It is safe enough to state that humanity is progressing, even without delving into philosophers such as Hegel. True – slavery still exists, classes still count, women and minorities are still being discriminated – but not as much as they used to. In a long perspective, human history is indeed moving forward. On the other […]

Who are we to blame for the common anti-Semitic stereotype about the Jews as contaminators of mankind? Can we blame it on the Jewish interpreter Luis de Torres, the man who brought the first cigarettes to Europe? We most certainly can not. For one thing, the hazards in smoking were not yet known in the […]

¿Será que el estereotipo antisemita sobre los judíos, que son un factor contaminante se originó en relación al intérprete judío Luis de Torres, quien es en gran parte el responsable por la llegada de los primeros cigarros a Europa? No, no tiene nada que ver. Los antisemitas modernos les atribuían a los judíos la culpa […]

Hubo tiempos pasados en que a la palabra “Explorer” tenía implicaciones de vida y muerte y no de un navegador web, y “Trafic” representaba un movimiento físico en el espacio y no algo que publicistas ávidos de fama juran en su nombre. Eran tiempos en los cuales la floreciente industria marítima del siglo XVI atraía […]

Back in the 16th century, “explorer” and “traffic” certainly did not mean what they mean today. These two concepts actually used to mean physical motion through lands and seas. Those were the days of the flourishing seamanship industry, in which some of the sharpest minds of that period were involved. The leading “startup nation” of […]

Praying at the graves of sages is an old Jewish custom, recorded in Talmudic and Midrashic literature. Various medieval Jewish scholars discussed this religious practice, whether they approved or rejected it. A significant change regarding the prostration on graves occurred some 500 years ago, and since then it became a popular custom practiced by the […]