Old Guard Fades: Zerah Warhaftig, signer of Declaration of Independenceand NRP leader, dies at 96 (JPost)

Warhaftig was born in Volkovysk, Belorussia,learned in yeshivot and the University of Warsaw, and received rabbinic ordination and a law degree.He later received a doctorate in Jewish law from the Hebrew University.

    

Israelis in Iraq? On the Ground (Jerusalem Post via Little Green Footballs)

Are Israeli Special Forces operating inside western Iraq to locatemissile launchers that could be used against Israel? Israeli officials refuseto comment.

According to Isayeret.com, this wouldn't be the first time Israeli special forces were working i the Iraqi hinterlands.

    

Selling Our Secrets (William Safire in NYTimes)

If current legislation being urged by the Bush Administration passes, American executives would be encouraged to sell technology to foreign nationals who may not wish us well.

    

Get your Torah here: Free Jewish Books Online

Also, check out the  Biblecommentaries page. 
I've said it before and I'll say it again: It's a darn shame that most ofthe titles here are courtesy of Lubavitch. But it's worth noting the Legendsof the Jews, linked to below.

    

Free for the Downloading: Project Gutenberg Titles by Ginzberg, Louis

 Legends of the Jews in four downloadable text files. Checkitout!

    

Words to Live By (Nathan Torkington)

"Some days you wake up and think "the whole world has lost its marbles and I'm the only sane one left". Then you look at your todo list and think "there's no way I'm the sane one." :-) "

    

Stop the Presses! Mass Aliyah from America is Unlikely (Ha'aretz)
    

Department of letters from good causes we never heard of before

Hi guys, we were hoping you would link our charity auction uponthe page for the week. Mr. Dylan is a long time supporter of B.A.D.D.
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&;item=907503585

Thanks
Danny Perkins
Bikers Against Drunk Drivers
www.baddcentral.com

    

Flight 93 Conspiracy Shot Down: Seismic Waves: The Ultimate Black Box: (Discover)

"Based on the amount of seismic energy, Wallace could estimatehow the plane came down: "The UA flight produced a significant signal, consistentwith a fully-loaded jet that was intact, or nearly intact, on impact." Thatfinding disputes rumors that the hijacked jet was shot down, he says, becausea missile or other explosion would have broken the craft into smaller piecesthat would have caused less seismic disturbance."

    

Too Much Silence: An Unimaginable Calamity, Also Unexamined (Jim Dwyer in NYTimes)

"One year later, the public knows less about the circumstancesof 2,801 deaths in Manhattan in broad daylight than people in 1912 knew withinweeks about the Titanic, which sank in the middle of an ocean in the deadof night.

"That hardly seems possible, considering that 9/11 iconography has beenabsorbed into everything from football pageants to pitches by speakers peddlinglessons in leadership at stiff fees. And yet, says John Timoney, formerlya senior police commander in New York and the police commissioner in Philadelphia,the events of Sept. 11 are among the most rare in American public life: truecatastrophes that have gone fundamentally unscrutinized.

"'You can hardly point to a cataclysmic event in our history, whetherit was the sinking of the Titanic, the Pearl Harbor attack, the Kennedy assassination,when a blue-ribbon panel did not set out to establish the facts and, whereappropriate, suggest reforms," Mr. Timoney said. "That has not happened here.""

    

From the Folks who Brought You Enron: Cronies in Arms (Paul Krugman in the NYTimes)

"It was crony capitalism at its worst. What kind of administrationwouldkeep Mr. White in office?

"A story in last week's Times may shed light on that question. It concernedanothercompany that sold a division, then declared that its employees had"resigned,"allowing it to confiscate their pensions. Yet this company didexactly theopposite when its former C.E.O. resigned, changing the terms ofhis contractso that he could claim full retirement benefits; the companytook an $8.5million charge against earnings to reflect the cost of its partinggift tothis one individual. Only the little people get shafted.

"The other company is named Halliburton. The object of its generositywasDick Cheney."

    

The Hope In A Honey Jar: 9-11, the Palestinian grocer and an affirmation (Debra Nussbaum Cohen in the Jewish Week)

" Soon after 9-11 last year I went to the grocery store around the corner from my house in Brooklyn to stock up on a few things. The Orthodox Muslim cashier, her face surrounded by a white scarf, dropped the change into my hand from a distance and without looking at me directly.

"e;I wondered if it was because I was Jewish."e;

    

YU? Why Her? Katzenstein's Termination Leaves Everyone Wondering (YU Commentator)

"As a result of the firing, Katzenstein has decided to sue Yeshiva University on grounds of age discrimination."

    

When the Lamm Lies Down: Presidential Search Down to Two Candidates (YU Commentator)

"The search for the next Yeshiva President is now down to two candidates: Drs. David Schnall and David Shatz -- one a friend of Lamm, the other a relative.

"This revelation follows the resignation of long-time Presidential candidate Rabbi Shlomo Riskin, who "finally acknowledged," according to a top Yeshiva administrator, that it would be impossible to lead the university from 6000 miles away in Efrat, Israel.

    

Lightning hits funeral, kills 3 (Springfield News Leader)
    

Rabbi Irwin Kula on Oneness and God (Via Jake's Radio 'Blog)

"For me, that there's something 'out there,' and that I'm here, no longer meant anything, because every time I thought there was something 'out there,' it turns into inevitably something opposed to me. Something I have to define myself against, whether that's God, or whether that's a Christian, or whether that's a Muslim, or whether that's a Buddhist. And that's not my experience. My genuine experience of life is that there is nothing 'out there.' This is all there is. And when you see the seamlessness of it all, that's what I mean by 'God.'

"Every tradition has that. Every morning, three times a day since I'm five or six years old, I've been saying, 'Hear O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is One.' Right? It's one of our few creedal statements, the Shema. Three times a day, since I'm six years old. If you ask what 9/11 really did, it made me understand the truth of that. The truth of that, 'Everything is one.' Not that there's some guy hanging out there who has it all together, who we call 'One,' but that it is all one. We all know it deep down. We've all had those experiences, whether it's looking at our child in a crib or whether it's looking at our lover or looking at a mountaintop, or looking at a sunset. Right? We've all had those experiences. And we recognize, 'Whoa. I'm much more connected here.' That's what those firemen had. They recognized -- they didn't have time to think about it, right? Because actually, if you think about it, you begin to create separations. They didn't think about it. All they knew is we're absolutely connected... That's what we mean when we say 'God.'..."

There's more worth reading there, including his thoughts on holy atheism and reading last words to the Eicha trop.

    

9/11 In Memoriam (Joel on Software)
    

Make copyright dependent on the active exercise of copyright: Copyright robs the future (Ray Davis via Boing Boing)

William Blake didn't stop writing in 1818. It just looks that way because his antejerusalem manuscripts were destroyed after his death and before his most fervent admirers were born.

Our access to European pre-Christian culture depends largely on copyists' lack of judgment: wild-assed Christians, like wild-assed fundamentalists of other sacred-or-secular stripes, aren't shy about discarding the not-obviously-utilitarian.

A while ago, I picked up a "great young American poets" anthology from 1880 or so. I recognized only two or three names, and them not for their verse. Among the missing: Dickinson, Melville, and Whitman.

They might've stayed missing, too. Whitman developed a cult while he was living, but scandalized heirs could easily have snuffed posthumous printings. And under our current rules, Moby-Dick and The Confidence-Man wouldn't have entered the public domain until 1961, crimping the 1920s Melville revival.

    

Whatever Happened to Jim Morrison? Manzarek Says Copeland & Astbury Are Permanent Members Of The Doors (Launch)

"The Doors played their first public show last Friday (September 6) with the Police's Stewart Copeland on drums and the Cult's Ian Astbury on lead vocals, but is this lineup set in stone? Keyboardist Ray Manzarek says it is."

Yudel's Line: This reminds me of the great book Armegeddon Rag by George R. R. Martin -- in which the assassinated leader of a Doors-like returns for the come-back tour.

    

Clever as a Fox at the Henhouse: Jack Welch's Very Golden Years (The Motley Fool)

During his last year with GE, Welch earned $16.2 million. He also holds 22 million shares of GE (which, at $28 a share, is worth $616,000,000). The obvious question is: How much more money does this guy need? And how long should current GE shareholders pay the bills for an ex-employee?

    

From Study of Scripture to a Reenactment of Sinai: The Emergence of the Synagogue Torah Service (Ruth Langer)

Gotta confess I haven't read this yet. But since just last night I was discussing this same point (trying to recall the details of Michael Chernick's discussion of Bavli Megillah), this seemd worth printing out and reading.

    

Trumps and Chumps: Bridge player stripped of medal for refusing drug test (Globe and Mail)

The World Federation of Bridge is attempting to get bridge recognized as an Olympic Sport, so it is requiring that bridge "atheletes" be drug-tested. This year's silver medalist has been stripped of her title for refusing to pee in a cup. [via Boing Boing Blog]

    

The Oracle of Google.

Give it a question with four answers to choose from and it uses Google to pick the correct one. It's eerily good, it knows everything from the president of the US to Simpsons trivia. [Google Weblog]

    

Noelle Bush, the president's 25-year-old niece, caught supporting terrorism at rehab center with vial of crack in shoe. (Orlando Sun-Sentinel, link and headline via. ViewFromTheHeart)
    

Rational markets? What rational markets? (Salon's Scott Rosenberg)

"Market theory tells us that the stock market is a near-perfect gauge of the collected knowledge of participants. Now, everyone under the sun knows that we are approaching the anniversary of 9/11 and that there's a heightened likelihood of a terrorist attack of some kind. This is not exactly a secret.

"The market, you'd think, has taken this information into account, right? Wrong. Stocks, which were showing modest gains this morning, dropped suddenly after the government announced a heightened "orange" alert. Shouldn't this have been a "duh, of course" moment? Are there really hordes of investors sitting there saying, "Ohmigod, I had no idea there was an anniversary of a terrorist attack coming up! Thanks, government, for warning me -- excuse me while I put in my sell order."

"Not exactly. Instead, what today's gyration indicates is that markets -- in the sort term, certainly -- are amazingly irrational. People buy and sell based on emotion, hunch, hearsay -- even the color of a government terror warning that tells us what we already know." [Scott Rosenberg's Links & Comment]

    

Introspection as a Prerequisite for Peace (Yossi Klein Halevy in the NYTimes)

On this Rosh Hashana, a time of self-examination, I confess that my capacity as an Israeli for self-criticism has been exhausted.....

Peace will come only through mutual introspection and atonement. Many Israelis went far in trying to understand Palestinian claims and grievances. To resume that necessary process among Israelis now requires a self-critical moral dialogue among Palestinians.

Permanent Link

    

Cops: Man en route to circumcision job was driving drunk [Romenesko's Obscure Store]

    

Online Treasury of Talmudic Manuscripts (announcement on H-JUDAIC)

The Jewish National and University Library, David and Fela Shapell Family Digitization Project and the Hebrew University Department of Talmud are happy to announce the opening to the public of the Online Treasury of Talmudic Manuscripts. This project will bring together images of major Talmudic manuscripts from libraries throughout the world. Many public and private institutions have already given permission for use of images of their manuscripts. Some of these are already in the site while others are in various stages of preparation and will be added in coming months.

Currently the site contains the Kaufmann Mishnah (Budapest) and some tractates from Seder Moed, Nashim and Kodashim.

The site enables one to view and read the actual manuscripts as they were written.

The manuscripts are indexed to enable access by standard citation (tractate, daf and amud for the Talmud Bavli, and tractate, chapter and mishna for the Mishna).

The site is found at: http://jnul.huji.ac.il/dl/talmud

It is best viewed with Microsoft Explorer version 5 or higher.

    

Ambulance runs over heart attack victim's ankle [Romenesko's Obscure Store]

    

Following Lamm: Committee Narrows Presidential Search to Four Candidates  (Stern College Observer)

the nine-member presidential search committee revealed that four men have been selected as “viable candidates” for Yeshiva president.

Rabbi Shlomo Riskin, Dr. Lawrence Schiffman, Dr David Schnall and Dr. David Shatz have unofficially been confirmed by insider Observer sources as the four candidates.
    

Ozick on Scholem: The Heretic (The New Yorker)

In Kabbalistic symbolism, with its tragic intuition that the world is broken, that all things are not in their proper places, that God, too, is in exile, Scholem saw both a confirmation of the long travail of Jewish dispersion and its consolation: the hope of redemption. In short, he saw Zionism.

    

Build It Itself: Smart Furniture Removes Confusion of Self-Assembly (Reuters)

Stavros Antifakos, of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, has designed "clever" furniture pieces with built-in microprocessors that could relieve the confusion, anger and frustration of putting them together.

"He has built a flat-pack kit whose parts are fitted with cheap microprocessors that monitor what you're doing during assembly and warn you if you're doing something wrong or dangerous," New Scientist magazine said on Wednesday.

Using a wardrobe from the Swedish furniture group IKEA, Antifakos and his colleagues fixed sensors into the pieces that make up the sides of the wardrobe.

"The sensors feed data into a battery-powered microchip built into one of the pieces. This works out where all the pieces are in relation to each other and generates instructions, tips and warnings that appear on a separate computer screen, which is connected over a wireless link," the magazine said.

    

When Arafat's Ship Sailed. Here's a rare interview with Israel Navy operations chief Eli Marum about the eight-minute capture of the Karine A -- a pivotal event that forever changed President Bush's attitude toward ... [little green footballs]

    

The FBI: Protecting our Cybersecurity with a Geek-Free Workforce (Wired News)

Mike Sweeny, fueled by renewed patriotism after Sept. 11, wanted to offer his 20-plus years of experience in computer security to the FBI. But he was disheartened by job requirements that required him to have a college degree, be under 37 years old, morally irreproachable ... and physically fit.

    

Marvel Bullpen Bulletins

Greater, Groovier, Goofier Goodies than Ever, Gathered From the Four Corners of Marveldom!

    

Silver Age Marvel Comics Cover Index

The early, formative years (1961-1962) when characters began to be infused with the humanism that would become the hallmark of Marvel and the first steps were taken that would later reshape Marvel's entire line of books into a single coherent universe,

...the years of Conscious Consolidation (1963-1964) when editor Lee set the policy of infusing the new humanism into every character (and creating whole new books such as Daredevil and the X-Men based entirely around the concept) and solidifying the Marvel universe with increasing cross-over events,

...the Grandiose years when the consciousness of a deliberate humanism in the Marvel line resulted in comics written and conceptualized for adults as well as children (1965-1969),

...and the Twilight years (1970-) after Lee, Kirby and Ditko's creative energies seemed to have spent themselves and a new generation of creators succeeded them, prolonging Marvel's Silver Age in a new guise into the mid-seventies.

    

SuperMarketing: Ads from the Comic Books

(Caricatures shown not intended to depict Artemia salina)