Peres Funeral

Today, September 30 2016, Jerusalem

The funeral was the largest such event in Israel since the funeral of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, who was assassinated by a Jewish nationalist in 1995.

Mr Peres suffered a stroke two weeks ago and died on Wednesday in a hospital near Tel Aviv.

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Who was Shimon Peres?

• Born in 1923 in Wisniew, Poland, now Vishnyeva, Belarus
• First elected to the Knesset (Israeli parliament) in 1959
• Served in 12 governments, including once as president and twice as prime minister
• Seen as a hawk in his early years, when he negotiated arms deals for the fledgling nation
• In 1996 he ordered the so-called Operation Grapes of Wrath operation against Beirut in retaliation for Lebanese Hezbollah’s escalated rocket fire on northern Israel. The bombing campaign killed and injured hundreds of civilians
• A member of the government that approved the building of Jewish settlements on occupied territory, but came to view their future as negotiable
• Played a key part in reaching the Oslo peace accords, the first deal between Israel and the Palestinians, which said they would „strive to live in peaceful coexistence”
• 

Taken months after the Oslo Agreement was signed, this photograph shows Shimon Peres, left, with Mahmoud Abbas, centre, and Egypt’s then Foreign Minister Amr Moussa

BBC

Marriage Story

From https://www.quora.com/

What are some of the most adorable things that you have seen a couple doing?

Vismaya SP

 I have seen quite a few adorable things that my parents do at home. They have been married for 30 long years and have practically grown up together.

1. My dad is an extremely reputed doctor in a big government hospital and he never really gets time to sit free. I am sure Indians know how busy and cramped government hospitals are. Even to this day, from the very beginning, he always makes it a point to call her up once around lunch time to ask if she had her food. If he ever misses calling, my mom calls him back and expresses her fake-anger in a very cute way and he pacifies her and asks her if she had lunch very sweetly. She blushes and smiles and asks him the same question in return.
2. Whenever my mom goes out for something, be it even shopping for a few hours, my dad just feels paralyzed at home. He doesn’t move, doesn’t change his dress, doesn’t look at his phone or even enjoy something on TV till she comes back. The funny thing is, my mom listens to music a lot and my dad is always hooked to some sports/news channel. My mom always asks him to mute the TV and just read the headlines or watch sports in mute so that she can listen to music in loud volume. My dad is so used to it that, even when he is alone at home he keeps the TV on mute and watches it!
3. My dad never walks even to this day without holding my mom’s hand. Everywhere. He cares for her so much especially because my mom is quite careless in crossing roads (considering the messy and chaotic traffic in Indian cities). He often forgets to hold my hand when we are crossing roads but does not let go of hers.
4. My mom plays a number of practical jokes on my dad. They always have a great laugh together! And for me, the most beautiful thing a couple can do is to have a hearty laugh together. Once on April 1st my mom packed uncooked raw rice into my dad’s box and told him she had cooked his favorite dish (I don’t remember what dish she told him she cooked). My dad invited his colleagues to taste his lunch that day after boasting quite a lot about how nicely she cooks. Imagine his embarrassment when he opens the box in front of eagerly awaiting colleagues (all big doctors 😛 ) This was not even while they were super young…They keep this spark alive even after so many years into marriage. This was just one of them, my mom always has a number of tricks up her sleeve even to this day to tease my dad.
5. My parents split every tiny work at home. Its never like one of them is working and the other is relaxing. They just don’t let each other do any hard work at home. They support each other so happily in these terms. Particularly my dad, who does this even after an extremely tiring day at work. When I see husbands who don’t help their wives at home, I find it very weird! I am so used to seeing my dad like this. My mom tries to ask him to rest but he never listens. He fights with her but does not let her work alone!
6. Now my sister has an adorable baby boy and he has brought so much happiness into their lives. That little brat calms down when he is crying only if my mom sings for him (she is an amazing singer!). So sometimes she stays up singing for him and trying to put him to sleep while my sister sleeps soundly. My dad always stays up with her until the baby sleeps even though he has nothing to do. Never does he listen to my mom when she asks him to sleep.
7. To be honest, they have had some of the worst fights any couple could ever have and have still not given up on each other. But a lot of their fights are very funny 😛 My mom is bad at understanding and remembering routes. Once, she had a terrible fight with my dad and left home saying she will never come back. It was quite serious and we all sat in the house with tensed expressions on our faces. After maybe 20 minutes, my dad got a call. It turned out to be my mom who had called him from a local phone booth. And we all heard her shout very angrily from the other end saying, “I don’t know the way to my father’s house properly! You better come here right now!” My father, sister and I resisted laughing as we were also worried about where she is lost. My father managed to find her and bring her back after which we all laughed like crazy. I can recall many more such cute fights they have had all these years.

   Well there really are too many things my parents do which I admire. They really are damn adorable and I love them and see them as an inspiration. I definitely have high standards set for my guy 🙂

These are my parents on their 29th wedding anniversary 🙂

EDIT:

I am overwhelmed by the response. My parents are so happy too!

Thanks a lot for all your lovely wishes 🙂 and I really wish and hope all of you have wonderful relationships in your lives 🙂

I just wanna say, yes relationships like this are possible even to this day. Don’t ever lose hope! All it takes is a little bit of love, patience, respect and dedication:)

 

„What I changed, I could; what I couldn’t, I endured”

Hidden Figures: The Untold Story of the Black Women Mathematicians Who Powered Early Space Exploration

„No woman should say, ‘I am but a woman!’ But a woman! What more can you ask to be?”astronomer Maria Mitchell, who paved the way for women in American science, admonished the first class of female astronomers at Vassar in 1876. By the middle of the next century, a team of unheralded women scientists and engineers were powering space exploration at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

Meanwhile, across the continent and in what was practically another country, a parallel but very different revolution was taking place: In the segregated South, a growing number of black female mathematicians, scientists, and engineers were steering early space exploration and helping American win the Cold War at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia.

Long before the term „computer” came to signify the machine that dictates our lives, these remarkable women were working as human „computers” — highly skilled professional reckoners, who thought mathematically and computationally for their living and for their country. When Neil Armstrong set his foot on the moon, his „giant leap for mankind” had been powered by womankind, particularly by Katherine Johnson — the „computer” who calculated Apollo 11’s launch windows and who was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Obama at age 97 in 2015, three years after the accolade was conferred upon John Glenn, the astronaut whose flight trajectory Johnson had made possible.

Katherine Johnson at her Langley desk with a globe, or „Celestial Training Device,” 1960 (Photographs: NASA)

In Hidden Figures: The Story of the African-American Women Who Helped Win the Space Race(public library), Margot Lee Shetterly tells the untold story of these brilliant women, once on the frontlines of our cultural leaps and since sidelined by the selective collective memory we call history.

She writes:

Just as islands — isolated places with unique, rich biodiversity — have relevance for the ecosystems everywhere, so does studying seemingly isolated or overlooked people and events from the past turn up unexpected connections and insights to modern life.

Against a sobering cultural backdrop, Shetterly captures the enormous cognitive dissonance the very notion of these black female mathematicians evokes:

Before a computer became an inanimate object, and before Mission Control landed in Houston; before Sputnik changed the course of history, and before the NACA became NASA; before the Supreme Court case Brown v. Board of Education of Topekaestablished that separate was in fact not equal, and before the poetry of Martin Luther King Jr.’s „I Have a Dream” speech rang out over the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, Langley’s West Computers were helping America dominate aeronautics, space research, and computer technology, carving out a place for themselves as female mathematicians who were also black, black mathematicians who were also female.

Shetterly herself grew up in Hampton, which dubbed itself „Spacetown USA,” amid this archipelago of women who were her neighbors and teachers. Her father, who had built his first rocket in his early teens after seeing the Sputnik launch, was one of Langley’s African American scientists in an era when words we now shudder to hear were used instead of „African American.” Like him, the first five black women who joined Langley’s research staff in 1943 entered a segregated NASA — even though, as Shetterly points out, the space agency was among the most inclusive workplaces in the country, with more than fourfold the percentage of black scientists and engineers than the national average.

Margot Lee Shetterly

Over the next forty years, the number of these trailblazing black women mushroomed to more than fifty, revealing the mycelia of a significant groundswell. Shetterly’s favoriteSunday school teacher had been one of the early computers — a retired NASA mathematician named Kathleen Land. And so Shetterly, who considers herself „as much a product of NASA as the Moon landing,” grew up believing that black women simply belonged in science and space exploration as a matter of course — after all, they populated her father’s workplace and her town, a town whose church „abounded with mathematicians.”

Embodying astronomer Vera Rubin’s wisdom on how modeling expands children’s scope of possibility, Shetterly reflects on this normalizing and rousing power of example:

Building 1236, my father’s daily destination, contained a byzantine complex of government-gray cubicles, perfumed with the grown-up smells of coffee and stale cigarette smoke. His engineering colleagues with their rumpled style and distracted manner seemed like exotic birds in a sanctuary. They gave us kids stacks of discarded 11×14 continuous-form computer paper, printed on one side with cryptic arrays of numbers, the blank side a canvas for crayon masterpieces. Women occupied many of the cubicles; they answered phones and sat in front of typewriters, but they also made hieroglyphic marks on transparent slides and conferred with my father and other men in the office on the stacks of documents that littered their desks. That so many of them were African American, many of them my grandmother’s age, struck me as simply a part of the natural order of things: growing up in Hampton, the face of science was brown like mine.

[…]

The community certainly included black English professors, like my mother, as well as black doctors and dentists, black mechanics, janitors, and contractors, black cobblers, wedding planners, real estate agents, and undertakers, several black lawyers, and a handful of black Mary Kay salespeople. As a child, however, I knew so many African Americans working in science, math, and engineering that I thought that’s just what black folks did.

Katherine Johnson, age 98 (Photograph: Annie Leibovitz for Vanity Fair)

But despite the opportunities at NASA, almost countercultural in their contrast to the norms of the time, life for these courageous and brilliant women was no idyll — persons and polities are invariably products of their time and place. Shetterly captures the sundering paradoxes of the early computers’ experience:

I interviewed Mrs. Land about the early days of Langley’s computing pool, when part of her job responsibility was knowing which bathroom was marked for „colored” employees. And less than a week later I was sitting on the couch in Katherine Johnson’s living room, under a framed American flag that had been to the Moon, listening to a ninety-three-year-old with a memory sharper than mine recall segregated buses, years of teaching and raising a family, and working out the trajectory for John Glenn’s spaceflight. I listened to Christine Darden’s stories of long years spent as a data analyst, waiting for the chance to prove herself as an engineer. Even as a professional in an integrated world, I had been the only black woman in enough drawing rooms and boardrooms to have an inkling of the chutzpah it took for an African American woman in a segregated southern workplace to tell her bosses she was sure her calculations would put a man on the Moon.

[…]

And while the black women are the most hidden of the mathematicians who worked at the NACA, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, and later at NASA, they were not sitting alone in the shadows: the white women who made up the majority of Langley’s computing workforce over the years have hardly been recognized for their contributions to the agency’s long-term success. Virginia Biggins worked the Langley beat for theDaily Press newspaper, covering the space program starting in 1958. „Everyone said, ‘This is a scientist, this is an engineer,’ and it was always a man,” she said in a 1990 panel on Langley’s human computers. She never got to meet any of the women. „I just assumed they were all secretaries,” she said.

These women’s often impossible dual task of preserving their own sanity and dignity while pushing culture forward is perhaps best captured in the words of African American NASA mathematician Dorothy Vaughan:

What I changed, I could; what I couldn’t, I endured.

Dorothy Vaughan (top left) with other early computers (Photograph: NASA)

In the remainder of her beautifully written, rigorously researched, and culturally sobering book, Shetterly goes on to explore the lives of a number of the early computers: how they became who they are and what difficult choices they often had to make between their personal and professional lives — choices many of which remain just as impossible and unjust for women today.

But the particular fate of these pioneering women offers something singularly emboldening.

Shetterly reflects on the gasp of a reaction she most often faces when people first hear the story: the disorientation and discomfiting surprise of realizing they’ve been unaware that black women mathematicians not only worked at NASA but were instrumental to the feats of space exploration — feats that brought humanity together around a shared sense of pride, but a pride for which its very achievers were given no credit. She writes:

Most people are astonished that a history with such breadth and depth, involving so many women and linked directly to the twentieth century’s defining moments, has flown below the radar for so long. There’s something about this story that seems to resonate with people of all races, ethnicities, genders, ages, and backgrounds. It’s a story of hope, that even among some of our country’s harshest realities — legalized segregation, racial discrimination — there is evidence of the triumph of meritocracy, that each of us should be allowed to rise as far as our talent and hard work can take us.

Complement the wonderful and important Hidden Figures with the untold story of the women soldiers who dressed and fought as men in the Civil War and thisillustrated celebration of trailblazing women in science, then revisit the story of „the rocket girls” — the Hampton computers’ West Coast counterparts.

Shimon Pérès, entre guerres et paix

Dans Libération, par Nissim Behar, à Tel-Aviv — 28 septembre 2016 à 06:11

Shimon Peres. 1998 Photo Michael Williamson. Washington Post.Getty Images

Avec une carrière politique de plus de soixante et un prix Nobel de la Paix, Shimon Pérès est la seule personnalité politique israélienne à avoir exercé quasiment toutes les compétences ministérielles de son pays. Il est mort dans la nuit, à 93 ans.

• Shimon Pérès, entre guerres et paix

Lorsque Szymon Perski est né le 2 août 1923 à Vilsneva (Biélorussie), ses parents n’imaginaient probablement pas que leur rejeton participerait vingt-cinq ans plus tard à la création de l’Etat d’Israël sous le nom hébraïsé de Shimon Pérès. Encore moins qu’il deviendrait, jusqu’à sa mort dans la nuit de mardi à mercredi à 93 ans, l’un des piliers de l’histoire politique de son pays doublé d’une personnalité internationale couronnée par un prix Nobel de la paix en 1994.

En vérité, Pérès ne s’imaginait pas non plus politicien lorsqu’il était jeune. Il se voyait agriculteur à une époque où le mouvement sioniste dirigé par David Ben Gourion vantait le «travail hébraïque de la terre». Mais les soubresauts de la région à la fin de la Deuxième guerre mondiale en ont décidé autrement. Repéré par Ben Gourion, que tout le monde surnommait alors «Hazaken» (Le vieux), le jeune Pérès a en effet entamé une carrière météorique dans l’establishment sioniste. Comme porte-serviettes du leader de l’Etat hébreu créé en 1948 puis comme directeur général du ministère de la Défense en 1953. Une fonction clef qui consistait alors à dégoter n’importe quelle source d’approvisionnement en armes et ainsi que les financements permettant de les acquérir.

A l’époque, les Etats-Unis n’étaient pas le «meilleur allié» et le protecteur indéfectible d’Israël. Loin de là. Ces soutiens, le factotum de Ben Gourion les a trouvés à Paris, parmi des personnalités de la IVe République telles Maurice Bourgès-Maunoury et Guy Mollet. Francophile, amateur de littérature et de bons vins, Pérès a su s’attirer l’oreille des services de renseignements et de l’appareil militaro-industriel français C’est ainsi que les chars, les avions, les hélicoptères et les bateaux «made in France» ont équipé Tsahal, l’armée de l’Etat hébreu jusqu’à ce que le général de Gaulle décrète un embargo pour punir Jérusalem d’avoir déclenché la guerre des Six jours (juin 1967). Au passage, cette collaboration franco-israélienne a également permis au jeune Etat juif d’ériger sa centrale nucléaire de Dimona (désert du Néguev), un centre militaire ultrasecret que Pérès présentait aux visiteurs trop curieux comme «une usine textile géante» alors que l’on y fabriquait les premières bombes atomiques frappées de l’étoile de David.

L’image d’un apparatchik travailliste

Elu pour la première fois à la Knesset en 1959, Pérès est la seule personnalité politique israélienne à avoir exercé quasiment toutes les compétences ministérielles de son pays, sauf les Postes et la Culture. Que retenir de sa carrière politique de plus de soixante ans? Qu’il a longtemps traîné l’image d’un apparatchik travailliste. D’un cadre retors et ambitieux que les gens de la rue n’aimaient pas. Paradoxalement, Pérès a été Premier ministre à trois reprises alors que le parti travailliste n’a jamais gagné aucune élection lorsqu’il le dirigeait. Son cynisme politique et appétit pour le pouvoir, il l’a en tout cas affiché au début des années 80 en acceptant de participer à une coalition avec le Likoud, alors dirigé par Itzhak Shamir, le successeur ultra-droitier de Menachem Begin. Cette alliance contre nature prévoyait une rotation entre Pérès et Shamir à la tête du gouvernement. Mais également des mesures ultra-libérales de privatisation que le travailliste a avalisées sans broncher. Durant les courant des années 70, et surtout lorsqu’il a été ministre de la Défense (1974-77), Pérès a largement encouragé le développement des colonies de Cisjordanie et de la bande de Gaza.

 

A peine nommé à cette fonction, il a également conclu avec son homologue sud-africain un accord de coopération secret aux termes duquel l’industrie militaire israélienne a pu, malgré l’embargo international frappant le régime d’apartheid, développer ses meilleures armes dans les bases de Pretoria. Grâce à l’«accord de 1975», des missiles, des obus spéciaux à fort taux de pénétration, des blindés, ont ainsi été conçus, développés, ou fabriqués en série. Israël a également amélioré son arsenal atomique tactique et progressé dans l’élaboration d’un prototype de chasseur-bombardier. Cette coopération avec le régime d’apartheid s’est encore renforcée à la chute du Shah d’Iran (1979), dont le budget impérial avait lui aussi financé les projets militaires de Jérusalem. Les Israéliens de la rue ne savent rien de tout cela. De toute façon, ils s’en moquent. Ce qu’ils retiennent de Pérès, c’est d’abord cette guerre à couteaux tirés pour la présidence du parti travailliste (alors dans l’opposition) qui l’a opposé à son rival Itzhak Rabin au début des années 90. Combines, coups bas, chantage, mensonges : les deux hommes ont employé les pires méthodes pour prendre le dessus sur l’autre. Et si Rabin a gagné en 1992, Pérès n’a pas démérité en la matière. Au point que les phases de ce duel au sommet sont encore décortiquées aujourd’hui dans les facultés de sciences politiques…

Icône de la paix

Après la victoire électorale travailliste aux législatives de 1993, Rabin ne pouvait pas faire autrement que de nommer Pérès à un ministère régalien. Et rien ne lui convenait mieux que les Affaires étrangères. Parce qu’il fallait «maintenir l’unité du parti», et que le nouveau chef du gouvernement préférait voir son pire ennemi à ses côtés plutôt que le laisser lui mettre des bâtons dans les roues à partir de l’hémicycle de la Knesset. Près de six ans après le déclenchement de la première intifada en décembre 1987, le gouvernement Rabin-Pérès est entré en fonction alors que la révolte palestinienne s’enlisait et que l’armée israélienne s’y était embourbée en employant des méthodes encore plus répressives que celles d’aujourd’hui. C’est durant cette période délétère que Pérès a entamé la mue qui allait le transformer en un homme d’Etat. Et en une icône de la paix. En effet, à l’insu de son Premier ministre, il a encouragé quelques intellectuels israéliens à poursuivre les contacts secrets que ces derniers entretenaient depuis quelques mois en Norvège avec des cadres de l’OLP. Ces rencontres étaient informelles et de toute façon illégales aux yeux du droit israélien, mais elles ont pavé la voie aux négociations qui allaient rapidement déboucher sur les accords de paix d’Oslo de septembre 1993. Cette séquence cruciale de l’histoire d’Israël et des Palestiniens a rapproché Pérès et Rabin, qui en sont parvenus à mettre leurs vieilles rancœurs de côté. La campagne lancée par le Likoud et par le «Yecha», le puissant lobby des colons, contre «les criminels d’Oslo» y a sans doute contribué. Les premiers attentats suicides du Hamas et du Jihad islamique, eux aussi opposés au processus de paix, également. Le 4 novembre 1995, Rabin et Pérès présidaient en tout cas ensemble le fameux rassemblement pour la paix organisé du centre de Tel-Aviv à la fin duquel le Premier ministre a été assassiné de trois balles dans le dos. Promu Premier ministre pour la troisième fois peu après que la mort de Rabin eut été prononcée, Peres s’est lancé au pied levé dans la campagne pour les élections du 29 mai 1996. «L’une des périodes les plus difficiles de ma vie», confiera-t-il plus tard. Entouré d’une nuée de gardes du corps, il devait en effet défendre les accords d’Oslo alors que la droite nationaliste poursuivait sa campagne hystérique et que les islamistes palestiniens multipliaient leurs attaques kamikazes.

«Un dinosaure qui a tout fait, tout vu, tout entendu»

En parallèle, la situation s’était dégradée au sud-Liban alors occupé par Israël où Pérès avait autorisé Tsahal (l’armée) à déclencher l’opération «Raisins de la colère». Officiellement, cette offensive «antiterroriste» était censée faire taire les lance-roquettes du Hezbollah qui arrosaient régulièrement les kibboutzim du nord d’Israël. Mais elle devait également renforcer l’image sécuritaire de Peres écornée par les attaques de Binyamin Netanyahou, le jeune porte-étendard de la droite aux élections du 29 mai. Or, rien ne s’est passé comme prévu. L’opération «Raisins de la colère» s’est soldée par la mort de nombreux civils libanais, dont cent dix-huit d’entre eux pulvérisés par l’artillerie israélienne alors qu’ils s’étaient réfugiés dans un centre de l’ONU, et Peres n’a pas amélioré son image dans l’électorat israélien. Certes, les sondages le donnaient alors vainqueur de son duel contre Netanyahou mais le 29 mai, c’est ce dernier qui l’a emporté à quelques milliers de voix près. Abattu, Peres s’est alors fait discret. Il a fallu attendre qu’Ehoud Barak, son successeur à la tête du parti travailliste, remporte les élections de 1999 pour qu’il revienne sur le devant d’une scène politique qu’il n’allait quasiment plus quitter. Ministre des Affaires étrangères dans le gouvernement d’Ariel Sharon au début de la deuxième intifada, Peres à beaucoup joué de son influence internationale pour tenter d’atténuer les critiques qui s’abattaient alors sur l’Etat hébreu en raison de sa politique envers les Palestiniens. Considéré comme «incontournable» en raison de son prix Nobel et de ses nombreux appels à la reprise du dialogue avec les Palestiniens, Peres a donc incarné l’image présentable d’Israël.

Shimon Pérès lors d’un débat à la Knesset en septembre 1993.

Une notoriété dont il a également joué pour se faire élire président d’Israël en 2007, sept ans après que Moshé Katzav –une personnalité falote du Likoud qui l’avait battu en juillet 2000- eut été contraint de démissionner pour viol et harcèlement sexuel. Shimon Pérès a exercé deux mandats de président et bien que cette fonction soit purement honorifique, il a poursuivi ses contacts avec l’Autorité palestinienne ainsi que des responsables de pays arabes à priori hostiles. Officiellement retraité depuis juillet 2014, il a, jusqu’à son dernier jour, continué à utiliser son imposant carnet d’adresses pour faire passer des messages et parfois prendre des initiatives sans que le gouvernement de Binyamin Netanyahou n’en soit informé. «Pérès est l’un des derniers témoins de la création de ce pays. C’est un dinosaure qui a tout vu, tout fait, tout entendu et sait tout ce qui se passe», lâchait le chroniqueur politique Hanan Kristal le 14 janvier 2016, date de sa première alerte cardiaque. «Vous voulez savoir quand il va s’arrêter ? Jamais, car c’est ça qui le fait tenir. Il est comme Molière, il mourra sur scène». 

RIP

Ioan Gyuri Pascu avea 55 de ani şi se retrăsese din viaţa artistică din cauza problemelor de sănătate.

Gyuri Pascu, născut pe 31 august 1961, la Agnita, a fost muzician şi actor, membru al grupului de umor Divertis. S-a lansat în cariera muzicală în anul 1982 şi de atunci a abordat diverse stiluri muzicale, printre care pop, rock, blues, reggae.

 „Când vrea Dumnezeu, mă duc, toţi suntem la mâna lui”

Actorul şi cântăreţul Ioan Gyuri Pascu a trecut pe lângă moarte în 2010 când a suferit un accident vascular cerebral. Într-unul din ultimele interviuri, în 2014, artistul spunea că se simte mult mai bine, că plănuieşte turnee în ţară şi că şi-a schimbat stilul de viaţă şi obiceiurile.

http://www.mediafax.ro/cultura-media/ioan-gyuri-pascu-a-murit-in-aceasta-dimineata-15745937

Leonard Cohen – You Want It Darker — Persona

The great poet and singer Leonard Cohen turned 82 yesterday. Here is one of his most troubling songs, unfortunately, just in audio. Thanks to LigiaC for the link. And here are the lyrics:

via Leonard Cohen – You Want It Darker — Persona

Dalai Lama la Paris

adevarul.ro/cultura/spiritualitate/dalai-lama-dialogulinterreligios-cel-isi-raneste-aproapele-isi-reneaga-propriareligie-1

Dintr-un material de Luana Luban

„Ţinând cont de climatul anxiogen care se resimte în prezent în societatea franceză, puternic zguduită de atentatele din ultima vreme, problematica terorismului a fost un subiect de discuţie greu de ocolit. În această privinţă, Dalai Lama a afirmat că nu are sens să vorbim despre terorismul musulman sau budist, deoarece teroriştii nu sunt credincioşi adevăraţi, cel care îşi răneşte sau ucide aproapele îşi reneagă de fapt propria religie şi nu poate fi încarnarea unui mesaj de iubire şi de pace promovat de marile religii ale lumii. A subliniat însă virtuţiile „jihadului interior” pe care l-a comparat cu meditaţia budistă atunci când este vorba despre eliminarea emoţiilor distructive.

Anouar Kbibech a împărtăşit pe deplin această definiţie a jihadului pledând la rândul său pentru fraternitate, „acest cuvânt magic care are o valoare religioasă şi laică deopotrivă…”. Aşadar, onorabilul deziderat al fraternităţii între credincioşi şi între oameni în general a fost pe buzele tuturor, dialogul fiind cea mai bună metodă de rezolvare a conflictelor.

Avidă să ascult genul acesta de discuţii, indiferent de religia despre care se vorbeşte şi bucuroasă fiind că întâlnirile dintre teologi nu mai sunt doar discipline universitare, ci au devenit accesibile publicului larg, oferind şansa unei experienţe comune între liderii spirituali şi laici, nu pot să nu observ totuşi intervenţia corectitudinii politice care se infiltrează uneori chiar şi în cadrul unor astfel de manifestări. Mă bucur când dialogul religiilor nu este doar o confruntare de idei (de ideologii?), ci oferă oportunităţi de a pune bazele unor relaţii constructive şi fraterne, dar am un sentiment de insatisfacţie când nu se dezbat cauzele reale ale conflictelor. În cadrul conferinţei, Dalai Lama spunea că de fapt noi înşine ne creăm probleme din cauza fricii, a furiei şi a frustrărilor. Dar toate aceste sentimente puternice au la bază conflicte sau evenimente traumatizante.

Cum poţi explica unei persoane care, de exemplu, şi-a pierdut copilul sau pe cineva drag într-un atentat terorist că islamul este religia păcii şi a toleranţei când toate atentatele din ultima vreme se comit invocând numele lui Allah? Devenim frustraţi fără motiv sau dimpotrivă acumulăm multe tăceri de teamă să nu fim criticaţi de zbirii corectitudinii politice? Fraternitatea o fi poate cel mai nobil sentiment, dar pentru a fi împărtăşit trebuie să fim în rezonanţă unii cu ceilalţi, dincolo de toate diferenţele culturale, morale şi religioase care ne despart sau ne opun.

Dialogul este calea cea mai onorabilă, dar numai atunci când cel din faţa ta are disponibilitatea emoţională şi culturală să te asculte şi să te accepte aşa cum eşti. Dar cum putem oare purta un dialog cu fanaticii?? Evident, nici Dalai Lama, nici cardinalul, nici pastorul, nici mitropolitul ortodox, nici rabinul, nici reprezentantul cultului musulman nu au răspunsuri la toate întrebările care ne frământă şi ne complică existenţa. Dar cel puţin atunci când se întâlnesc ridică nivelul discuţiilor la un prag incomparabil de superioritate faţă de dezbaterile politice care ne otrăvesc cotidianul.

Consider salutară atitudinea liderului spiritual tibetan de a nu se fi întâlnit cu politicieni, evitând astfel ocazia enumerării unor fraze îmbuibate de ipocrizie şi lipsite de conţinut ideatic. Dialogul purtat de Dalai Lama cu reprezentanţii cultelor religioase din Franţa are meritul de a ne reaminti că fiecare dintre noi are o responsabilitate universală, aşa cum remarca şi Papa Francisc şi anume că umanitatea ar trebuie să acţioneze asemeni unei familii care trăieşte în aceeaşi casă.

„Nu este vorba despre un sincretism religios”, a subliniat rabinul Haïm Korsia, „ci tocmai pentru că suntem diferiţi, putem crea coeziune între noi”, subliind că uneori tocmai cei din exteriorul unei religii înţeleg ce se întâmplă cu adevărat în interiorul ei. „Principiul laicităţii ne permite să fim egali în faţa legii şi nu în competiţie”, a mai adăugat rabinul. Sentimentul iubirii ne permite însă să fim în competiţie pentru mântuirea lumii, iar aceasta nu poate fi posibilă dacă nu ne îngrijim de mântuirea semenilor: fraternitatea nu înseamnă doar ajutor în clipele dramatice, ci şi compasiune, iubire dezinteresată, sfaturi mântuitoare, purtare de grijă celor diferiţi nouă. Aşa cum spunea un sfânt cu „gură de aur”, „începutul iubirii e a-l pune pe celălalt înaintea noastră…”.

La sfârşitul conferinţei toţi cei prezenţi au ţinut nu un minut de reculegere, aşa cum s-a întâmplat după fiecare atentat petrecut în Franţa, ci „60 de secunde” de linişte împărtăşite cu bucurie. Poate totuşi, dincolo de orice diferenţe, sursa tuturor religiilor ar fi liniştea… Vorbind prea mult despre divinitate, ajungem să nu o mai simţim deloc.”

Citeste mai mult: adev.ro/odqrlg

Adaug: fiecare cu jobul lui! Al sefilor religiosi, cu siguranta, NU este eliminarea de criminali, nici acuzatiile. Fac si ei ce pot, când si unde pot, cu necesara prudenta si discretie. Aceeasi discretie pentru care, indiferent câti evrei va fi salvat, un papa a fost acuzat ca nu a spus nimic rau, în public, despre Hitler. Nu stiu de unde a intrat in capul oamenilor ca trecutul trebuie „judecat” prin prisma valorilor ulterioare. Nimeni, traind în libertate si confort, nu-si poate face o idee justa despre ce-i motiveaza pe altii, supusi dictaturilor, razboaielor, regimurilor totalitare.

Mandela

„Notre peur la plus profonde est de ne pas être à notre place.

Notre peur la plus profonde est d’être trop puissants.

C’est notre lumière qui nous effraie, bien plus que nos ténèbres.

Nous nous demandons :

Mais qui suis-je pour être brillant, beau, doué, fabuleux ?

Or il faut dire :

Mais qui suis-je pour ne point l’être ?

Tu es enfant de Dieu.

Si tu te rabaisses, cela ne sert pas à sauver le monde.

Il n’y a rien d’éclairé dans le fait que tu te tapis dans ton coin, pour que d’autres ne se sentent dans l’insécurité autour de toi.

Nous sommes faits pour briller, comme les enfants.

Nous sommes faits pour manifester la gloire de Dieu en nous.

Elle n’est pas en nous seulement, elle est en chacun.

Et si nous laissons briller notre lumière, inconsciemment nous donnons aux autres la permission de faire de même.

 

Et puisque nous sommes libérés de notre propre peur, notre présence automatiquement libère les autres.”

 

Nelson Mandela

(qui en sait quelque chose au sujet de la liberte interieure)

Cules din „Dilema veche”

Evreul real

de Marius CHIVU

Ştim în continuare prea puţine lucruri sau, mai bine zis, prea puţine lucruri corecte şi complete despre evreii români. Cu „evreul imaginar“ e altă poveste. Şi cum cartea lui Andrei Oişteanu Imaginea evreului în cultura română este una dintre marile cărţi de eseuri scrise la noi în ultima jumătate de secol (reeditată de mai multe ori şi tradusă în cîteva limbi), s-a impus de la sine o conferinţă a autorului cu subiectul „Evreii din România în context european: asemănări și deosebiri“ la Alba Iulia, adică acolo unde a existat una dintre cele mai vechi comunități evreiești (care a primit dreptul de ședere în cetate și de organizare în vremea principelui Gabriel Bethlen).

În seara de 27 august, pe terasa Cafenelei cu dileme de la Poarta a III-a a Cetăţii, Andrei Oișteanu a făcut o sinteză despre istoria comunităților evreiești din România, pornind de la faptul că evreii români au fost ultimii din Europa care au primit cetăţenia statului unde locuiau, munceau şi trăiau. Constituţia din 1866 le-a refuzat emanciparea şi abia în 1878 s-au produs primele încetăţeniri, şi acelea făcute individual, nu in corpore, astfel că doar 500 de evrei (adică 1% din întreaga populaţie) au obţinut cetăţenia română, restul rămînînd în continuare neprotejaţi de lege. Această situaţie a condus la eforturi culturale de recunoaştere şi impunere a identităţii. Andrei Oișteanu a amintit faptul că, în 1866, Abraham Goldfaden a înfiinţat la Iaşi primul teatru în limba idiş din lume şi, de asemenea, faptul că în 1881, la Focşani, s-a ţinut primul Congres sionist european.

În chestiunea Holocaustului românesc, Andrei Oișteanu a spus că pe teritoriul României „nu s-au produs orori, dar n-a fost nici pace“, vorbind despre soluţia finală aplicată în nord-vestul Transilvaniei (peste 100.000 de evrei au fost ucişi după anexarea de către regimul horthyst) şi despre evreii din Basarabia şi Bucovina, trimişi în lagărele din Transnistria, spre deosebire de restul României, unde „s-a aplicat «doar» un sîngeros set de legi antievreieşti“: „Antonescu a fost un dictator şi un asasin sîngeros care a aplicat o metodă originală, fiind parțial nesupus lui Hitler. A ţinut să ofere o variantă proprie a soluţiei finale.“

Comunismul românesc a descurajat orice dovadă a ajutorului acordat evreilor (doar 39 de români menţionaţi la sfîrşitul anilor ’80, spre deosebire de cei 3000 de polonezi), a mai spus Andrei Oișteanu, explicaţia fiind că lui Ceauşescu nu-i convenea o astfel de statistică de vreme ce capitolul românesc al Holocaustului era tabu. Dacă în 1940 în România trăiau 800.000 de evrei, fiind a patra comunitate din lume, după Polonia, URSS şi SUA, astăzi mai există doar 8000 de evrei români, spun datele demografice.

Andrei Oișteanu a vorbit şi despre enorma moştenire culturală materială lăsată de evrei ­(şcoli, sinagogi, spitale, băi, cimitire), dar şi despre cea spirituală, numărul de artişti şi savanți de origine evreiască fiind uriaş. Dacă în această toamnă se împlinesc 140 de ani de la fondarea Teatrului evreiesc de la Iaşi, tot anul acesta se sărbătoreşte şi centenarul mişcării Dada, iniţiate la Zürich de Tristan Tzara, scriitorul evreu din Moineşti. „Există o lungă listă de cărturari antisemiţi, dar nu se vorbeşte mai deloc despre cei filosemiţi“, a mai spus Andrei Oișteanu, care a ţinut să-i menţioneze în finalul sintezei sale, printre alţii, pe I.L. Caragiale, Al. Macedonski, Gala Galaction, Liviu Rebreanu, C. Rădulescu-Motru, Tudor Arghezi, E. Lovinescu, Perpessicius, Ion Vinea şi Geo Bogza.

 

Nu te supara pe supararea ta

We do not produce mindfulness to chase away or fight our anger but to take good care of it. This method is non-dualistic and nonviolent. It is non-dualistic because it recognizes that mindfulness and anger are both parts of ourselves. One energy embraces the other. Don’t be angry at your anger. Don’t try to chase it away or suppress it. Acknowledge that it has arisen and take care of it.

– Thich Nhat Hanh

Traind in deplina constiinta, nu cautam sa ne alungam sau sa ne suprimam sentimentele negative.

Nu te supara pe supararea ta. Multumeste-te sa o recunosti si ai grija…