What Makes People Tick?

 Is there one great truth? One thing, or several things, that connect all religions? Is there one great universal truth? If there is... What is the great universal truth?  Certainly there are themes that seem universal, that come back in many different creeds and many different religions. But really, is there one universal truth that we can glean from the world's religions and spiritual systems? Trust and believe in something greater than yourself. Be kind to the needy. Be kind to the poor. Be kind to the orphans. Be kind to widows. Love your neighbour as yourself. Treat others as you'd want to be treated yourself. Don't lie. Don't kill. Treat your parents well. Have faith. Be kind. Do good. Show kindness. Be compassionate. Treat others well. Be kind to those who are less fortunate than you are. Those are themes that seem to come back time and again in the world's major religions.  Knowing only what I know, I want to write that the one great universal truth is this:...

Never Again... What does that actually mean in today's world? This What Makes People Tick? blog post looks at what I learnt about the Holocaust as a child, as a teenager and as an adult; it examines my current views on Judaism and it explains why I believe that it is still vital to educate everyone about the horrors of the Holocaust. Writing a post earlier this month about The non-Jewish Nanny who educates the world about Judaism , I realised that I also wanted to write about my own history of learning about Judaism. As writing about a sensitive topic like the Holocaust doesn't feel appropriate when also gushing about a young woman's social media pages, I figured that a separate post was in order. I was born in the early eighties and growing up in Europe, much of what I learnt about Jews and Judaism had to do with the Second World War. Back when I was in primary school in the nineties, we learnt a lot about the War. And back then, my grandparents and many others of their g...

Me Too? Yes. Me Too. #MeToo It's something I don't talk about all that much unless there's a reason to. Partly because it can make me feel weak to admit it. Partly because I'd much rather forget. Partly because society tells us not to make a big deal out of nothing. Partly because I just want to keep going instead of crying or feeling sorry for myself. Partly because being harassed is something so terribly common that we've just accepted it as something to grin and bear, like crying babies on the bus or people loudly yelling into their phones on the metro or intimidating groups of teens on the train. But yes. Me too. Yes I've been harassed. Yes, I've been hassled. Yes, I've had strangers grab different parts of my body while walking down the street. Yes, I've been insulted and assaulted. Yes I've been objectified. Yes I've been told I'm a stuck up bitch because I wanted to enjoy the live music at a pub instead of being chatted up b...

The Dalai Lama writes an amazingly inspiring and insightful piece which puts into eloquent words that which I stumblingly hope to confer to the world in my own way through this blog - we are all human, we all think and feel, we all need to learn to share our planet and we all deserve to live with dignity and respect. I originally started writing this post in February 2015, then attempted to continue it later that year, before abandoning it again. It is now October 2017 and after resetting every password for this blog and the associated Twitter account, I've come back to it after barely thinking about it for more than two years. There are things I want to say, things I want to speak out about, things I want to write about... Doing that under my own name isn't always the smartest idea in this day and age, which is why I created this blog in the first place. What I write about however isn't all that controversial - equality for all, humans from different backgrounds underst...

Read an article today that got me thinking. Sharing the first paragraph of the article here. Hope you'll head over to the Jewish Press to read the entire article. It's worth reading and the question the article asks is worth thinking about, no matter what you think about the Israel / Palestine situation. With the BDS movement gaining momentum, many on the Israeli Left are increasing their calls for negotiations under the premise of a two-state solution. In their minds, the two-state solution is the only practical solution that could end the international isolation of Israel and lead to peace. But in the midst of the exhausted political ping-pong of whether or not the two-state solution is actually viable, the most important question often goes unasked – what if they are wrong? Source: What if they are wrong? | The Jewish Press | 22 June 2015 Now, whether you went and read the article or not - and I hope you did, it's worth reading - do yourself a favour and use your i...

Religion pic.twitter.com/FmByPLkuUu — Mahatma K. Gandhi (@GandhiWisdom) June 19, 2015

Yom HaShoah How do you remember a tragedy some seventy years ago when you see it happening all over again, all around you and all around the world? How do you tell your children that those bad and evil people who murdered so many last century are not dead and gone as we once thought but still here, just wearing different faces, shouting different slogans? How do you honour your family members, the ones still here who lived through it and the ones long gone, murdered or gassed or shot or simply left to rot, how do you remember them without the promise, always, of Never Again? How do you tell your children, your neighbours, your ancestors and future generations? How do you explain to them that despite the horror and the knowledge and the pain, it is happening again? In Brussels (Belgium) where three innocents were murdered at a museum. In Paris (France) where four were murdered at a kosher store. In Copenhagen (Denmark) where a man was killed outside a party. In Amsterdam (Nethe...

Some quotes by the amazing and inspiring Yoko Ono. Dear Yoko,  You make me want to be a better person.  Thank you for being you. “War is over if you want it.” “ You change the world by being yourself.” “A dream you dream alone is only a dream.  A dream you dream together is reality.” “Remember, each one of us has the power to change the world.  Just start thinking peace, and the message will spread quicker than you think.”

If you care about what happens in the world, in the United States, in Israel, in the Middle East, in Europe... If you care about the survival of freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of opinion and free press... Watch this video of (former mayor of New York) Rudy Giuliani speaking out about world issues, the danger of power in the wrong hands and how to make the world a better place.  I am - shock horror - quite a fan of (American president) Obama and very much appreciate that he is attempting to bring the entire world together or at least that he's trying to talk to the Arab / Muslim world, not just to white / European / western / Christian countries. What I think is ridiculous is that the American president does not seem to want to link terrorists motivated by (their particular version of) Islam to Islam as a global religion .  I refuse to blame all of Islam (as a religion) or all Muslims for the horrible and despicable acts of a relatively small gro...

English soccer team Liverpool sends and then deletes a Rosh Hashanah Tweet after protests against the Tweet as the Jerusalem Post reports. Rational people might ask why. The answer is given by the article's title: Liverpool deleted the tweet after 'anti-Semitic posts'. Yes, you did read that right. “ Liverpool FC would like to wish all our Jewish supporters around the world a happy new year. #RoshHashanah ,” the tweet read. A few hours later, the tweet was removed after the anti-Semitic abuse ensued. The story was originally reported by The Guardian.  “Due to a number of offensive comments that were attached to a tweet on the official LFC twitter account, the tweet and comments have since been removed from the account,” the club told the Guardian. Source: English soccer club Liverpool deletes Rosh HaShanah tweet after anti-Semitic posts , The Jerusalem Post  Source: Jerusalem Post How judgemental is our society that wishing Jewish people the world over a happy ...

The world today is a mess. By that I mean that humans have made it into a mess. War and disease in Africa, rape and murder in the Middle East, social and economic upheavals in the west. People hate, murder, rape, abuse, lie to, threaten, torture and mistreat others. When it comes to looking at the world as a whole (not on a local or community level), I believe it is fair to say that we don't help each other, we don't think of the whole world as one family of humanity and we often treat other people as if they were less than us or beneath us. Even though we have thousands of years of history to learn from, it seems we just keep repeating the same mistakes. Even though we can do a quick online search to read works by authors such as Homer and Hippocrates, it seems we can't learn from them. Even though we can read about campaigns of Roman leaders who lived more than 2000 years ago, it seems we can't learn from them. Events in the past few months have shown me that we ...

In October 2001, almost thirteen years ago, Robert Worth published an article in the New York Times entitled "The Deep Intellectual Roots of Islamic Terror." In the article, he quotes Princeton professor of Near Eastern Studies Michael Doran who talks about terrorist group Al-Qaeda and its leader Osama bin Laden. Remember, this article was published only a month after the horrible events of September 11, 2001. ''Many Americans seem to think that bin Laden is just a violent cult leader,'' said Michael Doran. ... ''But the truth is that he is tapping into a minority Islamic tradition with a wide following and a deep history.''  Although many Muslims are horrified at the notion that their faith is being used to justify terrorism, Mr. bin Laden's advocacy of jihad, or holy war, against the West is a natural extension of what some radical Islamists have been saying and doing since the 1930's. These radicals were jailed, tortured and oft...

Vox.com presents an interesting article with 40 maps that show the start and spread of the internet. It looks like it all started in America, spreading from there to Europe and beyond. Reading this article made me wonder - didn't Dan Brown once write that the internet started at CERN? (Or some part of the technology that makes the internet possible anyway... Heck, it was a long, long time ago that I read his books...) "The internet increasingly pervades our lives, delivering information to us no matter where we are. It takes a complex system of cables, servers, towers, and other infrastructure, developed over decades, to allow us to stay in touch with our friends and family so effortlessly. Here are 40 maps that will help you better understand the internet — where it came from, how it works, and how it's used by people around the world." Source:  40 maps that explain the internet , Vox.com Maps 14 and 15 shows domain names around the world. The first map shows E...

Source: Propaganda Materials - Flyers , Church of the FSM One learns something new every day... Today, I'd like to tell you about something I first heard of some time ago. The first time I heard of the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, I thought it was a joke. Even today, I still wonder if this Church is only a farce or actually captures the essence of belief in the Divine. Back to the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster and let me assure you, Yes, you read that right . First thought up as an argument against teaching Creationism and Intelligent Design in schools in the USA, this idea has turned into an actual religion. Once upon a time, there was a Flying Spaghetti Monster who created the Heavens and the Earth...  No wait, stop laughing. I'm serious. This comes from the Church's website: Q: How do Pastafarians believe our world was created?   A: We believe the Flying Spaghetti Monster created the world much as it exists today, but for reasons unkno...

A Soldier's Mothe r is the personal blog of the mother of a soldier in the Israeli army, the IDF (Israeli Defense Forces). Writing to ease her worries, to share her thoughts and to tell her story to the world, this particular soldier's mother started blogging about her eldest son Elie's entry into the IDF in 2007. Now, A Soldier's Mother will be going to print. There's a fundraising campaign to raise money to print and publish the book:  Help A Soldier's Mother get published at Jewcer.com. I first started reading A Soldier's Mother several years ago. I was looking for new blogs to read, blogs by people from interesting places or those writing about interesting things. I wanted to expand my horizons; get to know different worlds and different perspectives - A Soldier's Mother fit the bill on all counts. Paula Stern is an American Jewish woman who moved to Israel with her husband and three young children over twenty years ago. Now a famed blogger...

Source :  The Happy Nomads -  Rainy Day Hikes and Emily the Cow “War is over ... If you want it.” ― John Lennon Dreaming of peace is easy. Working towards achieving peace -- true and lasting global peace based on respect for all of humanity and all living things, mutual understanding between peoples and common goals the world over -- is a lot harder than just dreaming of it. Yet peace is something worth dreaming of and also worth fighting for, or rather - It is something worth struggling for, worth working towards and worth supporting unconditionally. “If everyone demanded peace instead of another television set, then there'd be peace.” ― John Lennon True . Sad but true. Perhaps more true today than it was when John Lennon lived, over thirty years ago. Imagine if, instead of demanding things like television sets, mobile phones and music players we start demanding justice, equality, understanding, cooperation, liberty, religious freedom and peace for a...

Source : Pew Research Center Sometimes you need to read the numbers and see the statistics to understand just how often something happens. Take harassment or discrimination based on one's religion, for example. Pew Research reports that in Europe, 51% of Christians, 69% of Jews and 71% of Muslims face harassment. In other parts of the world, the numbers are just as shocking. Take the Middle East and North Africa where 65% of Christians, 70% of Jews and 75% of Muslims face religious harassment. "In nearly three out of every four countries of the world, religious groups experience harassment by individuals or groups in society. The harassment and intimidation take many forms, including physical or verbal assaults; desecration of holy sites; and discrimination against religious groups in employment, education and housing." Source : Social Harassment of Religious Groups , Pew Research Center

I am autistic. To be precise, I have Asperger's Syndrome. Autism comes in many varieties, shapes and sizes. You can't always see on the outside what someone is like on the inside, which is often quite true for autism. This means that many people think of me as someone who is reserved, shy or quiet while that's not the case at all. This BBC - My Autism and Me YouTube video explains autism in a simple way and shows several different autistic children. It looks at different gradations of autism and how people cope with being autistic, feeling different and living in a non-autistic world.  Source : The "AustismAssociationS" channel on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ejpWWP1HNGQ Rosie who presents the video has Asperger's Syndrome just as I do. As she explains, having Asperger's "means that my brain works a bit differently."  Yes, it does indeed.  I very much recommend this video as (for the most part) Rosie explains her own au...

"Imagine there's no countries It isn't hard to do Nothing to kill or die for And no religion too Imagine all the people Living life in peace... You may say I'm a dreamer But I'm not the only one I hope someday you'll join us And the world will be as one"

While focusing on looks or the 'beautification'of one's exterior is most certainly NOT one of our aim at this blog, we do very much appreciate the weird, the wonderful, the special and the extraordinary.  Which is why we're thrilled to share this  S F Times  article with you all. The article presents drawings that are so amazing and life-like that it is impossible to tell that they are not actual photographs!