REFLEXIONES MATUTINAS POR REINA DE LOS ANGELES 04/10/11

Porque la ira del hombre no obra la justicia de Dios. Santiago 1:20.
Carla sabía que la noche de aquel domingo marcaría su vida para siem pre. Era una noche fría; la más fría de todas las que había vivido al lado de su joven esposo. Las cortinas se movían con el viento helado; pero ni siquiera el aire de la noche era capaz de apagar la ira de su corazón. algo así! Pero, defi nitivamente él se arrepentiría de haberlo hecho: ella le pagaría con la misma moneda.
Saltó de su inercia. No miró el reloj; cualquier hora daba lo mismo para lo que pensaba hacer. Se vistió con prisa; pasó sus dedos entre su cabello negro, tratando de alisarlo. Tomó su bolso, cruzó el umbral y se perdió en la noche oscura y fría de su dolor de esposa traicionada.
Al volver a casa, se lo dijo. Así, sin medias palabras. Le dijo que estaban empatados: ojo por ojo, traición por traición.La imagen que había visto aquella tarde no se borraría de su mente jamás: su esposo besaba a otra mujer. ¡Nunca había imaginado algo así! Pero, defi nitivamente él se arrepentiría de haberlo hecho: ella le pagaría con la misma moneda.
Saltó de su inercia. No miró el reloj; cualquier hora daba lo mismo para lo que pensaba hacer. Se vistió con prisa; pasó sus dedos entre su cabello negro, tratando de alisarlo. Tomó su bolso, cruzó el umbra y se perdió en la noche oscura y fría de su dolor de esposa traicionada.
Al volver a casa, se lo dijo. Así, sin medias palabras. Le dijo que estaban empatados: ojo por ojo, traición por traición.
A partir de aquel día, las noches de Carla se hicieron cada vez más os curas y frías. Su dolor aumentaba. Ya no le dolía la traición del esposo: la atormentaba su propia traición. Se había vengado; había hecho "justicia" por sus propias manos. Pero aquel acto, provocado por la ira, solo le causó amargura; una amargura tan densa como sus densas noches frías y oscuras. Acabó en el consultorio de un psicólogo.
El consejo bíblico de hoy es: Deja la justicia con Dios; él no puede ser burlado. La persona que te hirió puede parecer victoriosa hoy y mañana, pero los actos de justicia divinos llegan oportunamente, llegan a su debido tiempo.

No te atrevas a llamar justicia al acto impensado provocado por la ira; las prisiones están llenas de gente que solo quiso hacer "justicia".
Las prisiones del alma también abrigan, en sus celdas, a gente herida que, como Carla, se dejó llevar por la ira. La ira humana no combina con la justicia divina: solo Dios sabe permitir que el ser humano coseche el fruto maduro de vivir perjudicando al otro.
Libértate. Pide a Dios la capacidad de perdonar. Abre las puertas de tus prisiones interiores. Brilla, como el sol del nuevo día. Porque: "la ira del hombre no obra la justicia de Dios".Matutina Pr. Alejandro Bullón

Amy Coughenour Betancourt to Lead NCBA's CLUSA International Development Program

Amy and Victor

WASHINGTON, DC -- (Marketwire) -- 10/03/11 -- The National Cooperative Business Association has selected Amy Coughenour Betancourt as its next Vice President for NCBA's CLUSA International Program. She brings to NCBA a number of strengths to support the growth of the CLUSA program. Along with a track record of proven leadership, Amy Coughenour brings success in securing program funds from various sources, including US government donors, multi-laterals, foundations, corporations and national governments. As Deputy Director of the Pan American Development Foundation, Coughenour led efforts to secure some $58 million per year from these various donor sources.

"Amy's 'out of the box' thinking on how to secure program funds will help NCBA continue its important work in food security, democracy and governance, natural resource management and community based health," said NCBA President and CEO Paul Hazen.

In addition to her leadership, Amy Coughenour's extensive contacts in Latin America will help NCBA re-establish its presence in this region of the world.

"What draws me to NCBA and its international work is its tremendous potential for growth and impact, especially on the eve of the International Year of Cooperatives," said Amy Coughenour. "I am excited to join this outstanding team and look forward to meeting and working with the cooperative community around the world," she continued.

For the last nine years, Amy Coughenour has served as deputy director of the Pan AmericanDevelopment Foundation, an organization dedicated to empowering vulnerable populations in Latin America and the Caribbean through a variety of means including training, micro-enterprise, disaster assistance, democracy building and sustainable development. At PADF, Amy was responsible for resource development, communications, private sector support, strategic planning, board development and overall management of the foundation. Her work in Haiti, in response to the earthquake of 2010 and other disasters, demonstrates her ability to creatively approach challenges.

Prior to joining PADF, Amy served as Deputy Director of the Americas Program for the Center for Strategic and International Studies. While with CSIS, among other duties, Amy developed and managed regional programs and budget; oversaw production of Americas policy publications; raised funds; and managed foundation relations, grant deliverables, expenditures and reports.

Amy Coughenour holds an M.A. in International Policy Studies (with a specialization in Latin America) from the Monterey Institute of International Studies and a B.A. in German from Central College in Pella, IA. She received a teaching Fulbright scholarship in Germany and has lived in Mexico, Austria and Central America.

ABOUT NCBA
Founded in 1916, the National Cooperative Business Association is the national voice for cooperative enterprise in the United States and has a mission to develop, advance and protect cooperative business. NCBA provides a strong, unified voice on Capitol Hill and diligently works with lawmakers to enact cooperative friendly legislation. NCBA's comprehensive programs help co-ops strengthen their businesses so they can better serve their members and transform the global economy. NCBA also creates connections across all sectors of the nation's more than 29,000 cooperative businesses, including agriculture, food distribution and retailing, childcare, credit unions, purchasing, worker-owned, housing, healthcare, energy and telecommunications cooperatives. NCBA's CLUSA International Program has helped develop cooperatives and other sustainable businesses in over 100 countries since 1953. CLUSA currently implements 23 projects in 10 countries. In the 2012, cooperatives around the world will celebrate the International Year of Cooperatives. Cooperative enterprises build a better world. To learn more about NCBA, visit www.ncba.coop.

A story of friendship between muslims and jews

PARIS — The stories of the Holocaust have been documented, distorted, clarified and filtered through memory. Yet new stories keep coming, occasionally altering the grand, incomplete mosaic of Holocaust history.

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Martin Bureau/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

The film's director, Ismaël Ferroukhi.

One of them, dramatized in a French film released here last week, focuses on an unlikely savior of Jews during the Nazi occupation of France: the rector of a Paris mosque.

Muslims, it seems, rescued Jews from the Nazis.

“Les Hommes Libres” (“Free Men”) is a tale of courage not found in French textbooks. According to the story, Si Kaddour Benghabrit, the founder and rector of the Grand Mosque of Paris, provided refuge and certificates of Muslim identity to a small number of Jews to allow them to evade arrest and deportation.

It was simpler than it sounds. In the early 1940s France was home to a large population of North Africans, including thousands of Sephardic Jews. The Jews spoke Arabic and shared many of the same traditions and everyday habits as the Arabs. Neither Muslims nor Jews ate pork. Both Muslim and Jewish men were circumcised. Muslim and Jewish names were often similar.

The mosque, a tiled, walled fortress the size of a city block on the Left Bank, served as a place to pray, certainly, but also as an oasis of calm where visitors were fed and clothed and could bathe, and where they could talk freely and rest in the garden.

It was possible for a Jew to pass.

“This film is an event,” said Benjamin Stora, France’s pre-eminent historian on North Africa and a consultant on the film. “Much has been written about Muslim collaboration with the Nazis. But it has not been widely known that Muslims helped Jews. There are still stories to be told, to be written.”

The film, directed by Ismaël Ferroukhi, is described as fiction inspired by real events and built around the stories of two real-life figures (along with a made-up black marketeer). The veteran French actor Michael Lonsdale plays Benghabrit, an Algerian-born religious leader and a clever political maneuverer who gave tours of the mosque to German officers and their wives even as he apparently used it to help Jews.

Mahmoud Shalaby, a Palestinian actor living in Israel, plays Salim — originally Simon — Hilali, who was Paris’s most popular Arabic-language singer, a Jew who survived the Holocaust by posing as a Muslim. (To make the assumed identity credible, Benghabrit had the name of Hilali’s grandfather engraved on a tombstone in the Muslim cemetery in the Paris suburb of Bobigny, according to French obituaries about the singer. In one tense scene in the film a German soldier intent on proving that Hilali is a Jew, takes him to the cemetery to identify it.)

The historical record remains incomplete, because documentation is sketchy. Help was provided to Jews on an ad hoc basis and was not part of any organized movement by the mosque. The number of Jews who benefited is not known. The most graphic account, never corroborated, was given by Albert Assouline, a North African Jew who escaped from a German prison camp. He claimed that more than 1,700 resistance fighters — including Jews but also a lesser number of Muslims and Christians — found refuge in the mosque’s underground caverns, and that the rector provided many Jews with certificates of Muslim identity.

In his 2006 book, “Among the Righteous,” Robert Satloff, director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, uncovered stories of Arabs who saved Jews during the Holocaust, and included a chapter on the Grand Mosque. Dalil Boubakeur, the current rector, confirmed to him that some Jews — up to 100 perhaps — were given Muslim identity papers by the mosque, without specifying a number. Mr. Boubakeur said individual Muslims brought Jews they knew to the mosque for help, and the chief imam, not Benghabrit, was the man responsible.

Mr. Boubakeur showed Mr. Satloff a copy of a typewritten 1940 Foreign Ministry document from the French Archives. It stated that the occupation authorities suspected mosque personnel of delivering false Muslim identity papers to Jews. “The imam was summoned, in a threatening manner, to put an end to all such practices,” the document said.

Mr. Satloff said in a telephone interview: “One has to separate the myth from the fact. The number of Jews protected by the mosque was probably in the dozens, not the hundreds. But it is a story that carries a powerful political message and deserves to be told.”

A 1991 television documentary “Une Résistance Oubliée: La Mosquée de Paris” (“A Forgotten Resistance: The Mosque of Paris”) by Derri Berkani , and a children’s book “The Grand Mosque of Paris: A Story of How Muslims Saved Jews During the Holocaust,” published in 2007, also explore the events.

The latest film was made in an empty palace in Morocco, with the support of the Moroccan government. The Paris mosque refused to grant permission for any filming. “We’re a place of worship,” Mr. Boubakeur said in an interview. “There are prayers five times a day. Shooting a film would have been disruptive.”

Benghabrit fell out of favor with fellow Muslims because he opposed Algerian independence and stayed loyal to France’s occupation of his native country. He died in 1954.

In doing research for the film, Mr. Ferroukhi and even Mr. Stora learned new stories. At one screening a woman asked him why the film did not mention the Ashkenazi Jews of Eastern European origin who had been saved by the mosque. Mr. Stora said he explained that the mosque didn’t intervene on behalf of Ashkenazi Jews, who did not speak Arabic or know Arab culture.

“She told me: ‘That’s not true. My mother was protected and saved by a certificate from the mosque,’ ” Mr. Stora said.

On Wednesday, the day of the film’s release here, hundreds of students from three racially and ethnically mixed Paris-area high schools were invited to a special screening and question-and-answer session with Mr. Ferroukhi and some of his actors.

Some asked banal questions. Where did you find the old cars? (From an antique car rental agency.) Others reacted with curiosity and disbelief, wanting to know how much of the film was based on fact, and how it could have been possible that Jews mingled easily with Muslims. Some were stunned to hear that the Nazis persecuted only the Jews, and left the Muslims alone.

Reviews here were mixed on the film, which is to be released in the Netherlands, Switzerland and Belgium. (American rights have been sold as well.) The daily Le Figaro said it “reconstitutes an atmosphere and a period marvelously.” The weekly L’Express called it “ideal for a school outing, less for an evening at the movies.”

Mr. Ferroukhi does not care. He said he was lobbying the Culture and Education Ministries to get the film shown in schools. “It pays homage to the people of our history who have been invisible,” he said. “It shows another reality, that Muslims and Jews existed in peace. We have to remember that — with pride

Jonah was a prophet who lived in the first Temple period. His first mission was given to him by the most famous of first Temple prophets, Elijah -- he was to anoint Jehu as king in the year 705 BCE. His were stormy times; the Jewish people were trapped in a pattern of spiritual decline that ended with first the conquest and expulsion of the Ten Tribes by the Assyrians in 607 BCE, and finally with the destruction of Jerusalem, which was followed by 70 years of exile.

As a prophet, Jonah knew far better than we can imagine what the inevitable end would be if no transformation would take place.

After the failure of his second mission, to rebuke Jehu's successor, Jeroboam the second, he was given his final mission.

The mission that God gave him was one that he could not open his heart to accept. He was sent to the capital of Assyria, Nineveh, to urge its population to repent. How bizarre the assignment sounded to him! His own people were falling uncontrollably into a chasm that seemed to have no bottom, yet he was sent to save others -- the archenemies of Israel!

Jonah actually dreaded success of this mission far more than he dreaded failure. How could he bear to witness the contrast of the Assyrians returning to God in the face of his prophecy, with the Jews stubbornly resisting any chance for spiritual self-preservation. Therefore, he attempted to escape from his destiny.

Jonah fled from Israel by ship to silence the voice of prophecy that can only be heard in the Holy Land. But a storm at sea forced him into the recognition that no one can escape from God. In the midst of calm waters, his boat was tossed in a tempest until it was on the verge of breaking. The sailors prayed to their gods.

Jonah went to sleep.

He knew the truth. It was he who had already cut himself off from God; there was nothing to say and nothing to pray for.

His apathetic behavior aroused the curiosity of the sailors. He told them his story. He believed in God, yet he was running away from Him.

Knowing he was the cause of the storm, he implored the sailors to toss him overboard so they could save themselves. As decent people they resisted this suggestion until the critical moment when it became clear that within seconds they would all die. At that point, they listened and threw him into the turbulent depths. The storm abated immediately. Jonah thought his story had ended.

But it had just begun. He was swallowed by a whale, and miraculously survived. In the dark fetid innards of the whale, he recognized what he had never truly been willing to see, in his most exalted moments of prophecy, God's intimate knowledge and care over each life and each moment. He was a prophet and awareness of God was not a novelty to him. But recognition of the depths of God's mercy was.

It was then that Jonah did teshuva -- he repented, returning to God and the best in himself.

Now he recognized that no matter how painful the contrast between the Assyrians and the Jews would be to him, that God's motivation could only be one of mercy. Once he recognized this truth, he was willing to open the gates that he had closed so resolutely -- the gates of prayer. He was now ready for the most significant undertaking of his life.

The whale spit him out at the shores of Nineveh.

He told the residents of Nineveh what awaited them: In forty days they could either make radical changes in their lives, or the city would be destroyed by God's wrath.

The changes in Nineveh happened with speed and drama. The king himself led the people into a total reformation. Nineveh's destruction was postponed for 40 years.

Everything that Jonah had feared had come to pass. The contrast that he dreaded was more vivid in reality than it was as a prophecy. He had only one further request that he be spared of seeing the destruction of his own people, which he knew would come eventually and at the hands of the Assyrians at that. The fact that the Jews would not take example from Nineveh would be the final act of callousness that would seal their fate. God did not answer Jonah's request with words. He answered by deed.

After Jonah left Nineveh, he went to the outskirts and made himself a shelter in the shade of a kikayon tree. It was a source of consolation to him in his anguish, and made him aware of God's compassion. But God sent a worm to eat through the branches and kill the tree.

In response, all the pent up feelings of agony poured forth from Jonah's lips. God replied "You took pity on a kikayon for which you did not labor ... Shall I not take pity on Nineveh, that great city in which there are more than 120 thousand people who do not know their right hand from their left, and many beasts as well?"

In short, what God was telling Jonah is the flaws of the residents of Nineveh did not make them unworthy of life. Each person is part of the world's spiritual ecology, and brings benefit to the world at least as much as the kikayon plant brought benefit to Jonah.

Yalkut Shimoni, the most encyclopedic of all Midrashim (written by Rav Shimon Hadarshan in the thirteenth century) gives us deep insight into the most profound recognition of Jonah's life:

At that moment he fell on his face and said, "Rule your world according to the attribute of mercy" as it is written "to You, God, is mercy and forgiveness."

The message of Jonah's prophecy is one for each one of us. The Vilna Gaon tells us that Jonah's journey is one that we all make. We are born with a subconscious realization of the fact that we have a mission. We seek escape, because our mission is often one that we are afraid to attempt.

In the text of the Jonah story we are told that the places that he sought were Yaffo and Tarshish. While these places actually exist and are known as Jaffa and Tarsis, the literal meaning of the names of these cities are "beauty" and "wealth."

We comfort ourselves externally, by escaping from our inner knowledge of our mission through the pursuit of wealth, and by surrounding ourselves with beauty. Our bodies are compared to Jonah's ship. We face moments in life in which the fragility of our bodies is inescapable, as in when we face illness, or confront moments of danger that seem to last an eternity until they are resolved.

The sailors on the ship are the talents and capacities that work for us. They too cannot save us from our futile desire to escape ourselves. The whale is the symbol of ultimate confrontation of the recognition that our ultimate fate is the grave. For some, that recognition almost feels like a welcome refuge. For others, facing death forces them at last into pursuing life!

As with Jonah, our recognition of our own vulnerability can bring us to finally transcend our ego, surrendering our desire to control events, and beginning at last to accept our mission in life, no matter what it is.

We can suffer the vicissitudes of life, and recognize that we ourselves have caused the storms to toss us back and forth. We can move forward to fulfill our purpose, but we are still not free of conflict and anxiety until we finally recognize that every step along the way, we are embraced by Divine compassion.

It is then that we are ready to return to God. While for each of us the path is our own, and never yet explored by any other person, Jonah knew the beginning and the end of the journey that we all make.

Yom Kippur is the day in which each one of us can relive Jonah's journey. Let us finally move towards whatever the next step is for us in fulfilling the mission for which we were created. Let us use the time to return to God with joy and love.

Paintings by Sara Legtig De Wertheimer

You can contact the artist at

saralegtig@yahoo.es

REFLEXIONES MATUTINAS POR REINA DE LOS ANGELES

Y el hombre respondió: La mujer que me diste por compañera me dio del árbol, y yo comí.

Entonces Jehová Dios dijo a la mujer: ¿Qué es lo que has hecho? Y dijo la mujer: La serpiente me

engaño y comí. Génesis 3:12,13.

Preso en el acto, por tráfico de drogas, Manuel lanza un discurso duro:

"Yo soy fruto de la sociedad; soy el resultado de un mundo injusto, don de a las personas solo

les importa ellas mismas. Yo soy lo que ustedes me lle varon a ser. No pude escoger, no tuve

oportunidades: yo no tengo la culpa".

• Su discurso era fuerte y elocuente. Este mundo es egoísta; cada día que pasa, las personas se preocupan más por ellas que por su prójimo. La ven ganza y el odio se sobreponen al amor y al perdón. Manuel parecía tener razón.
  Vivimos en un mundo en que faltan oportunidades para los jóvenes. Cada año, más y más profesionales son lanzados a un mercado de trabajo cada día más exigente. Faltan oportunidades; falta el deseo de invertir en los jóvenes. Manuel parecía tener razón.
  ¿Cómo condenar a muchachos que nacen huérfanos; jóvenes que viven sin un modelo a ser seguido; sin un referente paterno?

  ¿Cómo condenar a un muchacho que, desde sus primeros años, vive la ley de la selva en plena metrópoli? ¿Cómo condenar a un muchacho que mata, para no morir? Ma nuel, ¡parece que tienes la razón!
  Solo que Manuel es un muchacho de clase media, en una de las ciuda des más grandes del mundo. Segundo hijo de un hogar bien estructurado, siempre tuvo todo en casa: estudió en buenas escuelas; viajaba durante las vacaciones; usaba buenas ropas; frecuentaba los mejores ambientes sociales; tenía un cuarto solo para él; desde niño, tuvo su propia computadora. Si alguien tuvo oportunidades en la vida; si alguien podría hacer la diferencia en la sociedad, ese sería Manuel. ¡Ah, Manuel! Parece que ya no tienes tanta razón.
• El problema es que Manuel aprendió, desde pequeño, a colocar la culpa en los demás. El ser humano siempre fue así desde la entrada del pecado: "La mujer que me diste", excusó Adán; "La serpiente que creaste", adujo Eva.
  La culpa nunca es nuestra; el responsable nunca soy yo. Ese estilo de vida trae, como resultado, infelicidad, rebeldía, dolor, frustración.
  Hoy, en vez de decir, como Adán, "La mujer que me diste por compañe ra", di: "Señor, pequé. Por favor, ¿puedes perdonarme?
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REFLEXIONES MATUTINAS POR REINA DE LOS ANGELES 30/09/2011

• Porque raíz de todos los males es el amor al dinero, el cual codiciando algunos, se extraviaron de la fe, y fueron traspasados de muchos dolores.1 Timoteo 6:10.
  Los sobres se amontonaban, sobre la mesa de la cocina, como un castillo de naipes que en cualquier momento se desmoronaría. Cada sobre gritaba: "¡Pague, pague, pague!" Cintia evitaba entrar en la cocina, por miedo de oír el coro imaginario de los sobres. Pero, por más que no quisiese aceptar la realidad, las cuentas continuaban llegando, con valores cada vez más altos.

  • "Yo solo quería ser feliz", murmuraba, hastiada de huir de sus fantasmas: ropas caras, fiestas, restaurantes finos, viajes y más viajes. Todos sus amigos la consideraban alguien especial; una persona generosa y de buen corazón... con mucho dinero. Si el dinero en la mano es un vendaval, gastar sin tener dinero puede ser un tsunami.
    Ser feliz. Ese es el constante anhelo del ser humano: buscar incansable mente la felicidad. Y, para encontrarla, no mide esfuerzos: lucha, corre, llora, se sacrifica, no come, no duerme; casi deja de vivir.

    No es malo desear la felicidad; lo errado no es el objetivo sino el medio que usamos para conseguirlo. La mayoría de las veces, ese medio es la pose sión de bienes materiales.
    Desde que nos despertamos hasta la hora de dormir, somos bombardea dos con mensajes consumistas. Las personas basan su felicidad en su capa cidad de consumir: cuanto más compras, más feliz te sientes. Y eso es una rueda viva, que gira en función de un único sentimiento oculto: la codicia.

    La codicia no es solo querer lo que los demás poseen, sino desear lo que no puedo tener. Cintia compró, compró y compró, queriendo tener más, y terminó con menos.
    Tu felicidad no es la sumatoria de lo que tienes, sino a quién perteneces; es bueno tener, pero es mejor pertenecer. Cuando escoges pertenecer a Dios, escoges la felicidad: él te ayuda a vivir con lo que tienes y con lo que eres, y te dará mucho más de lo que un día soñaste.
    Hoy, sal a la lucha de la vida procurando primeramente pertenecer a

    Jesús y permaneciendo en él. Cuando sientas el deseo de tener lo que no está dentro de tus posibilidades, a pesar de que te parezca bueno y agradable a los ojos, recuerda: "Porque raíz de todos los males es el amor al dinero, el cual codiciando algunos, se extraviaron de la fe, y fueron traspasados de muchos dolores".