text on the importance of honesty, compassion, confidentiality, cleanliness, and careful noting of a patients symptoms (which could then be used by other physicians).

Indeed, more than 2,300 years after Hippocrates death, much of the oath still resonates today:

I swear by Apollo the physician, and Asclepius, and Hygieia and Panacea and all the gods and goddesses as my witnesses, that, according to my ability and judgment, I will keep this Oath and this contract I will use those dietary regimens which will benefit my patients according to my greatest ability and judgment, and I will do no harm or injustice to them Into whatever homes I go, I will enter them for the benefit of the sick, avoiding any voluntary act of impropriety or corruption, including the seduction of women or men, whether they are free men or slaves.

Whatever I see or hear in the lives of my patients, whether in connection with my professional practice or not, which ought not to be spoken of outside, I will keep secret, as considering all such things to be private. So long as I maintain this Oath faithfully and without corruption, may it be granted to me to partake of life fully and the practice of my art, gaining the respect of all men for all time.

However, should I transgress this Oath and violate it, may the opposite be my fate.

This fifth-century BC marble relief shows a Greek physician treating a woman (Photo By DEA / G. DAGLI ORTI/De Agostini via Getty Images)

While Hippocrates is perhaps the most famous of the ancient Greek physicians, he certainly wasnt the only doctor to have had an important impact on medical thinking.

Herophilus (c330c280 BC), for instance, is believed to have been one of the first to perform human dissections during a time when a ban on the practice (for religious reasons) was temporarily lifted in Alexandria. Through his careful studies of the body, Herophilus deduced that veins only carried blood (it was previously thought they also carried a mixture of water and air), and devised a method for measuring the pulse.

Despite their pioneering ideas, the ancient Greeks still had some unusual beliefs when it came to conditions like pregnancy, including the notion that a babys gender could be determined through the complexion of the mother the appearance of freckles was thought to be a sign that she was carrying a girl, while a clear complexion indicated that a boy was due instead.

If a couple wanted to increase the likelihood of having a boy, the man could tie up his left testicle before intercourse; according to contemporary thinking, the right testicle was believed to be superior and would therefore conceive a stronger (and more desirable) male heir.

Another medical technique that the ancient Greeks utilised was trepanation drilling a hole into the skull. While earlier civilisations may have adopted the procedure to allow evil spirits to escape, its possible that Greek physicians had other ideas as to the benefits of the procedure. According to some historians, trepanation may have been used as a way of treating head fractures, on the basis that recovery was more likely if pieces of dead bone could be removed before infection set in.

Regardless of how strange some of their methods may seem today, however, the work of ancient Greek physicians had an undeniable impact on the western world. The teachings of ancient Greece were adopted by ancient Rome, and as the Roman empire expanded those ideas spread further afield. Together, they would influence medicine for many centuries to come.

This article first appeared in BBC History Revealeds essential guide to ancient Greece

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The sweet joy of life | The Pittsburgh Jewish Chronicle – thejewishchronicle.net

Posted: at 5:43 pm

The holiday of Shemini Atzeres suffers from an identity crisis. On the one hand, its very name the Eighth Day of Assembly leads to the impression that it is the closing day of Sukkot, the holiday that immediately precedes it. At the same time, the Talmud clearly understands it to be a separate holiday, with significant features that distinguish it from Sukkot. Among the halakhic features that the Talmud uses to prove its independence is the recitation of the blessing of Shehechiyanu Baruch she-he-cheyanu ve-kiyamanu ve-higiyanu la-zeman ha-zeh the benediction recited at the beginning of each festival thanking God who has kept us alive, sustained us, and brought us to this season. The Shehechiyanu said at the beginning nights of Sukkot is not sufficient to cover the joy that we have in encountering a new and independent milestone of Shemini Atzeres.

It is striking to note how often this special blessing is recited over this season of the year: both evenings of Rosh Hashanah during kiddush, preceding the shofar on both days of Rosh Hashanah, during Kol Nidrei on Yom Kippur, during kiddush on the opening evenings of Sukkot, before waving the lulav and etrog for the first time and again in the kiddush of Shemini Atzeres and Simchat Torah. (In fact, during the time of the Talmud, an additional Shehechiyanu was recited when the sukkah was constructed! Sukkah 46a.) In many ways, this simple expression of gratitude to God for survival is the anthem of our High Holiday season.

There is a powerful story that illustrates the profound significance of this blessing:

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One year, the first Bobover Rebbe, R Shloime Halberstam (18471905), acquired a precious possession: a set of the famed Slavita edition of the Talmud. Particularly prized by Chassidic rebbes due to the beauty of the printing and the piety of the printers, the Bobover Rebbe was overjoyed with his good fortune. So when the second night of Rosh Hashanah arrived that year, the Bobover Rebbe asked that the Slavita Talmud be placed on the yom tov table together with the customary platter of new fruit, in order that his shehecheyanu his heartfelt declaration of joy in being allowed to live another year should include his excitement over his new Talmud.

Decades later, in 1946 his grandson who bore his holy name, R Shloime Halberstam (19072000), found himself in New York on Rosh Hashanah under very different circumstances. He had lost his wife, most of his children and many of his followers during the dark years of the Holocaust. Bobov was gone, and as a refugee in America, his beard just growing back after the war, was trying to imagine the near impossible work of rebuilding. When he sat down to celebrate the second evening of Rosh Hashanah, on the table he, too, placed a new set of Talmud, just as his namesake had done.

And when I imagine the ragtag group of refugees who shared that first Rosh Hashanah in the New World, I think about what the Shehecheyanu must have meant to them:

Notwithstanding the horror and the carnage, they were still alive.Notwithstanding the utter obliteration of the rich heritage of European Jewry, the Talmud still lived.Notwithstanding the unfamiliar and spiritually rootless soil they found themselves on, the grandson could still find the same joy in Judaism as the zeyde had years before.

Baruch she-he-cheyanu ve-kiyamanu ve-higiyanu la-zeman ha-zeh!

This has been a challenging year for the whole world, and as we culminate for a festival season that in some ways would be unrecognizable to our pre-pandemic selves, it is not difficult to give in to a sense of sadness and despair.

This Tishrei, we need to seize on to the Shehechiyanu of the Bobover Rebbe, to find the joy and gratitude to Hashem for what we do have, that we are still here and appreciating the unique gifts that each festival of this blessed season.

And I leave you with this question: What can we bring to the table this year to enhance our Shehechiyanu? More than a lychee or a kumquat, we need to dig deep in ourselves to find and share that for which we are so grateful to Hashem, notwithstanding the anxiety of this past year.

Baruch she-he-cheyanu ve-kiyamanu ve-higiyanu la-zeman ha-zeh!PJC

Rabbi Daniel Yolkut is the spiritual leader of Congregation Poale Zedeck. This column is a service of the Vaad Harabanim of Greater Pittsburgh.

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Celebrating the Joy of Torah in Israel – Israel Today

Posted: at 5:43 pm

As we speak, Jews across the world are preparing to celebrate Shemini Atzeret and Simchat Torah. Shemini Atzeret, or the 8th Day of Assembly, is the closing festival after the 7 days of Sukkot mentioned in Leviticus 23. Simchat Torah, the Joy of Torah, is a joyous occasion marking the fact that the Jewish people have finished reading the Torah for this year and start reading it anew for the year to come, demonstrating that the Torah is a cycle that is part of the daily life of the Jewish people.

In Israel, Shemini Atzeret is attached to Simchat Torah as one holiday. However, in the Diaspora, its celebrated as a separate holiday. Nevertheless, even though Israelis celebrate Shemini Atzeret and Simchat Torah as one holiday, the Talmud stresses that Shemini Atzeret is a holiday in its own right. According to Leviticus 23:36: For the seven days of Sukkot, you shall bring a fire offering to G-d; on the eighth day, it shall be a holy convocation for you.

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Congress Takes On the Week From Hell: Updates – New York Magazine

Posted: at 5:43 pm

Photo: Kent Nishimura/Los Angeles Times via Getty Imag

This week will be the most consequentialon Capitol Hill in a generation. An intra-Democrat rivalryhas meant that Joe Bidens entire economic agenda is in jeopardy. Meanwhile, Congress must pass also a new funding bill by Thursday night to avoid a government shutdown. And looming just over the horizon,the U.S. government may be forced to default on its debtsin a few weeks unless lawmakers can agree to raise the so-called debt ceiling.

The tough part is Democrat leaders uniting a fractured caucus with almost no margin of error. They are trying to reach an agreement to pass two bills: A bipartisan infrastructure agreement and Bidens signature Build Back Better Act. If passed, the bill would represent one of the most consequential legislative accomplishments since LBJs Great Society. If it fails, it would represent a humiliating defeat for Biden and a potentially insurmountable setback for his administration.

Heres the latest:

In a 50-50 Senate, any one Democrat can thwartJoe Bidens agenda, and no one has more leash than Joe Manchin, who has managed to win re-election in West Virginia, where Donald Trump won by 40 points last year.

So what Manchin says thus determines what can pass in the Senate and his every utterance is analyzedwith Talmudic intensity. and hes gone back and forth about what he desires. Early this month in a Wall Street Journal op-ed, he indicated support for a strategic pause on the reconciliation bill and insisted that he would not support legislation with total budget of $3.5 trillion.

This morning, CNNs Manu Raju caught up with Manchin senatorwho offered yet another ambiguousstatement about the prospects for a reconciliationbill moving forward.

Whatever decision Manchin reaches will have a huge impact on this weeks course of events: Vulnerable Democrats in the House want any reconciliation bill to be blessed by Manchin in advance so that it can pass the Senate.

In the meantime,as Manchin deliberates, he is likely to remain as one of the most consequentialhouseboat residents since Noahs Ark.

Monday: The House Democratic caucus has a 5:30 p.m. meeting to discuss the treacherous path moving forward. Plots will be outlined, feelings will be explored and maybe even something consequential might happen.

At the same time, the Senate will hold a vote to keep the government open as well to prevent it from defaulting on its debts. It is expected to fail due to Republican opposition.

Tuesday-Wednesday:Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together mass hysteria.

Thursday: The federal government will shut down at midnight unless Congress passes a continuing resolution to keep the government funded. It is also the day Pelosi has promised to hold a vote on the bipartisan infrastructure bill as part of a deal she reached with a group of moderates in August.

Daily news about the politics, business, and technology shaping our world.

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Call for normalization between Israel and Iraq at historic conference in Erbil – European Jewish Press

Posted: at 5:43 pm

Chemi Peres, Chairman of the Peres Center for Peace and Innovation, addressed a rally of 300 Sunni community leaders and activists in Erbil, in Iraqs Kurdistan, calling for normalization with Israel.

The rally, the first such event of its kind, was organized by the New York-based Center for Peace Communications (CPC) this was the first such event of its kind.

Addressing the plenary virtually, Peres used the platform to call to advance the vision of his father, the late Israeli President and statesman Shimon Peres, of normalization and peace across the region. Calling the event historic and inspirational, Chemi Peres sait it was an opportunity to solidify the historical ties between Iraq, or ancient Babylon, and the Jewish people, whose culture was influenced significantly by the ancient Jewish community which once thrived there.

He also noted the recent normalization trends as a model which he hopes can positively impact Israeli-Palestinian relations and the prospects for peace.

Holding such a meeting alongside this initiative serves as an inspiration for many Israelis. As you surely know, many Israelis have deep historical and familial ties to Iraq, my own family included. There exists today, and there will continue to be, a deep connection between those residing in the Holy Land and those living in Iraq, the land of the two rivers, where the historic Jewish text, the Babylonian Talmud was written. This is a text which continues to play an enlightening role in the lives of our people to this day, Peres said.

During the event, Wisam al-Hardan, a Sunni tribe leader from the Anbar province in Iraq, declared: We demand full diplomatic relations with the State of Israel and a new policy of normalization based on peole-to-peope relations with the citzens of that country.

He criticized the law against delaing with Israelis and Zionists, saying it violates the fundamental rights human rights of Iraqis. The so-called ant-normalization law in Iraq are morally repugnant and have been repeateldly exposed by the international community as an assualt on human rights and freedom of expression and association, said al-Hardan.

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Simhat Torah was included as a ‘new’ holiday. Could we add more? – The Jerusalem Post

Posted: at 5:43 pm

Israel Independence Day and Jerusalem Day are two of the most recent celebrations added to the Hebrew calendar. Holocaust Remembrance Day is another recent addition mandated by the Knesset. But these days are not universally recognized by all Jewry. We have to go back a thousand years to find a holiday added to the calendar and celebrated by all Jews.

The seven processions with the Torah scrolls, writes Birnbaum, became customary in the 16th century. Simhat Torah became one of the most popular of Jewish holidays despite its late appearance.

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In A History of Judaism, historian Martin Goodman writes: The end of Sukkot was marked by a final eighth day (Shmini Atzeret) on which no work was to be undertaken. In the Diaspora, where two days of the festival were observed, the second day in due course took on a character of its own in celebration of the completion of the annual cycle of the reading of the Torah, and the start of the new cycle with the book of Genesis. This celebration, known as Simhat Torah, is not attested until the beginning of the second millennium CE, but it has become a major festival for Diaspora Jews, with much singing and dancing by the congregation.

In the Land of Israel, Simhat Torah was incorporated into the holiday of Shmini Atzeret, in which the two are celebrated on the same day. It is interesting that the celebration of Simhat Torah had its origins in the Diaspora yet was adopted by the Jews of Israel. It attests to the supremacy of the Babylonian Gaonate and its influence throughout the Jewish world, even in Israel.

Simhat Torah should embolden us to create a meaningful Jewish calendar. If a holiday can be added to the Hebrew calendar millennia after Revelation, why can we not add holidays that address the issues of our own time and be recognized by all Jews? The modern calendar has been partially successful in accomplishing this. But a religion that fails to respond to the watershed events of our own time is a religion that is bound to ossify, calcify, and fail. Jews have to have the strength of our ancestors and not fear modifying the calendar. If Simhat Torah could be incorporated into the Hebrew calendar 1,000 years ago, we can be bold and expand the Hebrew calendar of today.

The writer is rabbi of Congregation Anshei Sholom in West Palm Beach, Florida.

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Simhat Torah was included as a 'new' holiday. Could we add more? - The Jerusalem Post

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Ex-Teacher From UK’s Elite Eton College Embroiled in Controversy After Interview With Antisemite Who Claimed Jews Are ‘Behind Pornography’ -…

Posted: at 5:43 pm

A former teacher from Britains elite Eton College is embroiled in controversy after he conducted a softball interview with a writer who claimed the Jews were always behind pornography among other racist statements.

Online UK news site inews reported that E. Michael Jones made the comments during a YouTube interview hosted by Will Knowland, who taught at Eton before being dismissed after a controversy regarding a lecture widely derided as sexist.

Jones made a series of rambling and vaguely antisemitic comments to Knowland, asserting, among other things, critical race theory is Jews; philosopher Stanley Fish suffered from Jewish animus; talmudic Jewish scholarship led to the demise of literary criticism; the group that took over cinema were the Jews in Hollywood who were using this as a form of control; Americans are upset because the Jews are corrupting the morals; the Jews were always behind pornography; and that opposition to pornography and the sexual revolution was crushed by the Jews, the ADL, who had the counterattack calling anything they didnt like hate speech.

Knowland expressed no objection to Jones antisemitic statements.

September 27, 2021 4:26 pm

The ADL has criticized Jones in the past, saying that he promotes the view that Jews are dedicated to propagating and perpetrating attacks on the Catholic Church and moral standards, social stability, and political order throughout the world.

Knowland said in a statement, Clearly many Jews are aghast at pornography, but suppressing discussion is not healthy. Accordingly, Jewish involvement in pornography has been discussed in the Jewish Quarterly.

People should be free to make up their own minds about Dr. E. Michael Jones statements, he said, and if Jones is mistaken in his views, giving them a platform is the best way to expose those mistakes.

Knowland was fired from his teaching position at Eton when he posted a lecture to YouTube that said patriarchy is, rather than being merely socially constructed, partly based in biology and biologically speaking, the idea that men exert power over women is nonsense.

Women, he added, exploit their power of sexual choice to get males to compete to do things for them.

Knowland condemned his dismissal as an attack on his freedom of speech.

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