Showing posts with label Constantinople. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Constantinople. Show all posts

Thursday, September 8, 2016

Does the Jewish Calendar Hold the Secret to Christ's Return? - JESSILYN JUSTICE CHARISMA NEWS

A centuries-old 'Messiah clock' could reveal the time of Christ's return. (Alex The Shutter/Flickr/Creative Commons)

Does the Jewish Calendar Hold the Secret to Christ's Return?

JESSILYN JUSTICE  CHARISMA NEWS
Join us on our podcast each weekday for an interesting story, well told, from Charisma News. Listen at charismapodcastnetwork.com.

A 200-year-old "Messiah clock" could hold the answer to Christ's return, according to some reports.  
"When you hear that the Russians have captured the city of Crimea, you should know that the times of the Messiah have started, that His steps are being heard. And when you hear that the Russians have reached the city of Constantinople (today's Istanbul), you should put on your Shabbat clothes and don't take them off, because it means that the Messiah is about to come any minute," Jewish Rabbi Eliyahu of Vilna, also known as the Vilna Gaon, allegedly prophesied in the 18th century.  
Gaon created the Messiah clock in the 1700s. The Vilna Gaon reportedly used his secular and religious scholarly background to come up with a unique method of tracking time based on the Hebrew calendar and a combination of Jewish sources found in the Talmud, Breaking Israel News reports. Based on his specific calculations, the Messiah clock was created and has been slowly ticking down toward his ultimate arrival. 
According to Breaking Israel News:
The clock is based on the six days of creation, with each day corresponding to 1,000 years on the Hebrew calendar. The Vilna Gaon centered his calculations around the Jewish tradition that the Messiah must arrive by the year 6000 in the Jewish calendar, which corresponds to the day before the Sabbath and God's refrain from any work. Currently, the Jewish calendar year is 5776. 
So is Jesus' Second Coming in 24 years? Only time will tell!
3 Reasons Why you should read Life in the Spirit. 1) Get to know the Holy Spirit. 2) Learn to enter God's presence 3) Hear God's voice clearly! Go deeper!
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Tuesday, January 14, 2014

Remarkable Pictures of Extinct Jewish Communities, Part 3 - Israel's History - a Picture a Day (Beta)


Posted: 13 Jan 2014

Original caption: "Jew Tailor in his Booth on a Street in Old Cairo"

(Credit: Keystone-Mast Collection, California Museum of Photography at UCR 
ARTSblock, University of California, Riverside) 





























We present Part 3 of a series of vintage pictures on the Jews of the Middle East.  Like the communities in previous features -- Baghdad, Mosul, and Constantinople (Istanbul) -- the Jews of Cairo, Alexandria, and Damascus are on the verge of extinction. 

Some of the pictures presented here show both the poverty and the wealth of the various Jewish communities.

Egypt

Cairo:  In 1948, the Cairo Jewish community numbered an estimated 55,000. Pogroms and imprisonment caused almost all of the Jews of Egypt to emigrate.

Zaoud-el Mara (Jewish Quarters) Alexandria, 
Egypt.  A Library of Congress photo dates
this picture from 1898.









Alexandria:  According to a Jerusalem Post article from 2008, Alexandria "is said to have boasted a community of tens of thousands of Jews of both Ashkenazi and Mizrahi descent, but some were expelled as French or British citizens during the Suez Canal crisis of 1956. Others were expelled and/or imprisoned for up to three years during the Six Day War. Some, too, left on their own accord, feeling that there was a brighter future for them as Jews in countries like Israel, America and Australia."



There are believed to be around 40 Jews living in Egypt today.



Syria - Damascus
 "Beautiful shaded court of a Jewish Home in Damascus, Syria."
Look at the details of the picture.

(Credit: Keystone-Mast Collection, California Museum of Photography at UCR 
ARTSblock, University of California, Riverside) 


The Damascus Jewish community numbered an estimated 15,000-17,000 in 1918.  Riots, government discrimination, and imprisonment caused almost all of Syrian Jewry to flee.

Today, perhaps a few dozen Jews live in Syria, but the savage civil war has also engulfed old Jewish neighborhoods and ancient synagogues.

At the start of the 20th century, several wealthy Jewish families lived in Damascus, and photographs of their homes are presented here.

Enlarging the photos disclosed 
several interesting details.


The matron of the home?


Children of the home?





















Grand Mosque and Damascus from the Jewish 
Quarters, Syria. Three women on a balcony 
overlooking city. 

Credit: Keystone-Mast Collection, California Museum
 of Photography at UCR ARTSblock, University 
oCalifornia, Riverside) 




 Court of a Wealthy Jew’s Home in Old 
Damascus, Syria. See also here.

Keystone-Mast Collection, California Museum of Photography
 at UCR ARTSblock, University of California, Riverside) 































Click on pictures to enlarge.  Click on the caption to view the original photo.
















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Thursday, January 2, 2014

Constantinople's Jewish Quarter, 1898 (Israel's History Picture-A Day)

Posted: 01 Jan 2014 
Constantinople's Jewish Quarter, 1898

Street scene, Jewish Quarter of Constantinople, 1898 (Credit: Keystone-Mast Collection, California 
Museum of Photography at UCR ARTSblock, University of California, Riverside)
We were certain we recognized this photo from a feature on the Library of Congress archives we posted two years ago.  We thought it was a quaint picture of a man and dog in the Jewish Quarter of Constantinople (Istanbul today).

But when we enlarged the photo, using the Keystone-Mast Collection's excellent "zoom" tools, we realized that there was much more than what met the eye.  The University of California photo, we discovered, was not identical to the Library of Congress picture.  The two were taken seconds apart, and there are differences. Moreover, upon examining the photos, we saw that almost a dozen residents of the street were watching what may have been a confrontation between the man and dog. (Rabies vaccinations in Constantinople began only in 1900.)

Look at the bottom left corner of the picture above, and you will see the back of a head and women standing in a doorway.  In the LoC photo you see that the head has turned; it's a young boy's face. From many other windows women are watching the street scene below.

A head and three women (UCR)
The boy's
face (LoC)


Woman in a window
Women looking from
window


A girl in the doorway, a woman at the window
Two figures watching from a distant window

















A woman, possibly with children, appears to be
scurrying across the street (LoC)



Constantinople:  The name of the Turkish city was changed from Constantinople to Istanbul in the 1920s, which explains the location in the caption on this 1898 photo.


The Jewish community in Turkey dates back millennia. Tens of thousands of Jews from Spain found refuge in Turkey in 1492.  The Ottoman Empire which ruled the Middle East for 400 years usually provided a safe haven for its Jewish residents, with occasional outbreaks of anti-Semitic episodes. 
Today, the Jewish community in Turkey numbers approximately 20,000, mostly in Istanbul.  The new Islamic policies of the current Turkish government may result in Jewish emigration, according to some observers.
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