The Power of Producing Fresh and Quality Content for SEO

“Content is King,” is a phrase you often hear over and over again when people talk about SEO success and how to achieve it.

Many experts would say that if you get your content right you will create a solid foundation to support every SEO techniques and efforts.

Generating fresh content is a great idea, especially to those people who have already visited your website. But will can it attract the search engines as well?

The straight answer here is that creating fresh and quality content does give you numerous benefits. Human readers find them helpful and informative while search engines love them provided they are original and relevant.

1. Fresh Content Equates To Frequent Indexing

One important thing to remember is that just because you are producing fresh content does not mean you will index higher in the serps. But the more you update your website with e-book downloads, new web pages, articles and other content, the more frequently the search engines stop by to check out your site.

The more often search engines visit your site to take a look at your content, the more opportunity you have in achieving a higher ranking. But it also depends on the quality of what you have produced.

Your site may be indexed based on the combination of the number of incoming links (and sometimes external links) to the site, the keywords used and how often your site is updated. Therefore, if you want to rank higher on search engines, updating your content frequently is vital so that it can reassess your position on its index.

Another important detail to remember is that quality is crucial here. As long as you frequently produce contents with high standards, you improve your chances of getting a more elevated position in the search engine page results.

2. More Content Equates To More Keywords

Keywords are high on the algorithm chart for search engine indexing and ranking. And everytime you publish new content, you present more opportunities for your website to contain more keywords. Posts such as reviews, testimonials, guidelines or blogs allow you to optimize them using appropriate keywords that can attract not just real human readers but search engines as well.

According to the algorithm updates by Google, they are not looking for keyword-stuffed content. What they want is fresh and high-quality content; which brings us back to number 1.

Keywords are still a significant part of search engine optimization, but you cannot build your SEO campaign entirely on keywords and never write a content around a keyword. Use title tags, meta tags and descriptions for your keywords. Just make sure to leave the published material as natural as possible.

3. Fresh and Quality Content Boosts Your Authority Potential

Every webmaster strives to become the niche expert in the eyes of search engines. The key to achieving this goal is to abide by the SEO adage “content is king.” The more valuable, quality and informative content you have, the higher chances you have in becoming an authority site.

Assuming that you have already been indexed and people have already started reading about your content, this is the time for you to step up your game and produce better content. The more you talk about a topic in depth, more people will trust you and revisit your website. The more visits you get, the better your chances of becoming an expert in your field.

Answering questions on forums, commenting back and sharing content on social media platforms can also help build your reputation and gain more visits from people who wanted to read what you wrote or check what you produced.

Even if you set search engine optimization aside, there is still a good and valid need for giving your website regular valuable content. Naturally, you want to keep your current subscribers or readers engaged as these people convert their visits into sales.

By making sure your readers stay hooked, you develop some authority, which will equate to translates into increasing traffic that will increase the value of your site. So make sure to refresh your site content often enough, which will not only garner appreciation and commitment from your visitors, but it will also put you in a good standing with search engines.

Lean Belly Breakthrough Review

Lean Body Breakthrough is a weight loss program created by Bruce Krahn, who is both an author of bestselling body transformation programs and a personal trainer. Lean Body Breakthrough reveals a proven way to lose not less than one pound if belly fat every day with the aid of certain herbs, spices, foods, and 5 simple body movements.

A Brief History of the Lean Body Breakthrough Program

Lean Body Breakthrough was created specifically targeting health-conscious women and men aged 50 and above. It shares a unique formula by Dr. Heinrick for getting rid of belly fat and associated health issues such as depression, low libido, and heart disease without involving drugs, restrictive diets, risky diets, and tasteless foods. Lean Body Breakthrough targets internal irritation, which is what causes stubborn belly fat.

Dr. Heinrick used a unique 2-minute ritual on Dan, who is Bruce’s father-in-law that suffered a heart attack while on an airplane. According to Bruce, Dan was able to lose 9 pounds of belly fat in just 3 days and 30 pounds in 30 days.

What Does the Program Cover?

If you want to understand what Lean Belly Breakthrough has to offer better, here are some of the topics the program covers:

– A list of foods capable of triggering a heart attack any time

– A list of foods that can dissolve a pound of belly fat each day if eaten in the right way

– Important information pertaining to signs that you are at high risk for suffering a heart attack

– Tracking sheets to help you monitor health progress while you shed off excess weight

– Potent spices, herbs, and food nutrients that have an effect on hormones responsible for fat storage

– A practice that can help you get rid of excess fat from other parts of the body along with minerals, herbs, and foods you can use for the same

This list of topics is not exhaustive but it shows the main things that Bruce teaches in the program. If you wish to learn more about the program, visit the official page.

The Good

Experienced and Knowledgeable Fitness Specialist

Bruce has more than 15 years of experience as a fitness consultant and has worked with celebrities including Nelly Furtado and Tom Cochrane. Bruce understands what works and what does not and his program offers scientifically proven workout strategies and meal plans to help you lose unwanted fat, enhance your flexibility, and develop lean muscle.

Designed Specifically for Older Persons

The vast majority of fitness programs in the market are geared mostly towards younger persons. The workouts are often too intense and meal plans are not suitable to older age groups. The Lean Belly Breakthrough offers meals and exercises geared specifically to the needs of people in this age group.

Tackles the Root Cause of Belly Fat

Fitness and nutrition programs sometimes work for some people, but often bring temporary results. The reason for this is that they have not addressed the root cause of the problem. The Lean Belly Breakthrough is a completely different program that teaches techniques designed to provide long-term results.

It is Easy to Follow

The Lean Belly Breakthrough doesn’t require you to follow unreasonable demands. When you are following the program, you never have to starve yourself, count calories, exercise too hard, take risky supplements, or undergo surgery. Everything is doable, simple, and backed by clear, detailed explanations.

It Improves Your Quality of Life

The greatest benefit the Lean Belly Breakthrough provides is a second lease of life. It can help you reverse or avoid the harmful effects of belly fat, so that you can become healthier, feel stronger, and achieve your life goals.

60-Day Money-Back Guarantee

The Lean Belly Breakthrough is an effective and legit weight loss program, but if you don’t find this to be the case, you can always ask for a full refund within 60 days.

The Bad

It Does Not Replace Medical Intervention

The Lean Belly Breakthrough does seem to work as promised but it is wise to work closely with your doctor when using it, especially if you have a serious health condition.

Discipline and Consistency

It is never easy to stick to a weight loss program, so always remember before you buy the Lean Belly Breakthrough program that if you lack discipline you will be unable to lose weight and keep it off for good.

A Digital Program

If you don’t love eBooks or live in an area with a poor or no Internet connection, you will not like that the Lean Belly Breakthrough is only available in digital format.

The Bottom Line

The Lean Belly Breakthrough program is an amazing program for older persons that have trouble getting rid of belly fat and are suffering from various diseases due to it. It is not a magical system that works overnight, but if you want to lose fat quickly and in a natural way, the Lean Belly Breakthrough is highly recommended.

Secret Lifestyle Choices To Prevent Anxiety

Treating anxiety or depression is not only limited to the four walls of your therapist’s office. In addition there are essential components that can be integrated to your treatment apart from taking prescription meds. In most cases, a change in your lifestyle can already help lift the problem and bring relief to anxiety. Below are the simple but powerful tools to address this issue.

Exercise

You would think “How does exercise affect mental health?”. Well, there were numerous and well designed studies conducted to prove that exercise can elevate your mood to prevent anxiety and depression. Mindful movements like yoga, qigong and tai chi are among the best physical activities that can help improve anxiety symptoms.

Exercise also helps stimulate the body’s “happy hormones“. As you move about, your body starts to stimulate the production of endorphins and serotonin in your brain – these are neurotransmitters that help alleviate depression. This explains the happiness you feel every time you finish a good workout.

Eat A Healthy Diet

Your brain is the most active part in your body. Even at bedtime, your brain will continue to work non-stop during the night. It means it needs a steady stream of essential nutrients for it to function properly. Poor diet choices limit the necessary nutrients your body needs to secrete the right hormones to stabilize a proper mental health. Here are some diet tips you may consider:

Buy healthy food – make sure to fill your plate with nutritious meals. Choose whole foods, fruits and vegetables. Drink plenty of water and get enough calcium. Avoid trans fats and research dietary guidelines to learn more about which foods are the healthiest.

Take care of your stomach – supplementing with probiotics with lactobacillus and bifidobacterium will improve your gut health. Providing these live cultures to your stomach will help boost your immune system. You can also eat fermented foods like miso, natto, and yogurt to support your digestive system.

Cut back on anything sweetened – soda, sweet tea, fruit punch and juice concentrates contribute to anxiety. A recent study of individuals who drank at least four cups of soda found they were 30% more prone to anxiety and depression. This same study also reported that individuals who drank unsweetened decaf coffee each day had less likelihood of experiencing anxiety compared to non-coffee drinkers.

Choose decaf – Coffee is rich in antioxidants, but too much caffeine is not good for you peace of mind, indeed long-term intake of caffeine is also linked to anxiety. Try to gradually switch to decaf. This way, you get the same amount of health benefits from coffee without the caffeine content.

Take More Antioxidants

Anxiety is thought to be connected to high oxidative damage and a low antioxidant state in your cells and body. Antioxidants are needed to help fight the oxidative damage brought about by free-radicals in your body, which occur naturally. Therefore, it is a must for you to prioritize antioxidant-rich sources to ease the symptoms of anxiety.

According to the United States Department of Agriculture, there are 3,100 herbs, spices, supplements and foods that are designated to help increase your body’s antioxidant levels. Some of them include beans, berries, nuts and vegetables.

You may think that fruits and vegetables have the highest content of antioxidants, but herbs and spices hold even more to that reputation. One potent spice that has anti-anxiety properties is turmeric. Its active ingredient curcumin is responsible for fighting the free-radicals in the body and is known to efficiently prevent further chronic microinflammation.

Eating more of these antioxidant sources will help prevent anxiety and depression. You can also get it in pill form or in its liquid extract state. Curcumin supplements are already in popular demand and you can find that easily in your local shops or online stores. Turmeric supplement side effects are rare but should still be watched out for.

Sleep More

A bad mood is often led by stress and lack of sleep. When you deprive your body of at least 7 hours of sleep every day, it finds it difficult to improve your mood as the hormones that control your state of mind are not fully replenished by your night’s rest. To restore and maintain a balanced mental health, you need to rest especially if you are feeling stressed out.

Scientific medical research shows that sleep-deprived individuals classify neutral images as “negative”. This means that people who do not get adequate sleep at night see everyday objects as “menacing”. If this continues, anxiety can develop into depression.

Drink Less

Alcohol is usually abused as a “self medication” to alleviate stress and numb the pain from depression. But it is itself a depressant and it does not make sense that people suffering from major anxiety and depression tend to resort to drinking too much alcohol.

Alcohol is not a quick fix and should be avoided no matter what. It only prevents you from taking the proper action to cure your anxiety. If you feel the urge to constantly drink alcohol, seek the advice of a professional. You might be battling with something more than anxiety.

Control Your Emotions and Thoughts

Believe it or not, your brain has the power of suggestion. If you allow negative feelings like helplessness and hopelessness to take over, the physiological function of your body becomes upset. This leads to hormone imbalance and depletion of brain chemicals essential for achieving the feeling of “zen”. If this continues, your entire body and immune system will follow and can possibly make you feel sicker by the day.

Mediation and positive thinking can affect your perception of the world in a positive way. It will make you more resilient, calmer and happier. There are mental trainings that can help you gain a more favourable outlook in life.

Some people choose to meditate, practice yoga, or use prayer. Researchers have also identified that kindness, forgiveness and a sense of gratitude can be practiced and developed over time and can alleviate anxiety and depression.

Health Coverage in the USA

weightsThe term health coverage or health insurance is used commonly in the USA to describe a program that assists one in bearing his medical expenses.

Individuals can purchase such programs privately from specialized agents or acquire these insurances through the social welfare systems being funded by the local government. These programs are also referred as health benefits, health coverage and health care coverage.

These facilities are being provided by both government and the privately owned organizations to offer protection against the growing cost of different medical services. Medicare, Medicaid, and Children Healthcare Coverage are some of the health care programs that provide help to people who are unable to afford these expenses.

Recent Development in Public Sector Health Programs

In the year 2009, the U.S government spent 2.5 trillion dollars and 18% of the total investment was on two most popular healthcare programs of the country which are – Medicaid and Medicare. Both the health programs were introduced in the year 1965. Lyndon Johnson was the president then when these two health coverage programs were introduced. The Federal Department of Human and Health in US takes responsibility to run these programs.

Medicare is the health care coverage program being provided to Americans who are over 65 and Medicaid is a joint program (state and federal government together run the program) that has been designed principally to back health care for the poor people. Both the programs provide financial aid to disabled Americans and together these programs cover nearly 87 million U.S people.

Medicaid Program in Brief

Medicaid is one of the two mentioned private health coverage programs that have been organized to provide aid to the people with low income and fewer assets. According to an ACA report, the health coverage program includes almost all the Americans who are under 65 and with the least earning (less than 30% of states federal property).

According to a 2009 record, the total Medicaid cost for the year was $359 billion that split within federal payments and state payment that were $234 billion and $125 billion respectively. Throughout the country, several variations are noticed on this program that include certain services like choosing eligible people, claims that would be covered or not, and the payment facilities for hospitals and doctors treating their Medicaid patients.

Medicare Program in Brief

In the year 2004, 42 million beneficiaries were availing this health cover facility and the total expense for this program rose to $297 in the same year. Unlike the private health insurance owners, beneficiaries of Medicare have the facility to demand medical care wherever they choose.

Thus, this program is often referred as a Free-For-The service model. A majority of the Medicare beneficiaries pay taxes in the programming until they retire from work and this facilitate them to participate in the Medicare hospitalization programs when they are 65 years old.

At this time, beneficiaries can also decide to opt for Part B Medicare programs providing only $96.40. The health programs benefits through multiple personal health plans that include HMOs or health maintenance organizations as well.

Health Coverage- An Important Part OF U.S Healthcare System

Health coverage programs provided by both the federal government and the private organizations are regarded as an important part of the country’s health care system. Some of the most-required health care services are being covered by the insurance policies planned by the companies.

People, who don’t have either a private or federal government insurance plans, often fail to avail the best treatment methods. Actually, the plan is that the revenue being earned from the insurance policies will be invested to modify the health care system and thus it is a must for the people of the country to purchase at least a small-amount of policy, if he or she wants to enjoy the facilities.

Reformation of Health Coverage Programs

In the year 1990, the U.S government has reformed one of the country’s best-known health coverage programs, which is the Veteran Health Administration. The mentionable reforms done to this program are:

  • Focus on primary care and more-increased fund for it
  • Implementation of extended pharmaceutical treatment
  • Establishment of a national center keeping patients safety in mind
  • Eligibility criteria was extended for majority of the US veterans

Employer Offered Health Cover Program

This is another popular health coverage program in the USA where the employers offer health care assistance to their employees. This program was introduced shortly after the Second World War. In this program, employers often pay a major portion of the insurance amount and ask the employees to provide a share only.

This amount is deducted from the salary amount being paid to the employee. Some employers don’t even ask the employees to bear a portion of the insurance whereas others do.

Forbidden Ideas


The words in its title are forbidden. That appears to be the central lesson of the field notes from the June, 2009 conference on models of statehood for Israel/Palestine. The second and third parts of this monograph deal with the mechanisms engaged to enforce the proscription around the one state topic; this part deals with its forbidden history and content.

When the call for papers for our conference came out in the fall of 2008, it was immediately met by one of my colleagues at Osgoode Hall Law School who noted, in a letter of complaint to the Dean, that “politically the ‘one-state solution’ has become a code word disguising a call for the destruction of Israel.” By way of explanation for why he thought Osgoode should not sponsor a conference that to his mind, would only bring controversy and dissension, he rhetorically asked the Dean.

Is there any legal issue per se in connection with the establishment of ‘one state’ in Israel & Palestine? Aren’t the models simple and obvious? Why hide then behind the number of states to be created? Isn’t it that the real issue, other than security, is the repatriation of the 1948 Palestinian refugees to their old homes in Israel? Will this objective not be facilitated by the one-state, certainly much more easily than in the framework of two states? Isn’t it self-explanatory?

By this analysis, the gezerah around the one state model protects the more deeply forbidden idea of the Palestinian refugees’ Right of Return to the place that they consider their homeland; a right that, if exercised, would undermine the Jewish majority in the state of Israel and, with presumably inexorable logic and pragmatics if the state of Israel is to remain democratic, the Jewish nature of the state. The impossibility of a Palestinian Right of Return is thus a fence around the more forbidden idea that the state of Israel might not be Jewish.

The verbotten one state model operates as one of the outer rings of prohibition protecting concentrically increasing sacrosanctity. As we experienced, the fence around the one state model is itself circumscribed by expanding rings of outer structures that ranged from demands for “balance” in discussions about Israel/Palestine to requisite thresholds of civility and scholarship supposedly attendant upon the topic.

The centrality of how fraught any discussion on the one state model would be (at least in the Canadian context) recurred as a theme from before that first email complaint up until the very day of the conference and beyond. As the Organizing Committee sought to gain the participation of local Zionist and two state proponents on our advisory committee – it having been relatively straightforward to secure the participation of Israeli scholars – we were informed by those we approached that the topic of the one state model was too charged for local participation.

Immediately after the letter of complaint went out from my Osgoode colleague, one of our Advisory Committee members, who had been copied on the email, raised with us an issue regarding the title of our conference that had not before occurred to him. As he noted, words exist, as Stanley Fish would say, within an interpretive community. The “One State Solution” has become a euphemism.

It’s not as vile as the “Final Solution”, but it has a similar impact on the reader and listener, and it simply cannot be used without signaling its now commonplace meaning. Most of the people who deploy it mean the “Destroy The Jewish State By Another Means Solution”. Unfortunately, no amount of bona fide explanation by the conference’s organizers can rid the phrase of the use that its most aggressive proponents have made of it.


The original title of the conference (One State or Two?) apparently was ineradicably a code for something far more ominous. It appeared that there could not be a space for discussing alternatives to the more orthodox two state model without triggering concentric rings of security alarms. As a result, it increasingly appeared as though the only legitimate discussions that could take place about statehood in Israel/Palestine were ones that were already received.

The four members of the Organizing Committee in fact had not only a broad scope of views on models of statehood between them, but shared a fair amount of skepticism and ambivalence about any of the models presented. From the outset, we actively sought out the participation of scholars who could represent a range, if not polar opposition, on conceivable ways out of the Middle East impasse.

When the call for papers was answered by a far more complex range of models than suggested by the original title – One State or Two? – we changed the title to reflect the diversity and richness of papers that were beginning to be sent in. Neither the conference vision statement – which was explicit in its aspiration to canvass diverse positions – nor the change in title could shake our critics’ preoccupation with the presence of the one state model as a scholarly topic of inquiry.

That the one state model was the central anxiety of the conference’s critics was reinforced throughout coverage. The Canadian Council for Israel and Jewish Advocacy (CIJA) issued a statement several weeks before the conference stating that “the conference aims to explore a one-state, bi-national solution to the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians, the imposition of which would spell the end of Israel as a Jewish state” and called on people to “write to the President of York University making clear that events like this should not have the sanction of the university.”

On the first day of the conference, the National Post published an article by Stephen Scheinberg and Neil Caplan on what they presumed was the “original political objective of the organizers”, namely the promotion of the one state model. As they noted, We believe that frustration with the lack of progress toward a two-state solution does not provide a sufficient basis for advocating a one-state solution.

Current calls for a one-state solution mask a desire for the disappearance of Israel as a Jewish state. They not only reinforce the demands of fundamentalist groups like Hamas, but also cater to demagogic seekers of “justice” and anti-Israel campus groups.

Some time after the conference, in an article in the Canadian Jewish News announcing a review of the conference by the President and Provost/Vice President Academic of York University to the Jewish community, the presence of the one state model in the themes addressed by a roster of speakers and as a topic of scholarly debate remained central to the Jewish community’s concerns: another issue that concerned many members of the Jewish community was the York-sponsored conference in June called Israel/Palestine: Mapping Models of Statehood and Paths to Peace. The concern stemmed from the fact that a large majority of the speakers promoted a one-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict – a solution that would mean the end of a Jewish state.

While not all of the furor that arose around the conference was focused on the perils of raising the one state model as a subject of inquiry, it is fair to say that vast bulk of the express anxiety was provoked by this stimulus. The successive proscriptions embedded within the forbidden one state topic fits well with the Talmudic analogy to gzerot established to protect a biblical precept. As with biblical commands within a world of religious pluralism, there is a contingent, contested, and at times radically incommensurable quality to those topics which different communities take – internally – to be indisputable.

The contingent nature of gzerot – the quality of being deeply and meaningfully proscriptive to insiders while potentially perplexing, if not arbitrary or even vexatious, to outsiders – is manifest in the history of these devices. This contingent quality is present even when outsiders have profoundly empathetic responses to the inner logic, even empathy sufficiently deep to be akin to a recognition of necessity.

Gzerot – rabbinical, and therefore human, commandments designed to shore up the sacrosanctity of the divine commands given in the Torah – emerged most prolifically after the fall of the second temple in 70 CE when the center of Jewish lawmaking moved from the land of Israel to the dispersed communities of the Diaspora and the Torah itself became interpretively surrounded by the mishnah and the mishnah by the spiraling complexity of the Talmud.

When the Jews of Europe were enclosed in ghettos – segregated communities that had earlier been preferred by Jewish communities wishing to settle in new towns but became imposed during the renaissance – the authority of rabbinical leaders became entrenched as the ghettos became autonomous and corporate law-making jurisdictions. Rabbinical law flourished commensurately and the distinctiveness of the Talmudic legal tradition was massaged to respond to a plethora of disputes and conundrums both ponderous and mundane. The structure of rabbinical jurisdiction became solidified as the threat of excommunication from a familiar space was given the edge of banishment to a surrounding world of pervasive and persistent anti-Semitism.

When the walls of the ghettos were taken down in the 19th century under the ideals of the Enlightenment and the expansion of the French Revolution through Napoleon, Jews dispersed from the corporate and segregated world of ghettos and aspired towards equal citizenship in their surrounding societies. As a result of the dispersal and of the promise of integration, the jurisdictional scope that the ghettos had afforded the integrity and development of Talmudic law was commensurately diluted. Not only did many Jews assimilate rapidly and sometimes with great success into non-Jewish society, Jewish law lost the solidarity and jurisdictional enclosure that enables many legal traditions to flourish.

This disruption was significant enough that, as Celia Fassberg notes, commentators have observed that by the end of the 19th century, “the rabbinical establishment had missed the opportunity to develop Jewish law in a number of areas crucial to modern life – contracts, torts, commercial institutions, and the like.” The waning robustness of Jewish law is one of several reasons that Jewish law did not play a significant part in the legal system of the new Jewish state.

Not only did integration play a role in retarding the development of Jewish law by dispersing the legal authority from theretofore highly localized communities with steep enforcement mechanisms for non-compliance, the Jewish Enlightenment (Haskalah) that followed upon the release from the ghettos also fractured the prior cohesion of the Jewish people. Where orthodoxy prevailed by default and by imposed context prior to the Haskalah, the Enlightenment’s dispersal of Jewish communities simultaneously fractured the religious community into distinctive clusters that accommodated, to greater and lesser degrees, elements from Europe’s surrounding and emerging modernity.

Beyond the religious fracturing that increasingly dwindled Orthodox Judaism’s monopoly over observants, the free and critical inquiry at the core of the Enlightenment further dispersed Jews into the secularism that was spreading throughout Europe. Over the 19th century, the conception of authority that had governed Jews – seeped in revealed truths and rooted in deeply historical sources, many with absolute validity – gave way to a persuasive authority whose sources were far more plural and hybrid and contentious.

The paradigm of fences built around absolute truths by authorities whose expertise clustered around a highly distinctive set of sources and methodologies shifted, for Jewish as well as non-Jewish Europeans. The corporate pluralism of the Middle Ages and Renaissance gave rise to a far more scattered and complex pluralism just as the concept of citizenship held the promise of embracing far more diverse swathes of society.

As Amos Elon has poignantly laid out in The Pity of It All: A Portrait of the German-Jewish Epoch, 1743-1933, this promise was devastatingly betrayed for Europe’s Jews. The Haskalah transformed the viciously stigmatized and ghettoized Jewish population into a stunningly successful and seemingly fully integrated part of the upper echelons of German society.

Having taken seriously the promise of full and equal citizenship in the European community of nations and the prospects of fecundating millennia of Jewish thought with the fruits of the Enlightenment (and vice versa), Jews found themselves transformed in the European imaginary into deadly threats to national integrity.

No longer having the security of ghettos to retreat to, the pervasive and seemingly ineradicable anti-Semitism of European society exploited the vulnerabilities that arise from the openness of integration, assimilation, and hope. The pedagogy of the Holocaust appears to logically and overwhelmingly reinstate a new absolute around which multiple fences are required, emerging as they do out of the seemingly indelible historical truth of deep-seated anti-Semitism: no state but Israel can ultimately protect the Jews and the state must be Jewish to provide this protection.

This is the logic of an unspeakable pain and grief that is hard to deny. This is an historical logic that, while contingent, is so virtually unassailable and so immediately evocative, also to outsiders, to render it a seeming necessity. It is hard to imagine a group whose terror of dependency on the goodwill of others is more justified.

At this post-deluvial point in history, however, the Jews are dispersed and fractured – both geographically and intellectually – and have been as deeply and widely infused with the Enlightenment’s core value of critical inquiry as the rest of us. Perhaps the best illustration of this is the high level of contestation and disputation that are tolerated within Israel proper, for example in its media and its universities; a tolerance that is often unparalleled in other Western democracies.

Some of the most vocal critics of pronouncements about the unassailable nature of the Israeli state come from Israel itself. When Professor Neve Gordon of Ben-Gurion University called for a boycott of Israel, the group leading the furor to have a tenured professor fired was the Jewish community of Los Angeles. While the President of Ben-Gurion was highly critical of Gordon’s position, she was also clear that “like it or not, Gordon cannot be readily dismissed.

The law in Israel is very clear, and the university is a law-abiding institution.” The recurrent commitment to the Enlightenment values of secularism and critical inquiry is also seen in the enduring tension within Israel itself over the place of secularism in the state. Very few states have this tension so omnipresently part of the national dialogue with itself.

In this much more complex post-Enlightenment/post-Holocaust context, where Jewish and non-Jewish communities are riddled with contradictions and seemingly irreconcilable tensions around competing core values, we are no longer innocent of the power of persuasive authority over the force of revealed authority.

The pluralism of the contemporary world makes it hard to see one peoples’ history as rooted in a bedrock of universal truth while another peoples’ history is rooted in imagination. However much necessity our shared understanding of history generates, it is hard for children of the Enlightenment not to see that it all could have been otherwise – and it all might be otherwise. Gzerot are ultimately fragile defenses against this need to know.