Eighteen Years On

A close friend, N.S., sent me the snippet in which I appeared being interview by Ricard Dawkins in his January 2006 program, Root of All Evil. Earlier posts here, and also here.

"The Root of All Evil", later renamed The God Delusion, is a documentary written and presented by Richard Dawkins in which he argues that humanity would be better off without religion or the belief in any god . The documentary first aired in January 2006, as two 45-minute episodes (excluding commercial breaks), on the UK 's Channel 4 . Dawkins' book The God Delusion, published in September 2006, examines the issues raised in the documentary in greater detail.

Me:

From the transcript:

Dawkins: I’m in Jerusalem’s old city, trying to understand the role deeply-held faith plays in the bitter conflict here. One of the first things you notice is the edgy watchfulness, the different ethnic and religious communities live cheek-by-jowl, but there are security checkpoints throughout the old city, and one section above all is under heavy guard. For the Muslims, the compound enclosing the Dome of the Rock and Al-Aqsa mosque is, after Mecca and Medina, the third holiest site in Islam. It was from here, they believe, that the prophet Mohammad flew up to heaven. As bad luck would have it, the Jews believe the same place is the site of the long-destroyed first and second temples, the holiest shrine in Judaism.

Jews are not allowed to worship inside the compound, their prayers are restricted to the ruined western, or wailing, wall.

Yisrael Medad, Mount of the Lord Advocacy Group: “When Jesus came here to overturn the tables, there was no mosque in view.” “When the Arabs conquered this part of the world, they established the Al-Aqsa mosque.” And then they put over where we think is the main temple compound, where the altar was, where the holy of holy was, they put another building called the Dome of the Rock, it was not properly a mosque, and we at the present moment are simply not allowed in there, inside the compound, identifiably as Jews. 

The Muslims reject these Jewish claims.

Quite short, that. In actuality, we stood at the location overlooking the Kotel for over a half-hour and I think I stood my ground admirably.

Pics I grabbed at the time:

Thank you N.S.

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Jews Attacked - By Athiests

As CopyRanter reports:

NYC area Jews and Arabs to be assaulted by these atheism billboards.

The group behind the effort is the American Atheists.

The top board will be erected in Muslim-heavy Paterson, NJ. The bottom one will be going up in an orthodox Jewish neighborhood of Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Bets on which one will be destroyed first. I'm going with the Arabic one, probably a suicide bomber will take it out.

But I was the first - I distorted the writing of the Divine Name, the Tetragrammaton, as prescribed ("According to Jewish Orthodox tradition, the Sacred Name is not to be uttered and accordingly, the form "G-d " is used in writing or printing").

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The Jewish State's State Broadcasting Network

Several secular coworkers view Revah as a harmless curiosity. Others are very angry over what they see as missionary activity in a public workplace.

"The Broadcasting Authority is a public body and there is nothing wrong with it housing a synagogue on the premises," Shklar said. "Bringing a Torah scroll to the authority is a welcome move, because a synagogue without a Torah scroll is not a synagogue."

A former Broadcasting Authority senior executive thinks otherwise. "It's a scandal. It's forbidden to bring worshipers into a broadcasting facility, especially near the news department. It will start with prayers on the High Holy days, continue on regular Saturdays and then there will be a suit filed to stop broadcasting on Saturdays because it disrupts the service. So long as people sought a prayer corner in the workplace it was okay. Now they're starting to say they will pray in the Nakdi studio. Because the whole residential area around the authority is religious, who knows how it will end."

Source