Roger Froikin @rlefraim wrote, "YOM KIPPUR
יום. כיפור
Sometimes it is interesting to play around with Hebrew terminology and see what happens. 1)
Take Yom Kippur – לכפר The Day of Atonement - and the term “to atone”, which itself means to do something responsible to make up for something one did irresponsibly or wrong... 2)
and hopefully, everyone will make the כפר – the village or area, a better place to be once people have acted responsibly & atoned & ended an atmosphere of coldness & frost (כפור) that destroys good relations, or worse leads to outright heresy (כופר) & division & hurt.
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Think about all of that. Because if one notices, in the Makhzor (the book traditionally of prayers for this Holiday) the prayers are collective.
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We pray that the transgressions, of all of us, individually and collectively, like a Jewish cultural Gestalt, where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, atone, realize what was wrong, and make it right,...
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and realize that this is not for each of us to somehow get into what some religions would call Heaven, but to make the community, the collective, better and stronger in this life by making its components (us) better people through our promise to do better.
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That is what Yom Kippur is about. All the trappings - the communal prayer, the fasting, the preparation, the writings chosen for reading on that day, are directed to that end.
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And the start of the Observance with a recitation of Kol Nidre, sets the stage and the mood, but there is something generally ignored in this format.
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“Kol Nidre” is not in Hebrew. It is Aramaic, the trade language, the lingua franca of the Middle east from 2500 BCE to 2100 BCE, a language spoken & used by both Jews and Gentiles from the Mediterranean to Persia.
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Sure, other Jewish texts also were in Aramaic, rather than Hebrew, so Jews everywhere, whose Hebrew had deteriorated, or been lost, would be able to be part of this collective observance, of this event, ...
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and even though Hebrew has been substantially revived, and Aramaic as a language has died, and the world language is now English, not Aramaic, Greek, or Latin, we keep this custom because of the emotional and historical attachment we have to it.
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It is part of us, though in the first 800 years of the Observance of Yom Kippur, we did not have Kol Nidre.
But, all of us will have a large pre-fast meal, then the mundane world, for us, will stop, & for 25 hours we will take stock of ourselves, & of our people,...
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we will dwell on the sins we have committed, negligently or on purpose, & those others may have committed negligently or intentionally, & we will understand we cannot change the past, but we can do better in the future, & we will enjoy the quiet and the calm & think, ...
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and 25 hours later, we will be cleansed, forward-looking, and with family and or friends, celebrate with company and food a fresh start.
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This is not a day to be sad. The Book is already closed on who shall live and who shall not. This is a time to actually be happy, because next, once the contemplation is done, we have a fresh start to make better choices.
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And thousands of years ago, this time was also a time for young people to meet. One source claimed that at least 1/3 of all marriages in the year following Yom Kippur were made between young people who met on Yom Kippur. A beginning to be happy about, not an end to mourn.
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A fresh start for each of us individually, to be responsible mature people, and just maybe a fresh start for us collectively as a people where ever we live."
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Roger Froikin @rlefraim wrote, "A THREAT TO DEMOCRACY?
One thing is very clear. The accusation that a person or political party is a “Threat to Democracy” seems to be used everywhere,
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as if there is one Hollywood script read by and repeated all over the world by the “Left” and its allied media, though anyone can see that it is the “left”. That has advocated censorship, banning opposition media,
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and using the courts to make free and honest elections doubtful, in short what those who want to end democracy actually do.
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Roger Froikin @rlefraim wrote, "FREE SPEECH AND LIABILITY
The US Bill of Rights protects Free Speech FROM INTERFERENCE BY GOVERNMENT
IT DOES NOT PROTECT AGAINST LIABILITY FOR SPEECH THAT ENCOURAGES ILLEGAL ACTS.
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There has now been 2 assassination attempts against a Presidential Candidate.
In an atmosphere in which the President of the United States, his VP, and the members of his party and the affiliated partisan media have painted a bullseye on the candidate,
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calling him a danger to democracy, some going so far as to say he must be eliminated, including the President who said there is a Bullseye on the Republican candidate.
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Roger Froikin @rlefraim wrote, "REUTERS PUBLISHED AN ARTICLE SAYING THAT UN HUMAN RIGHTS “EXPERTS” ARE CRITICAL OF WESTERN NATIONS SUPPORT FOR ISRAEL.
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“WHO ARE THESE HUMAN RIGHTS EXPERTS? Oh, yes, they are the same people who celebrated the appointments of countries such as Libya, Iran, and similar despotic regimes to the Human Rights Committees at the UN.
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The same “experts”, who seem to support Hamas, the Houthis, and Hezbollah, who made excuses for the October 7 massacre by Hamas, and the same ones who tend to ignore persecution of dissent and mass jailing of Uighers in China,
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September 17
On this day, we remember Benjamin Franklin's fsmous words:
"A republic, if you can keep it.”
--Benjamin Franklin's response to Elizabeth Willing Powel's question: "Well, Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?"
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Constitution Day 2)
Constitution Day, also known as Citizenship Day, is a federal observance in the United States that commemorates the formation and signing of the United States Constitution on September 17, 1787.
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