This is sincere from my hart even so you may not think so! We have problem in this country and I should say we had this problem for while now.

Some churches have being taking over for one reason or other but it seems it always wind up in courts and courts seem to side always with those that want to take over. I would like to remind our courts and law makers that religious organizations “DOES” not own any property of any church, synagogue, mosque’s or chapels that this building maybe erected un, it belong to community in which maybe located. Community is the owner of that property and people of that community can make decision what to do with that particular building or property that is located on. No Courts or law makers should be permitted to interfere with this including top religion organization like Rome.

The people of that community own these property they are the ones that sacrifice them self to have place to worship and cherish these properties. The religious organizations regardless of faith can supply Ministers, Rabies, Priest, and recall them as they may wish, but property belongs to people of that faith that support these property financially and exempting them from community tax. Unless that any of this organization can prove that they have financed purchase of property and were not tax exempt!!

SORRY NO EXCEPTIONS!

Respectful;

A. Seput

Palisades Park, NJ

Image via Wikipedia

Militantly, it is to be understood

That only they are the protectors and producers

Of the morality and the good

The only ones officially to be recognized or patronized

For doing the good in every neighborhood

Is the synagogue, mosque, or church

With all their efforts carefully directed

So this is projected as their image

So this can be perceived as true

By the masses, from the things they do

So the masses living in deepest poverty

Do not dare to see or think otherwise; or challenge religion

Even when it’s decision

Is to construct a retrieval of Objective Thinking

Human Rights, and Constitutional Protections (something evil)

In its defection in serving all the freedoms of the free

For what does religion really intend

In its thirst for a co-dependency over men

And why is that not a sin?

To serve the poor, not making them independent and strong

But to ration care in small amounts

So others must belong

Religions breed disagreements and war

Fills children’s minds with peculiar hatreds, mysticism, superstition

Not worthy of an intelligent man’s attention

But children across this world are its victim, minds crippled as a child

Taught mysticism and superstition frequently and loud

And can no longer see the universe as it really is

Adults having merged their thoughts with imagination in a way that kills

The ability of a human mind to see only whats real

Or see that the universe is all at once, hostile, objective, learn-able, and kind

And full of secrets only a reasoning (without imagination) can find

But instead children’s heads are misled, filled with demons, angels, ghosts, and Gods

Where objective human reasoning is crippled and dislodged

From the conscious mind and substituted with a “faith”

Fires fanned by inevitable coincidences over time

In a treacherous act to humanity and truth

They call worshipping the divine

When minds should have been filled with objective rules of Ethics

Based on acute observation, fairness, and Justice

The only cure to an imagination made dangerous and sick

With fantasy imagery producing logic that’s quick

To draw a wrong conclusion

About what’s fair, what’s Just, or what’s true about the universe

That you can really trust

Or what’s a mere delusion

Creating a psychological illusion

A matrix, an artificial reality,an intrusion

About what is or is not fair, good, or real

AND THATS WHAT ADULTS DID TO YOU TOO!

Though in ways in which you cannot feel

These Wizards of OZ (Preachers and ministers)

Use intellectual smoke and mirrors

Or use stern dictatorship, the threats, the fears of the fuhrer

To make a victim of every boy and girl

That’s what philosophically unintelligent  men

Do to the children of this world

When the discovery of gold in California was made public knowledge, in 1848, migrants and immigrants poured in from all over the world, including many Jews. The majority of the Jews came from the German-speaking countries of Central Europe, especially Posen and Bavaria; some came from England, France and the part of Poland which was then part of Russia, and a few were Sephardim.

Thirty Jews held the first Jewish services on the West Coast on Rosh Hashanah, 1849, in a wood-framed tent on Jackson Street near the waterfront. Since they had no sacred Torah scroll made of parchment, they used a printed copy of the Torah. High Holiday services were held one year later in Masonic Hall on Kearney Street, by which time the congregation had probably obtained a Torah scroll. (By the next year, another had been donated by the famous British-Jewish philanthropist Sir Moses Montefiore.) The congregation rented space on Bush Street until they could build a synagogue. In 1851, a Torah reader was appointed, although at a nominal salary. One of the members of the congregation taught the congregants’ children without payment.

By March 16, 1851, $4,400 had been raised from among the Jewish community to build a synagogue. But on April 4, 1851, the congregation split, over religious differences between German and Polish religious customs, into two congregations, Emanu-El and Sherith Israel. A recession delayed Temple Emanu-El’s ability to raise the money to build a synagogue; so did the “Great Fire” of May, 1851, and the immense property damage it caused. Its synagogue was finally built in 1854, and consecrated on September 14.

In July, 1854, its first rabbi, Julius Eckmann, arrived. The first two places where Congregation Sherith Israel met were destroyed by fire; the congregation built a synagogue on Stockton Street in 1854.

In a way, the Jews were continuing a tradition started by the Protestants who came to San Francisco (even before the Gold Rush) of religious groups who came to San Francisco without a house of worship, and making do with other places to meet and hold services. People “met in homes, hotels, courtrooms, rented halls, aboard ships abandoned in harbors, or even under canvas, and made their compacts with the Lord.”

But unlike the Jews, most or all of the Protestant groups arrived in San Francisco with a minister and a Bible. Ministers were often chosen in the Eastern, Southern or, sometimes, Midwestern United States, by authorities in their religion, to be sent to San Francisco. Other ministers tried to persuade their congregations not to go to San Francisco; when that failed, they would go to San Francisco themselves to provide at least some spiritual leadership. Three weeks after the American flag was raised over Yerba Buena, on June 7, 1846, a ship of Mormons arrived and their leader, Elder Samuel Brannan, began holding services in the plaza (the first wedding is reported to have been performed in a room the Mexicans had used as a prison.

One difference between the Mormons and most other religions that came to San Francisco is that the Mormons brought their congregation with them.) Two Methodist preachers came to San Francisco at the beginning of the Gold Rush; the Methodists held their services in the pre-fabricated, cloth-topped house of one preacher, while the other preacher led the service. The Episcopals preached their first sermon in the adobe hotel in the existing settlement’s plaza.

The first Presbyterian services were held in “a schoolhouse, the newly built First Baptist Church, a Customs House storeroom, and the Superior Court chambers in the City Hall”; their first official meeting-place was a large tent purchased from a mining company.

These are examples of the rather crude, humble beginnings of society and institutions in San Francisco. The progression of places these religions, including the Jews, held their services in the earliest years of San Francisco illustrate the growth of San Francisco from a boom town, to a more permanent city, to a European-style city, in a few years.

The very names of the first two Jewish congregations are significant: Emanu-El and Sherith Israel were the two most important synagogues in New York, the biggest city in the United States and an East Coast city. This is an example of the desire of San Franciscans to try recreate the solidity and order of the older parts of the United States, once people started to stay in San Francisco instead of just passing through it on the way to the gold mines. And the name “Emanu-El” (”God is with us” in Hebrew) may express gratitude for the Jews’ safe arrival in San Francisco, for the journey there was dangerous for everyone.

The activities, the fortunes and misfortunes, of Jews in the early years of San Francisco reflect the experiences of San Franciscans in general. Many Jewish immigrants made good money quickly as merchants, at odd jobs, and through luck arising from conditions of the Gold Rush (e.g., a man named Morris Shloss was given $100 for the wooden crate in which he stored his wagon, as soon as he got off the boat, by a man who wanted the box as a workshop by day and to sleep in by night).

They often lost everything they had even more quickly, especially to fires and robberies, and after bad luck they sometimes turned to mining and gambling.

Many of the Jews who came to San Francisco were unsuccessful; some gave up and left, if they had enough money to do even that; and not all survived. As Alexander Mayer, who had arrived in San Francisco in February of 1851, reported in letters to his uncle in Philadelphia, four merchants (Reuben Greenbaum, M. Baker, O. Nusbaum, and O. Rosenthal) had died in a fire and were buried in the same coffin at the Israelite Cemetery. Mayer himself lost his property in a fire, and after that and other setbacks, he eventually returned east.

These details (except for the dead merchants who were buried at the Israelite burying ground) reflect the general fortunes and misfortunes of the people of early San Francisco – including getting worn out from disasters and changes, fires, losses, alternating from odd job to odd job.

That was true in the case of a man named Abraham Abrahamsohn. Of the many odd jobs that Abrahamsohn performed, most of which would have perfectly represented the experiences of most [white] immigrants of the time to California, there was one odd job that was only part of the Jewish experience: that of a mohel [ritual circumciser].

On March 30, and April 6, 1851, the Jewish community was split over whom to elect the community shohet (ritual butcher). The German Jews and the Polish Jews supported rival candidates. The split occurred in the second week of April, into Congregation Emanu-El, composed mostly of German Jews (and a few Sephardim); and Sherith Israel, composed largely of Poles, Englishmen, and people from Posen (at the time, a province of Prussia).

The character of early San Francisco might well have had a lot to do with the nature of Temple Emanu-El, and why it became a Reform temple when Reform Judaism was in its infancy. Many Jews in San Francisco were already breaking the (Orthodox) Jewish laws by the time the split happened, including the laws of kashrut (purity of food) (the Seligmann brothers, who contributed a great deal of money for the building of a synagogue, did not keep kosher, and one of them became the president of the congregation).

This lack of keeping to the (Orthodox) Jewish laws reflected partly that the majority of Jews in San Francisco were German Jews, who were more westernized and tended to be less orthodox than those of Eastern Europe, but it also reflected the frontier-society, rough-and-tumble, rule-breaking, adapting nature of San Francisco, the newness, lack of traditions, the society made up entirely of immigrants.

It is probably no accident that the “capital” of Reform Judaism in the United States was not New York, which had the largest Jewish population, or any of the other East Coast cities with large Jewish populations, but Cincinnati, which was a fairly young, recent city, having grown as a city only since 1794.

These are some of the ways that the experiences of Jews in San Francisco reflected, and were shaped by, the history of San Francisco.

There may indeed be cases of conversion for citizenship (not unlike marriage for citizenship in America ), but this isn’t about cutting down on Jewish conversions, it’s about keeping undesirables out of Israel . This may appear to be something small, but an avalanche also starts with a single snowflake. Israel has a problem with racism, and it is growing, judging by the number of stories that keep popping up on the subject in its various forms.

America also has a racism problem and at times it’s hard to say how much progress or regression we are truly making in this category, but we at least admit we have a problem. Israel seems to be content to sweep most of their secret under the rug and pretend it doesn’t exist in their utopia, which is denial.

The discrimination and in some extreme cases, the hate, is quite obvious and borders on being fanatical and frightening. Take for instance the issue with the gay pride parade in Jerusalem . Most people who honestly follow the Bible, Torah, and the Koran all believe in the same thing: homosexuality is wrong. It’s not sexist to state what is within the pages of a book. In Christianity, it is often taught that one should love the sinner but hate the sin and help the person overcome it. “Sin” in this case includes all sin, not just homosexual behavior.

"The Rabbinical Court has held a special session and discussed placing a pulsa danura on those who have a hand in organizing the march," Rabbi Shmuel Papenheim, editor of the Eida Haredit’s weekly magazine "Ha’eidah" told Army Radio on Tuesday.

A pulsa danura is also known as a death curse. Its roots come from the Babylonian Talmud and is tied to modern day Kabbala; depending on who you ask, it’s black magic, voodoo, or Jewish mysticism and some believe it to be quite effective. The believers routinely point to the July 2005 pull out from occupied territories, at which time a pulsa danura was placed on Ariel Sharon . It is well-known he has been on life support for nearly a year after suffering initially from a stroke.

In the beginning of November, a synagogue had its windows smashed out and was sprayed with grafitti: " If we can’t march in Jerusalem you won’t walk in Tel Aviv ". There were violent clashes in Jerusalem in response to this destruction. Anger and violence always begets more of the same, but in this case, worshippers have to pay the price. In the end, the gay pride parade turned into a gay pride stadium rally that generally took place without incident.

Speaking of the pulsa danura, it seems some are using it against their Palestinian neighbors, which I don’t think is allowed under the rules of the Torah. However, the racism is quite well known between Jews and Palestinians.

"There are two kinds of racism, there’s the bad Hitleristic racism and then there’s the fine, chosen, Godly racism," Shurin explained before his performance.

"God chose, he chose the Jews and that’s his right. That’s healthy racism. The unhealthy racism is all the attacks against the Jews just for being the chosen people."

There is no such thing as “healthy racism”, despite the claim – this is nothing more than an oxymoron as the two cannot co-exist. There’s also been a flier campaign in Pardes Katz to encourage people not to sell or rent housing to Arabs.

"Our homes have become non-Jewish. In Pardes Katz, there are hostile Arabs, not of our people, who have brought to our streets intermarriage, destruction and fear," read the flier.

"We must not agree to an atmosphere so dangerous to our souls and bodies! We cannot allow them to destroy the education of the youth in our neighborhood!"

Such overt racism does nothing to preserve a culture; on the contrary, it destroys it. No one with a reasonable mindset would want to live in such an area or patronize the business community in it. Many have tried in the past to isolate themselves, and history teaches thriving communities that do, have died out and gone the way of dust. It is nothing more than a slow death.

Such hate should have no place in the modern day world, but unfortunately seems to find minds in which to thrive. It is not the only case of discrimination that I found regarding the state of Israel .

"We, who came from Ethiopia, live in a trap. You try as hard as you can to distance yourself from your parents’ culture so that you can become Israeli, but you always end up going back to the place you started from. There’s something about Israelis that makes them unwilling to accept Ethiopians. It is very painful."

It is common knowledge Ethiopians are not accepted in Jewish society, but the sad question is why? A common religion should bring all together, but that isn’t the case. Some argue this separation is due to factors such as education, wealth, and not skin color, but whatever the truth is, Jewish is Jewish; it shouldn’t matter where you were born.

Just this week the Ethiopian problem made another appearance in Jewish society with the Sidg holiday :

"Once a year we come to Jerusalem and pray towards the Temple Mount for a renewed building of the Holy Temple. This year there is an awakening because of the struggle against discrimination lead by the Chief Rabbinate and its treatment of Ethiopian Jews."

It is sad when a holiday that gives thanks to Israel is marred with such feelings of not being wanted and not being able to find your place in polite society.

According to a story printed in Scoop , they break down the ethic make up of Israel as follows:

“Today Mizrahim constitute around 50% of the Israeli population. Palestinian Arabs make up another 20%, so the total non-European population is about 70%. This rises to 90% with the inclusion of Palestinians from the occupied territories.”

This article also brings up an interesting point: could the discrimination be coming from European Jews who simply forgot their original Middle Eastern genes? It’s hard at times to relate to someone who doesn’t look or sound like you, but as much as that is a barrier, it can also be a blessing if one wants it to be.

I kept reading message boards where Jews were calling others “goyim” or “goya”. I didn’t understood the term and wasn’t sure I could find out the translation, so I googled it up. In the end I found the definition on dictionary.com and discovered I fit into the category. I was none too pleased to discover it is a derogatory term that has replaced a slightly more polite “gentile ” (“pagan” and “heathen” are translations I don’t associate my Christian faith with). Of course Christians have been targets of Jewish discrimination, too.

There was at least two well publicized incidents of Jewish attacks on Christians in Israel that I read about in 2006: January and June . There are conflicting accounts of proselytizing, but that is no reason to become violent. There are laws against such activities, and if they were offended or felt these Christians had stepped over a legal line, it would’ve been proper to call the police and report the group. If they were in fact innocent, then the police would’ve let the groups go and given them a warning to leave the area.

Some argue Israel , by its very nature, has many racist policies that are the root cause of the problems modern Israel currently faces. It was hard to see the initial reaction after the cease-fire between Israel and Lebanon was called because it mean for Israeli Arabs, they were not going to be compensated at the same rate as Israeli Jews . That decision was nothing more than another collective form of punishment.

Those who are in charge of governing the state, do little better than the bean counters who came up with the lower compensation scheme. “ If we kill civilians, we accept blame, but when you kill civilians, you take credit; it’s a cultural thing. ” What an awful thing for a member of the Knesset to say! I could challenge this statement based upon multiple fiascos, but that’s not my focus. It just goes to show the mindset of the political elite is more comfortable with insults than diplomacy.

Finally, there’s always a waiting slap for the Germans, who could never in their wildest dreams forget what they’ve done, and if by some bizarre chance they did for just a moment, the Israelis would certainly remind them with inflammatory statements:

"It’s 1938 and Iran is Germany. And Iran is racing to arm itself with atomic bombs," Netanyahu told delegates to the annual United Jewish Communities General Assembly, repeating the line several times, like a chorus, during his address. "Believe him and stop him," the opposition leader said of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. "This is what we must do. Everything else pales before this."

What has this discrimination achieved? Other than entrenched negative opinions, it has given birth to an exodus from Israel . Many Christian groups do not know the money they are paying to fly Jews home is being wasted as many turn around and go back to their native lands because of the discrimination.

"I thought Israel would make all my dreams come true, but it turns out that the life I always wanted is back home," says Kovitch in his heavy-accented Hebrew. The accent, he adds, is part of the problem. "I will never be a full Israeli, people will always think I am ‘Russian’ and discriminate against me."

The idea of the regathering seems to be failing, which also means prophecy is not being fulfilled. The Christians technically know there has to be a regathering into the land before certain events take place, and by discrimination pushing immigrant Jews out, they are creating a prophetic problem most Christians have no concept exists.

I can remember my dad having a little nameplate style plaque with a simple sentence on it. “I don’t discriminate. I hate everyone.” I am thankful there are open minded and kind Jews amongst the Israeli population who are trying to make a change in societal thinking, uphill battle or not. These people have a hard job, but it’s one worth fighting and doing right the first time; there are no second chances in fighting discrimination.

quazen.com articles by this writer can be found here

socyberty.com articles can be located here

relijournal.com articles are here

picable.com photographic images are here here

I have read many accusations online from Jewish groups claiming Germany is trying to rewrite its past and hide its sins. There is no way this could be done, and I say that with total confidence. The fact Israel exists is the greatest standing testament to what was done; the Jewish homeland would not have come about any other way. It is a fulfillment of prophecy the homeland was established, and continues to be fulfilled as the ingathering returns Jews to their ancient home.

Modern Germany is a good friend to Israel and provides support because they feel it is their obligation to aid Israel for their sins. They have also erected a huge memorial to the survivors that consists of over 2,711 giant slab blocks . That would be hard to hide if someone were rewriting history. The two governments have a track record of good political relations . A new synagogue was recently opened after the last one was destroyed 68 years ago.

These comparisons in light of such good relations must be heartbreaking for the German people. They will never forget on their own, and the more Jewish politicians invoke the image, it tells not only the Germans, but also the rest of the word, you still cannot and will not forgive on the whole. The Old Testament surely would back up the position of how important it is to forgive others, as God forgives you of much more.

They have the right to a little peace of mind; they also have many scars on the inside, too. A Jewish politician once said that war between the Jews and Arabs will end when Arabs learn to love their children as much as Jews do. Today, there are two full generations, and a solid start on a third in both countries. As long as Jews continue to beat Germans over the head with the Holocaust, new generations will continue to be scarred instead of learning how to live together.

Many often say you are a self-fulfilling prophecy; what you think, you are. As long as Jewish groups continue to tell Germans they are bad, they will become just that. Is it any wonder there has been a sharp rise in anti-Semitism and increased membership in neo-nazi groups?

It’s time to stop beating them over the head with the Holocaust club. It’s time to forgive.

quazen.com articles by this writer can be found here
socyberty.com articles can be located here
relijournal.com articles are here
picable.com photographic images are here