Around the Jewish World

SA JEWISH REPORT STAFF

Honesty remains the best policy

Without thinking twice, he decided he would wait for its owner while trying to come up with other ways to return the lost item should its owner not show up.

As the minutes ticked by, a secular man came to the bus stop and retrieved the bag from the yeshiva boy after correctly identifying the bag by describing it sight unseen, as prescribed by halacha when a finder attempts to return a lost object to a claimant.

The man was so moved by the student’s good deed that he wrote a post on Facebook retelling the incident.

“When I got to the station, a haredi boy was sitting on the bench and he asked if he could help me. I told him my story and he told me: ‘I came here 25 minutes ago and saw the bag. I opened it and I saw quite a large sum of money. I told myself that I’ll wait here for 15 minutes and if the bag’s owner did not show, then I would leave a note with my cell number so he or she could reach me.

“’Fifteen minutes later, when no one came, I said to myself because I live in Jerusalem and because the money may be urgent to its owner, I will wait longer. I recited a verse from Tehillim (Psalms) so the owner would come soon and barely 10 minutes later you arrived’.” – Arutz Sheva

Pat Boone (81) to perform in Tel Aviv

TEL AVIV – Legendary pop crooner Pat Boone has been to Israel many times as an evangelical supporter of the country. But on March 1, the 81-year-old American icon will put his mouth where his money is, when he makes his musical debut in Israel at the Mann Auditorium in Tel Aviv.

Boone made his mark in the 1950s as a rock ‘n roll contemporary of Elvis Presley and Ricky Nelson.

With his Hush Puppy shoes, clean-cut demeanour and novelty tunes like “Speedy Gonzales”, Boone provided palatable versions of raucous rockers like “Ain’t That A Shame” by Fats Domino and “Tutti Frutti” by Little Richard and ranked number nine – ahead of artists like The Beach Boys and Aretha Franklin – in Billboard’s listing of the Top 100 Artists 1955-1995.

“I always treasured the reputation I had – to be considered a square guy, but I winced sometimes when people compared me unfavourably to Elvis,” Boone told The Jerusalem Post in 2010.

“Elvis’ career seemed much more exciting, even though I was matching him hit for hit. I had more hits than anyone in the ’50s except for Elvis and I ran a very close second.”

Boone endeared himself to Jewish fans and Israel supporters when in the early 1960s he took the Ferrante and Teicher theme song to the film Exodus and added lyrics. The song “Exodus (This Land is Mine)” evolved into a standard that brings the house down at Boone’s concerts.

Boone will be accompanied by 15 backing musicians for his first concert in the Holy Land. –  Jerusalem Post

Archaeologists unearth ancient farmstead, monastery

ROSH HA’AYIN -Archaeologists working in Rosh Ha’ayin have uncovered an impressive farmstead and an ancient monastery with colourful mosaics and inscriptions dating back thousands of years.

In an excavation conducted by the Israel Antiquities Authority – at the initiative of the Ministry of Construction and Housing and the Rosh Ha’ayin municipality prior to the building of new neighbourhoods in the city – archaeologists found a 2 700-year-old farmhouse (30 × 50 metres) and a 1 500-year-old church.

“The large farmhouse was preserved to a height of more than two metres. The building included 24 rooms constructed around a central courtyard. A large storage compartment (silo) meant to protect the grain, was exposed in the courtyard. It seems that carbohydrates were as popular then as now, and the growing and processing of grain were fairly widespread in the rural-agricultural region,” said Amit Shadman, excavation director on behalf of the Israel Antiquities Authority. – Israel 21C

Salute to Jewish general who liberated 60 million Muslims

LONDON – One of the tragic ironies of history is that Pakistan, a country created explicitly to safeguard Muslims from predatory non-Muslims, perpetrated in 1971 the single largest massacre of Muslims since the birth of Islam.

The man who halted the bloodbath in what was then East Pakistan and led to the birth of what is now Bangladesh – one of the largest Muslim nations on earth – was Jewish.

Lieutenant General (retired) Jacob Fari Rafael Jacob, who passed away at the age of 93 in New Delhi last week, was born in 1923 to a family of affluent “Baghdad Jews” in Calcutta.

His parents sheltered Jewish refugees fleeing Hitler and their stories motivated the young Jacob to enlist in the British Indian Army, despite the objections of his family.

The only anti-Semitism he ever experienced, he later told an interviewer, “was from the British in their army. Among Indians [anti-Semitism] does not exist.”

Jacob rose steadily through the ranks of independent India’s army. The genocide in East Pakistan – wherePakistani troops slaughtered three million and coerced half a million women into sexual slavery – made Jacob restless with rage.

When the Pakistani air force attacked India in December 1971, Jacob was ready. Within 13 days Jacob, aided by Bengali freedom fighters, had liberated an entire nation.

Jacob never really retired. After leaving the army he served as governor of Goa and Punjab. Some saw him as an ideal candidate for the presidency of India. He played a key part in the deepening if India-Israel relations. – Jewish Chronicle, London

Free speech, hate speech: Where’s the line at UCLA?

LOS ANGELES – Where does UCLA draw the line when it comes to speech and conduct protected by the First Amendment? When are words and actions punishable according to university standards?

Those are questions some Jewish and pro-Israel UCLA students and faculty have been asking since Lisa Marie Mendez, a UCLA student and former work-study employee at the UCLA Medical Centre, posted multiple blatantly racist, anti-Jewish and anti-Israel comments on the Facebook page of Jewish actress Mayim Bialik and on that of the group Students Supporting Israel (SSI) at UCLA.

“Go murder some Palestinian children so you can have their parents arrested and move into their home,” Mendez wrote. “Greedy lifeless pieces of s*** people. Capitalist colonisers who steal and kill from other races to promote your dead ideologies.”

“F***ing Jews,” she wrote. “GTFOH [Get the f*** out of here] with all your Zionist bulls***,” Mendez wrote.

“I live in the ghetto, and if you’re a Jew, you’re white. Not black, not middle eastern [sic], not Asian – white. Being a Jew is not a race – it’s a faith system that keeps you inbreeding long enough to believe you’re preserving your race, and keeps you thinking you’re entitled to take someone else’s land.” 

SSI posted on its Facebook page an alert to Mendez’s comments, demanding a public condemnation from UCLA. – Los Angeles Jewish Journal