The Messenger, Georgia
Nov. 3, 2004
Mirtskhulava’s case goes to court
By M. Alkhazashvili
On November 3, the district court of Krtsanisi-Mtatsminda will begin
hearing the case of the former Minister of Energy David Mirtskhulava,
who is accused of overestimating his duties, which seriously damaged
the country economically, and could face twelve years imprisonment if
he is found guilty.
Mirtskhulava is the first high ranking official from the Shevardnadze
administration whose case has come to court, as all those others who
have been charged by the General Prosecutor’s Office have preferred to
pay money for their freedom. Mirtskhulava, however, protests his
innocence, adding that he does not have enough money to buy his way out
of jail.
The case revolves around a contract agreed with Armenergo during the
period when Mirtskhulava was Minister of Energy, which the
investigation claims is one-sided and artificially increased Georgian
Railway’s debt to Armenergo from USD 4 million to USD 6 million.
The investigation says that Mirtskhulava agreed to this in return for
certain benefits – namely, helping mediator company
Energomanqkorporatsia to embezzle 90 percent of the USD 6 million
transmitted from Georgian Railway. Georgia still had to pay the debt as
a result of the one-sided contract Mirtskhulava had signed.
The newspaper Kviris Palitra reports that the investigation also
accuses the former minister of taking secret materials relating to
Georgia-Armenia criminal relationships from the Energy Ministry and
hiding them in the office of the National Regulation Commission.
The prosecution has been working on the charges against Mirtskhulava
for ten days but the court will have to clarify many ambiguous facts as
well, including who stands behind the disputable crimes committed by
Mirtskhulava.
The former minister declares himself to be innocent and says that the
contract has not damaged the country, but, on the contrary has brought
the country some USD 500,000, although this is disputed by the
investigation.
Mirtskhulava is currently being detained in the Republic Prison
Hospital. During his imprisonment his health condition has seriously
deteriorated. His lawyer Eka Beselia say that Mirtskhulava will appeal
to the European Court for Human Rights in Strasburg if the court finds
him guilty.

Playbill.com, NY
Nov. 3, 2004
Award-Winning Drama Beast on the Moon Aiming for Broadway with Zorich
and Metwally
By Kenneth Jones
Producers of the developing New York production of Richard Kalinoski’s
Beast on the Moon are now aiming the work – a sensation in resident
theatres around the world – at Broadway in 2005 rather than the
previously-announced Off-Broadway.
The American play, about Armenian immigrants still dealing with the
shadows of the 1915 Armenian genocide – even as they face hope and
opportunity in their new home in Milwaukee – “is an absolutely
universal tale of love as a healing tool in the aftermath of wartime
loss,” according to producer David Grillo of Stillwater Productions.
The producer and partners are working toward a Broadway production in
2005, with Tony Award nominee Louis Zorich (Hadrian VII, Agamemnon, 45
Seconds From Broadway, Follies, She Loves Me) and Tony Award nominee
Omar Metwally (Sixteen Wounded) attached. Larry Moss (The Syringa Tree)
directs.
Three workshop presentations will be heard Nov. 11-12 in Manhattan. The
play – honored by the American Theatre Critics Association in 1996 –
has been performed in 16 nations, translated into 11 languages, and won
more than 40 awards around the world.
The work is billed as “a love story, and an American immigrant story,
whose two central characters are survivors of the Armenian Genocide of
1915.”
Members of the theatre industry can get more information about Beast on
the Moon by calling Stillwater Productions at (212) 541-4502.
*
Kalinoski’s play debuted in 1995 at the Humana Festival of New American
Plays at Actors Theatre of Louisville. The intimate four-actor show
later blossomed in American regional theatres, from Los Angeles to
Boston, and then around the world.
The play received the 1996 Osborn Award from the American Theatre
Critics Association, recognizing an emerging playwright.
Playwright Kalinoski is a college professor at the University of
Wisconsin, Osh Kosh, where he teaches in the Theatre Arts department.
David Grillo, an actor who appeared in a 1999 Boston production of the
play, is to be lead producer for the commercial Off-Broadway stand.
The title, Beast on the Moon, refers to an ominous lunar eclipse.
“So much appeals to me about Beast that it is hard to find a place to
begin,” producer Grillo previously told Playbill On-Line. “It is an
extraordinarily challenging drama with a surprising number of
well-earned laughs. The play takes its audiences through an emotional
cataclysm and delivers them, at its finish, to joyful redemption. I
don’t like plays that ask me to jump through emotional hoops and then
leave me beaten up by the side of the road. Beast is redemptive. The
journey is hard, but one for which the audience is enormously grateful.
Also very important for me right now is that Beast on the Moon is a
play about Muslim/Christian relations that stresses healing.”
Beast on the Moon is a four-actor romance about two survivors – Aram
and Seta, a young man and his mail order bride – who settle in
Milwaukee between the World Wars (spanning 12 years) and seek to start
a family in the wake of the genocide of their past. They end up taking
an orphan under their wing. A aged narrator provides context.
Producer Grillo has two degrees from the University of California at
Berkeley, in Economics and Dramatic Arts, plus a masters in fine arts
in acting from the Yale School of Drama.
In 2003, Grillo acquired the rights to produce the play in New York,
after 10 months of negotiations. This is the first time the playwright
has granted the New York rights.

Reuters, UK
Nov. 3, 2004
Scientists Close in on Source of Cosmic Rays
Wed 3 November, 2004 18:01

LONDON (Reuters) – An international team of astronomers believe they
have solved a mystery that has been perplexing scientists for 100 years
— the origin of cosmic rays.
Scientists first discovered the energetic particles that bombard the
Earth nearly a century ago but where they come from has been one of the
big questions in astrophysics.
Using an array of four telescopes in Africa, the scientists produced
the first image showing that the source of cosmic rays could be the
remnant of a supernova, a powerful explosion of a star at the end of
its life.
“This is the first time we were able to take an image of the source,”
David Berge, an astrophysicist at the Max Planck Institute in
Heidelberg, Germany, told Reuters.
Scientists had long thought that supernova explosions were indeed the
source, but did not have evidence to support it, according to Berge,
who reported the findings in the science journal Nature.
He and colleagues from Britain, Armenia, France, Ireland, Namibia,
South Africa and the Czech Republic studied the remnant of a supernova
that exploded about 1,000 years ago and left a shell of debris.
“Because the energy density in cosmic rays is so large, they play an
important role in the development of our galaxy,” said Berge.
“We are now at a stage where we seem to be able to prove cosmic rays
come from supernova remnants.”
Professor Ian Halliday, head of the Particle Physics and Astronomy
Research Council (PPARC) which funds research, welcomed the findings.
“These results provide the first unequivocal proof that supernovae are
capable of producing large quantities of galactic cosmic rays —
something we have long suspected, but never been able to confirm,” he
said in a statement.

Persian Journal, Iran
Nov. 3, 2004
Anahita, Mother of Deity in Ancient Iran
Nov 3, 2004, 14:15
Iranchamber
Mutual love between mother and child is an instinct found in almost all
living creatures, even the very primitive species. This instinct is all
the more prominent in human being, the most sophisticated of creatures,
expanding to social dimensions. From this standpoint, mother, as a
symbol of affection, fertility and creation, could be regarded as the
first god men have worshiped.
It seems that the worship of mother started since the concept of family
and being born from a common ancestor was formed. Among men, the
concept of family in its social meaning dates back to the caved welling
era, i.e. when the Neanderthals took refuge in caves as a result of the
third Ice Age, where it emerged eventually as homo sapiens after
undergoing an evolutionary period. During this time, some 30,000 years
ago, man discovered fire, warming up his cave. The number of caves and
their internal space was limited and could host a limited number of
men. Therefore, the concept of family bonds and bloods ties, which
already existed as an instinct in other species, was intensified,
eventually emerging as a social requirement.
Competition over dwelling in warm caves was a solid reason for
primitive men not to admit non-related primitive men to their caves.
Only family members with a common birth ties to a common ancestor were
permitted to enter the caves. This ancestor could only be the mother,
because at that time, sexual behavior among men was a natural and
non-social one, only the strongest males in the cave being allowed to
procreate, a behavior which is necessary to produce healthier offspring
and is practiced among many species of animals and particularly
mammals. Therefore, cave-dwelling women could have several husbands
during their fertility period, so that tracing family ties through
males was impossible. Thus being attributed to a family tree leading
back to the mother was the permit to live in the cave, which in turn
translated into survival. This was adequate reason to turn the
mother/child instinct into a sacred belief in a common ancestor.
Paleontology confirms the theory suggesting that the mother goddess was
the first divinity to be worshiped. The earliest relics showing signs
of religious beliefs among primitive tribes are statuettes of mother,
depicting her in large buttocks and breasts, signifying feminine
characteristics, or girls arrived at puberty and ripe for marriage.
The elapsing of thousands of years has meant that modern science has
not yet penetrated the depth of the secrets of mother goddesses in the
early stone ages. However, there exists a lot of information about the
quality of the sanctity of mother goddesses in later historical
periods, the oldest of which have been found in Susa, Iran. The
documents which have been found in the form of tens of mother goddess
statuettes date back to early 4th millennium, BC. The number and the
age of these statuettes gives good reason to suggest that the origin of
mother goddess was the Iranian Plateau, whence the tradition of
worshiping these goddesses have expanded throughout the world as a
result of the migration of Aryans.
With the ending of the Ice Age and the shifting of men’s habitat from
caves to foothills and the discovery of agriculture the tradition of
worshiping mother goddess was continued, with mother goddess surviving
as the origin of fertility, the goddess of family, the goddess of
procreation and later the goddess of agriculture and productivity.
In Susa, south of Iran, mother goddess was worshiped at least since
early 4th millennium BC, with numerous statuettes of her found in the
area. The tradition of worshiping the mother goddess spilled over to
Mesopotamia, where it continued for thousands of years to come.
Iranian-origin Sumerians were skilled astronomers, attaching each of
the gods to certain star or planets. The mother goddess was sometimes
attributed to the moon and some times to Venus. The reason behind this
duality lies in the tradition of incest, which was not only allowed,
but also sanctified in ancient Iran. According to this tradition which
dates back to the cave dwelling period, the kings and noble men of Iran
had to marry their close relatives, the offspring of such marriages
enjoying priority to inherit the crown. The same tradition was observed
among the divinities, so much so that the ancient goddesses appear
alternately as the mother, the sister or the wife of the masculine god,
having different ranks.
That is why Anahita, the Iranian goddess, sometimes appears, as mother
earth and the goddess of fertility and birth, and sometimes as Venus,
the goddess of music, love, jealousy and coquetry. Nahid is alternately
the wife, the sister or the mother of god. However, when she is the
wife and mother of god, her symbol is the moon, and when she represents
the goddess of love and music, the planet Venus. An Armenian myth says:
“the devil knew that if the god had intercourse with his mother, the
sun would be born, and if with his sister, the moon would be born.”
Sumerians were a seafaring people, their ships trafficking in the
Mediterranean Sea. Therefore, it is very likely that they promoted the
worship of mother goddesses in the Mediterranean coats of Europe and
North Africa. Or perhaps the goddess made its advent with the expansion
of the Aryan race and its migration to India, Central Asia and central
Europe.
In any case, historical evidences show that in the late 3rd millennium
BC, worshiping mother goddesses was common in Iran, India, Central
Asia, Mesopotamia, Syria, North Africa, and Europe.
An even more interesting point is the evidence found about the
worshiping of such a goddess in South America, implying that probably
Sumerian seamen had discovered the New Continent eons before
Christopher Columbus. Evidence supporting this suggestion is a monolith
stone called the Gate of the Sun in Tiahunaku. According to the myth
imprinted on the slab, a golden ship descended from the stars, carrying
a woman named Oriana. Her mission was to become the earth’s
grandmother, who returned to the stars after giving birth to 70
earthling children. The concepts of worshiping the sun and the moon and
mother goddesses and the figures on the slab are all Persian and
Sumerian concepts, making such a resemblance unlikely without any
connection.
The oldest statuette of mother goddess found in Europe, in Austria,
dates back to the 3rd millennium, BC. Another similar statuette found
in Moravia shows a mother goddess holding her breasts up with her large
hands. In Greece, too, the mother goddess was worshiped as a
birth-giving goddess through the entire Neolithic period.
The close connection between the mother goddess and the moon, and
worshiping her which has been found all over the world shows a
correspondence between the lunar month and the menstruation period of
women, i.e. 28 days. This significant resemblance which basically
indicates the passage of time in ancient times before the discovery of
astronomy and invention of the clock has contributed to the relation
between the two creatures, and that is one reason why women are
described as the moon. In later historical periods, religions that in
some way worshiped the mother goddess continued to use the lunar
calendar, in contrast with religions based on the worship of the sun.
The Iranian mother goddess was also worshiped in the east, including
India. Anatolian mother goddesses too had many temples. According to a
Roman historian, noble girls were asked to practice prostitution in
such temples before getting married. This tradition which was current
also among Venus worshipers of Egypt has its roots in the group
marriages of the matriarchal aroid mentioned earlier. A statuette of
Venus with a dolphin has been found in Tunisia.
The tradition of worshiping Venus was also widespread in ancient
Arabia, where 360 gods and goddesses were adored. Venus’s special day
of the week is Friday and the form of this goddess is a cube, which is
the sacred form for Arabs.
In addition to the very ancient relics found in Susa, Girschmann
discovered a statuette of a mother goddess in the Gian mound near
Nahavand in 1931. He relates the object to 2,500 years ago.
In the Chaghagavaneh mound near Eslam-abad Gharb, a 7-cm mother goddess
statuette was found which dates back to 2,900 years ago. The figure is
headless and naked, resting her hands on her stomach.
On bronze objects found in Lorestan, dating back to the first
millennium BC, figures of mother goddesses are seen. These objects are
usually copper or bronze clips, bearing a circular plate at the end,
with the imprint of the head of the mother goddess. Also in the
southern and western parts of Iran several examples of such objects
with the figure of the mother goddess have been found. The most
fascinating example is a clay statuette 18.13-cm high, decked with
emerald earrings, bracelet and necklace. This goddess is fully
comparable to the Anahita of later periods. The statuette is kept at
the Philadelphia museum. In the Gorgan region of Iran, the oldest such
relics have been found, dating back to 5,000 years ago.
On Achaemenid coins, the head of Nahid is seen in a halo of light. Also
in Achamenian scripture, mention is made of Anahita, alongside with two
other gods, namely Ahuramazda and Mehr, and perhaps they could be
regarded as mother and child, just as in Christianity, the trinity is
made up of God, Virgin Mary and Jesus (sun) Christ. The fact that the
words Mehr and sun both mean the sunlight reflects the connection
between the two religions.
Worship of Anahita continued in the Sassanid period. In one of the
tablets in Naqsh-e Rostam, near Persepolis, the Sassanid king is
depicted receiving the kingdom ring from Nahid. On metal vessels of the
Sassanid era too, hundred of Nahid figures can be seen.
After, the occupation of Iran by Moslem Arabs, the ritual of respecting
woman and mother and the sanctity of Nahid continued in different
forms. However, it became a secret creed, reflected in Iranian culture
and literature, particularly in the sophist poetry.
On the other hand, the indispensable bond between Nahid and music and
love has found manifestations in Iranian sophism.
The relics of the mother goddess in Iran are numerous and diversified
some of, which are located in remote mountains, indicating the secret
nature of the ritual.
Bridges in different parts of the country reflect the relation between
Nahid and water.

Interfax
Nov. 3, 2004
Armenia’s trade deficit expands 6.6% in Jan-Sept
Yerevan. (Interfax) – Armenia ended the month of September with a
$463.4 million foreign trade deficit for January-September, up from
$434.7 million for the same period of 2003, the country’s national
statistics service told Interfax.
The country posted foreign trade volume of $1.846 billion for these
nine months, for 3.1% year-on-year increase. Exports increased 1.3% to
$511.1 million and imports increased 4.1% to $974.4 million.
Trade with the European Union came to $548.8 million in January-
September, representing 36.9% of Armenia’s total trade volume. The
country’s trade deficit with the EU was $160 million.
The country’s trade with Commonwealth of Independent States countries
came to $299.7 million in January-September, or 20.2% of overall trade.
The trade deficit with CIS countries was $125.7 million.
Armenia engaged in $1.948 billion worth of foreign trade in 2003, a
30.5% increase from the year prior.

Assa Irada, Azerbaijan
Nov. 3, 2004
Armenian Energy Minister Expected to Visit Baku
An international conference with participation of Caspian and Black Sea
countries’ ministers for energy and transport will be held in Baku on
November 12-14, according to the Ministry of Transport.
A meeting of energy ministers from Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Iran,
Kazakhstan, Moldova, Russia, Turkey, Turkmenistan, Ukraine and
Uzbekistan will be held on November 12 and 13. The Armenian energy
minister is expected to attend the meeting as well.
Another meeting to be attended by transport ministers from Azerbaijan,
Belarus, Bulgaria, Georgia, Iran, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova,
Russia, Romania, Turkey, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Ukraine and
Uzbekistan will be held on November 13 and 14.
Prospects for cooperation among regional countries will be discussed in
both meetings.

Interfax
Nov. 3, 2004
Karabakh criticizes Azerbaijan’s UN discussion initiative
Stepanakert. (Interfax) – Foreign Minister Ashot Gulian of the
self-proclaimed Nagorno-Karabakh republic has harshly criticized
Azerbaijan’s initiative to discuss the situation in Nagorno-Karabakh in
the UN, calling it “a propagandist trick.”
“This initiative fully fits Azerbaijan’s policy whose aim is to
distract the international community’s attention from the essence of
the problem of Nagorno-Karabakh by using propagandist tricks,” Gulian
told journalists in Stepanakert on Tuesday.
“Azerbaijan is fully aware that these territories are under the control
of Nagorno-Karabakh forces and Armenia has nothing to do with them,”
Gulian said.
Nagorno-Karabakh is equally concerned by what is “going on in the
Nagorno-Karabakh territories, which are still under Azerbaijan’s
occupation,” he said.
Nagorno-Karabakh is willing to discuss any difficult questions with
Azerbaijan, Gulian said. The shortest way to reach a compromise is to
restore the negotiating process in its full format, involving Nagorno-
Karabakh as a full-fledged party in the negotiations, he said.
Baku lost control of Nagorno-Karabakh in a bloody conflict with Armenia
in the 1990s. The OSCE Minsk Group represented by the U.S., Russia, and
France is mediating in the settlement of the problem.

ITAR-TASS, Russia
Nov. 3, 2004
Azerbaijan wants UN General Assembly to discuss territory issue

BAKU, November 3 (Itar-Tass) – Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev said
international discussion of Azerbaijan’s conflict with the
Nagorno-Karabakh conflict would not harm the settlement process.
Azerbaijan wants the discussion at the 59th session of the UN General
Assembly of the problem of chunks of its territory seized by the mostly
Armenian enclave Nagorno-Karabakh during the military phase of the
conflict.
Aliyev told reporters on Wednesday that discussing the issue `will not
make any harm to the Minsk process of settlement of the Karabakh
conflict’.
`We want the questions related to the Karabakh conflict, occupation by
Armenia of Azerbaijani territories to be brought to a broad
international audience in a full degree,’ he said.
Aliyev stressed that Azerbaijan remains committed to the Minsk process
`and does not seek at all any organization replacing the Minsk group of
the OSCE on Nagorno-Karabakh’ as a mediator.
At the same time Azerbaijan wants the European Union, the Council of
Europe, the UN and other influential international organizations to
discuss the territorial issue.
`All should unequivocally recognize that Armenia occupied a part of the
territory of Azerbaijan, and this unfair situation, this violation of
norms of the international law must be abolished,’ Aliyev said.

Radio Free Europe, Czechia
Nov. 3, 2004
World: Sampling Of Reaction To U.S. Vote Shows Cautious Optimism
By Don Hill

In opinion polls before the 2 November vote in the United States,
citizens of countries from Canada to South Korea — with the notable
exceptions of Russia and Israel — declared an overwhelming preference
for Democratic Senator John Kerry to win the U.S. presidential election
over Republican incumbent George W. Bush. But as the time neared for
declaring an actual winner, international figures and people on the
streets displayed a cautious optimism. RFE/RL collects a sampling of
various opinions from Eastern Europe, Central Asia, and around the
world.
Prague, 3 November 2004 (RFE/RL) — Tajik parliamentarian Olim
Salomzoda said that whoever won yesterday’s U.S. vote is far less
important to Tajikistan than whether U.S. policy in his region is
consistent and respects democratic norms. Salomzoda spoke to RFE/RL in
Dushanbe today.
“It is up to the American voters who to choose, but what is important
to us is that [U.S.] foreign policy in our region, in Central Asia,
should stay the same. But if changes occur, they should be proper to
democratic processes. We want to have peace both in Afghanistan and
Iraq,” Salomzoda said. The result of yesterday’s U.S. presidential vote
remained in limbo midday today over a balloting dispute in the state of
Ohio. It wasn’t clear when a winner would be named.
Kazakh parliamentarian Amalbeck Tshanov told RFE/RL in Astana that
responsibility for U.S.-Kazakh relations depends primarily on the
Kazakhs themselves, regardless of who presides over the U.S.
government.
“How Kazakh-U.S. relations develop depends on us. If our so-called
democratic reforms become really democratic, there will be positive
changes. If our pseudo-democratic changes remain just cosmetic efforts,
if a de facto single party continues to dominate, [the U.S. leadership]
will have to alter its attitude [toward Kazakhstan] negatively,”
Tshanov said.
The result of yesterday’s U.S. presidential vote remained in limbo
midday today over a balloting dispute in the state of Ohio. It wasn’t
clear when a winner would be named.
In Moscow, Editor in Chief Fedor Lukyanov of the Russian quarterly
journal, “Russia in Global Policy,” said Russian leaders preferred Bush
because they feared that a president from the U.S. Democratic Party
would revive Cold War-style confrontation.
“Moscow is very concerned that if a Democratic administration comes to
power, this could bring about a return, to a certain degree, to [former
U.S. President Bill] Clinton’s policies of the U.S. administration’s
active involvement in Russia’s internal politics, and this is
definitely not what Moscow wants now,” Lukyanov said.
The chairman of the Armenian opposition National Accord Party, Artashes
Geghamian, spoke to RFE/RL in Yerevan. “Winning the election, George W.
Bush will pursue one real goal, and that is to ensure his name in the
history books, in positive terms,” Geghamian said. “So I think U.S.
policy will become much more tolerant and cooperative than before.”
In Georgia, Maya Nadiradze, majority leader in parliament, told RFE/RL:
“After coming to power, [any] new administration will start
establishing new relationships. That includes introducing a new policy
toward our neighbor Russia, too. All the above will either slow or
delay certain processes, even change directions.”
In recent months, France has emerged as an expected source of
dissatisfaction with the United States. Speaking to the Reuters news
agency today, a man identified only as Xavier did not disappoint: “I
think it is a pity for the world because it means the continuation of
American hegemony. I think in Europe, in old Europe, everyone hoped
that Kerry would win.”
But in Kyrgyzstan, the deputy speaker of the Legislative Assembly, the
lower house of parliament, Kubatbek Baibolov, was strongly supportive
of Bush. “I think it will be better for us if Bush wins. First of all,
his policies are known better. Secondly, if the U.S. continues its
fight against terrorism at such a pace and in such a way, then we will
also benefit from this policy,” he told RFE/RL’s Kyrgyz Service.

Christianity Today
Nov. 3, 2004
Spitting on God’s Image
Christians complain of assaults in Old City.
By Michele Green, ENI, in Jerusalem | posted 11/03/2004
Tensions in Jerusalem’s Old City have flared following an incident
during October in which a Jewish seminary student spat at an
archbishop. It happened during a procession from the city’s Armenian
Quarter to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, a site commemorating
Jesus’ crucifixion and burial.
Israeli police arrested the seminary student, but Christian clerics
living in the walled Old City say such assaults by ultra-Orthodox Jews
are frequent.
“It happens maybe once a week,” Armenian Bishop Aris Shirvanian told
Ecumenical News International. “As soon as they notice a Christian
clergyman, they spit. Those who are ‘respectful’ turn their backs to us
or the large cross that we may carry. But the ones that are daring
either spit on the ground or on the person without any provocation.”
In the latest incident, a scuffle broke out after the Jewish seminary
student spat at the cleric, whose cross was ripped from his neck. The
seminary student later told police he saw the religious procession as
idolatry. Police said an indictment is pending.
Shirvanian said spitting against Christian clergyman had been going on
for years. He said the assailants are religious Jews – men, women, teens,
and children. “This shows that it is a phenomenon that is prevailing in
their religious education and it should be corrected,” he said.
Daniel Rossing, director of the Jerusalem Center for Jewish-Christian
Relations, said his organization plans to ask rabbis to teach their
congregants to stop such attacks.
“All people are created in the image of God and to spit on another
person is to spit on the image of God,” Rossing said.