"I don't want my picture in any cigarettes, but I also don't want you to lose the ten dollars, so I'm enclosing my check for that sum. Tobacco may shorten a man’s life and interfere with his baseball career, but I guess it hasn’t shortened mine a great deal. I have noticed that where a player starts to quit hitting, it will shorten his career a good deal quicker than tobacco. There ain't much to being a ballplayer, if you're a ballplayer." Honus Wagner. "Honus Wagner was the greatest athlete in baseball. Acknowledging that there may have been one or two whose talents were greater, there is no one who has ever played this game that I would be more anxious to have on a baseball team. The difference between the number one shortstop, all time, Wagner and the number two shortstop, whoever it is, is about the same as the distance between the number two shortstop and the number 30 shortstop. Honus Wagner was a gentle, kind man, a storyteller, supportive of rookies, patient with the fans, cheerful in hard times, careful of the example he set for youth, a hard worker. He was the most beloved man in baseball before Ruth." Bill James. Honus Wagner still ranks in the top 10 all-time, in hits, singles, doubles, triples and stolen bases. Honus Wagner hit an astonishing 20 triples at age 38 and 17 triples at age 41.
BT In A New Key
A blog for people who seek alternative approaches to kiruv and the baal teshuvah experience.
Monday, July 20, 2026
Sunday, July 19, 2026
Saturday, July 18, 2026
Friday, July 17, 2026
not Muslims
Highest rates of prostitution in the World :
1.Thailand (Buddhist) 2.Denmark (Christian) 3.Italy (Christian) 4.Germany (Christian) 5.France (Christian) 6.Norway (Christian) 7.Belgium (Christian) 8.Spain (Christian) 9.United Kingdom (Christian) 10.Finland (Christian) Highest rates of theft in the world: 1.Denmark and Finland (Christian) 2.Zimbabwe (Christian) 3.Australia (Christian) 4.Canada (Christian) 5. New Zealand (Christian) 6.India (Hindu) 7.England and Wales (Christian) 8.United States (Christian) 9.Sweden (Christian) 10.South Africa (Christian) Highest rates of alcohol addiction in the world: 1.Moldova (Christian) 2.Belarus (Christian) 3.Lithuania (Christian) 4.Russia (Christian) 5.Czech Republic (Christian) 6.Ukraine (Christian) 7.Andorra (Christian) 8.Romania (Christian) 9.Serbia (Christian) 10.Australia (Christian) Highest homicide rates in the world: 1.Honduras (Christian) 2.Venezuela (Christian) 3.Belize (Christian) 4.El Salvador (Christian) 5.Guatemala (Christian) 6.South Africa (Christian) 7.Saint Kitts and Nevis (Christian) 8.The Bahamas (Christian) 9.Lesotho (Christian) 10.Jamaica (Christian) Most dangerous gangs in the world: 1.Yakuza (non-religious) 2.Agberos (Christian) 3.Wah Sing (Christian) 4.Jamaica Posse (Christian) 5.Primeiro (Christian) 6.Aryan Brotherhood (Christian) Largest drug cartels in the world: 1.Pablo Escobar – Colombia (Christian) 2.Amado Carrillo – Colombia (Christian) 3.Carlos Lehder – Germany (Christian) 4.Griselda Blanco – Colombia (Christian) 5.Joaquín Guzmán – Mexico (Christian) 6.Rafael Caro – Mexico (Christian) And then they say that #Islam is the cause of violence and terrorism in the world and want us to believe that. Who started World War I? Not Muslims. Who started World War II? Not Muslims. Who killed about 20 million of Australia’s indigenous people? Not Muslims. Who dropped the nuclear bombs on Nagasaki and Hiroshima in Japan? Not Muslims. Who killed more than 100 million Native Americans in South America? Not Muslims. Who killed about 50 million Native Americans in North America? Not Muslims. First, we must define terrorism or understand how terrorism is viewed by non-Muslims. If a non-Muslim commits a terrorist act, it is called a crime; but if a Muslim commits it, it is called terrorism. We must stop dealing with double standards.DNA
A recent study on mitochondrial DNA revealed that the female line of Ashkenazi Jewish ancestry closely resembles that of Southern and Western Europe, rather than the ancient Near East, as many scholars proposed in the past.
Ashkenazim, a Jewish group who migrated to Central and Eastern Europe, make up the majority of the world’s Jewish population today.
A recent article in Nature Communications discusses the results of the mtDNA tests. The article, written by a team of scientists led by the University of Huddersfield’s Martin B. Richards, includes the following in its abstract:
Like Judaism, mitochondrial DNA is passed along the maternal line. Its variation in the Ashkenazim is highly distinctive, with four major and numerous minor founders … we show that all four major founders, ~40% of Ashkenazi mtDNA variation, have ancestry in prehistoric Europe, rather than the Near East or Caucasus. Furthermore, most of the remaining minor founders share a similar deep European ancestry. Thus the great majority of Ashkenazi maternal lineages were not brought from the Levant, as commonly supposed, nor recruited in the Caucasus, as sometimes suggested, but assimilated within Europe. These results point to a significant role for the conversion of women in the formation of Ashkenazi communities, and provide the foundation for a detailed reconstruction of Ashkenazi genealogical history.
Earlier DNA tests performed on male chromosomes in Jewish communities generally reveal Near Eastern DNA patterns. Population migration and conversion to Judaism may have led to the growth of the Ashkenazi population. Ashkenazi Jewish ancestry may, in fact, stem from the Jewish community in the early Roman Empire. The authors write that “a substantial Jewish community was present in Rome from at least the mid-second century BCE, maintaining links to Jerusalem and numbering 30,000–50,000 by the first half of the first century C.E. By the end of the first millennium CE, Ashkenazi communities were historically visible along the Rhine valley in Germany.”