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June 17, 2013

Rabbi Simcha Weinstein: Black to the Future: American Apparel Gets Biblical

Patrik Jonsson: Minnesota Nazi: How did Nazi hunters miss Michael Karkoc?

Kate Irby, Ali Watkins, Trevor Graff and Kevin Thibodeaux: All the ways you're being watched
Don Lee: G-8 meeting will test NSA leaks' effect on U.S. influence

Patrik Jonsson: Fort Hood shooting: Judge nixes Nidal Hasan defense strategy. What now?

Stacey Burling: Why the stigma for migraine sufferers?

The Kosher Gourmet by Lisa Abraham: Does it work? 5 new kitchen gadgets put to the test

June 14, 2013

Rabbi Abraham J. Twerski: A spiritual budget: Religious economics and being a ruler

John P. Martin: Hitler insider's missing diary found

Matt Pearce: NSA surveillance disclosure could affect court cases
Peter Tinti: US bounties changes strategy on (Wild, Wild) West African jihadis

Daniel Pendrick, M.D.: Memory loss? Old age may be the least of it

Lauren F. Friedman: But it's all natural! Should we have an instinctive preference for herbal remedies?

Jewz in the Newz by Nate Bloom : Streisand and Alicia Keys in Israel; "Girls" Stuff; Mel Brooks, Another TV special; Superman (who is Jewish) returns --- Israeli plays his mom

The Kosher Gourmet by Sharon K. Ghag : Bored with salad? Bling it up a bit (4 effortless recipes that will result in a 'WOW!')

June 12, 2013

Stephanie Hanes: Little girls or little women? The Disney princess effect

Fred Weir: In tweak to US, Russia would 'consider' asylum for Snowden

Sharon Palmer, R.D.: What's so special about Omega-3 supplements?
Morgan Housel: What newspapers were saying when you should have been buying

Pete Spotts: How cockroaches evolved so as to bypass 'roach motels'

The Kosher Gourmet by Anjali Prasertong: Deep-dish cookie: Warm, gooey and a little over the top

June 10, 2013

Joseph A. Slobodzian: Faith healing and third degree murder: Thorny legal case
Lindsay Wise: Few options for online users to avoid spying, experts say

Sharon Palmer, R.D.: There are plenty of nutritional food bargains out there
Harvard Health Letters: Can bariatric surgery control diabetes?

Zach Murdock: Superglue helps doctors save infant's life

The Kosher Gourmet by Celebrated chef Mario Batali : As good as grilling gets: Rib eye with dry mushroom spice rub

June 7, 2013

Rabbi David Aaron: Beating jealousy

Caroline B. Glick: Wounded . . . and dangerous

Clifford D. May: Al Qaeda vs. Hezbollah
Harvard Health Letters: Fighting back against allergy season

Kimberly Lankford: Grandparents who use FSA to cover grandkid's braces and other must-know info

Jewz in the Newz by Nate Bloom:J ewish Tony Nominees/Tony Awards; Jewish Teen Actor In Sci-Fi Flick; Jewish singer in "Voice" finals

The Kosher Gourmet by Anjali Prasertong: A tart filling so good it might not make it to the crust

June 5, 2013

John Rosemond: Mom, Dad: Talk More and listen less

Kristen Chick: Egypt court sentences 43 pro-democracy workers to prison

Sharon Palmer, R.D.: Mushrooms Have Medicinal As Well As Culinary Value
Morgan Housel: Why you never learn from your investment mistakes

Don Lee: In China, kindergarten rivalry takes deadly turn

The Kosher Gourmet by Sara Kate Gillingham-Ryan: 30-Minute Coq au Vin isn't a dream

June 3, 2013

Molly Hennessy-Fiske: Military judge to consider letting Fort Hood shooting defendant represent himself

Richard A. Serrano: Pvt. Bradley Manning's WikiLeaks trial also a test for government

Mark Trumbull: Have degree, driving cab: Nearly half of college grads are overqualified
Kim Lankford: What to do when long-term care insurance premiums rise

Deborah Netburn: Study: Adults' mouth bacteria may help babies

Jewz in the Newz by Nate Bloom: Jewish Contestant on 'The Voice'; Will Smith's 'Jewish movie family'; Bravo Gives Long Island Jews the Jersey Shore Treatment; Magicians and More

The Kosher Gourmet by Bill Ward: How to be as refined as the wines at a wine tasting

May 29, 2013

Andrew Connelly and Helene Bienvenu: The Little Synagogue that Refused to Die

Dennis Prager: The 'Muslims-Killed-by-the-West' Lie

David Clark Scott: Open war on teachers?
Morgan Housel: If you know only five things about investing, make it these

Sara Reardon: AGenome detectives change the donation game

Deborah Netburn: A one-way ticket to Mars? 78,000-plus and counting apply by video

The Kosher Gourmet by Bev Bennett: CHEDDAR AND CHERRY MUFFINS --- your mouth is already watering

May 24, 2013

Rabbi Tzvi Hersh Weinreb: When I didn't so 'humbly disagree'

Caroline B. Glick: Thank you, Hafez al-Assad

Diana West: From the Brooklyn Bridge to London
Morgan Housel: Why spotting bubbles is so much harder than you think

Environmental Nutrition editors: NuVal labeling to the rescue?

Jewz in the Newz by Nate Bloom : Memorial Day: Jews Serving and KIA in War on Terror; Liberace Bio-Pic; Jew Wins "Survivor"; Shalom, Dr. Brothers; More

The Kosher Gourmet by Emma Christensen: HIDE THESE FROZEN TREATS FROM THE KIDDIES!: Sangria pops; Irish cream pudding pops; mango Lassi pops

May 22, 2013

John Thorne: They launched the 'Arab Spring' but now yearn for the good old days of a strongman

John Rosemond: 'Disciplinary math' adds up to parental successl

Warren Richey: Are prayers before public meetings OK? Supreme Court to decide
Rick Montgomery: Use of ADHD drugs as study aid raises concern on campuses

Brierley Wright, M.S., R.D.: 6 convincing reasons you should keep carbs in your diet

Eoin O'Carroll: Scientists examine nothing, find something

The Kosher Gourmet by Carole Kotkin: This soup is made from one of the great pleasures of spring: A wonderful pairing of rosy color and earthy tang

May 20, 2013

Richard A. Serrano: Is Meir Kahane's assassin now a changed man?

Hannan Adely: Town raises Palestinian flag at City Hall

Melissa Healy: Genetic copies of living people from embryos no longer science fiction
Morgan Housel: When smart investors do stupid things

Sharon Saloman, M.S., R.D.: Hunger games: Eat more, weigh less, without starving

Jewz in the Newz by Nate Bloom : Jews Inducted into Rock Hall of Fame; Anton Yelchin co-stars in New "Trek" film; Kutcher (but not Kunis) visits Israel; Jewish TV Star Praises Jewish Rap Star

The Kosher Gourmet by Cathy Pollak: WARNING: This WALNUT CAKE WITH PRALINE FROSTING, perfect for afternoon coffee, is addicting


Jewish World Review July 19, 2012/ 29 Tamuz, 5772

Blowing up history

By Victor Davis Hanson



http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | In the Arabic media, there are reports that Muslim clerics -- energized by the sudden emergence of Egypt's new president, Muhammad Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood -- are now agitating to demolish the Egyptian pyramids. According to agitated imams, the Pharaohs' monuments represent "symbols of paganism" from Egypt's pre-Islamic past and therefore must vanish.

Don't dismiss such insanity so easily. Mali Islamists are currently destroying the centuries-old mausoleums of Sufi-Muslim saints in the city of Timbuktu, the historic site of early Islamic scholarship and jurisprudence. But perhaps the most recent regrettable Islamist attack on the past was the Taliban's 2001 dynamiting and shelling of the huge twin 6th-century A.D. statues of Buddha carved into a cliff at Bamiyan in Afghanistan. "We are destroying the statues," Taliban spokesmen at the time bragged, "in accordance with Islamic law, and it is purely a religious issue."

Ideologically driven and historically ignorant violence is not just an Islamist monopoly. Sometimes postmodern, politically correct Westerners can be every bit as zealous -- and as potentially destructive of the past -- as premodern Islamists. One of the joys of visiting California's Yosemite Valley is a series of historic arched bridges that span the Merced River on the valley floor. One, the 80-year-old Stoneman Bridge, is an architectural masterpiece and a tribute to Depression-era ingenuity and artistic elegance, while the sister Ahwahnee Bridge and the Sugar Pine Bridge were likewise designed to combine functionalism and beauty. All are used daily, appreciated by thousands of visitors each summer, and now are listed as endangered treasures by the National Trust for Historic Preservation.

Environmental zealots in the National Park Service are now proposing to demolish all three bridges, motivated by their pie-in-the-sky dreams of allowing the flood-prone Merced River to be freed to find its original course, without human contamination. To paraphrase the Taliban, these green fundamentalists would probably believe that the bridges are "symbols of humanism" and their destruction is "purely an environmental issue."


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Again, don't laugh. A petition circulated by an environmental group is forcing the city of San Francisco -- in a state currently struggling with a $17 billion budget shortfall -- to hold a November referendum on a proposal to blow up the historic O'Shaughnessy Dam that holds back the Hetch Hetchy Reservoir. That brilliantly engineered early-20th-century water and power project still supplies San Francisco and the South Bay with as much as 85 percent of its water, while providing the city with 400 megawatts of clean electrical power, and providing Central Valley farms and towns with irrigation and flood control. Where the billions of dollars would come from to dynamite the vast dam, penstocks, pipelines and powerhouse complex and to clean up the ensuing mess, how the green electricity would be replaced, and how the Bay Area's millions of residents would find their daily water are questions that matter little to ideologues who believe the aboriginal valley of Hetch Hetchy can be reborn without man's baleful touch.

What do these contemporary wars against the past have in common? One shared trait is the power of ideological zealotry, whether religious or environmental, to trump all questions of practicality, historical preservation and reverence for prior generations. The zealot's version of purity, and only his version, matters.

Modern affluence and leisure also explain both the ability and desire to destroy monuments of the past. Twenty-first-century technology allows premodern Islamists to have the weaponry, and the leisure time, for such destruction. If the statutes at Bamiyan are pagan, then so are the explosives that the Taliban used to obliterate them. And it is only because water so easily flows from San Francisco faucets, and power is a matter of flicking a switch -- both impossible in 1913 when a growing San Francisco was short on clean water and newfound electricity -- that today's green imams have the latitude to dream of their own version of a pure and uncontaminated paradise.

A general historical ignorance among the public at large plays a role, too. Just as fundamentalist madrassas pound dogma into the heads of students without any historical appreciation of the richness and variety of all religions in the early Middle East, so too have politically driven courses in our own universities crowded out broad classes in history. Students in our own versions of the madrassas can recite all the commandments of their own sacred green texts, but they know very little about the nation's past -- and almost nothing about the constant poverty, physical ordeal and, yes, early death that our forefathers struggled against to ensure that we might not.

Beware of the wages of professed purity, whether religious or environmental -- whether it targets a mausoleum in Timbuktu or a stone arched bridge in Yosemite.

Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.

Victor Davis Hanson, a classicist and military historian, is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and a recipient of the 2007 National Humanities Medal. Comment by clicking here.


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