A little Cash on Hand ... how many romantic dinners would $215.7 billion buy you in Paris

A little Cash on Hand ... how many romantic dinners would $215.7 billion buy you in at a Michelin Three Start Restautant in Paris and come to think about with who, anyone and all. Can anyone resist a man with $215.7 in  his wallet: a women with $102.6 billion in her garter belt.


Apple was reportedly considering buying media giant Time-Warner late last year, which would've given it a huge content business including media brands like CNN and HBO. It also would've cost at least $60 billion, which is Time-Warner's current market capitalization.

But Apple could easily have afforded it with plenty of money left over. As this chart from Statista shows, Apple had more than $200 billion in cash and marketable securities at the end of 2015, more than any other U.S. company. A lot of other tech companies also have billions stashed away, including Microsoft, Google, Cisco, and Oracle.

Most of this cash is stored overseas, and buying a US company like Time-Warner could have meant a pretty big tax bill, but there's no question that Apple could make huge splashy acquisitions like this if it wants to.

Yiddish in Zion

Yiddish Language and Culture




• Yiddish was the language of Ashkenazic Jews, but not Sephardic Jews

• Yiddish is based on German, Hebrew and other languages

• Yiddish uses an alphabet based on Hebrew

• There are standards for transliterating Yiddish

• Yiddish was criticized as a barrier to assimilation

• Yiddish developed rich literature, theater and music
S'iz shver tsu zayn a Yid

(It's tough to be a Jew)

      - Yiddish folk saying

1798	[Yiddish] ... a language without rules, mutilated and unintelligible without our circle, must be completely abandoned.       - David Friedlander, a member of the Haskalah Jewish enlightenment movement
1978	Yiddish has not yet said its last word.       - Isaac Bashevis Singer, upon receiving the Nobel Prize for Literature for his writings in Yiddish

The Yiddish Language

Yiddish was at one time the international language of Ashkenazic Jews (the Jews of Central and Eastern Europe and their descendants). A hybrid of Hebrew and medieval German, Yiddish takes about three-quarters of its vocabulary from German, but borrows words liberally from Hebrew and many other languages from the many lands where Ashkenazic Jews have lived. It has a grammatical structure all its own, and is written in an alphabet based on Hebrew characters. Scholars and universities classify Yiddish as a Germanic language, though some have questioned that classification.

Yiddish was never a part of Sephardic Jewish culture (the culture of the Jews of Spain, Portugal, the Balkans, North Africa and the Middle East). They had their own international language known as Ladino or Judesmo, which is a hybrid of medieval Spanish and Hebrew in much the same way that Yiddish combines German and Hebrew.

At its height less than a century ago, Yiddish was understood by an estimated 11 million of the world's 18 million Jews, and many of them spoke Yiddish as their primary language. Yiddish has fallen on hard times, a victim of both assimilation and murder. Today, less than a quarter of a million people in the United States speak Yiddish, about half of them in New York. Most Jews know only a smattering of Yiddish words, and most of those words are unsuitable for polite company. But in recent years, Yiddish has experienced a resurgence and is now being taught at many universities. There are even Yiddish Studies departments at Columbia and Oxford, among others, and many Jewish communities provide classes to learn Yiddish. Many Jews today want to regain touch with their heritage through this nearly-lost language.

Yiddish is referred to as "mame loshn" ("loshn" rhymes with "caution"), which means "mother tongue," although it is not entirely clear whether this is a term of affection or derision. Mame loshn was the language of women and children, to be contrasted with loshn koydesh, the holy tongue of Hebrew that was studied only by men. (And before the feminists start grinding their axes, let me point out that most gentile women and many gentile men in that time and place could not read or write at all, while most Jewish women could at least read and write Yiddish).

The word "Yiddish" is the Yiddish word for "Jewish," so it is technically correct to refer to the Yiddish language as "Jewish" (though it is never correct to refer to Hebrew as "Jewish"). At the turn of the century, American Jews routinely referred to the Yiddish language as "Jewish," and one of my elderly aunts continues to do so. However, that usage has become unfashionable in recent years and people are likely to think you are either ignorant or bigoted if you refer to any language as "Jewish." Likewise, the Yiddish word "Yid" simply means "Jew" and is not offensive if used while speaking Yiddish or in a conversation liberally sprinkled with Yiddish terms, but I wouldn't recommend using the word in English because it has been used as an offensive term for far too long.

The History of Yiddish

It is generally believed that Yiddish became a language of its own some time between 900 and 1100 C.E., but it is difficult to be certain because in its early days, Yiddish was primarily a spoken language rather than a written language. It is clear, however, that at this time even great biblical scholars like Rashi were using words from local languages written in Hebrew letters to fill in the gaps when the Hebrew language lacked a suitable term or when the reader might not be familiar with the Hebrew term. For example, in his commentary on Gen. 19:28, when Rashi comes across the Hebrew word qiytor (a word that is not used anywhere else in the Bible), he explains the word by writing, in Hebrew letters, "torche b'la-az" (that is, "torche in French").

It is believed that Yiddish began similarly, by writing the local languages in the Hebrew characters that were more familiar to Yiddish speakers, just as Americans today often write Hebrew in Roman characters (the letters used in English).

The Yiddish language thrived for many centuries and grew farther away from German, developing its own unique rules and pronunciations. Yiddish also developed a rich vocabulary of terms for the human condition, expressing our strengths and frailties, our hopes and fears and longings. Many of these terms have found their way into English, because there is no English word that can convey the depth and precision of meaning that the Yiddish word can. Yiddish is a language full of humor and irony, expressing subtle distinctions of human character that other cultures barely recognize let alone put into words. What other language distinguishes between a shlemiel (a person who suffers due to his own poor choices or actions), a shlimazl (a person who suffers through no fault of his own) and a nebech (a person who suffers because he makes other people's problems his own). An old joke explains the distinction: a shlemiel spills his soup, it falls on the shlimazl, and the nebech cleans it up!

As Jews became assimilated into the local culture, particularly in Germany in the late 1700s and 1800s, the Yiddish language was criticized as a barbarous, mutilated ghetto jargon that was a barrier to Jewish acceptance in German society and would have to be abandoned if we hoped for emancipation. Yiddish was viewed in much the same way that people today view Ebonics (in fact, I have heard Yiddish jokingly referred to as "Hebonics"), with one significant difference: Ebonics is criticized mostly by outsiders; Yiddish was criticized mostly by Jews who had spoken it as their native language. Thus the criticism of Yiddish was largely a manifestation of Jewish self-hatred rather than antisemitism.

At the same time that German Jews were rejecting the language, Yiddish was beginning to develop a rich body of literature, theater and music.

Yiddish Literature

From the earliest days of the language, there were a few siddurim (prayer books) for women written in Yiddish, but these were mostly just translations of existing Hebrew siddurim.

The first major work written originally in Yiddish was Tsena uRena (Come Out and See), more commonly known by a slurring of the name as Tsenerena. Written in the early 1600s, Tsenerena is a collection of traditional biblical commentary and folklore tied to the weekly Torah readings. It was written for women, who generally did not read Hebrew and were not as well-versed in biblical commentary, so it is an easier read than some of the Hebrew commentaries written for men, but it still packs a great deal of theological rigor. Translations of this work are still in print and available from Artscroll Publishers.

In the mid-1800s, Yiddish newspapers began to appear, such as Kol meVaser (Voice of the People), Der Hoyzfraynd (The Home Companion), Der Yid (The Jew), Di Velt (The World) and Der Fraynd (The Friend), as well as socialist publications like Der Yidisher Arbeter (The Jewish Worker) and Arbeter-Shtime (Workers' Voice). Some Yiddish language newspapers exist to this day, including Forverts (the Yiddish Forward), founded in 1897 and still in print, both in English and Yiddish versions.

At about the same time, secular Jewish fiction began to emerge. The religious authorities of that time did not approve of these irreverent Yiddish writings dealing with modern secular and frivolous themes. Some strictly observant people refused to even set type for these writers because they were so offended by their works, but Jewish people throughout Europe embraced them wholeheartedly.

The first of the great Yiddish writers of this period was Sholem Yankev Abramovitsch, known by the pen name Mendele Moykher Sforim (little Mendel, the bookseller). Abramovitsch was a respected writer in Hebrew and used the pen name when writing in the second-class language of Yiddish. He wrote stories that were deeply rooted in folk tradition but focused on modern characters. Perhaps his greatest work is his tales of Benjamin the Third, which is thematically similar to Don Quixote. Mendele's works gave Yiddish a literary legitimacy and respectability that it was lacking before that time. I have been told that there is a street in Jerusalem called Mendele Mocher Sefarim Street.

The next of the great Yiddish writers was Yitzhak Leib Peretz. (I.L. Peretz). Like Mendele, his stories often had roots in Jewish folk tradition, but favored a modern viewpoint. He seemed to view tradition with irony bordering on condescension.

Perhaps the Yiddish writer best known to Americans is Solomon Rabinovitch, who wrote under the name Sholem Aleichem (a Yiddish greeting meaning, "peace be upon you!"). Sholem Aleichem was a contemporary of Mark Twain and is often referred to as "the Jewish Mark Twain," although legend has it that Mark Twain, upon meeting Sholem Aleichem, described himself as "the American Sholem Aleichem"! Americans know Sholem Aleichem for his tales of Tevye the milkman and his daughters, which were adapted into the musical Fiddler on the Roof. How true is the musical to the stories? Based on my readings of the stories, I would say that Fiddler is a faithful adaptation of the plotlines of the Tevye stories, but the theme of "tradition" that pervades the musical is artificially imposed on the material. The stories certainly turn on the tension between the old world and the modern world, but Tevye's objections to his daughters' marriages are not merely because of tradition. For example, in the original stories, Tevye opposes Hodel's marriage to Ferfel not so much because of tradition, but because Ferfel is being sent to prison for his socialist political activities! Also, there is no fiddler in Sholem Aleichem's stories.

One last Yiddish writer deserves special note: Isaac Bashevis Singer (middle name pronounced "buh-SHEH-viss"), who in 1978 won a Nobel Prize for Literature for his writings in Yiddish. He gave his acceptance speech in both Yiddish and English, and spoke with great affection of the vitality of the Yiddish language. Singer was born in Poland, the son of a Chasidic rabbi. He wrote under his full name, Isaac Bashevis Singer or I.B. Singer, to avoid confusion with his older and (at the time) better-known brother, Israel Joshua Singer, who wrote as I. Singer. Isaac Bashevis Singer wrote mostly short stories, but also some novels and stories for children. Like the others, his stories tended to deal with the tension between traditional views and modern times. Many of these are available in print in English. Perhaps the best known of his many writings is Yentl the Yeshiva Boy, which was adapted into a stage play in 1974 and later loosely adapted into a movie starring Barbara Streisand. It is worth noting that although the movie was quite popular, Singer hated the movie and wrote a brutal editorial in the New York Times about it (January 29, 1984). He thought that Streisand placed too much emphasis on the Yentl character (which she played) to the exclusion of other characters, and that her revised ending (Yentl immigrating to America instead of moving on to another Polish religious school) was untrue to the character.

Yiddish Theater

Yiddish culture has a rich theatrical tradition. It has been suggested that Yiddish theater began with the "Purimshpil," outrageous comedic improvisational plays based on the biblical book of Esther, performed in synagogues by amateurs as part of the drunken festivities related to the Purim holiday.

Professional Yiddish theater began with Abraham Haim Lipke Goldfaden, who wrote, produced and directed dozens of Yiddish plays in the last quarter of the 19th century. Goldfaden and his troupe traveled throughout Europe performing Yiddish plays for Jewish audiences, and later moved to New York City where they opened a theater.

Many traveling Yiddish theater groups also performed Yiddish versions of existing plays, most notably Shakespeare and Goethe. With apologies to Star Trek fans ... Shakespeare's Hamlet cannot be fully appreciated until it is seen in the original Yiddish.

Permanent Yiddish theaters sprung up in cities around the world, including Odessa, Vilna and New York City. In New York, Yiddish theater was jump-started by 12-year-old immigrant Boris Thomashefsky, who fell in love with the European Yiddish show tunes sung by his coworkers in a tobacco sweatshop. He persuaded a rich tavern owner to finance the endeavor and introduced Yiddish theater to New York with an Abraham Goldfaden play in 1881. Over the next few decades, Yiddish theater grew substantially in New York, but most of these theaters no longer exist. New York's Folksbiene Yiddish Theater, founded in 1915, is the oldest continuous venue for Yiddish theatre in the world and continues to have an active calendar of Yiddish-language productions, now with "English supertitles" at all performances.

Yiddish plays tended to be melodramas with strong traditional Jewish values, often with song and dance numbers incorporated into the serious plots. Yiddish theater also included many comedies, in America often focusing on intergenerational conflicts between the immigrants and their American-born children.

Yiddish Music

Like Yiddish theater, Yiddish music ultimately has its roots in Jewish religion. The Jewish love of music is seen in the earliest stories in the Bible: in Exodus 15, both Moses and Miriam lead the Children of Israel in song after G-d drowns the pursuing Egyptians in the sea; King David is often portrayed playing musical instruments. Music is an integral part of Jewish worship: most of the prayers are sung or chanted. Even the Torah is read to a traditional chant. It has been customary for hundreds of years for synagoguesto have a professional chazzan, a person with musical skills to lead the song-filled prayer services.

Yiddish culture has produced a wealth of music, from lullabies to love songs, from mournful songs of loss and exile to the wild dance music of klezmer.

Yiddish music traditionally was played on string instruments (fiddle, viola, etc.), the tsimbl (a Jewish instrument similar to a dulcimer) and flute, perhaps because these instruments were relatively quiet and would not attract the attention of hostile gentiles. In later days, however, the clarinet became a staple of Yiddish music because of it's ability to emulate the wailing or laughing sound of the human voice.

The style of music most commonly associated with Yiddish culture is klezmer. The word "klezmer" comes from the Hebrew words "klei zemer" which means "instruments of song," and probably indicates the important role that instruments played in this kind of music. You've probably heard klezmer music in the background of television shows or movies featuring Jews: it is normally characterized by the wailing, squealing sounds of clarinets. It has also influenced some modern bands: I was in a bookstore a while ago and heard what I thought was klezmer music, only to be told it was Squirrel Nut Zipper! The klezmer style is based on cantoral singing in synagogue: simple melodies in a minor key with extensive ornamentation, such as fast trills and sliding notes. It's hard to explain unless you've heard it.

You can hear some traditional Yiddish music in the samples of Best of Yiddish Songs and Klezmer Musicon Amazon.com. The track Doyne/Kiever Freylekhs is a particularly good example of klezmer dance music.

Alef-Beyz: The Yiddish Alphabet

Yiddish is written with Hebrew letters, but the letters are used somewhat differently than in Hebrew. In fact, the first time I saw the familiar Yiddish phrase "oy vey" written in Yiddish letters, I thought the spelling must be a mistake!

The Yiddish alphabet is called the alef-beyz for its first two letters.

The biggest difference between the Hebrew alefbet and the Yiddish alef-beyz is in the use of vowels: in Hebrew, vowels and other pronunciation aids are ordinarily not written, and when they are written, they are dots and dashes added to the text in ways that do not affect the physical length of the text. In Yiddish, however, many of the Hebrew letters have been adapted to serve as vowels and the pronunciation aids in Hebrew are reflected in the consonants. Vowels and other pronunciation aids are always written unless the Yiddish word comes from Hebrew, in which case the Yiddish word is written as it is in Hebrew, without the vowel points but with the dagesh (dot in the middle).

When a Hebrew word is combined with a Yiddish suffix, the Hebrew part is spelled as in Hebrew and the Yiddish part as in Yiddish. For example, the Yiddish word "Shabbesdik" (for the Sabbath; festive) combines the Hebrew word Shabbat (Sabbath), spelled as in Hebrew, with the Yiddish adjective suffix "-dik" (set aside for, suitable for, in the mood for, "-ish"), spelled as in Yiddish.

In addition, some of the most common Hebrew letters are rarely used in Yiddish, being used only if the Yiddish word comes from Hebrew. These rarely-used letters all have the same sound as another Hebrew letter, and reducing their use simplifies spelling when bringing words in from languages that weren't originally written using these letters. For example, there are three different Hebrew letters that make the sound "s": Samekh, Sin and the soft sound of Tav (according to Ashkenazic pronunciation). Which one do you use? It depends on the origin of the word. Words brought in from Hebrew use the original Hebrew spelling, which may be any of these three letters, but words brought in from other languages will always use Samekh. The word vaser (water, from the German wasser) is spelled with a Samekh, but the word simkhah (celebration, from Hebrew) is spelled with a Sin and the word Shabbes (Sabbath, from Hebrew) ends with a Sof.

The illustration below shows the Yiddish alphabet. You may wish to review the Hebrew alphabet to see the differences.

To hear how these letters are pronounced, check out the alef-beyz page on YIVO's website (requires Real Player), which pronounces the name of the Yiddish letter, then a Yiddish word that begins with the sound, then the English translation of that word. Unfortunately, YIVO lacks audio for many of the vowel sounds, but they provide explanations of pronunciation.

Here some things to notice:

• The letter Alef, which is always silent in Hebrew, has three versions in Yiddish: one that is silent, one that is pronounced "ah" (like the "a" in "father"), and one that is pronounced "o" or "aw" (a bit like the "o" in "or" or "more").
• In Hebrew, Vav can be pronounced as V, O (as in home) or U (like the oo in room). In Yiddish, Vov alone is pronounced "u"; a Double-Vov is pronounced "v," and the nearest equivalent of the Hebrew "o" sound is the "oy" sound of Vov-Yud.
• In Yiddish, the letter Yud can be pronounced as a "y" sound (as in "yellow") or a short "i" sound (as in "it"); in Hebrew, it is always either a "y" sound or silent (identifying and modifying a preceding vowel).
• There are combinations of letters in Yiddish to account for consonant sounds that do not exist in Hebrew, such as zh (like the second "g" in "garage" or the "s" in "measure"), dzh (j as in judge) and tsh (like the "ch" in chair).
• Combinations of Vov and Yud are used to handle additional vowel sounds.
• Melupm Vov and Khirek Yud are used to clarify that the Vov or Yud is not to be combined with an adjacent letter into a different pronunciation. For example Double-Yud is a letter combination pronounced as the "ey" in "they," but the word "Yiddish" begins with two separate Yuds: one for the Y and one for the i. To clarify that these Yuds are not combined into an "ey" sound, the word Yiddish begins with a Yud, then a Khirek Yud. See the illustration in the heading of this page.
• As in Hebrew, some letters are drawn differently when they occur at the end of the word. Most of these letters are named "langer" (longer) because, well, they are! The final version of Mem, which is not longer, is named Shlos Mem.
• In Hebrew, the dot in the middle of Kaf, Pei and Tav and on top of Sin is written only in pointed texts. In Yiddish, it is always written. Note that Shin in Yiddish, unlike Hebrew, never uses a dot. Remember, though, that Kof, Sin and Tof are rarely used in Yiddish.
• The Yiddish letter Sof is equivalent to the soft sound of the Hebrew letter Tav, which is used inAshkenazic pronunciation but is not used in Sephardic pronunciation. Remember, though, that Sof is rarely used in Yiddish.

Yiddish Transliteration

Transliteration is the process of writing a language in a different alphabet than its native alphabet. The Yiddish language began by transliterating Germanic words into the Hebrew alphabet, so I find it unspeakably amusing that we now take Yiddish and convert it back into the original alphabet!

In Yiddish, unlike Hebrew, there is a widely-accepted standard for transliterating Yiddish into the Roman alphabet (the alphabet used in English). This standard was developed by theYIVO Institute for Jewish Research, the recognized world authority on Yiddish language, history and culture. Although the YIVO standard is widely accepted in general, it is routinely ignored for Yiddish words that have a widely-used, familiar spelling. For example, a certain Yiddish word appears in many American dictionaries spelled "chutzpah," but the correct YIVO transliteration would be "khutspe"!

A Few Useful Yiddish Words

Here are a few fun Yiddish or Yiddish-derived words that would not require your mother to wash your mouth out with soap. Many of them have found their way into common English conversation. Most of them are spelled as I commonly see them, rather than in strict accordance with YIVO transliteration rules. I've tried to focus on words that are less commonly heard in English (gentile English, anyway).

Bupkes (properly spelled bobkes and pronounced "BAUB-kess," but I usually see it spelled this way and pronounced to rhyme with "pup kiss")

Literally means "beans" in Russian; usually translated as "nothing," but it is used to criticize the fact that an amount is absurdly smaller than expected or deserved. Examples: "I was assigned to work on that project with Mike and he did bupkes!" or "I had to change jobs; the work wasn't bad, but they paid bupkes."

Chutzpah (rhymes with "foot spa", with the throat-clearing "kh" sound)

Nerve, as when the Three Stooges say, "The noive of that guy!!! Why, I oughta…" It expresses an extreme level of bold-faced arrogance and presumption. Example: "She asked me to drive her home, and once we were on the road she told to stop at the supermarket so she could pick something up. What chutzpah!"

Frum (like "from," but with the "u" sound in "put"; sort of sounds like the imitation of a car noise: brrrum-brrrum, but not vroom like in the car commercials)

Observant of Jewish law. Almost always used to describe someone else; almost never to describe yourself. "He wasn't raised very strict, but when he went away to college he became very frum." The Yiddish name "Fruma," derived from this word, was once quite popular.

Nu (rhymes with "Jew")

An all-purpose word that doesn't really mean anything, like "well," "so" or "wassup?" I usually hear it as a prompt for a response or explanation. A friend of mine who worked for a Jewish history museum joked that they answered the phone "Jew mu, nu?" When someone takes too long to respond in an online chat or trails off in the middle of a thought, I might type "nu?" (are you still there? are you answering?) If someone says something that doesn't seem to make any sense, you might say, "nu?" (what's that supposed to mean?)

Shmutz (rhymes with "puts")

Dirt. Refers to a trivial amount of nuisance dirt, not real filth. Example: "You have some shmutz on your shirt; brush it off."

Shmooze (rhymes with "booze")

Having a long, friendly chat. Can be used as a noun, but is usually used as a verb. Examples: "Come to our party! Eat, drink and shmooze!" or "Our salesman is very good at shmoozing the clients."

Tchatchke (almost rhymes with "gotcha")

1) Little toys; knick-knacks. 2) A pretty young thing, like a trophy wife. Examples: "The collector had so many tchatchkes that he had to buy a bigger house!" or "when my mother visits, she always brings tchatchkes for the kids" or "The boss divorced his wife; now he's dating some little tchatchke." The Yiddish spelling of the word uses the letter Tsadek, so it should be pronounced "tsatske," but I've always heard the word pronounced as if it were the "ch" in "chair."

Yiddish Links

There are many Yiddish sites on the web and many of them maintain a better list of links than I could ever hope to. I will point out only a few that I find useful, along with their links to other sites.

Forverts is a weekly American Jewish newspaper written in Yiddish. This is an excellent source if you want to try reading some useful, day-to-day Yiddish. It is written in the Yiddish alphabet, not transliteration.

The Yiddish Voice is a weekly Yiddish-language radio show based in the Boston area, which is available on streaming audio over the Internet. Their site has a nice list of Yiddish links.

YIVO Institute for Jewish Research is an organization dedicated to studying and preserving the history, society and culture of Ashkenazic Jewry. YIVO is the recognized leader in the study of the Yiddish language. They have a page of the alef-beyz with transliteration (Romanization) and pronunciation guides and an extensive list of Yiddish links.

Dr. Rafael Finkel, a computer science professor at the University of Kentucky, has a marvelous Yiddish typewriter online. Type a word in transliteration (Roman letters, according to YIVO rules of transliteration), and it will show you what it looks like in Yiddish letters. He also maintains a Yiddish song list and a number of Yiddish texts, as well as an extensive list of Yiddish links. See his index.

Suggestions for Further Reading, Viewing or Listening

The New Joys of Yiddish (Paperback): The original edition by Leo Rosten was the first Jewish book I ever owned. It examines a wide variety of useful Yiddish words, many of which have found their way into English, and puts them into their cultural context, illustrating the use of words through classic humorous stories and jokes. The original edition is no longer in print -- much of what it said has become remarkably dated in the 50 or so years since it was written. This new edition has gotten mixed reviews because, rather than merely updating some of the dated slang and references, the new edition merely adds a lot of politically-correct footnotes. For example, after Rosten's original text defines "shlock house" using the expression "gyp joint," the revisor goes off on a lengthy rant about what a terrible term "gyp joint" is, because the term "gyp" comes from "Gypsy" and the Gypsies have been horribly oppressed, all of which is true, but none of which provides any insight into the meaning of the term "shlock house."

Tales of Mendele the Book Peddler (Paperback): Two stories by the first great Yiddish writer, Mendele Moykher Sforim, including his masterpiece, Benjamin the Third, with a lengthy scholarly introduction discussing the author and the time and place where he lived and wrote. Translated into English.

In my Father's Court (Paperback): Autobiographical short stories by Isaac Bashevis Singer, the Nobel Prize winning Yiddish writer. These stories tell of his childhood in a Polish community with his father, aChasidic rabbi. Translated into English.

Vini-Der-Pu (Paperback): Want to try reading some Yiddish? Why not start with that that classic children's favorite, Winnie the Pooh! Leonard Wolf has provided a very direct, literal translation of Winnie the Pooh into Yiddish. Printed in transliterated Yiddish (Yiddish in familiar Roman letters), with the first paragraph of each story presented in the Yiddish alphabet as well, Vini-Der-Pu is a fun place to start reading Yiddish. You may also want to buy the English original for comparison. Oy gevalt, hot Pu gezogt! (Oh, bother, said Pooh).

Avi Hoffman's Too Jewish (DVD from Hoffman's website): I saw this video on PBS's pledge drive one year, and absolutely had to own it. This one-man-show (or rather two man, including his pianist and assistant, Ben "give that man a bagel" Schaechter) is a loving tribute to Yiddish culture and language, sometimes touching and usually hilarious, full of Yiddish songs both traditional and not so traditional, jokes and stories. My favorite part is his translation of Broadway show tunes in Yiddish (Veyn nisht far mir Argentina...) and Yinglish (Oyyyyyyyyy...glaucoma ven you can't see foither den yer nose...). Unfortunately, the version I bought does not have the on-screen translations nor the closed-captioning that were shown on PBS, but most of the Yiddish is either self-explanatory or explained by Avi Hoffman.

Mamaloshen (Audio CD) Well-known actor Mandy Patinkin shows his Jewish pride with this CD. Half of the songs are traditional Yiddish songs like Belz and Oyfn Pripichik; half are songs written in English by American Jews but translated into Yiddish, such as Maria, Take Me Out to the Ballgame, and Paul Simon's American Tune. Some have quibbled with his pronunciations and some have criticized him for being - dare I say? - a bit of a ham, but Patinkin's affection and enthusiasm for the material are overwhelming and infectious through every song.

Rise Up (Audio CD) A recent CD by the Grammy award-winning The Klezmatics, a modern band mixing klezmer and jazz. They won the Grammy for their CD Wonder Wheel, which puts their (mostly klezmer) music to Woody Guthrie lyrics. They also drew from the Woody Guthrie well on Woody Guthrie's Happy Joyous Hanukkah, which puts klezmer music to Chanukkah-related songs that Guthrie wrote.

21st May ( Hey that's today) 1881 American Red Cross established in Washington DC

• Doughnut Dollies: American Red Cross Girls During World War II : A Novel May 15, 2016 by Helen Airy Paperback, Sunstone Press
• The American Red Cross: Background, Federal Coordination, and Oversight IssuesMay 5, 2016 by Isabel Owen. Hardcover
• From Castles and Bombs to Nazis and Frauleins: Adventures with the Red Cross in England and Germany during World War II Paperback – March 24, 2016by Evelyn H. Cochran (Author), Nancy H Runner (Editor)
• Clara Barton Founder of the American Red Cross ,by Mildred Mastin Pace 

In Washington, D.C., humanitarians Clara Barton and Adolphus Solomons found the American National Red Cross, an organization established to provide humanitarian aid to victims of wars and natural disasters in congruence with the International Red Cross.

Barton, born in Massachusetts in 1821, worked with the sick and wounded during the American Civil War and became known as the “Angel of the Battlefield” for her tireless dedication. In 1865, President Abraham Lincoln commissioned her to search for lost prisoners of war, and with the extensive records she had compiled during the war she succeeded in identifying thousands of the Union dead at the Andersonville prisoner-of-war camp.

She was in Europe in 1870 when the Franco-Prussian War broke out, and she went behind the German lines to work for the International Red Cross. In 1873, she returned to the United States, and four years later she organized an American branch of the International Red Cross. The American Red Cross received its first U.S. federal charter in 1900. Barton headed the organization into her 80s and died in 1912.

The American Red Cross (ARC), also known as The American National Red Cross, is a humanitarian organization that provides emergency assistance, disaster relief and education inside the United States. It is the designated US affiliate of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies.

Today, in addition to domestic disaster relief, the American Red Cross offers services in four other areas: communications services and comfort for military members and their family members; the collection, processing and distribution of blood and blood products; educational programs on preparedness, health, and safety; and international relief and development programs.

Issued a corporate charter by the United States Congress under Title 36 of the United States Code, Section 3001, the American National Red Cross is governed by volunteers and supported by community donations, income from health and safety training and products, and income from blood products. The American Red Cross is headquartered in Washington, D.C. The Chairman of the Board of Governors, serving her second three-year term, is Bonnie McElveen-Hunter. The current President and Chief Executive Officer is Gail J. McGovern.





The American Red Cross National Headquarters in Washington, D.C. is a National Historic Landmark.

Founders

The American Red Cross was established in Washington, D.C. on May 21, 1881, by Clara Barton, who became the first president of the organization. Clara Barton first organized a meeting on May 12 of that year at the home of Sen. Omar D. Conger (R, MI).[5] Fifteen people were present at this first meeting, including Barton, Conger, and Rep. William Lawrence (R, OH) (who became the first vice-president). The first local chapter was established in 1881 at the English Evangelical Lutheran Church of Dansville at Dansville, New York.

Clara Barton (1821–1912) founded the American chapter after learning of the Red Cross in Geneva, Switzerland. In 1869, she went to Europe and became involved in the work of the International Red Cross during the Franco-Prussian War, and determined to bring the organization home with her to America.[8]

Clara Barton, founder of the American Red Cross

Barton became President of the American branch of the society, known officially as the American National Red Cross in May 1881 in Washington. The first chapters opened in upstate New York where she had connections.[9]Ultimately, John D. Rockefeller, Lars Kovala and three others along with the federal government, gave money to create a national headquarters near the White House.[10]



American National Red Cross

Barton led one of the group's first major relief efforts, a response to the Great Fire of 1881 (Thumb Fire) in the Thumb region of Michigan, which occurred on September 4–6, 1881. Over 5,000 people were left homeless. The next major disaster dealt with was the Johnstown Flood which occurred on May 31, 1889. Over 2,209 people died and thousands more were injured in or near Johnstown, Pennsylvania in one of the worst disasters in United States history.

Progressive reform

Barton took personal charge during major disasters. She gave the illusion of efficiency but was unable to build up a staff she trusted, and her fundraising was lackluster. As a result, she was forced out in 1904, when professional social work experts took control and made it a model of Progressive Era scientific reform. The new leader Mabel Thorp Boardman consulted constantly with senior government officials, military officers, social workers, and financiers. William Howard Taft was especially influential. They imposed a new corporate ethos of "managerialism," transforming the agency away from Barton's cult of personality to an "organizational humanitarianism" ready for expansion along increasingly professional lines.

Organization

The American Red Cross is a nationwide network of more than 650 chapters and 36 blood services regions dedicated to saving lives and helping people prepare for and respond to medical emergencies. Approximately 500,000 Red Cross volunteers, including FemaCorps and AmeriCorps members, and 30,000 employees annually mobilize relief to people affected by more than 67,000 disasters, train almost 12 million people in necessary medical skills and exchange more than a million emergency messages for U.S. military service personnel and their family members. The Red Cross is the largest supplier of blood and blood products to more than 3,000 hospitals nationally and also assists victims of international disasters and conflicts at locations worldwide. In 2006 the organization had over $6 billion in total revenues. Revenue from blood and blood products alone were over $2 billion.

Blood services

Blood donation

The American Red Cross supplies roughly 40% of the donated blood in the United States, which they directly sell to hospitals and regional suppliers.[16] Community-based blood centers supply 50% and 6% is collected directly by hospitals. In December 2004, the American Red Cross completed their largest blood processing facility in the United States in Pomona, California, on the campus grounds of the California State Polytechnic University, Pomona.

Tissue services

For more than twenty years, the American Red Cross provided allograft tissue for transplant through sales in its Tissue Services Program. It cared for thousands of donor families who gave the gift of tissue donation and sold donated tissue to more than 1 million transplant recipients in need of this life saving or life-enhancing gift of tissue. At the end of January 2005, the American Red Cross ended its Tissue Services program in order to focus on its primary missions of Disaster Relief and Blood Services.

Plasma services

A leader in the plasma industry, the Red Cross provides more than one quarter of the nation's plasma products. Red Cross Plasma Services seeks to provide the American people with plasma products which are not only reliable and cost-effective, but also as safe as possible.

In February 1999, the Red Cross completed its "Transformation," a $287 million program that: re-engineered Red Cross Blood Services' processing, testing and distribution system; and established a new management structure.

As of 2011, the Red Cross is no longer in the Plasma Services industry. The Red Cross currently supplies Baxter BioSciences with plasma for the manufacturing of plasma products.

Nucleic Acid Testing (NAT)

On March 1, 1999, the American Red Cross became the first U.S. blood banking organization to implement a Nucleic acid testing (NAT) study. This process is different from traditional testing because it looks for the genetic material of HIV and hepatitis C (HCV), rather than the body's response to the disease.

The NAT tests for HIV and HCV have been licensed by the Food and Drug Administration. These tests are able to detect the genetic material of a transfusion-transmitted virus like HIV without waiting for the body to form antibodies, potentially offering an important time advantage over current techniques.

Leukoreduction

A person's own leukocytes (white blood cells) help fight off foreign substances such as bacteria, viruses and abnormal cells, to avoid sickness or disease. But when transfused to another person, these same leukocytes do not benefit the recipient. In fact, these foreign leukocytes in transfusedred blood cells and platelets are often not well tolerated and have been associated with some types of transfusion complications so the blood dies out. Leukocytes present in stored blood products can have a variety of biological effects, including depression of immune function, which can result in organ failure and death.[18] Because whole blood is rarely used for transfusion and not kept in routine inventory, the need for leukoreduced red blood cells is critical. After collection the whole blood is separated into red cells and plasma by centrifugation. A preservative solution is mixed with the red cells and the component is filtered with a leukoreduction filter. Shelf life for this product is 42 days.

The Red Cross is moving toward system-wide universal prestorage leukocyte reduction to improve patient care. From 1976 through 1985, the United States Food and Drug Administration received reports of 355 fatalities associated with transfusion, 99 of which were excluded from further review because they were unrelated to transfusion or involved hepatitis or acquired immune deficiency syndrome.[19] While the FDA has not yet made leukoreduction a requirement, the American Red Cross has taken a leading role in implementing this procedure with a goal of leukoreducing all blood products. More than 70 percent of American Red Cross red blood cell components currently undergo prestorage leukoreduction, a filtering process that is done soon after blood is donated.

Research

The Red Cross operates the Jerome H. Holland blood laboratory in Rockville, Maryland. Each year, the Red Cross invests more than $25 million in research activities at the Holland Laboratory and in the field.

Cellular therapies

The Red Cross is also treating people using cellular therapies; this new method of treatment involves collecting and treating blood cells from a patient or other blood donor. The treated cells are then introduced into a patient to help revive normal cell function; replace cells that are lost as a result of disease, accidents or aging; or used to prevent illnesses from appearing.

Cellular therapy may prove to be particularly helpful for patients who are being treated for illnesses such as cancer, where the treated cells may help battle cancerous cells.
Health and safety services[edit]

The American Red Cross provides first aid, Cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR), Automated external defibrillator (AED), water safety andlifeguarding, babysitting, disaster preparedness, and home safety training throughout the United States. The training programs are primarily aimed at laypersons, workplaces, and aquatic facilities. The American Red Cross teaches around 12 million Americans these skills annually, ranging from youth to professional rescuers. In 2005 the American Red Cross co-led the 2005 Guidelines for First Aid, which aims to provide up-to-date and peer-reviewed first aid training materials. Many American Red Cross chapters also have for sale first aid kits, disaster kits, and similar, related equipment. 

Many chapters of the American Red Cross offer pet first aid courses to prepare pet owners and pet professionals for emergency situations. The American Red Cross also offers a pet first aid reference guide. This guide includes a 50-minute DVD that informs viewers about safety procedures and instructs on dealing with medical emergencies.

American Red Cross providing assistance during the 1994 Northridge earthquake

An American Red Cross vehicle distributing food to Grand Forks, North Dakota victims of the 1997 Red River flood

Satellite communications after tropical strom Debby in Lake City, Florida, 2012

Disaster services
Each year, the American Red Cross responds to more than 70,000 disasters, including house or apartment fires (the majority of disaster responses), hurricanes, floods, earthquakes, tornadoes, hazardous materialsspills, transportation accidents, explosions, and other natural and man-made disasters.

Although the American Red Cross is not a government agency, its authority to provide disaster relief was formalized when, in 1905, the Red Cross was granted a congressional charter to "carry on a system of national and international relief in time of peace and apply the same in mitigating the sufferings caused by pestilence, famine, fire, floods, and other great national calamities, and to devise and carry on measures for preventing the same." The Charter is not only a grant of power, but also an imposition of duties and obligations to the nation, to disaster victims, and to the people who support its work with their donations.

American Red Cross disaster relief focuses on meeting people's immediate emergency disaster-caused needs. When a disaster threatens or strikes, the Red Cross provides shelter, food, and health and mental health services (Psychological First Aid) to address basic human needs. In addition to these services, the core of Red Cross disaster relief is the assistance given to individuals and families affected by disaster to enable them to resume their normal daily activities independently. The organization also provides translationand interpretation to those affected when necessary, and maintains a database of multilingual volunteers to enable this.

At the local level, American Red Cross chapters operate volunteer-staffed Disaster Action Teams that respond to disasters in their communities, such as house fires or floods.

The Red Cross also feeds emergency workers of other agencies, handles inquiries from concerned family members outside the disaster area, provides blood and blood products to disaster victims, and helps those affected by disaster to access other available resources. It is a member of the National Voluntary Organizations Active in Disaster (VOAD) and works closely with other agencies such as the Salvation Armyand the Amateur Radio Emergency Service with whom it has Memorandums of Understanding.

The American Red Cross also works to encourage preparedness by providing important literature on readiness. Many chapters also offer free classes to the general public.

A major misconception by the general public is that the American Red Cross provides medical facilities, engages in search and rescue operations or deploys ambulances to disaster areas. As an emergency support agency, the American Red Cross does not engage in these first responder activities; instead, these first responder roles are left to local, state or federal agencies as dictated by the National Response Framework. The confusion arises since other Red Cross societies across the globe may provide these functions; for example, the Cruz Roja Mexicana (Mexican Red Cross) runs a national ambulance service. Furthermore, American Red Cross Emergency Response Vehicles (ERVs) look similar to ambulances. These ERVs instead are designed for bulk distribution of relief supplies, such as hot meals, drinks or other relief supplies. Although American Red Cross shelters usually have a nurse assigned to the facility, they are not equipped to provide medical care beyond emergency first aid.

Disaster Services Workforce

The Disaster Services Workforce (DSW) system enrolls volunteers from individual American Red Cross chapters into a national database of responders, classified by their ability to serve in one or more activities within groups. The activities vary from obvious ones such as feeding and sheltering ("mass care") to more specialized ones such as warehousing, damage assessment, financial accounting, radio and computer communications, public affairs and counseling. Responders must complete training requirements specific to the activities they wish to serve in, as well as the basics required of all disaster service volunteers, which include a background check as well as training in first aid.

National Response Framework

As a National Response Framework support agency, the American Red Cross shelters, feeds and provides other types of emergency relief to victims of disasters. The American Red Cross is also a co-lead with FEMA for the mass care portion of the Emergency Support Function 6. This role gives the American Red Cross the joint responsibility for planning and coordinating mass care services with FEMA. The American Red Cross also has responsibilities under other Emergency Support Functions, such as providing health and mental health services.

The NaNach Brigade dancing with IDF Soldiers (July 2014)

The monotonous din of traffic permeated the air on Tel Aviv’s Sheinkin Street on a recent Friday afternoon, when, suddenly, a large white cargo van whipped around the corner, blasting music from a pair of huge roof-mounted loudspeakers.People walking on the crowded sidewalks stopped to stare as five bearded young men wearing white-knit, tassel-topped yarmulkes leaped out, dancing to the thud of electronic bass beats. Some people smiled. Soldiers driving past waved enthusiastically out the windows and cheered. A cyclist cut through the group, her face set in a smiling , tapping her handle bars to the beat of the music. Secure TA Jews got up and suddenly were dancing and singing along with the Simcha and sason brought by the NaNachman Brigade of Zion.

It’s a scene increasingly common in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem and other Israeli cities where the loud, brightly painted Ford cargo vans associated with Israel’s hottest new Hasidic sect have become a recognizable sight. The vans are plastered with large Hebrew letters and larger-than-life stick-on portraits of a laughing, bearded old man in a fur hat, his arms cast jubilantly skyward. Religious-themed Hebrew techno tunes blast from the rooftop speakers.

The Bohemian clothing of the dancing young men seems unusual for Hasidic Jews. So does their belief that screaming, singing, and bellowing joyous prayer are the best ways to connect with God.

They are known as the Na Nach — a recently emerged subgroup of the 200-year-old Breslover Hasidic sect. Like other Breslover Hasidim, they follow the teachings of Rebbe Nachman of Breslov, a kabbalist mystic who lived 200 years ago in what is today Ukraine. More established Breslov groups were once seen as an eccentric, vaguely countercultural element in the Orthodox world. But members of the Na Nach sect now stand out as the  radicals, as the older tradition of Nachman study assumes a newfound respectability within the ultra-Orthodox world.

“[Na Nach] are seen as sort of an embarrassment in Israeli society, and held up as a circus sideshow,” said Shaul Magid, a professor of Jewish studies at Indiana University and an expert on Hasidism who seriously is clueless as what this sect of Hasidism are trying to do. Magid you need to experience them in Zion to understand them. Embaressment... hell no!!

The sect’s name is a stub of the phrase Na Nach Nachma Nachman Me’uman. Repeated often by followers as a kind of mantra, it spells out in Hebrew, adding one letter at a time, the name of the members’ revered teacher, who died and was buried in the town of Uman, Ukraine. Nachman’s great-grandfather, known as the Baal Shem Tov, established what was then seen as wild, spiritual Hasidism in response to the increasingly bookish rabbinic Judaism of the early 18th century. Nachman’s version of Hasidism was a back-to-basics campaign of sorts, and not at all popular with the Hasidic dynasties that had established themselves over the previous century.

Na Nachs sport the beards, sidelocks and yarmulkes favored by other ultra-Orthodox, or Haredi, Jews, but often eschew traditional black trousers and frock coats. The Na Nach movement lacks a definable hierarchy, and its followers maintain that their connection with God is more personal than anything the authority of a rabbi can deliver. Instead of relying on the direction of a living rebbe, Na Nachs go straight to Nachman’s texts for spiritual guidance. Though the Na Nachs are seen in many cities across Israel, the lack of hierarchy makes it hard to count the number of followers.

The Na Nach Van Patrols — the movement’s charismatic but often ridiculed public face — are only part of what Na Nachs do. Nachman encouraged self-seclusion and meditation, during which his followers talk to God in an intimate manner. Bellowing, yelling and enthusiastic singing are the norm during group prayer.

Criticism of the Na Nachs by other Orthodox Jews — even from other Breslovers — stems from their unusual habits. “As far as mainstream Breslov is concerned, Na Nach has no validity whatsoever,” said Rabbi Chaim Kramer, a leader in the Breslov community. “You can’t just sit back, close your eyes and say a mantra; you have to study, you have to fill your heart with prayer, you have to have the Torah and perform the mitzvot.”

Secular people tend not to take them seriously, either. Many greet the grinning, dancing street revelers with incredulity and with questions about what mind-altering substances they may be using.

“I think they view their goal as trying to make people happy — to cause people to smile and create a good atmosphere — but I don’t find it funny anymore, and I don’t find it entertaining,” said Shaked Shtigel, a 28-year-old secular resident of central Tel Aviv. “They stop in the middle of the intersection, cause and create traffic, jump into the street, and don’t consider their surroundings.”

But the Na Nach world goes beyond raucous street parties in Tel Aviv to a spiritual realm rooted in Kabbalah, the Jewish mystical text. It is in sharp contrast with the secular party scene many of them left behind. Some took drugs, others came from nonreligious backgrounds and, Magid says, a few found their Na Nach calling while in gangs or prison yards. Whatever their pasts, they evince strong commitment to their current path.

“Rebbe Nachman said he wanted his people to be like wild animals, out in the woods, screaming and talking to God,” said Israel Blumenfeld, 29, an American expat who used to follow touring punk rock bands around the United States and Israel. Now he devotes his time to praying, studying Nachman’s teachings, and traveling around in vans with other Na Nachs.

Far from Tel Aviv, in the mountains near Meron in the Galilee, a group of Na Nachs assembles every Friday evening, at Uri Eliav’s pastoral home, to celebrate the Sabbath. Eliav is the patriarch of an ever-growing Na Nach family. His bright blue eyes twinkle as he smiles warmly at visitors to his Sabbath table. Most of them are young. Few have regular jobs. They live off donations, odd jobs and welfare, and do what they can to make ends meet. Some have wives, and some have families. Things get tight, but somehow they scrape by.

“Na Nach Nachma Nachman Me’uman!” a grinning, bespectacled man shouts in a piercing tenor, one of the many times that line is uttered during the evening prayers. He calls himself Moshe Nanach, and he once appeared on the Israeli version of “American Idol.” Although he caused more than a few participants to cringe when he sang a devotional song horribly out of tune, he won over the program’s audience with his bellowing laughter and unwavering cheeriness.

Everyone at Eliav’s Sabbath table is male. Women occupy a separate, parallel niche, separate from, and supportive of, the men. The barrier relaxes a little after the meal concludes, when everyone lounges around the table in satisfied, semi-recumbent poses, chatting idly. First, a timid-looking young girl pokes her head out from behind the curtain that divides the dining room from the part of the house where the women ate their meal. A few moments later, the girl’s mother, Neta, Eliav’s wife, strides into the room, beaming. She is clad in a long, plain dress and a white head wrap reminiscent of 18th-century Poland.

“So how do you like it here?” she asks a newcomer, a visitor from America. “This is a holy life. Why not join us?”

Eliav’s farm was a favorite haunt of Rabbi Yisroel Ber Odesser, founder of the Na Nach version of Breslov Hasidism. Known to his followers as Sabba (“Grandpa” in Hebrew), Odesser passed away in 1994 at the age of 106. The journey that led him to spawn the Na Nach movement began in the 1920s, when he was attending a yeshiva in his native Tiberias. At the time, other Hasidic groups frowned upon studying Nachman’s works, but Odesser found one of the books in a trash can at the yeshiva and began reading, against the advice of his rabbis. One day, he found what Na Nachs believe to be a letter from Nachman stuck between the pages of one of the books in his room. The cryptic note included the phrase “Na Nach Nachma Nachman Me’uman,” which his followers believe has numeric correlations to parts of the Torah. Odesser’s discovery of the letter began a lifetime of dedication to learning and teaching Nachman’s works. It has also led to plenty of skepticism from some Hasidim, who believe that the note was placed there as a prank by a classmate.

According to Na Nach lore, Odesser suffered persecution by other religious Jews throughout his lifetime. It wasn’t until the 1980s, when he was confined to a wheelchair, that he began to spread Nachman’s teachings.

Living in a manner similar to today’s young van crews, Odesser traveled around Israel, praying, singing and living off charity. He stayed with supporters and attracted new followers, whom he never really organized, from as far afield as France.

Mark Sykes and François Georges-Picot draw lines on a map.100 year later they remain the basis for the borders of Zion

Sykes Picot Agreement Map. It was an enclosure in Paul Cambon's letter to Sir Edward Grey, 9 May 1916.Paul Cambon was the French signatory to this agreement.

Sykes

Picot

Paul Cambon signed the Agreement for the French

The Sykes–Picot Agreement /ˈsaɪks pi.ko/, officially known as the Asia Minor Agreement, was a secret agreement between the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and the French Third Republic, with the assent of the Russian Empire, defining their proposed spheres of influence and control in Southwestern Asia should the Triple Entente succeed in defeating the Ottoman Empire duringWorld War I. The negotiation of the treaty occurred between November 1915 and March 1916,^[2]the agreement was signed on 16 May 1916, and was exposed to the public in Izvestia and Pravda on 23 November 1917 and in the British Guardian on November 26, 1917.

The Agreement is still mentioned when considering the region and its conflicts in the present day. 

Britain was allocated control of areas roughly comprising the coastal strip between the Mediterranean Sea and River Jordan, Jordan, southern Iraq, and a small area including the ports of Haifa and Acre, to allow access to the Mediterranean.France was allocated control of southeastern Turkey, northern Iraq, Syria and Lebanon. Russia was to get Istanbul, the Turkish Straits and Armenia. The controlling powers were left free to decide on state boundaries within these areas.Further negotiation was expected to determine international administration pending consultations with Russia and other powers, including Hussein bin Ali, Sharif of Mecca.

Given the eventual defeat in 1918 and subsequent partitioning of the Ottoman Empire, the agreement effectively divided the Ottoman's Arab provinces outside the Arabian peninsula into areas of future British and French control and influence. An "international administration" was proposed for Palestine.^] The British gained control of the territory in 1920 and ruled it as Mandatory Palestine from 1923 until 1948. They also ruled Mandatory Iraq from 1920 until 1932, while the French Mandate for Syria and the Lebanon lasted from 1923 to 1946. The terms were negotiated by the British and French diplomats Mark Sykes and François Georges-Picot. The Russian Tsarist government was a minor party to the Sykes–Picot agreement, and when, following the Russian Revolution, the Bolsheviks published the agreement on 23 November 1917 "the British were embarrassed, the Arabs dismayed and the Turks delighted."

The Agreement is seen by many as a turning point in Western–Arab relations. It negated British promises made to Arabs^[11] through Colonel T. E. Lawrence for a national Arab homeland in the area of Greater Syria, in exchange for their siding with British forces against the Ottoman Empire. It has been argued that the geopolitical architecture founded by the Sykes–Picot Agreement disappeared in July 2014 and with it the relative protection that religious and ethnic minorities enjoyed in the Middle East. The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) claims one of the goals of its insurgency is to reverse the effects of the Sykes–Picot Agreement.

British–Zionist Discussions

Edward Grey signed the Agreement for the British

Herbert Samuel

Zionism was first discussed at a British Cabinet level on 9 November 1914, four days after Britain's declaration of war on the Ottoman Empire. David Lloyd George, then Chancellor of the Exchequer "referred to the ultimate destiny of Palestine."^] Lloyd George's law firm Lloyd George, Roberts and Co had been engaged a decade before by the Zionist Federation of Great Britain and Ireland to work on the Uganda Scheme. In a discussion after the meeting with fellow Zionist and President of the Local Government Board Herbert Samuel, Lloyd George assured him that "he was very keen to see a Jewish state established in Palestine." Samuel then outlined the Zionist position more fully in a conversation with Foreign Secretary Edward Grey. He spoke of Zionist aspirations for the establishment in Palestine of a Jewish state, and of the importance of its geographical position to the British Empire. Samuel's memoirs state: "I mentioned that two things would be essential—that the state should be neutralized, since it could not be large enough to defend itself, and that the free access of Christian pilgrims should be guaranteed. ... I also said it would be a great advantage if the remainder of Syria were annexed by France, as it would be far better for the state to have a European power as neighbour than the Turk." The same evening, Prime Minister H. H. Asquith announced in a speech that the dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire had become a war aim, "It is the Ottoman Government, and not we who have rung the death knell of Ottoman dominion not only in Europe but in Asia."

In January 1915, Samuel submitted a Zionist memorandum entitled The Future of Palestine to the Cabinet after discussions with Chaim Weizmann and Lloyd George. On 5 February 1915, Samuel had another discussion with Grey: "When I asked him what his solution was he said it might be possible to neutralize the country under international guarantee ... and to vest the government of the country in some kind of Council to be established by the Jews" After further conversations with Lloyd George and Grey, Samuel circulated a revised text to the Cabinet which was formally discussed on 13 March 1915.

Zionism and the Jewish question were not considered by the report of the De Bunsen Committee, prepared to determine British wartime policy toward the Ottoman Empire, submitted in June 1915.

In a 12 January 1916 memorandum commenting on a draft of the agreement, William Reginald Hall, BritishDirector of Naval Intelligence criticised the proposed agreement on the basis that "the Jews have a strong material, and a very strong political, interest in the future of the country" and that "in the Brown area the question of Zionism, and also of British control of all Palestine railways, in the interest of Egypt, have to be considered".

Prior to Sykes's departure to meet Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Sazonov in Petrograd on 27 February 1916, Sykes was approached with a plan by Samuel in the form of a memorandum which Sykes thought prudent to commit to memory and then destroy.^[25] He also suggested to Samuel that if Belgium should assume the administration of Palestine it might be more acceptable to France as an alternative to the international administration which France wanted and the Zionists did not. Of the boundaries marked on a map attached to the memorandum he wrote:

"By excluding Hebron and the East of the Jordan there is less to discuss with the Moslems, as the Mosque of Omar then becomes the only matter of vital importance to discuss with them and further does away with any contact with the bedouins, who never cross the river except on business. I imagine that the principal object of Zionism is the realization of the ideal of an existing centre of nationality rather than boundaries or extent of territory. The moment I return I will let you know how things stand at Pd."

The Sykes-Picot agreement, reached a century ago , delineated national borders based more on British and French interests than local conditions. But it has proven surprisingly resilient.





BEIRUT, LEBANON — One December morning in 1915, with World War I not yet 18 months old, a young diplomat stalked into the offices of the British prime minister in London, carrying with him a map and a bold plan for the future of the Middle East once the allies had defeated Germany and the Ottoman Empire.

Standing before Britain’s top leaders, Sir Mark Sykes slashed his finger across his map of the region and, according to James Barr’s book “A Line in the Sand,” said, “I should like to draw a line from the ‘e’ in Acre [in then-Palestine, on the Mediterranean] to the ‘k’ in Kirkuk [in what would become Iraq].”

Britain, he said, would retain control of the territory to the south of the line, while the French would have Greater Syria north of the line.

That blunt proposal to divide the Middle East into British and French spheres of influence was the seed that would lead a few years later to the birth of the modern Middle East and with it decades of political turmoil, wars, sectarian bloodletting, socioeconomic disparities, and the interminable Arab-Israel conflict.



The Middle East today is undergoing its greatest political and social upheaval since the agreement negotiated by Sykes and the French statesman Francois George Picot was signed 100 years ago this week. The conflicts roiling the region, particularly those in Syria and Iraq, have thrown into question whether the post-World War I nation-states can survive or whether new entities will emerge from the turmoil in the years ahead.

In June 2014, the self-declared Islamic State (IS) bulldozed through an earth berm marking the border between Iraq and Syria. A video of the operation was entitled “the end of Sykes-Picot.”

“This is not the first border we will break, we will break other borders,” an ISIS gunman said in the video.

Yet, despite ISIS’s bold promise and the collapse of governance in several states in the Arab world, including Yemen and Libya, the borders themselves remain surprisingly durable. In Syria, both the regime of President Bashar al-Assad and the opposition continue to aspire to a unitary state rather than a much mooted break-up into mini states to better reflect the country’s sectarian demographics. And Iraq continues to hold together, albeit shakily and with the Kurdish north practicing some autonomy from Baghdad.

“Although far removed from Sykes-Picot, one thing we have learned from the colonial carve-up in Africa is that ‘artificial states’ tend to persist on the map, even in cases of genocidal rampages within individual states. I suspect this will be true in the former Ottoman provinces of the Levant and Mesopotamia as well,” says Fred Hof, director of the Atlantic Council’s Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East and an expert on the post-World War I boundaries of Lebanon, Syria, and Palestine.

That durability lies partly in the fact that borders agreed to by treaty tend to remain in place. Furthermore, tinkering with international boundaries cannot be done unilaterally but requires the consent of the state on the other side of the line, which can complicate the process.

“Questioning settled boundaries inevitably invites nettlesome counterclaims, especially in regions where ethnic or tribal groups straddle borders and minority populations have ended up behind the lines when the maps were finalized,” wrote Steven Simon, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute, in an August 2014 article for Foreign Affairs magazine.
Straight lines across the desert

The 1916 Sykes-Picot map of the division of territorial spoils between Britain and France looks very different from a map of the modern Middle East. Yet from these crude pencil slashes, the borders of future Arab states – and one Jewish state – would emerge.

The process of confirming those borders would take years or decades. Iraq only recognized its southern border with Kuwait in 1991 after Operation Desert Storm forces drove out Saddam Hussein’s army. After more than 60 years of independence, Lebanon and Syria still have not demarcated their joint border, a legacy of Syria’s traditional unhappiness with the French decision to wrench Lebanon from the motherland in 1920. And Israel’s borders have varied considerably through occupation of, and withdrawal from, neighboring Arab territory. Last month, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared that the Golan Heights, seized from Syria in 1967 and internationally recognized as occupied territory, would forever remain part of Israel.

Few of the borders follow natural geographic features. Lebanon’s border with Syria is a rare exception, following a river in the north and the watershed of a rugged stretch of mountains to the east. But for the most part, the European powers simply drew straight lines cutting across endless vistas of desert. One stretch of Syria’s southern border with Jordan and Turkey runs 260 miles in an imperious straight line, most of it marked only by a bulldozed earth berm a few feet high.

When Sykes and Picot hammered out their agreement, the strategic interests of the British and French took precedence over the tangled sectarian and ethnic demographics of the region. Britain had already promised Hussein ibn Ali, the emir of Mecca, an Arab kingdom in exchange for his military support against the Ottoman Turks in World War I. The Arabs of Syria were fiercely anti-French and rejected the notion of future French rule.

But the Sykes-Picot Agreement betrayed Britain’s earlier pledge to the Arabs and ignored the anti-French sentiment in Syria.

By the end of World War I in 1918, Faisal, Emir Hussein’s son, had seized Damascus and proclaimed himself king of Syria. He was quickly ousted by France, which had won the mandate over Syria and the newly created state of Lebanon. As a consolation prize, Britain handed Faisal the new state of Iraq which grouped the cities of Baghdad, Basra, and Mosul. Faisal’s brother, Abdullah, was given Transjordan, a tranche of desert wedged between Iraq, Palestine, and Syria, the borders of which Winston Churchill famously boasted he drew up “with a stroke of a pen, one Sunday afternoon.” Both Iraq and Transjordan (which later became Jordan) as well as Palestine were placed under British mandate.
Pan-Arab unity and strongman rule

The years between the two world wars were marked by frequent revolts against the mandatory powers. Arab nationalist parties, with their anticolonialist agenda, rose in popularity, aspiring to erase the Anglo-French constructs in favor of pan-Arab unity.

After Britain and France retreated from the Middle East in the 1940s, Arab nationalism began its march. The post-World War I monarchies in Iraq and Jordan were toppled and new Arab nationalist leaders mounted coups and counter-coups. The region’s enormous oil and gas reserves helped turn the Middle East into one of the global battlefields of the cold war. And the Arab-Israeli conflict amplified the instability.

What emerged by the 1970s was the rule of the strong man – Hafez al-Assad in Syria, Jamal Abdul Nasser in Egypt, Saddam Hussein in Iraq, Muammar Qaddafi in Libya.

But the fervent Arab nationalist ideologies that originally inspired these regimes soon ossified. Dissent was crushed, rivals to the leadership eliminated, and in some countries power became an inheritable family business. Surging population growth, inefficient bureaucracies, social and economic inequity and decaying infrastructure added to the malaise.

A key factor that contributed to the often dysfunctional, dictatorial, and corrupt systems is that the Levant region had not experienced self-governance for centuries, having been ruled over by the Ottoman Empire.

“The problem … is this region, … which is effectively four or five big cities [such as Damascus, Aleppo, Baghdad, and Mosul] with no center,” says Paul Salem, director of studies at the Middle East Institute in Washington. “Hence much of the problems are deeper than where did Sykes and Picot draw the line, and [that] if they had drawn it 20 miles further east all would have been fine.”

Decades of atrophy in the Arab world exploded into protest in 2010, first in Tunisia before spreading to Egypt, Libya, Yemen, Bahrain, and Syria, with the latter mired in a brutal war that has left more than a quarter of a million people dead.

Yet many citizens of these turbulent states continue to resist the notion of dismemberment, viewing such calls as a Western plot to weaken the Arab world.
The Iraqi view

Iraqi leaders, including the Shiite-led government, believe Iraq needs to hold together.

“We are surrounded by enemies – Israel, Saudi Arabia, and America,” says Intisar Mohammad, a trainer for Iraq’s national women’s judo team, and one of the few women in a protest camp, in Baghdad’s Tahrir Square, of followers of Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr. “This is a very old plan to divide Iraq,” she says of talk that the country could split into regions. “This is not an Iraqi idea – it came to us from the outside.”

Many Sunnis, however, have felt marginalized in Iraq since the downfall of Saddam Hussein and the empowerment of the majority Shiite community. Liqa’a al-Wardi, a member of parliament from the Sunni city of Fallujah, says some Sunnis see the idea of an autonomous region as their salvation.

“Iraqis want to remain one country, not split into regions, but the social and political conflict in Iraq has made people loyal to their tribes, their regions, and their sect [rather than Iraq],” she says. “People in Anbar think the government is against them – they see a Sunni region as an issue of survival.”

Arguably, the biggest loser from the post-World War I partition of the Middle East is the Kurdish community, the largest ethnic group in the world without a state, with some 40 million people spread across northern Iraq, northwestern Iran, and northeastern Syria.

While Kurds have had different experiences in each country, a unifying ambition of rewriting boundaries to create “Greater Kurdistan” has long been a dream. Many Kurds now wonder if the current disintegration in Syria and Iraq, and the war between Turkey and the militant Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) that resumed last July, won’t lead to a de facto new nation by default.

“The Kurds feel … the moment to redress a historical injustice is coming soon, and the Sykes-Picot anniversary is just a reminder that the Kurds have spent a century oppressed,” says David Phillips, a professor at Columbia University and author of “The Kurdish Spring: A New Map of the Middle East.”

Signs of dramatic change have been many. When IS swept into northern Iraq and seized Mosul in June 2014, Kurdish peshmerga forces took full control of the oil-rich city of Kirkuk and swaths of territory long disputed with the central government in Baghdad. Within weeks, Massoud Barzani, president of the semi-autonomous Kurdistan Regional Government in northern Iraq, declared for the first time that the time had come for independence.

In northern Syria, Syrian Kurds created three enclaves and exercised a degree of self-rule in a region they call Rojava. But it was the battle of Kobane in October 2014 – in which Syrian Kurds were bolstered by Kurdish fighters from both Iraq and Turkey, along with US airstrikes, to defeat the Islamic State – that raised again questions of a “Kurdish moment” emerging from the current regional turmoil.

“I don’t see Iraqi Kurdistan staying in Iraq,” says Mr. Phillips. “I think they will have a referendum on independence and they will allow a year from the date of the referendum to negotiate a friendly divorce from Baghdad and amodus vivendi with Turkey and others. And when they declare independence, the other [Kurdish] communities [in Syria and Iraq] are going to want to hook up to them.”
Jordan's precautions

Jordan, which lies at the heart of the region, generally has been spared the tsunami of the Arab Spring. But it is taking precautions to avoid overspill. Police and gun-toting soldiers stop vehicles at checkpoints 35 miles from the desert border with Iraq in the east, and 15 miles from Syria to the north. For 30 miles along the main highway north to Syria, Jordanians are hard to find. Grocery-baggers, shopkeepers, farmers, and construction workers speak with thick Syrian accents; entire villages have uprooted and moved south across the border into Jordan, with Syrians now accounting for 20 percent of Jordan’s population.

Even as the Syrian influx changes the demographics of northern Jordan, the country’s 233-mile border with Syria is effectively shifting northward. According to the Jordanian military, Syria’s rebel factions and regime forces maneuver at a minimum distance of eight to 28 miles from the Jordanian border and have been “warned” that they could be attacked if they approach within four miles of the frontier.

As a result, Jordan’s border has become a de-facto safe zone for more than 60,000 Syrian refugees. They are unable to return home, yet unable to enter Jordan due to concerns over infiltration by IS. That adds to Jordan’s burden of responsibility, which already includes more than 2 million Palestinian refugees.

Officials and palace insiders freely admit that Jordan’s borders mean less and less as the kingdom increasingly takes on the economic and humanitarian responsibilities of Sunni Arabs in Syria, Iraq, and the West Bank.

“I doubt they [the Sunnis of neighboring states] will be annexed to Jordan, but due to economic dependency and humanitarian responsibility, Jordan is already playing an unofficial administrative role,” says Jawad Anani, a Jordanian senator.
Lebanon's power-sharing

Lebanon suffered its own upheaval three decades ago, a bitter 16-year civil war that saw the country divided into sectarian cantons. Yet when the war ended in 1990, Lebanon’s borders with Syria and Israel remained unchanged and the sectarian cantons were dissolved as the state resumed authority in Beirut. For Arab nationalists, sectarianism is anathema, but in Lebanon it is the basis for a complicated power-sharing system. Some argue that Lebanon’s sectarian system of governance is a potential model for other countries composed of multiple sects and ethnicities.

Yet, while Lebanon’s system has helped keep the peace for a quarter century, it is inherently dysfunctional – it stifles progress and ensures that Lebanese citizens view each other through the prism of their respective religious affiliations.

How Lebanon’s Arab neighbors will emerge from their own wars and crises remains to be seen, and could take years or even decades. In the meantime, Mr. Salem predicts that strife-torn countries, Syria in particular, will devolve into cantons possibly with “their own informal taxes, customs tariffs, and informal administrations … de facto cantons, like we had in the Lebanese civil war.”

“But I don’t see any de jure movement internationally to formalize [each canton] into a state,” he says.

Ultimately, the changes that could unfold across the Middle East may have less to do with collapsing the borders of the post-World War I states and creating new entities, and more with fundamental changes in governance within existing frontiers.

“With the possible exception of Kurdistan emerging from northern Iraq … I do not see states breaking up,” says Mr. Hof. “If, however, they are to be stable, then political power hoarded in capital cities and exercised by incompetent, corrupt elites must devolve to provinces, cities, towns, and villages. In this way, the post-mandate promise of self-government can become a reality."