RK, could I make a format suggestion? when you're responding to a single Talk segment (e.g., Palestine, your responses to SKissane), it's easier to follow if you go to the end of what you're responding to and do it in one segment (indented is best! that's really obvious - just start your first line with a colon and it'll indent) or indent a response after each of the other person's paragraphs. I personally practice the former, since it doesn't do as much violence to the flow of that person's written statement. I agree with you about the points of millenial-old variants of Judaism; we can CALL them Judaism, but the one that lasted is it. I have similar problems with people equating Gnostic sects and the Catholic church, myself. --MichaelTinkler
RK, may I request an article on Sunni and Shiite, or whatever the appropriate terms might be? There is already an article on Sunni, but I think it is pretty bad.
Why do you frequently write "Yasir Arafat"? Doing a search on Google, the spelling "Yasser Arafat" gives 186,000 hits, but "Yasir Arafat" only 18,000. I suggest we use the more common spelling. -- SJK
Some of us are interested in this. Can you give more info? And any idea what the Sephardim thought on this issue? Thanks.