Odds & Ends

Harvard’s top astronomer to ‘Post’: Alien life could exist. Lightsail technology could allow humanity to achieve interstellar travel. * Modern “Noah’s Ark” could help save, reconstruct life on Earth.

By AARON REICH – JANUARY 11, 2021

If humanity is truly not alone in the universe, how would we go about finding extraterrestrial life, and would they be as advanced or perhaps even more so than we are?

These are the questions that Prof. Avi Loeb seeks to answer, and according to his newest book, Extraterrestrial: The First Sign of Intelligent Life Beyond Earth, which is set to come out January 26, the clues might already be there.

Loeb, an Israeli-born scientist who has been the longest ever serving chair of Harvard University’s Astronomy department, has long been one of the most vocal advocates for the possible existence of alien life. (more…)

‘Promised Land’ or revisionist history? A former Knesset member weighs in on Barack Obama’s telling of Israel’s story

By Dov Lipman – CT Jewish Ledger – December 11, 2020

(JNS) I have never criticized former U.S. President Barack Obama publicly – neither during my time in the Knesset nor anywhere else – despite my having disagreed with many of his policies. I am of the strong opinion that Israelis should not engage in or interfere with American politics, and I regularly offer a blanket thank you to all American presidents, including Obama, for their economic and military support for Israel.< (more…)

The test has adherents among Hillel educators and is spreading among educators at pluralistic institutions of Jewish learning.

By SHIRA HANAU/JTA DECEMBER 9, 2020

When Danielle Kranjec committed to using only Jewish texts written by women and queer people in the classes she taught for Hillel International’s Springboard Fellowship, a program that places recent college graduates in positions at college campus Hillels across the country, she knew she was taking on a challenging task.
After all, for most of Jewish history, women weren’t encouraged to take on religious leadership roles or write commentaries on the Torah or Talmud.
But Kranjec knew that elevating the work of women would be worth the effort, both because doing so would communicate the value of women’s insights to her students and she believes the mismatch between the diversity of the people teaching Torah today and the sources they teach had grown too great. Also, as a Jewish educator and trained historian, she knew there were a plethora of texts that might not be considered “Torah” in the traditional sense but could serve as rich source material.
Much of the time, those who assemble materials for Jewish study sessions — commonly known as “source sheets” — start with the Torah text, working their way to the rabbinic texts, the Mishna and Talmud, followed by commentaries on texts written over a span of more than a thousand years. Men wrote the vast majority of those texts. (more…)

An odyssey of espionage and revolutions led Israel to bring the once thriving biblical species back home, “one of the most successful cases of the reintroduction of a species extinct in the wild.”

By AARON REICH NOVEMBER 24, 2020 12:24

‘Deer #42’ was recently spotted, happy and healthy in the Jerusalem hills (photo credit: AMY KATZ)

Israel has one of the world’s two populations of Persian fallow deer – but it took a revolution, a clandestine Mossad mission, and a secret and daring flight for this to happen. (more…)

Trump would not be the first pro-Israel president to be “cursed” by God.

Has God cursed Donald Trump, the man who claimed to bless Israel more than anyone else?

Just days before the election, Trump sought to reawaken and harness the love of his Evangelical Christians constituency for Jerusalem by removing political limitations on research cooperation between the United States and Israel and allowing Americans born in Jerusalem to choose to put Israel on their passports. (more…)

When self-righteousness and moral superiority take the helm—beware!

By: Michael Laitman – June 16, 2017 – Exclusive to World Israel News

When cold-blooded murder is committed, and even encouraged, in the name of liberalism, a serious alarm should ring throughout the country. Left unchecked, Nazism will grip the land of the free. (more…)