Ayatollah Khamenei Asks For Our Jewish Origins? How About His?

Nadene Goldfoot                                                                        

On Saturday, the Ayatollah Khamenei called for arming Judea and Samarian Arabs against Israel.  He did this through Twitter.  Could this be from coming to an agreement about the uranium use in Iran?  Now he feels free to clamp down on the Jews once again this way?  

He also calls for a  referendum in which “all the original people of Palestine including Muslims, Christians and Jews” could vote, but from which “Jewish immigrants” would be excluded. They would vote on whether or not the Jews could remain in the country.   Of course he wants to eliminate Israel-get rid of all Jews.   Perhaps he should review the history of this part of the world with this map. 

 http://www.mapsofwar.com/images/EMPIRE17.swf  A lot of people, including Persians, have tried to take over Israel and Judah, and they have come and gone, but look who is back?  Israel.  And look who has been prophesied to be back?  Israel.  Baghdad still remains in the picture as well, I concede.  Not Persia, though.  It has the new name of Iran.

Iranians are not Arabs.  They speak Farsi.   They are not claiming any connection to Abraham.  Is the Ayatollah Khamenei trying to revive the Achaemenid Empire?  Persians were made up of the Medes, Parthians, Bactrians, Scythians. and the Avesta (Arya) people, which is where the name "Iran" comes from.    They also interpret the leader of Islam from a different part of Mohammad's ancestry than the Sunnis do.  Shi'a is contrary to the Sunni way of Islam if in just saying who they listen to.  It's caused reason to fight each other.
                                                                     

                                                      Persian noblemen and soldiers

We survived a planned Holocaust coming from Persia's underling to the throne, Haman.  The tables were turned on him and he and all his sons were hung by the king for such a plot to kill all Jews.  We will survive again.  I'm beginning to think that the Ayatollah must be related to Haman who was an Agagite, descended from Agag, king of Amalek.  Since Khamenei has called for a check on our Jewish origins, he has opened the door for me to call upon his.  What are Sayyid  Ali Khamenei's origins?  His parents were  Seyyed Javad Khamenei and Khadijeh Mirdamadi.  He was born in 1939 in Mashad, Khorasan Province, Iran.  A DNA test would tell us about his haplotype and where that comes from originally.  Jews lived for a long time in Persia also, and this is where Queen Esther, who saved the Jews from a holocaust of all being slaughtered, lived with King Ahasueros.  It would be shocking if the Ayatollah had some Jewish genes!

1. 
   

The Amaleks were an ancient people mentioned several times in the Bible (Torah).  They had a habit of being always hostile to Israel.  They were a nomadic people wandering between southern Eretz Yisrael and Canaan.  They attacked the Israelites in the desert near Rephidim shortly after the exodus and killed the weak and weary.  Finally they were defeated by the Israelite army under Joshua (Exod. 7; 8-13;  Deut. 25:  17-19).  So Israel has regarded the Amaleks as an eternal foe, the extermination of which was a national mission.  King Saul tried to do it but failed.  During the period of Judges of the 12th and 11th centuries BCE, Amaleks penetrated western Eretz Israel  at various points and their presence was a standing threat to the peace of the country.  In King David's time, Amalek invaded southern Judea and burned down the town of Ziklag.  David fought and defeated them heavily, but 400 escaped.
                                                                        

The tribe of Simeon overwhelmed the Amalekites and settled in their territory.  The name remained in rabbinic literature as a symbol of everlasting enmity to Israel, and Haman, the Agagite, is regarded as a descendant of Agag, their king.  Evidently, perhaps all the Arabs calling themselves Palestinian Arabs and Khamenei both are descendants.  Such constant hostility to Jews!

                                                                       

Iran gives money to terrorists already to attack Israel.  It's at a time when his own people are not doing very well with their internal financial situations.  Khamenei wants to have his cake and eat it, too, so he no doubt came up with a plan that will again put coffers in his treasury chest by lifting the ban on selling or buying from Iran as well as being able to slyly get around the ban of uranium development for his A bomb.
                                                                   

Last night I watched a CNN travelogue starring Anthony Bourdain who traveled to Iran..  The people were nice. I saw that they served him food of ground lamb mixed with a yogurt.  Very interesting; something we Jews find not kosher.  This type of meat preparation is done in Egypt, too.   It's too bad that their leader is so intent on destroying Israel.  It's a two-faced society of kindness but hatred from their religious and political  leader,  leading to destruction of  Israel, he hopes.
                                                                           

Resource: http://edition.cnn.com/video/shows/anthony-bourdain-parts-unknown/season-4/iran/index.html
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/irans-supreme-leader-ayatollah-khamenei-outlines-plan-to-eliminate-israel-9850472.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persian_people
http://www.iranchamber.com/history/akhamenei/ali_khamenei.php
The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia-on Amaleks
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tribe_of_Simeon

Islamic Jihad Takes to Knifing in Israel

Nadene Goldfoot                                                                        

               Leaders of both Fatah and Hamas, Responsible for Jihad being called against Israelis.
                                                                           
Some Arabs have been  listening to the call of jihad and have turned into terrorists in Israel.
                                                                                 

 Today, Monday, a 20 year old  IDF soldier was stabbed and critically wounded by an 18 year old terrorist in Tel Aviv at the Hahagana train station.  He was Sgt Almog Shiloni who has since died from the attack.  His brother is his twin, who is angry with the government who died not defend them from such terrorists.    The terrorist was a  Nablus Arab who was illegally in Israel. Nablus  is only 30 mi north of Jerusalem,(approximately 63 kilometers (39 mi) by road), with a population of 126,132. Located in a strategic position between Mount Ebal and Mount Gerizim, it is the capital of the Nablus Governorate and a Palestinian commercial and cultural center.  
                                                                             

                                                                   Nablus          

                                                                Judean Mountains
                                                                       

                                                      Gush Etzion

 This  call of jihad just resulted in the death only a few hours later of a 25 year old woman who was stabbed to death at the Alon Shvut junction in the Gush Etzion area of Judea. The Etzion Bloc) is a cluster of Israeli settlements located in the Judaean Mountains directly south of Jerusalem and Bethlehem.  A car had pulled up to the hitchhiking post at the entrance of the Alon village and a driver stepped out and stabbed 3 people.  The guard there shot the terrorist and seriously wounded him.  Islamic Jihad later took responsibility for the attack.  It must have happened very fast, as the other two had no time to react when one of them was being attacked, evidently.

Resource: http://www.jpost.com/Arab-Israeli-Conflict/At-least-one-seriously-hurt-in-stabbing-attack-in-West-Bank-terrorist-killed-381351?utm_source=Copy+of+Newsletter+11-9-2014&utm_campaign=Newsletter&utm_medium=email

What Happened After Chanukah to the Maccabees and to Israel?

Nadene Goldfoot                                                                               

The first night of Chanukah this year is on the 16th of December.  This holiday commemorates the victory of the Maccabees over the Greek armies of Antiochus IV, who thought of himself as a god.
                                                                                 

          Mattityahu, patriarch of the priestly Hasmonean clan during the time of the Seleucid Dynasty-Greek kings who reigned from Syria.  He dared to step forward to challenge the Greek soldiers and to those who acquiesced to their demands.  He was backed by 5 sons, and killed the idolators and destroyed an idol.  "All who are with G-d, follow me!" he called out.  

This revolt began when Mattathias killed another Jew who was about to sacrifice to a Greek god, something Jews just didn't do.  Antiochus was the king of Syria and controlled all of Israel.  He bordered on insanity.  His title, Epiphanes, meant "the manifest God."  His enemies called him Epimanes-"the madman."  This is what Jews were up against.
                                                                               

The Romans had gone from a republic to an empire.  They loved bloodshed and dedicated their state to military expansion, something like IS today.  They loved brutal spectacles in the Roman Colosseum's, massacres of as many as 3,000 people to provide Romans with one day's "entertainment, live entertainment."  Their history and love of bloodshed was a part of their society dedicated to military expansion.

Once the Roman armies began to occupy new territories as they did in 400 BCE, no force was able to stop their slow but steady advance.  By 275 BCE they had take the Italian peninsula and within 100 years had gained control over Greece and the Western Mediterranean.  When they went into Egypt they had become involved in our Jewish history.  Antiochus Epiphanes was ready to attack Alexandria but Rome ordered him to leave Egypt at once.  He asked for more time to think about it.  The messenger told him to draw a circle around himself and he had to reach his decision before stepping out of it!  He had to withdraw his armies, but was furious and wanted revenge.  That was when he decided to force his Jewish subjects to convert to his Greek religion.
                                                                    Judah Macabee    

The Jewish revolt began in 167 BCE and 2 years of fighting against the Greeks went by before Judah Maccabee was able to defeat their armies and recapture Jerusalem.  On the 25th of Kislev, 165 BCE, they took back and rededicated the Temple.  After 400 years of rule by Babylonians, Persians and Greeks, Jews were again the masters of their own country.

And then the Romans came into power.  By 135 CE the Romans had killed General Bar Kokhba who had retaken Jerusalem from them and held off the Romans for 3 years.  For 200 years Judea was a province of the Roman Empire.  The Hasmoneas, the family of Mattathias, had become the royal family of Judea.  They ruled for 100 years.  Their children forgot the principals their fathers had fought for, the philosophy of Judaism.  They stopped supporting the principles of religious freedom, basic to the Maccabean revolt.                                                              

                                                                             
 John Hyrcanus was one of the early Hasmoneans , son of Simon,  and ruled from 135 to 104 BCE.  He conquered the state of Idumea which lay to the south of Judah and he forced the entire population, tens of thousands of people, to convert to Judaism.  The Hasmoneans were terrible rulers and had wrecked the country.

There were 9 good years from 76 to 67 BCE when Judah was ruled by a woman, Queen Salome Alexandra (141-67 BCE).  She was kind and gentle and brought unity to the country.  When she died, her 2 sons battled for the throne.  They didn't want to start another civil war so asked Pompey who was in Syria to decide between them who was to rule Judah.  He was smart.  He seized Judah for Rome.  This was in 63 BCE.
                                                                         

"Salome Alexandra, the sister of Rabbi Shimon ben Shetach, the famous leader of the Sanhedrin, was the wife of the first Maccabean to take on the title of “king” since the destruction of the first Holy Temple. The name of this great-grandson of Mattathias was Judah Aristobulus.

After her husband’s death, Salome freed the king’s oldest brother, Alexander Jannai, who had been imprisoned by her husband, and married him, in accordance with Jewish law, since she was left childless."  She had reversed Jannai's policy  towards the Pharisees, traditionally by his dying request.  She handed internal control to the Pharisees but kept the responsibility for the army and foreign policy.  She then appointed her oldest son, Hyrcanus, as high priest and heir but he was opposed by his brother, Aristobulus.  Josephus, the Jewish general and writer, was critical of her since he wrote for the Roman audience.  

                                                                         

The Romans turned around and gave the control of the country to a family from IDUMEA, people that had been forced into Judaism.  In reality, they were still pagans who didn't respect Judaism or Jews!  The throne was given to Herod( 73-4 BCE).    He was the son of Antipater the Idumean by his Nabatean wife, Cypros.  He celebrated his new position by going to Rome for his coronation where he offered sacrifices to the Roman god, Jupiter.

Herod  was an odd sort.  He trusted no one and killed anyone he suspected of disloyalty, another Saddam Hussein.  He had the High Priest murdered as well as his wife and sons.  The Emperor Augustus said of him that it was safer to be one of Herod's pigs than one of his children!

Thousands were dying at his command.   He didn't want to think about this so he concentrated on his building projects for himself like fortresses to protect the land and give himself places of refuge in case of a revolt against his rule.

He did rebuild the Jerusalem Temple and made it more splendid that the first Temple of Solomon but just to show off his wealth and make himself more important.  It had nothing to do with the religion.  In fact, he had a huge golden eagle mounted on the Temple gate, a violation of the 2nd commandment which prohibits making statues of animals.  It was a sign of loyalty to Rome and the symbol of the Roman Empire.  Jewish patriots tore it down so Herod had 42 of them arrested and burned to death.  On the other hand,  he was very two-faced as  he appeared as a spokesman and protector of the Jews to the Jews, but he was one mentally sick person.

King Antiochus the Greek (175-163 BCE) had wanted to strip away our way of life and its spirituality and holiness.  They wanted us to forsake the G-dliness of our study of Torah.  Their culture was of pragmatic materialism and it left no room for an invisible god and the Jews' special relationship with Him.

General Pompey the Roman (106-48 BCE) walked through the Temple and went into the Holy of Holies, where no Jew dared enter except the High Priest on Yom Kippur only.  He found nothing in there.  No Ark of the Law.  It had disappeared when the Temple of Solomon was destroyed.  No idol, no priest or priestess delivering messages from the gods like he was used to seeing.  An invisible god was not something he could understand.  The times were bad.  No one was there to stop him.  Jewish independence was at an end.
                                                                       

A great Rabbi once said that "You cannot chase away darkness with a stick.  You have to turn on the light."  The way to eliminate darkness, or ignorance, is to rid the world of it.  We have to get rid of negativity, hatred and greed.  We have to kindle the lights of knowledge, generosity, hope and love.  But you can't do it by forcing people into such acts, which is what the Puritans did in early America as told in the book, "Good Wives" by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich.  They were punished and humiliated into such behaviors.  They became social outcasts.  Education done as well as possible is the only way to continue our standards of today.  One generation, and they melt away quickly if not reinforced with education.

Resource:  My People -Abba Eban's History of the Jews Volume I adapted by David Bambergert, 1978
http://www.anshe.org/parsha/chanukah.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salome_Alexandra
http://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/112049/jewish/Queen-Salome-Alexandra.htm
Your Chanukah Guide, 1996-Lubavitch

The UPs and downs of Judaism 597 BCE-- Return From Babylon

Nadene Goldfoot                                                             

In the days when Jews had been enslaved and taken to Babylon in 597 BCE by Nebuchadnezzar II and again in 586 BCE, they had survived there.  In those Persian times, about 200,000  Jews were living in Mesopotamia.  Cyrus II, King of Persia overran the Babylonian Empire which included Judah.  About 50,000 were anxious to return to their homeland and so made the 800 mile journey back to Jerusalem.

They were led there by Zerubbabel.(480 BCE) who was the grandson of King Jehoiachin. of Judah who ruled from 598 to 597 BCE.  Zerubbabel had been appointed to be the bodyguard of Darius according to Ezra's account in Persia.  Darius was king Cyrus II's son.  It was Cyrus who encouraged the Jews to go back to Judah in 538 BCE.

Zerubbabel  was the last satrap (subordinate official or ruler ) of the Davidic descent in Jerusalem and after his time, the high priest had more influence.    The Persians were fearful of restarting the Davidic dynasty.

  Darius was the king Cyrus's  son.  It is thought that  King Xerxes, son of Darius I and who ruled from 486 to 465 BCE  was actually the King Ahasuerus in the Jewish story of Queen Esther and Purim, making him Jewish.  Darius reigned from 522 to 486 BCE and inherited the throne of Cyrus.  It was Cyrus  who permitted Zerubbabel and the Jews to return to Jerusalem and start the reconstruction of the Temple. King Xerxes,  alias King Ahasuerus,  had married a 2nd time to Esther, who in secret was Jewish. It was Haman, King Ahasuerus's chief minister,  who wanted to kill all Jews in the empire. It's said that he was a descendant from the king of Amalek, Agag. It could have been a Holocaust to end all Jews, but Esther told her husband about Haman's scheme and he stopped it.  

Cyrus II died in 529 BCE.  He had overrun the Babylonian Empire, including Palestine.  His policy with people was certainly enlightened.  The Jews regarded Cyrus as a Divine agent.
                                                      ....................................
                                                                   

The city lay in ruins.  Hostile people from other lands had come to live there and settled throughout Judah.  The few Hebrews who had been able to stay and raise up families through the exile period had had to intermarry with these other people and actually were hostile to the returnees from Babylonia.  The nerve of them!  They claimed the right to rule over everyone!  No doubt this was when we added a few DNA Y haplogroups to our people.
                                                                               

The ones that returned got busy and started rebuilding.  In one year they laid the foundations for a new Temple.  then all work stopped for 5 years.  Possibly they were also having trouble farming on the hilly land outside the ruined Jerusalem, but it took 18 years before the people went back to work on the building.  It took them a total of 23 years to finish the Second Temple.  It had only taken 9 years to build Solomon's Temple.  This Second Temple was not as impressive as the first.  It was the prophets Haggai and Zechariah who had inspired and encouraged them to get back to work and finish the job.
                                                                                     

Things went from fair to bad.  The children of the returnees of course intermarried with the local non-Jews.  Jerusalem remained fairly uninhabited and defenseless.  The Priests of the Temple, the Cohens, were unable to lead these people and even became corrupt in doing so.  It had been 60 years after finishing the 2nd Temple and all of 80 years since the Babylonian exile had ended and Israel's community was ready to fall apart.  What had gone wrong?
                                                                               

They needed better leadership, and 2 great leaders had remained in Babylon; Nehemiah (5th century BCE) and Ezra (5th century BCE).  They hadn't gone on the trek because they had been holding positions of importance in the Persian capital, Shushan.  Nehemiah was an adviser and cupbearer of the Persian king  Artaxerxes.  You don't leave such positions of power.  But when he heard of the situation back in Jerusalem, he decided he had to leave the splendor and comfort of court life and return to the ruins of Judah. So the king appointed him as the Tirshata, the governor of Judah in 444 BCE.
                                                                     

     
He became their governor and the conditions changed quickly.  Before he had arrived, the men had tried to build up their defenses but their enemies had attacked and destroyed them before they had even finished.

Nehemiah had better ideas.  He divided the men up in 2 groups when he took over.  One group worked on the defenses,  a wall, and the other group stood guard while holding their weapons.  The walls were then finished in 52 days  and finally Jews were able to safely live in their city of David.

Now they were celebrating the holiday of the Feast of Booths, Sukkot.  This was the first time for them all as they never knew of this holiday before.  Nehemiah made sure that ethical laws were taught.  He discovered that poor Jews were slaves to rich Jews.  He set them free and taught that the society in Judah was to be rebuilt with the ethical principles established by Moses from G-d.  He even cancelled the debts of the poor.  Jerusalem was made more secure by having 1/10th of the population live within its walls.
                                                                           

He started a major educational program and imported scholars from Babylonia to teach Torah to these people of Israel.  Ezra read the Law of Moses in public assemblies.  This may be that he only had a few Torahs and because not everyone knew how to read.  Also, they had been living in Babylonia for so long and had learned to speak another language, and the Torah was in Hebrew, so most likely needed translation as he read it to them.  He couldn't have read the whole Torah in this one sitting, but must have read only certain parts he felt he needed to share.

At the end of the reading, the entire community subscribed to an oath, they were so moved.  ...to walk in G-d's law, which was given by Moses the servant of G-d, and to observe and do all the commandments of the Lord our G-d, and His ordinances and His statues.  (Nehemiah 10:30).

Nehemiah returned to Susa after 12 years, but returned again to Jerusalem.  In 433-432 he tried to bring and end to mixed marriages with Ezra's help.  That means that in the last 200 years, people had been marrying non Jews.  Was it a wonder then that Judaism had been slipping into almost non-existence in the homeland?  If Jews had been marrying Jews only since Abraham's day, all the Jewish men would be carrying J1 or J2 Ydna, but that isn't the case as today's DNA testing shows a few others in the Jewish population; not many, but a few others.  We have a variety of Es, Gs that make up 7% of the Jews, and a variety of Rs, and Q1b1a which 5% of Jews have.

Ezra had been a member of the priestly family of Zadok and was a scribe working for the Persian government.  He had also received permission in 458 BCE from King Artaxerxes I (reigned from 465 to 421 BCE) of Persia to return to Jerusalem and lead a new party of 1,754 settlers there, but would be of more religious Jews and they would establish the Mosaic law.  He worked along with Nehemiah to encourage the people to keep Torah, observe the Sabbath and the sabbatical year which Israel is keeping  right now in 2014 CE.  They encouraged everyone to pay their Temple dues and to reject intermarriage with gentiles which was in 444 BCE.

The Talmud notes that Ezra reintroduced biblical law since it had all been forgotten in the last 150 years.  He started the introduction of the square Hebrew letters and other updated information.  The rabbis compared his spiritual level with that of Moses.

While the Jews lived in Babylonia, they may have longed to be back in Judah, but they hadn't lost their religion.  It had gone with such a large population.  The Persians had been our rulers for 207 years from 539 BCE to 332 BCE.  We had become one People.  Before we were Hebrews divided into tribes or rival kingdoms of Israel and Judah.  Now we were Jews.  Our religion is Judaism.  We would remain the people of the ONE G-D.  The past 1,000 years was one of idolatry, a constant problem in Jewish life.  We started with the golden calf while waiting for Moses to come down from his high mountain.  During this Persian period, idol worship was not a part in our Jewish life at all, but pagans were able to join with us.  Before this, they were unable to join with us.

The reason Nehemiah and Ezra were against intermarriage was because it endangered the very survival of Judaism.  They had forced the men to divorce their wives.  Later, somebody thought up conversion.  What a novel idea!  They realized then that through study, commitments, and ritual, anyone could choose to give up his former religion and join his future to that of the Jewish people.  Persian rule had been tolerant and enlightened but then the Persian kings became more dictatorial .  Alexander the Great defeated them and gave Jews a better life.
                                                                         

I wonder about the Jews taken away even before the Babylonian conquest.  The Assyrians had attacked in 722 and 721 BCE.  Those were really primitive days.  Amos taught that the G-d of Israel was the G-d of the Assyrians but that they just didn't know it.  He was the G-d of all people.  When King Solomon had died in 922 BCE, the land divided into Israel and Judah, Judah being the southern part of Israel.  The Assyrians had attacked and devastated Israel, taking its people to Mesopotamia where they had mixed with the native population and disappeared from our history as the Lost 10 tribes of Israel.  All this occurrence showed Amos that this was a sign of G-d's power, that a sign of G-d's weakness.  He had been determined to have the Israelites obey HIS laws of righteousness.  Assyria had become the instrument of G-d's anger.  The Assyrian warriors were fierce.

This made Isaiah to think of world peace, so he wrote:

And they shall beat their swords into plowshares,

And their spears into pruning hooks;

Nation shall not lift up sword against nation,

Neither shall they learn war any more.  

                                                 (Isaiah 2:2-4).  

Yet today we are facing down Iran (Persia) and their Ayatollah Khamenei in a battle of uranium use in that they would like to make an atom bomb and destroy Israel today.  Several of Israel's neighbors have not ended their warring and are making even worse weapons, like missiles that can reach all of Israel.  

Some of the lost 10 tribes are being found and many are returning.  Israel has been reborn after a lull of 2,000 years.  Perhaps it takes all of the tribes to withstand the war mongols of the world with G-d's help, of course.  

To be Jewish is not to be faint of heart.  We've had our ups and downs.  Scientists in DNA now believe that the living Jews of today came from 4 women.  Ashkenazis are said to be from 350 men.  We've had our times of almost being wiped out in our history, and we've bounced back to create Israel once again.  The tide has turned.  

                                                           May G-d be with us.  

Resource:  My People:  Abba Eban's History of the Jews Volume I, adapted by David Bamberger, p. 30-36
The New Standard Jewish encyclopedia

Khamenei Gets Secret Letter From Obama on Nuclear Power's Centrifuges

Nadene Goldfoot                                                                   

My gosh!  Do politicians and diplomats  really do things like this?  President Obama himself secretly wrote a letter to Ayatollah Khamenei, Iran's Supreme Leader, and urged him to reach a deal on its nuclear program by November 24's deadline.  He didn't want him to tell Israel about it, though.  It was a secret, of course.

Oh, Susan Rice just said the letter was about communication, not cooperation.  This was just announced on CNN as I was writing.  She spoke.  This doesn't salve my anger, though
                                                                         

Obama wants Khamenei to join the US coalition against IS.  Cooperation on IS depends on the agreement on the nuclear program which Israel has warned of aims to build nuclear weapons to use against Israel.  The US did not inform Israel about this letter, or Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.  The USA move is disregarding the security concerns  and the potential nuclear arms race it could start.

Obama has moved closer to Iran even though they provide for Hamas and Hezbollah terrorism.  There have been secret channels of communications to Iran by senior Sh'ite sources in Iraq.

Last month, John Kerry first says they wouldn't cooperate with Iran on IS and now he says he would.  Tehran's last word on the subject was that it would consider it in return for a good deal in the nuclear talks.

Wendy Sherman is the top US negotiator and said on October 23rd that the pieces of a deal were in place and that they needed was Iran to wrap it up by the deadline.   Supposedly a deal includes a tough inspection regime, disabling a plutonium reactor at the Arak nuclear facility and a sharp reduction in Iran's enrichment capability.

The sticking point, making it painstaking and difficult in negotiation for her, has been the capability condition.  This is the red line laid down over the summer by Khamenei  who said that Iran would not dismantle any of its more than 19,000 centrifuges.  More than 9,000 of them are operational.  The USA wants that reduced to 4,500.  They think this number is good enough to keep Iran from reaching weapons breakout ability.

The question is all about if Iran will stick with that maximalist position.  Mark Dubowitz, former skeptic, said "there could be creative work arounds in which both sides could claim victory on the centrifuges issue."
                                                                     

Since Netanyahu gave his famous speech at the UN about the red line where most of the people in the audience walked out including some of our USA representatives,, about enrichment capacity.  Yuval Steinitz of Israel isn't calling for an end to enrichment in trying to get a deal from breakout capacity.  I imagine the USA has leaned on him.  Steinitz, on October 19th's article in NY Times, insisted that any deal should provide "CLARITY"  on the quantity and quality of  their remaining operational centrifuges and THE FINAL DESTINY  of its remaining centrifuges and their infrastructure.    Israel's hard line on enrichment made sense, Dubowitz said.

Therefore, I'm not happy over Obama sending a letter to Khomenei and telling him not to tell Netanyahu about it.  That is dirty to treat Israel, a close friend, that way.  Iran can be said to be Israel's greatest enemy.  This is very dirty business.  How can Netanyahu ever trust Obama on such a delicate issue as their life blood in depending on Iran not to be able to blow up Israel as soon as the inspector's backs are turned?

Resource: http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/187147#.VFyUqfmUdmM  Obama sends a secret letter to Iran's Khamenei
The Jewish Press Friday, October 31, 2014 US Nuclear Negotiator suggests Iran deal could be close at hand by Ron Kampeas

The Jewish Brain of Einstein

Nadene Goldfoot                                                                 

  Young Albert Einstein b: March 14, 1879 Ulm, Germany; d: April 18, 1955 Princeton, New Jersey

History 2 had a program on October 31st about Einstein's brain.  His brain was definitely different from most of the people on earth.
                                                                           

 He had a thickness of corpus callosum where nerves cross from one side to the other.  He had a unique prefrontal cortex.  Einstein had an IQ figured at 180, the highest ever recorded.  He was able to think in terms far better than most people in math concepts.  When he died at age 76 in 1955, Thomas Harvey, pathologist, did the autopsy (something not really desired by the Jewish laws- but being who he was, it happened. His parents were not observant Jews. Many  German  Jews had become very reformed, and his family had gone even a step farther away.   Harvey cut Einstein's brain into pieces and preserved it in formaldehyde.  His brain size was normal.  It weighed less than the average adult male brain by 1/3 of a pound.  However, his "muscles" were in his brain, "which were that he had greater than normal numbers of glial cells, which are needed to nourish high-performance neurons and are believed to help the hippocampus and cerebellum work more efficiently."

The middle portion of his brain, known as the inferior parietal lobes, which influence mathematical and music ability and help process visual images were 15% wider and the neurons here were packed tighter than in other people.  The sulcus groove that we have early in life  didn't extend all the way and so didn't shrink because he used his brain a lot.
                                                                               

                     Albert Einstein and friend David Ben Gurion, 1st President of Israel

The program thought that perhaps he had outside space alien help in this somehow.  At no time did they ever mention that Albert Einstein was Jewish, from Jewish parents that go back to the time of the Exodus.  They never gave it a thought that he came from people who had developed a lot of intelligent people somehow, which was very disappointing to me.  They couldn't give any credit to the Jewish people and his family tree..To understand how Einstein had such a high IQ of 180, one must look at his inherited DNA as well as the physical characteristics of his brain.  .
                                                                             

                   Theoretical Physicist and Philosopher of Science of 20th Century, known of his Theory of Relativity 

Albert Einstein came from a people whose priority was knowledge and thinking skills.  His father, Hermann,  was an engineer. His mother was Pauline Koch before marrying Hermann.   Physical prowess was not the guiding light in selecting a mate.  Intelligence has been the mark of achieving the right mates and from the right families for many generations.  "Genes circumscribe human possibility."  The question has always been debated as to which factor decides intelligence, genes or environment.  The evidence shows that genes make these decisions.  You must remember though, that our parents carry many genes to be passed on from all their ancestors, and each child grabs a handful and his handful may be different ones than his siblings.   Einstein had one younger sister.   He still may have been the only genious in his family, but chances are that the other siblings he might have had would be very bright, too, though not as bright as he was.  He lucked out.  In this case, environment and DNA affected Maja, his sister, in reaching 180 IQ.  Females have not reached the heights of IQ's found in men as yet.  We are more stable, though in having a good high IQ without having the extremes at both ends of the curve.  Scientists have also discovered that it is the female who passes on the DNA of intelligence, so you inherit this IQ from your mother's genes, though I'm sure, that you get it from your father, too.

Also, Jews  have been found to be distantly related to their spouses and many can go back 5 generations to see their two families were connected.  DNA testing is proving this fact.  In fact, the latest test result is that all of the Jews are at least 30th cousins to each other.  We Jews have been marrying Jews, and we're only 0.02% of the world population.

For a small group, we've won an amazing % of Nobel prizes.  Science seems to be our forte, but we do well in other fields, too.  For the people who Hitler said was sub-human and killed off 6 million of us, we are people who rise to the occasion and have become leaders of men.

Moses was our 1st prophet. He had the ability to hear G-d speaking to him.  Today, when someone says something like this, he is put in a mental institution, or at the least, sent to a psychiatrist.  Moses, the former prince of Egypt,  was extra-ordinary.  He was carrying around a lot of guilt for running out on his people, and so his brain was under a strain.  Something then happened and he knew what he had to do.  He was hearing messages and visualizing what to do.  He had tapped into the lines to G-d.  He wasn't crazy;  he was special.

 Following him in this ability was Joshua, our Judges, Samuel, Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel.  Moses, born in 1391 BCE, discovered his ability to hear from G-d at age 80, so  by 1311 he discovered this power.  Isaiah prophecized in Jerusalem (a part of Judah) from the death of King Uzziah/Azariah (780-740 BCE)  until the middle of King Hezekiah's reign (720-692 BCE).   Therefore, his prophecy came from (740 to 701 BCE).   Assyria had attacked Israel and Judah  in 722 BCE and they had led away the best of the population as slaves.The attacking went on till 721 BCE.  

Our ancestors have produced 12 men of extraordinary gifts of prophecy; Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi,  over a period of 350 years beginning in 700 BCE from the middle of the 1st Temple period to the early years of the 2nd Temple.  Each prophecized for brief periods to get something important across.  Rashi, our great biblical commentator explained that the era of prophecy was ending then,  so they would be the last prophets.  Haggai, Zechariah and Malachi had to write down their own prophecies.  He saw Hosea, a contemporary of Isaiah, was according to the sages, the greatest prophet of his time.  Since then, we have had a few more make prophecies that have come true.  Hosea, born in the 8th century BCE lived and prophesied in the kingdom of Israel from the reign of Jeroboam II in 744 BCE but mainly in the last years of the kingdom up to 722 BCE.  His prophecies were about the relationship between G-d and Israel and in 4-14, rebuking Israel, followed by promises of consolation and salvation.  He saw the bond between G-d and Israel as an almost physical love with Israel compared to a wife in a marriage.  He forecasted Israel's exile, but also saw visions of restoration after the people's repentance.  Much later, Judah the Pious of the 13th century CE from Germany made prophecies that area coming true.  .

To think that at one time, most likely at the fall of Jerusalem to the Romans in 70 BCE, we were so depleted of a population that DNA scientists have found our Ashkenazi ancestors  600 to 800 years ago, from 1214 to 1614, happened to be only 350 Jews, caused by a bottleneck.  (1)When you think of the men who managed to get out of a burning Jerusalem and escape to France and then to Germany, they had to take their wives and children. Over 1 million Jews were killed in Jerusalem's fall.  100,000 were taken as slaves to Rome.   Many were to old to bear children anymore out of the group.  Our 350 would have been the children of those survivors who fled.  They would have had many of their men slain fighting off attackers, and there would have been hunger, thirst, the elements to deal it in nature that would have cut down the population.

As far as that goes, an earlier DNA report was that we Jews had only 4 women as our ancestors.  That means that each generation was from that population only.  People from other women had died out.  So here we are today, from one of 4 women and 350 survivors who managed to procreate and rebuild our nation.

Long before in our midst we had other anomalies of the brain; men who had the ability to prophesize the future.  Surely they also had brains that had mutated to have special abilities, most likely in similar areas that Einstein's brain had been affected.
                                                               

Peter Hurkos b: May 21, 1911-d: June 1, 1988 from Dordrect, Netherlands

I remember reading long ago about a man that had something happen to his brain.  Peter Hurkos had a brain injury after falling off a ladder while working and hit his head at age 30 and was in a coma from the fall for 3 days.   The end result was that he had the gift of ESP.  He had become psychic. Previous to this accident, during World War II, he was a member of the Dutch Resistance and was imprisoned in Buchenwald   He would have been 30 in 1941. "Hurkos was said to have been born with a caul, the milky veil over his head that old wives considered the mark of a mystical child. As a boy, he was a poor student, dropping out of school when he entered his teens. He was a loner who spent much time in the woods or in solitude, dreaming and exploring, prone to fantasies and visions."

After the accident he became religious.  He proves that you don't have to be born with a brain that had mutated, but that a brain can be jiggled into having extra sensory capabilities if done in just the right way.

 My brain just showed a capability we all have, and that was that I was able to remember his name after reading about him over 60 years ago.  When I thought about the man who fell off the ladder, I could not remember his name, but after a half hour or so it just popped up into my head, like retrieving a stubborn file from my computer program and I had even retained the correct spelling of his full name.  .  It was there. He had made a huge impression on me long ago.

 He said he saw pictures.  He wasn't 100% correct all the time, but did far better than us with average abilities. He claimed to be 87% right on his ESP.    "He discovered he had developed an ability to pierce the barriers that separate the past, present and future. With stunning accuracy, he was able to see into the unknown."  Now he sounds a little like Einstein who had some amazing theories about the past, present and future all being one in time.  

So, you don't have to have had ancestors that were in UFO's.  Our brains have the ability to somehow do miraculous feats given the right circumstances of life.  We just have to get ourselves to use it or we lose it.  

Resource:  http://io9.com/this-is-why-einsteins-brain-was-better-than-yours-1441971724
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Hurkos
http://www.peterhurkos.com/peter_biography.htm
Abraham's Children, race, identity, and the DNA of the Chosen People by Jon Entine p 303 Brains andd IQ
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Einstein
http://www.biography.com/people/albert-einstein-9285408#synopsis
update: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_Jewish_population_comparisons
http://www.timesofisrael.com/ashkenazi-jews-descend-from-350-people-study-finds/ (1)
http://jewishbubba.blogspot.com/2014/03/bible-predictions-from-judah-pious-of.html
http://jewishfactsfromportland.blogspot.com/2014/10/ashkenazi-jews-of-today-are-30th-cousins.html
http://israel-nadene.blogspot.com/2014/08/jews-living-in-judea-samaria-and-other.html / TIMELINE
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3199788,00.html  (4 Jewish women-DNA)
http://jewishfactsfromportland.blogspot.com/2012/10/east-of-euphrates-river-came-hebrews.html, timeline from beginning of Jews with Abraham's people
http://jewishbubba.blogspot.com/2014/04/census-time-of-12-tribes-of-israel.html
http://www.religioustolerance.org/jud_pers1.htm  numbers killed
http://goldfoot_genealogy.blogspot.com/2011/06/high-iqs-coming-from-mothers-or-fathers.html

The First Jewish Holocaust

Nadene Goldfoot                                                                     

                                                   Jerusalem Burning  by Romans 70 CE

General Bar Kokhba revolted against the Romans from 132 to 135 CE, 65 years after the 2nd Temple was destroyed by the  Romans and the shock of having to fight against Jews again for 3 years, a revolt that was the fiercest and longest faced by the Roman Empire,  caused them to make a determined effort to stamp out Jewish identity in the Jewish homeland.
                                                                               

                                         General (Aluf) Bar Kokhba

The Romans decided to lay the country into a wasteland.  Jerusalem was plowed over at Hadrian's order and renamed Aelia Capitolina.  Judah, the country, was then renamed Syria Palestina.  
                                                                             

                     Jewish slaves brought to Rome-depicted here on Arch of Titus with loot from Temple
"The Arch provides one of the few contemporary depictions of Temple period artifacts

The seven-branched menorah and trumpets are clearly depicted. It became a symbol of the Jewish diaspora. In a later era, Pope Paul IV made it the place of a yearly oath of submission. Until the modern State of Israel was founded in 1948, many Jews refused to walk under it. However, when the existence of modern State of Israel was formally declared, many Roman Jews gathered by the arch and in joyful celebration, walked backwards under the arch to symbolize beginning of the long-awaited redemption from the Roman Exile.

The menorah depicted on the Arch served as the model for the menorah used on the emblem of the state of Israel." (1) The relief shows the march of Jewish captives bearing the Temple vessels, the shewbread table, 7-branched candlestick, and the trumpet;  the Jordan;  and the sacrificial procession.  

580,000 Jewish soldiers died in this battle.  An untold number of civilians died from starvation and pestiilence.  985 villages were destroyed.

However, were Jews about to be run out completely?  No.  Those that managed to escape the holocaust returned, most to the Galilee as they had been banished from Jerusalem and now it was in shambles anyway.   Jews who had been sold into slavery were redeemed by those who weren't.  Jewish life continued in this way.                                                                

 The Mishnah was finished and so was the Jerusalem Talmud.  Most of the returnees farmed the land in order to survive.

What happened to the Romans and their G-d that they had tried to push down the Jewish throats in previous years?  By the 4th century, The Roman Empire adopted Christianity.  From then on, the continued policy of the Romans was carried on by these new Christians, to prevent the birth of any glimmer of renewed hope of Jewish independence.  It was the now basic to Christian theology that the loss of national independence was an act of G-d designed to punish the Jewish people for their rejection of Christ.  The work of the almighty had to be helped along.  Most of the world were governed then by emperors and some were more lenient towards the Jews than others.  However, they all managed to maintain the minimal criteria of oppression and restriction on the Jews.
                                                                         

The Jews managed to keep on trying, though.  In 351 they launched another revolt which caused heavy retribution.  In 438, Empress Eudocia removed the ban on Jews praying at the Temple site.  The Jews were so happy that they issued a call, "Know then that the end of the exile of our people has come!" 
                                                                       
The Jews thought a new day had dawned in their history so they made an alliance with the Persians (Iran) who invaded Palestine in 614 and fought at their side which overwhelmed the Byzantine garrison in Jerusalem and governed the city for 3 years.  Then the Persians  turned and made peace with Emperor Heraclius. This caused Christian rule to be reestablished and Jews were again banished from Jerusalem.  Byzantine rule of vengeful persecution started, but it was short-lived.
                                                                             

For in 632, the Moslem Arab invaders came and conquered and this is how and when Arabs arrived in the Jewish Homeland.  By 640,Syria  Palestine  was a part of the emerging Moslem empire.

Resource; Battleground by Samuel Katz, p. 86-87
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arch_of_Titus (1)
The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia