Evolution of Neanderthal

                                                                                                             B-H

Sorry if I disappointed my steady readers by not posting lat week but my latest editor took well deserved vacation and without editing I’m really afraid if my writings are being understood. That’s also why this week post, is mostly made out of pictures and not usual long sentences.

Maybe some of you will enjoy it better than my long hard like a stones posts. J

Have easy reading and even easier watching.

Does anybody remember this picture of Neanderthal man, that’s how the priests of cult called “science” (do not mistake with science) pictured him 140 years ago in order to fit him in to the theory of evolution.

This monkeys – Neanderthals were to be considered to be our direct ancestors, our - the Homo sapiens.

Than Neanderthal became separate specie which at some moment of evolutionary ‘History’ lost its competition with Homo sapiens. Actually later theories supposed the man as a guilty of mass murder performed on Neanderthals, guys with stronger body and bigger brain than Homo sapiens.

The newest research based on DNA unknown when most of the reconstructions of Neanderthal were made shows that big part of humanity has genes of those people, people because they were people and no more or less than just that. Meanwhile few generations were fed with fuzz about Neanderthals, illustrated with the picture like below which actually was hanging in my biology class room among other “ancestors” Human beings. 

According to today’s reconstructions they were looking like this 'old Asian' man 

and they use to have children as good looking as this one.

Amazing evolution from the first picture to this one, isn’t it?

Regards.

Matys Weiser

P.S. If anyone would see the picture of me from my hippie period, I was looking more ‘Neanderthal’ than most of modern reconstruction of Neanderthal man, at my age of 17 J.

Eksplenation of Independence

                                                                                                             B-H

Another beautiful peryrish on Parsha Shmos from Rav Hirsch. I called it Explanation of Independence as it elucidate correlation between absolutely free G-d and free man. Enjoy!

V. 14. If I am to express an idea of Myself which, if he comprehends it, and if he allows himself to be completely absorbed by it, will completely change a man, will raise him out of, and above all other creatures, and bring him into direct intimate relationship to Me, then I name Myself, I express Myself as: "I shall be that which I Will be". All other creatures are that which they have to be; with their coming into existence they are bound by the will of the One Who alone can say, not only "I am" but that "I shall be that which I wish to be". This expresses the personal, absolute free nature of God. Inasmuch as God does not proclaim here "I am that which etc." but "I shall be etc.", He stresses, by using the future tense, that the future is completely unbound, completely dependent on His free will. This expresses the characteristic Jewish conception of God, and the fresh new knowledge of Him which was to be known to mankind by the redemption from Egypt — a knowledge which is to serve for the redemption of the whole world. 

The conception of God in non-Jewish circles, is, at the most, as the origin of the world in its physical state since it came into existence, and even then, when this thought does raise itself from the denial a the existence of God into the vague, obscure, non-mundane existence of an actual God, it still relegates the work of God really to the past. At one single moment, they say God did stand in connection with the world, the moment in which the world came into existence by God's power or will. Since then His work, the world, is self-contained. Everything, even the most distant future is simply the irrevocable result of the physical laws of nature given when the world came into existence. To this point of view, everything in the world follows unalterable given laws, which, at the utmost, did once originate from the power of a higher One. (…) Accordingly, in order to save their unfree, bound, God they have to declare that the freedom of Man is itself a delusion. Man is not free. What he imagines to be his own free decisions are but the products of unconscious influences arising out of his past, he is but a puppet dancing to the strings pulled by this past of his — and so from heaven to earth, in the whole realm of being, to them there is nothing at all that can say "I shall be", because to them nothing can say "I will". Ekye asher Ekye comes crushingly against this delusion, which, with the denying of the freedom of God has to deny the free will of Man; and by declaring the absolute freedom of God, puts the future of Man in its true perspective.

In the last words of the description of the Creation Asher Buru Elokim Leasos the work of God is declared not as finished, but as only beginning, as these words referring to our earth and its heaven imply that God called them into existence Leasos, to go on working. This working is indicated as being the mission of the immediately preceding last creation of the Creation, Man, who had been placed as the free administrator and manager of God's creation. Now these four words Asher Buru Elokim Leasos mark the transition from the completion of God's creative work in Nature, to what then began and which reaches out to, and guides and forms and influences, the whole distant future — God's creative work in the History of Man. "From the creative work of the world He ceased, but not from work on the righteous and wicked, but  He goes on working creatively with the one and with the other, makes the one (the righteous) experience an inkling of the ultimate future that awaits him, and lets the other (the wicked) also experience an inkling of the ltimate future that awaits him." (Rabbi Pinchas in the name of Rabbi Oshiya in the Midrash on this verse).

Up to this point we only find God proclaiming Himself as Elokim – God of Nature, of the Laws of Cause and Effect, but from here onwards we find a new name added to Elokim

Viz: four lettered name of God, as the God of the assured future of Mankind. In the same way here, at the beginning of the Geula from Egypt, where God first showed Pharaoh and the whole world His creative interference in the development of the History of Mankind, we find a new designation of Him, Ekye Asher Ekye  This expresses with absolute certainty that basic truth, the very cornerstone of all Truth and of all Happiness, that the future goal of mankind is absolutely assured, and it is a call for Man to use his power to carve the immediate future, in God's service, i.e., to make God's will his will. This word, Ekye Asher Ekye breaks the chains of every other power, sets Man upright and free in the service of God, — a co-worker in the Future which He desires. Under the free God, free Man rules the world for the Future which God's free will desired. With every impression of Godliness which Man impresses on his own internal self, with every such impression that he stamps on the external world about him, Man works at the creation of this Future. The guarantee that this Future will ultimately be absolutely achieved lies in the very fact that God, with the power of His absolute free and unbound will, created this world for this Future, so that even the apparently most opposing conditions and events must be leading up to this one, great, sure goal. We express this confidence, in the ever-recurring Kaddish which we have interwoven into all our public divine services: Yiskadal veYiskadaish Shmei Rabo "God's great name shall come to ever greater and ever holier realization Beolmo in the world Devrah which He has created Keeresoh according to His free Will".

Yisroel's last will - Rav Hirsh on parshas Vayeyhi

                                                                                                             B-H

Below is the last will of our father Yisroel as explained by Rav S.R. Hirsch.

The significance of those teaching can be appreciated only if we take under consideration that those were the last words of father of Jewish nation before he joined “his people”.

Bereyshis 48;3

“The nation (…) as a model nation, factually to establish the Truth that the one great personal and national calling which God has revealed in His Torah is not dependent on any particular kind of calling or trait, but that the whole of mankind in all its shades of diversity, can equally find its calling in the one common spiritual and moral mission and outlook in life. The division of the nation into separate tribes, and the resulting division of the Promised Land into different provinces for the different tribes, the diversity of whom is thus to be retained, is what is referred to here.”

48;22

“I have appointed you to bear the burden and the honor to be the one amongst your brothers, the one who, after my death, is to represent me, to be the head of the family and guide them, your brothers, my children whom I have wrenched away from the Amorite with "my sword and my bow", with that which — in contrast to Esau's sword — is my weapon, my spiritual force, and my spiritual work. Jacob says: See, I die, I have no great heritage to leave, and we are in a foreign country. God must first lead you back to our own land, there you will have nahalos here we have only bruchos and wishes. But what I have to bequeath, that I have given to you. That is the burden and the honor to be my successor in the leadership and responsibility of the family, to be the first over your brothers, over my children who are the only conquests I have made in my life, and whom I dispose of in dying. That, in the midst of the Amorite they became no Amorites, that I can now gather them all around me as my sons, as carriers-on of the name and calling of Israel, those are my trophies, my conquests and victory out of the hand of the Amorites.”

49;1-2

“Break away from everything to which you really do not belong, and find yourselves all united in the one common purpose. Be all taken up with that which is common to you all! Place yourselves all on one common footing! So that heospi demands the spiritual gathering together on the single point, for one single purpose — as our sages, accordingly, pithily explain it hatehuro! Literally it would read: Let yourselves be gathered up (i.e. by your common mission). (…)

So we have here two pronouncements: All of you together give yourselves up to your one purpose in life for I would picture to you what will happen to you at the end of time. Really, what will "call to you" at the end of time. Acharis must be differentiated from kotz. Kotz is the end, where something ceases; aharis is that which comes afterwards, after the other has ended. Here, accordingly, after the present development of time has run out, the legacy of days, the goal of world-history.

We know from what follows that Jacob was not having in mind the uniformity of his sons, but was thinking of them in their characteristic diversity. Hence: "different though you all are, if you will all give your-selves up entirely to the one spirit, I will reveal to you what the end of time will be for you". First one spirit must pervade all the sons of the Family of Jacob before the acharis hayamim – the days after end will come. It will not come before the heospi – unity has become a reality. Yea — perhaps — it will not even be conceived, understood, until then, and that is why only just short hinting references to the acharis hayamim follow.

Hikovtzi veshmi - Keep together and listen these two words from the mouth of the dying father contain the whole Jewish history until the acharis hayamim. Materially you are Bnai Yakov – sons of Jacob, a powerless minority. But because you are a powerless minority Hikovtzi, keep together, grow together, do not split up into parties, in kovetz, in unity lies your strength. And Shmi bnay Yacov – listen o sons of Jakob, only by one thing can the weakest material minority obtain the victory over the strongest majority, and that is spirit, mind, it is shimo - listening, it is by giving yourselves up to spirituality, hence shmi bnay Yacov, have an ear, get understanding for the spiritual, thirst for it, as the word itself means (shma is the spiritual tzema) drink deeply, absorb it!

Such is the testament of our Father Jacob. "Unity, concord; and spirit", therein he recognized the strength and life of his children, and "when the thirst for spiritual matters awakes in you, have thirst for nothing but the traditions of your father Israel", veshmo al Yisroel avichem. Drinking out of the Jewish well of spirituality, and harmoniously keeping together, that is the oldest legacy of our dying father, and the same call comes to us from our last prophet : Vehaemes vehasholom ahvo - Truth and peace you shall love (Zach. VIII.19).

49;7

“It is of the most profound importance that here, at once, at laying the foundation of the Jewish nation, a curse is laid on any and every transgression of the laws of morality and justice even if done in the interests of the public and the state. All other states and nations justify themselves by the principle that public and state interests sanctify everything. Cunning, trickery.-and force, which in private life would be punished with prison and gallows, are rewarded with civic honors and medals, the laws of morality only exist for private life, but in politics and diplomacy the only code recognized is the interests of the party or state. The original testament for the Jewish nation here lays a curse on all trickery and violence even if practiced for the most justified cause in the public interest, and perpetuates the teaching that even in public life and in the public interests, not only the end but the means too must be pure. In no case does the end justify the means.”

49;10

The time will come when the spirit of Judaism seems to have come to its end, and the world at large, have become worn out and dull, have lived through everything, tried and tested everything, feels that some new regenerating spirit must come, and this, that last sprout from the stem of Judah will bring.

11. So Jacob visualizes Mashiah - the Messiah, and how does he see him? He sees the savior of mankind, the conqueror of nations, not on a steed, but on a young donkey. The "donkey" is always used to represent peaceful well-being, peaceful national greatness, whereas "steed" is used to represent military might. (…)It is the animal that carries people at a leisurely pace and bears his packs and baggage for him. Thus the Jewish conception of the power of kings is not to be represented by horses. The Jewish Kings were prohibited by the Torah to have leharbos sus – many horses. A Jewish King was also not to be chosen until after yerisha veyeshiva, after the complete conquest and settlement in the land, expressly not primarily for military purposes, and it was just in that that the sin of the people lay in Samuel's time, that they demanded a king to lead them in the wars defending the land, as Samuel reproached them Ch. XII. 12.

That is why here the one real true king, saving Yisroel and mankind appears on donkey Two points are stressed with this picture painted here of the future time. The king of mankind does not ride on a charger, but on a donkey, so he comes as the King of Peace, and he ties up his animal to a vine. If one can tie an animal, and especially an ir the lively mettlesome young donkey, to a vine, it is a sign of an infinitely increased development in nature (the vine stem growing like that of a tree), and in general of immense prosperity and abundance. Abundance in an infinitely increased blessing in the world of nature, and peace in the world of mankind are the two signs that always characterize this final age in the mouth of our prophets. As long as the animal of peace is not placed in its true worth, the leaders of men always represented on horseback, on chargers, and as long as one does not tie up one's animals to vines, for so long are we still a long way off from the promised regeneration of the world of nature and the world of Man.”

12

“Thus he sees his final generation, sees the return of paradise on earth, the whole of nature rejuvenated as it was at the beginning, the subjugators and slayers of men no longer regarded as heroes, no drop of blood on the garments of its great men, and he sees this generation, with eyes more sparkling than wine, the joy of life shines from their eyes, their white teeth prove their health. This was something of the acharis hayomim, of which Jacob probably would have liked to reveal more to his sons, had he been permitted to do so.”

Two Leaders - Vaclav & Kim

                                                                                                             B-H

There are no coincidences. Two heads of countries passed away a month ago day apart. Both of them were leaders of divided states, both of them were people of art and culture engaged actively in the cultural event of their countries. Both departed, leaving behind tears and sadness of their citizens. One of them was Vaclav Havel of the Czech Republic the other was Kim Jong Il of North Korea. After the short list of commonalities listed above between these two people we can now begin to list a long catalog of differences between these two countries and their rulers.

Both countries suffered in the last century under a communist regime but only one successfully escaped the bond of communism and the soviet influence over twenty years ago. North Korea survived the collapse of the soviet system and continues its communist regime but remains only one of the few exhibits that do so in the museum of the history of the world.

But where is this history leading us? Where does it lead humanity in general and the chosen Jewish nation in particular?   

Vaclav Havel was elected as the first non communist president of Czechoslovakia in the last days of December 1989. This happened just a few months after Poland got its first non communist prime minister and just few weeks after the Berlin wall crumbled under the sledge hammers of the citizens of a divided Europe. The autumn of nations in east Europe brought to the forefront memories long forgotten and to many completely unknown fresh air of freedom. Political freedom for nations enabled them to now make their own choices unafraid of interventions from the “brotherly” armies of the Warsaw Pact, choices resulting from the democratic process of their own citizens.

For the nations it was political freedom, but for the individuals it was the freedom of distinctiveness and personal liberty. Till now minds and mouths were suppressed under the bondage of rulers and now freedom was so enjoyable and treasured. Vaclav Havel was along with Lech Walesa and Michail Gorbatchov one of the superstars of the new currents now shaping this part of the world. Havel unlike Walesa was not a dockyard electrician and unlike Gorbatchov was not the product of the stiff Soviet political system. Havel was a member of the so called “intelligentsia”, a drama writer and a political prisoner for many years of his life. He was a part of the new European establishment and a member of the 1968 generation. He was a politician who got to the presidential palace not by studying in military or political academies but a person whose mind was shaped by European existentialists so popular at this time. To name a few, Buber and his friend Rosentzweig and Levinas. Havel was a member of a political generation who understood that perhaps the European soil was drenched and soaked with the blood of not only its own  people but also with blood of the Jewish people. He was a person who like many new European leaders understood that the treatment of the ancient tribe of Yisrael is the best gauge for general freedom in a society.

It was while I was fighting and waiting for this freedom to happen that induced me to emigrate from my Alte Heim – old homeland, about 20 years ago. My country wasn’t ready and the time, was not ripe yet to tolerate these freedoms and to tolerate who I was in my soul. I found my freedom here, in this country the United States which for a long time was leading the entire world with the ideals of freedom; freedom for its citizens, freedom from tyranny and human rights in general. Nevertheless from afar I was observing with great interest the unification of Europe under the leadership of people like Vaclav Havel. At first Havel allowed the splitting of his homeland into two countries which was united only a few years later with the creation of the European Union. I couldn’t believe that my old friends who traveled with me in my youth within the square cage of the Polish implementation of the soviet prison are now traveling and moving freely within almost all of Europe. I admired the smart leaders of Europe but I was proud that it is my new nation to whom I now belong, who fostered the idea of peaceful coexistence and collaboration to all of mankind - the Jewish nation. I’m proud to find myself among the people who suffered like no other nation in history. Most of the suffering was for nonparticipation in the suppression and mass killing of nations by nations and political factions by their adversaries. I’m proud I became a member of the nation of Yisroel, fighting for G-d! Not with weapons of war but with spiritual weapons of ideas and ideals! Ideas and ideals that are slowly but surely capturing the minds of one nation after another.

It takes time and there are many setbacks. Some of the setbacks are happening in the arena of international relations, some within nations themselves. We as the nation in charge of bringing these teachings of brotherhood and mutual understanding between nations and individuals are also experiencing some setbacks on this extremely difficult task given to us by our Creator. We have to admit that not all of us understand clearly our mission in the world as the chosen nation, a mission of being Ohr lamos – a light for the nations and Mamleches Kohanim – Royal Priests of humanity.

There is no guarantee that the European Union will be able to carry it success forever or perhaps as it has already happened in the past after the so promising spring of nations in 1848 when Europe pulled the whole world in to two bloody wars and invented the Holocaust. Chas Vacholila!

In our country as well we may go through periods when our civil liberties given to us by our American Constitution could be suppressed in the interest of the ruling class. In fact within only these last few years since I chose this land as my new home, these liberties are being suppressed step by step by each successive administration, with our citizens not even realizing it. We are losing the rights promised by our constitution and G-d given freedoms under new and changing all the time pretexts, recently it is the so called ‘war on terror’.

For over the last one hundred years, we the people of Torah the children of Yakov are also engaged in activities strange to our teachings, tradition and the very nature of the Jewish soul. But there is a eternal guarantee for the success of our mission, it is the revelation of Sinai, it is the Torah – the blueprint of our existence. These are the words of our prophets, who assured us that ultimately we will understand who we are and nations will follow us in kneeling and giving the praise to G-d the One and Only. 

Until then, some tyrants will manipulate their subjects to the borders where one can not distinguish between free human beings and the totally enslaved mind of near cyborgs, shedding tears and crying after the fast disappearing Stalins, Maos, Kims and others.

Matys Weiser