(source: Sydney Morning Herald 28 Oct 2008)
Catholic bishops want the word of God on iPods
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October 27, 2008 - 2:19PM
Catholic bishops meeting in Rome said they want the word of God to be heard through what could be considered an unlikely channel: iPods.
The bishops, attending a synod at the Vatican since October 5, called for increased distribution of the Bible "in the largest variety of our planet's languages".
They said in a message to believers that the printed text is no longer sufficient at a time when communication has been transformed by technology.
"The voice of the divine word must also resonate over the radio, Internet channels with virtual online distribution, CDs, DVDs, iPod ...", it said.
It went on to add to the list "television and cinema screens, in the press, at cultural and social events."
The synod on the theme of the "Word of God in the Life and Mission of the Church" ended on the weekend.
-----------------------
You can get your e-bible in Text (*.txt) format at:
http://ruwach.googlepages.com/bibletext
Tuesday, October 28, 2008
Monday, October 13, 2008
The Financial Crisis: What Would the Talmud Do?
Heard about the Financial Crisis recently? Here's an interesting reminder that God has already revealed His Financial System, if only we would follow it.........
see - The Financial Crisis: What Would the Talmud Do?
http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1849231-2,00.html
(original article copied below)
--------------------------------------------------------------
The Financial Crisis: What Would the Talmud Do?
By David Van Biema Friday, Oct. 10, 2008
Would the current financial crisis have been avoided if traders followed Jewish traditions embodied in the Bible and the Talmud? Two scholars from the Conservative and Orthodox branches of the Judaism are suggesting just that. They also conclude that the tradition prescribes significant regulation to begin to redress the debacle.
That may not be so exotic as it sounds. Every theology has a subdivision for business ethics, but Judaism's is especially complete. It is said that more of the 613 commandments in the Jewish bible deal with keeping one's money kosher (or "fit") than pertain to one's food; and the business literature springing from that concern may be the longest and most continuous in the world.
In an article to appear shortly in a book from Oxford University Press, Aaron Levine, chair of the economics department at a respected New York college opens with the assertion: "The current downturn is the first post World War II recession that has its roots in widespread moral failure." It's an interesting, if debatable contention, but equally interesting is the authorities Levine cites as he makes his argument: the Jewish torah, the mishna (transcribed oral law), talmud, the work of medieval jurists like Maimonides, and host of rabbinical opinions (responsas) ever since. Levine is an Orthodox rabbi as well as a prof, and his institution is Yeshiva University. The book is titled Judaism and Economics; and his article's title is "The Recession of 2008: The Moral Factor — A Jewish Law Analysis."
It is not surprising that scholars like Levine have begun to bring Jewish religious teaching to bear on the current crisis — which, if not completely about ethics, certainly has a large ethical component. Says Rabbi Eliezer Diamond, Professor of Talmud and Rabbinics at New York's Jewish Theological Seminary, a body of the Conservative arm of Judaism, puts it, "What any religious tradition calls on us to ask is, 'how can I make money and simultaneously be a responsible member of the society in which I live, protecting the interests of both the buyer and the seller?' Clearly that consideration was absent from this whole process."
Neither Levine nor Diamond claims that Jewish participants in, say, the sub-prime mortgage crisis have been more virtuous than non-Jews. But both are inclined to analyse it through the lens of Jewish law, especially regarding proper financial disclosure, on which so much of the current fiasco has hinged. Here are some of the ancient principles they feel are applicable to today's bad news
•Bamboozling the "Blind"
Much Jewish ethical thought flows out of Leviticus 19:14, which reads "Thou shalt not curse the deaf, nor put a stumbling-block before the blind." From an early date, rabbis expanded this into a general prohibition on bad advice. In time, it became part of the language specifically regarding loans, mostly regarding the need for witnesses. But Diamond says it now applies to the whole loan debacle and "any expert who tells someone who probably shouldn't take out a mortgage 'you'll be able to do it, no problem.'" There are a lot of financially "blind" people out there, and a lot of people mis-advised them.
•Hidden Flaws and the "Reasonable Man"
Medieval jurists like Maimonides identified a more specific kind of bad advice. They tackled the idea of the "hidden flaw," which, Levine points out, leads directly to a demand for fiscal disclosure. "If you sell an animal, you had to disclose to the buyer what the hidden flaw is," he explains. Not only that: "the disclosure has to be made so that a 'reasonable,' or average man can decide" whether to buy. Once again, almost the entire chain of transactors in the mortgage crisis is guilty: predatory brokers for not alerting working-class borrowers to the fine print; middle-men selling mortgage debt to investment banks sliced and diced into "tranches" that obscure their riskiness; bankers who used hard-to-fathom financial instruments that leave ultimate responsibility for a loan a mystery even to experts. Like many observers, Levine is particularly exercized about credit default swaps, a largely unregulated field since 2000.) And anyone who willfully ignored the fact that real estate prices must eventually come down.
•The Bath House Rule
An extension of the disclosure concern, Diamond reports, was explored by Jews through the unexpected vehicle of marriage law. The tractate Ketubot in the Mishna dictates that a betrothal is valid only if the bride-to-be has no hidden blemishes that would have disqualified the match, had they been public. However, there is a heavy responsibility on the groom: if he has relatives who could have observed the disfigurement by checking out his fiance in the womens' bath but neglected to do have them do so, he can't complain. This suggests (feminist complaints notwithstanding) that culpability in sub-prime crisis does not lie solely on the mortgage broker who glided over the fact that payments ballooned in the third year; but also on the buyer who happily neglected to read the fine print: : "Ignorance of the facts is no defense," Diamond says.
•Morals of the Mark-Up
Leviticus 25 of the Bible explains that you cannot charge the same price for land that is about to become useless (in this case, by reverting to its original tribal ownership) as for a parcel that still has decades of use left. Rabbinic tradition, says Diamond, interpreted that as a check on price-gouging and ruled that nobody should charge more than one-sixth above market value for anything.
If this last bit sounds too ethical to be true, that's because, these days, it is. "To be honest," Diamond explains, "In the medieval and the modern periods, Jewish law caved to the marketplace on this." The financial markets that Jews found themselves in routinely assumed profits of over 6%, and they followed suit. "It became more an aspiration than a duty," he says. "Let's say that the more pious among us would take this seriously in establishing prices that are responsible, based on the marketplace." Indeed, with the exception of those involved in specifically Jewish markets like the Kosher foods industry that may fall partly under the jurisdiction of religious courts, Jewish businessmen are far less likely to be discussing rabbinic ethics than people like Levine and Diamond.
But the desire to apply them to the wider world may be growing. Diamond belongs to a group called Rabbis for Obama, and says that in light of the financial crisis, its members have begun to discuss how the old wisdom could mediate the new mess. The question these days, he says, is not whether Jews can be induced to be more ethical than the market, but whether the market can be made more ethical. "I think classic rabbinic tradition is certainly pro-regulatory," he says. Meanwhile, Yeshiva's Levine calls in his journal article for what he describes as "an incentive structure in the workplace that would dissuade people from wrongdoing." He gets quite specific, imagining a "carrot and stick" arrangement. One stick would be an expansion of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, which mandated greater accountability for CEOs of publicly-owned companies, among other things.
Sarbanes-Oxley is not popular among free-market advocates. "I know," says Levine, "people involved in all this will say that they wanted to maximize shareholder value." But he thinks that today's capitalism needs to be a little more bounded in order to protect the possible victims of its excesses. That term includes the poor man who mistakenly takes an impossible mortgage. But increasingly it may mean all of us. In regulating, says the rabbi-economist, "we have to imitate God, in the way He shows compassion and mercy when he deals with mankind."
see - The Financial Crisis: What Would the Talmud Do?
http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1849231-2,00.html
(original article copied below)
--------------------------------------------------------------
The Financial Crisis: What Would the Talmud Do?
By David Van Biema Friday, Oct. 10, 2008
Would the current financial crisis have been avoided if traders followed Jewish traditions embodied in the Bible and the Talmud? Two scholars from the Conservative and Orthodox branches of the Judaism are suggesting just that. They also conclude that the tradition prescribes significant regulation to begin to redress the debacle.
That may not be so exotic as it sounds. Every theology has a subdivision for business ethics, but Judaism's is especially complete. It is said that more of the 613 commandments in the Jewish bible deal with keeping one's money kosher (or "fit") than pertain to one's food; and the business literature springing from that concern may be the longest and most continuous in the world.
In an article to appear shortly in a book from Oxford University Press, Aaron Levine, chair of the economics department at a respected New York college opens with the assertion: "The current downturn is the first post World War II recession that has its roots in widespread moral failure." It's an interesting, if debatable contention, but equally interesting is the authorities Levine cites as he makes his argument: the Jewish torah, the mishna (transcribed oral law), talmud, the work of medieval jurists like Maimonides, and host of rabbinical opinions (responsas) ever since. Levine is an Orthodox rabbi as well as a prof, and his institution is Yeshiva University. The book is titled Judaism and Economics; and his article's title is "The Recession of 2008: The Moral Factor — A Jewish Law Analysis."
It is not surprising that scholars like Levine have begun to bring Jewish religious teaching to bear on the current crisis — which, if not completely about ethics, certainly has a large ethical component. Says Rabbi Eliezer Diamond, Professor of Talmud and Rabbinics at New York's Jewish Theological Seminary, a body of the Conservative arm of Judaism, puts it, "What any religious tradition calls on us to ask is, 'how can I make money and simultaneously be a responsible member of the society in which I live, protecting the interests of both the buyer and the seller?' Clearly that consideration was absent from this whole process."
Neither Levine nor Diamond claims that Jewish participants in, say, the sub-prime mortgage crisis have been more virtuous than non-Jews. But both are inclined to analyse it through the lens of Jewish law, especially regarding proper financial disclosure, on which so much of the current fiasco has hinged. Here are some of the ancient principles they feel are applicable to today's bad news
•Bamboozling the "Blind"
Much Jewish ethical thought flows out of Leviticus 19:14, which reads "Thou shalt not curse the deaf, nor put a stumbling-block before the blind." From an early date, rabbis expanded this into a general prohibition on bad advice. In time, it became part of the language specifically regarding loans, mostly regarding the need for witnesses. But Diamond says it now applies to the whole loan debacle and "any expert who tells someone who probably shouldn't take out a mortgage 'you'll be able to do it, no problem.'" There are a lot of financially "blind" people out there, and a lot of people mis-advised them.
•Hidden Flaws and the "Reasonable Man"
Medieval jurists like Maimonides identified a more specific kind of bad advice. They tackled the idea of the "hidden flaw," which, Levine points out, leads directly to a demand for fiscal disclosure. "If you sell an animal, you had to disclose to the buyer what the hidden flaw is," he explains. Not only that: "the disclosure has to be made so that a 'reasonable,' or average man can decide" whether to buy. Once again, almost the entire chain of transactors in the mortgage crisis is guilty: predatory brokers for not alerting working-class borrowers to the fine print; middle-men selling mortgage debt to investment banks sliced and diced into "tranches" that obscure their riskiness; bankers who used hard-to-fathom financial instruments that leave ultimate responsibility for a loan a mystery even to experts. Like many observers, Levine is particularly exercized about credit default swaps, a largely unregulated field since 2000.) And anyone who willfully ignored the fact that real estate prices must eventually come down.
•The Bath House Rule
An extension of the disclosure concern, Diamond reports, was explored by Jews through the unexpected vehicle of marriage law. The tractate Ketubot in the Mishna dictates that a betrothal is valid only if the bride-to-be has no hidden blemishes that would have disqualified the match, had they been public. However, there is a heavy responsibility on the groom: if he has relatives who could have observed the disfigurement by checking out his fiance in the womens' bath but neglected to do have them do so, he can't complain. This suggests (feminist complaints notwithstanding) that culpability in sub-prime crisis does not lie solely on the mortgage broker who glided over the fact that payments ballooned in the third year; but also on the buyer who happily neglected to read the fine print: : "Ignorance of the facts is no defense," Diamond says.
•Morals of the Mark-Up
Leviticus 25 of the Bible explains that you cannot charge the same price for land that is about to become useless (in this case, by reverting to its original tribal ownership) as for a parcel that still has decades of use left. Rabbinic tradition, says Diamond, interpreted that as a check on price-gouging and ruled that nobody should charge more than one-sixth above market value for anything.
If this last bit sounds too ethical to be true, that's because, these days, it is. "To be honest," Diamond explains, "In the medieval and the modern periods, Jewish law caved to the marketplace on this." The financial markets that Jews found themselves in routinely assumed profits of over 6%, and they followed suit. "It became more an aspiration than a duty," he says. "Let's say that the more pious among us would take this seriously in establishing prices that are responsible, based on the marketplace." Indeed, with the exception of those involved in specifically Jewish markets like the Kosher foods industry that may fall partly under the jurisdiction of religious courts, Jewish businessmen are far less likely to be discussing rabbinic ethics than people like Levine and Diamond.
But the desire to apply them to the wider world may be growing. Diamond belongs to a group called Rabbis for Obama, and says that in light of the financial crisis, its members have begun to discuss how the old wisdom could mediate the new mess. The question these days, he says, is not whether Jews can be induced to be more ethical than the market, but whether the market can be made more ethical. "I think classic rabbinic tradition is certainly pro-regulatory," he says. Meanwhile, Yeshiva's Levine calls in his journal article for what he describes as "an incentive structure in the workplace that would dissuade people from wrongdoing." He gets quite specific, imagining a "carrot and stick" arrangement. One stick would be an expansion of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, which mandated greater accountability for CEOs of publicly-owned companies, among other things.
Sarbanes-Oxley is not popular among free-market advocates. "I know," says Levine, "people involved in all this will say that they wanted to maximize shareholder value." But he thinks that today's capitalism needs to be a little more bounded in order to protect the possible victims of its excesses. That term includes the poor man who mistakenly takes an impossible mortgage. But increasingly it may mean all of us. In regulating, says the rabbi-economist, "we have to imitate God, in the way He shows compassion and mercy when he deals with mankind."
Tuesday, September 9, 2008
Hurricanes - "they swirl around"
Recent hurricanes in the south of the US had some experts noticing how severe they had become. Global warming and climate change never fail to get mentioned we such news. However, something else may be at work here ........
Job 37
11 He loads the clouds with moisture;
he scatters his lightning through them.
12 At his direction they swirl around
over the face of the whole earth
to do whatever he commands them.
13 He brings the clouds to punish men,
or to water his earth [b] and show his love.
.... for a complete picture, read Job 37. Or better still read Job. The passage above reminds us about the sovereignty and power of our Creator and Loving Father.
Comments welcome...
Job 37
11 He loads the clouds with moisture;
he scatters his lightning through them.
12 At his direction they swirl around
over the face of the whole earth
to do whatever he commands them.
13 He brings the clouds to punish men,
or to water his earth [b] and show his love.
.... for a complete picture, read Job 37. Or better still read Job. The passage above reminds us about the sovereignty and power of our Creator and Loving Father.
Comments welcome...
Thursday, June 26, 2008
Weeds among the Wheat
Gay clergy has split Anglican Church: Jensen
Jason Koutsoukis
June 22, 2008
(http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/gay-clergy-has-split-anglican-communion--archbishop-jensen/2008/06/21/1214009179925.html)
So it is in these times that enemy will infiltrate the Body of Christ and cause confusion and division. Here this parable from the Lord:
Matthew 13:
24Jesus presented another parable to them, saying, "(U)The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a man who sowed good seed in his field.
25"But while his men were sleeping, his enemy came and sowed [a]tares among the wheat, and went away.
26"But when the wheat sprouted and bore grain, then the tares became evident also.
27"The slaves of the landowner came and said to him, 'Sir, did you not sow good seed in your field? How then does it have tares?'
28"And he said to them, 'An enemy has done this!' The slaves said to him, 'Do you want us, then, to go and gather them up?'
29"But he said, 'No; for while you are gathering up the tares, you may uproot the wheat with them.
30'Allow both to grow together until the harvest; and in the time of the harvest I will say to the reapers, "First gather up the tares and bind them in bundles to burn them up; but (V)gather the wheat into my barn."'"
-----------
If you need an explanation, the Lord actually explains this in Matthew 13:36
Jason Koutsoukis
June 22, 2008
(http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/gay-clergy-has-split-anglican-communion--archbishop-jensen/2008/06/21/1214009179925.html)
So it is in these times that enemy will infiltrate the Body of Christ and cause confusion and division. Here this parable from the Lord:
Matthew 13:
24Jesus presented another parable to them, saying, "(U)The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a man who sowed good seed in his field.
25"But while his men were sleeping, his enemy came and sowed [a]tares among the wheat, and went away.
26"But when the wheat sprouted and bore grain, then the tares became evident also.
27"The slaves of the landowner came and said to him, 'Sir, did you not sow good seed in your field? How then does it have tares?'
28"And he said to them, 'An enemy has done this!' The slaves said to him, 'Do you want us, then, to go and gather them up?'
29"But he said, 'No; for while you are gathering up the tares, you may uproot the wheat with them.
30'Allow both to grow together until the harvest; and in the time of the harvest I will say to the reapers, "First gather up the tares and bind them in bundles to burn them up; but (V)gather the wheat into my barn."'"
-----------
If you need an explanation, the Lord actually explains this in Matthew 13:36
Friday, June 6, 2008
Credit Crunch reveals World Financial vulnerability
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,,23229288-7583,00.html
http://www.shares.com.au/forum/showthread.php?t=5392
The recent credit crunch which is still unfolding has the potential to undermine the current global financial system. The article above highlights the amount of debt in the system itself. It should serve as a reminder where our treasures is and where our priority lies.
James 5:2
Your riches are corrupted, and your garments are moth-eaten.
http://www.shares.com.au/forum/showthread.php?t=5392
The recent credit crunch which is still unfolding has the potential to undermine the current global financial system. The article above highlights the amount of debt in the system itself. It should serve as a reminder where our treasures is and where our priority lies.
James 5:2
Your riches are corrupted, and your garments are moth-eaten.
Rehersal for Passover Lamb Sacrifice
See the article above about the movement to rebuilt the Temple and the rehearsal of the Mosaic sacrificial system.
Update 3 April 2021
Passover has just finished, and Covid has reached a turning point. A few interesting things are happening in this Passover in Israel.
https://www.israel365news.com/188734/passover-sacrifice-dry-run-takes-place-near-temple-mount-police-warm-up-to-the-idea-watch/
https://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/299065
https://www.israel365news.com/188111/prominent-rabbis-ask-netanyahu-to-allow-the-pascal-sacrifice-on-temple-mount/
It seems like a practice version of the Passover Sacrifice is taking place near the Teemple Mont since there are still many restrictions. The practice is getting closer to the full event, and the actual Passover Sacrifice in its original form may take place sooner than many people have expected.
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