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发帖数: 38600 | 1 http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/04/07/why-is-the-us-honoring-a
If things proceed normally, President Barak Obama will soon proclaim April
11, 2014 “Education and Sharing Day, U.S.A.” Despite the innocuous name,
this day honors the memory of a religious leader whose lesser-known
teachings help fuel some of the most violent attacks against Palestinians by
extremist Israeli settlers and soldiers.
The leader being honored on this day is Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson,
charismatic head of a mystical/fundamentalist version of Judaism. Every year
since 1978, a Presidential Proclamation, often accompanied by a
Congressional Resolution (the 1990 one had 219 sponsors), has declared
Schneerson’s birthday an official national day of observance.
Congress first passed a Resolution honoring Schneerson in 1975. Three years
later a Joint Congressional Resolution called on President Jimmy Carter to
proclaim “Education Day, U.S.A.” on the anniversary of Schneerson’s birth
. The idea was to set aside a day to honor both education and the alleged
educational work of Schneerson and the religious sect he headed up.
Carter, like Congress, dutifully obeyed the Schneerson-initiated resolution,
as has every president since. And some individual states are now enacting
their own observances of Schneerson’s birthday, with Minnesota and Alabama
leading the way.
Schneerson and his movement are an extremely mixed bag.
Schneerson has been praised widely for a public persona and organization
that emphasized “deep compassion and insight,” worked to bring many
secular Jews “back” into the fold, created numerous schools around the
world, and had offered, in the words of the Jewish Virtual Library, “social
-service programs and humanitarian aid to all people, regardless of
religious affiliation or background.”
However, there is also a less attractive underside often at odds with such
public perceptions. And some of the more extreme parts of Schneerson’s
teachings – such as that Jews are a completely different species than non-
Jews, and that non-Jews exist only to serve Jews – have been largely hidden
, it appears, even from many who consider themselves his followers.
As we will see, such views profoundly impact the lives of Palestinians
living – and dying – under Israeli occupation and military invasions.
Who was Rabbi Schneerson? |
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