"Brit-Am Now"-657
Contents:
1. Thank You
2. Brit-Am Interested in Radio Interviews
3. DNA Four Mothers of Present Day European Jews?
4. Rabbi Avraham Feld: Notes on Redemption
5. Brit-Am Message Definitely Does Help Others
1. Thank You
From Baxter
THANK YOU FOR ALL YOUR TIME AND EFFORTS IN THIS PROJECT-THEY ARE EVERLASTING.
2. Brit-Am Interested in Radio Interviews
Our recent Radio Interview on Arutz-7 was very succesful.
We would like to do more of the same.
Perhaps there are those amongst you who could interest
radio programs in your area to consider us.
These days telephone connections and conference calls etc are not
necessarily so-expensive and not difficult to arrange.
3. DNA Four Mothers of Present Day European Jews?
From BBC News
'Four mothers' for Europe's Jews
Almost half of Europe's Jews are descended from just four women who lived 1,000 years ago, a study says.
Scientists studied the mitochondrial DNA - passed from mother to daughter - of 11,000 women of Ashkenazi Jewish origin living in 67 countries.
The Ashkenazis moved from the Mid-East to Italy and then to Eastern Europe, where their population exploded in the 13th Century, the scientists say.
One of the authors said the study shows the importance of Jewish mothers.
"This I could tell you even without the paper," Dr Doron Behar of the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology told Reuters news agency.
Genetic signature
The four women are thought to have lived in the Middle East about 1,000 years ago but they may not have lived anywhere near each other, according to the study published in the American Journal of Human Genetics.
However, they bequeathed genetic signatures to their descendents, which do not appear in non-Jews and are rare in Jews not of Ashkenazi origin.
The Ashkenazis are thought to have travelled from the Middle East to Italy in the first or second Centuries.
In Central and Eastern Europe, many spoke Yiddish - a form of German, mixed with Hebrew.
Ashkenazi comes from an old Hebrew word for Germany.
By the outbreak of World War II, there were some nine million, some two-thirds of whom were killed by the Nazis.
There are now some eight million people of Ashkenazi origin living around the world, the researchers say.
Some 3.5m, or 40%, of them are descended from the four women, they say.
Story from BBC NEWS:
4. Rabbi Avraham Feld: Notes on Redemption
The Men of the Great Assembly [at the time of the return of the Jews from Exile in Babylon under Ezra and Nehemiah]
organized the blessing that G-d is the redeemer of Israel only as the seventh blessing in a serious of praises and requests. Minimally, this means that we have to go through many improvements until we reach the golden days of brotherly love and goodness and goodwill. This, opposed to having the request for redemption as a first request. The saintly sages knew that much metaphysical spiritual infrastructure needed to be in place before blessing G-d as a redeemer and asking for the manifestation of this redemptive power.
(Yerushalmi, Yoma 3:2) R. Chiya the Great and R. Shimon ben Chalafta were walking in the Arbel valley at dawn when they saw the glimmering of the morning star. R. Chiya the Great said to R. Shimon ben Chalafta: "My master, so is the redemption of Israel at first little by little, but as it progresses it grows greater and greater." Why so? When I sit in the darkness the Lord is a light unto me. (Michah 7:8).
Brit-Am Message Definitely Does Help Others
Brit-Am requires the full-time dedication of Yair Davidiy together with the part-time
(and sometimes almost full time) help of several volunteers.
All this requires energy and funding.
Brit-Am functions through selling publications
and through the offerings and occasional tithes of others.
This enables us to get by
and we manage to do quite a bit on a meagre budget.
Nevertheless we need and want to do more
and for this we need additional support.
Please send us what you can if you can.
The Brit-Am message definitely does help others so by helping us you could
be doing a great deal good, more than any of us realize.
God bless you all
Yair Davidiy