I forgot to mention that I have visited several times that beautiful Sephardic Sofia synagogue:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sofia_Synagogue
I have also met Sephardic Jews in Bulgaria who speak Ladino (luckily Alois Brunner could not get his bloody hands in Bulgaria, as he did in Thessaloniki): Bijenanov, Barocas.

In German you say: I love you: Ich liebe dich. In Yiddish: Ich liebe dich.

The greatest European Yiddish actor, Solomon Mikhoels, was dispatched by Stalin in the following way, on January 13, 1948: A friend invited him outside Moscow (critic Vladimir Goluvob-Potapov). In a train the NKVD men followed him. He was lured out of his hotel later at Minsk. He and his friend were snatched. In the outskirts of the city, they beat him up, laid him on a road, and had a truck run over him. Also his friend. The cadavers were thrown on the snow in a suburb of Minsk. Several newspapers were informed; it was thought, it was reported, that right-wing Poles or fanatical Zionists had killed Mikhoels.

Later, on September 1948, the new Israeli ambassador to the USSR, Golda Meier, arrived in Moscow. She knew no Russian, but several advisers did. She was addressed by the Jewish wife of Molotov, Polina Zhemchuzhina, in Yiddish: “Ich bin a yiddische tochter!”

One more thing…your statement referring to Jews:

[That is why we argue, are interested in facts]

Please argue, and never take my diatribes personally. Your erudition is palpable. I enjoy discussions of this type, being rather isolated down here. I also try to stay within empirical historiography.

The Jews are undoubtedly, an intelligent bunch. In the book “The Bell Curve” they were shown at the top in IQ within the US white population. Feelings of frustration, over achievement as compensation from racism and bigotry, close family ties, the feelings of being a chosen people, concentration on the material world, is surely a formula for success, thus the many Nobel prices.

However, your statement: [Jews believe in this world, and have little interest in the World to Come.] Is not correct, for that would make Jews essentially materialists, contrary to Jewish scriptures. Where do you think Christians and Muslims got their ideas of heaven and hell? Even though Judaism focuses on life here on this world, the afterlife is always pervading. Kaddish, and Shema Yisrael!

Each of the 3 Abrahamic religions; namely, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, has developed fringe beliefs, for Jews the Kabbalah, for Christian the Gnostics, for Islam, the Sufis. All 3 fringe movements have accepted on and off, metempsychoses in one form or another.

Finally, many Jews have been converts to spiritual movements, bringing their developed intellect and acumen to the practice. The one I admire the most, is Iraqi Jew S.S. Cohen, who abandoned everything and traveled to India in the 1930s, to become a disciple of Ramana Maharshi. His tomb is inside Ramana Ashram, next to Major Chadwick (Sadhu Arunachala). Please allow me to quote here what I think is the greatest saying by S.S Cohen:

“To me in the beginning this was of all more perceptible in the contrast it offered to the hustle and bustle of the life on which I have turned my back – to the wasted energies, the false values, the foolish expectations from ideals which are in themselves hollow reeds, the dreary intercourse with people with whom one has little in common; to the social rules which have been laid down by many generations of selfishness, convention and superstition, not to speak of the mess of politics, of rank and wealth, and the bitter jealousy they breed in the mind of man.”

I have often prayed near his tomb.

1) [Stalin and Mao thought that what they were doing was virtuous, and the fact that they reveled in it supports this argument.]

While I agree on Mao, I still disagree on Stalin. The latter knew what he did was not virtuous. I don’t know that Mao reveled in his crimes in the way Stalin did. Stalin drinking bouts till late at night with his henchmen, sadistically recalling torture of recent victims are well documented. In the case of the Kulaks, it was not simply famines, but shootings, burning alive, etc. That’s why for me it qualifies as a Holocaust. In occult circles, we believe that Hitler had an underdeveloped soul, and was possessed by one of the 4 original forces of evil, the Lord of Falsehood (who calls himself the Lord of the Nations) while Stalin was a direct incarnation of a vital demon, no soul. I assume you may now be tempted to tell me that Jews are this-worldly and don’t believe in the occult, preemptively let me say that one of the greatest occultists of the 20th century was a Polish Jew: Max Theon.

2) [Jews do not deny the role of Communist Jews among the perpetrators of Stalin’s crimes.]

OK, no, they just don’t like to talk about it much.

3) [Jews believe in this world, and have little interest in the World to Come. That is why we argue, are interested in facts, are merciful to our children, and are likely to be Nobel Prize winners.]

I also follow a philosophy that is essentially this-worldly, but it believes that man is not final, nor the current world the pinnacle of human civilization. This philosophy is also spiritual in its nature.

In addition to the famine that killed the kulaks in the Soviet Union, there was the 1959-61 famine caused by Chairman Mao that killed between 30 and 60 million people. It was the worst famine in all human history. Marxism always causes famine. A philosophy that believes in changing human nature has no respect for the lives of pre-change human beings.

Stalin and Mao thought that what they were doing was virtuous, and the fact that they reveled in it supports this argument.

Jews do not deny the role of Communist Jews among the perpetrators of Stalin’s crimes. Jews believe in this world, and have little interest in the World to Come. That is why we argue, are interested in facts, are merciful to our children, and are likely to be Nobel Prize winners.

[In general, the most horrible crimes in history, including the Inquisition and the Holocaust, were caused by people who knew they had nothing to gain but were simply doing what they thought was virtuous.]

1) Why go all the way back to the Inquisition? Almost parallel to the Jewish Shoa there was another bigger Holocaust occurring in the Soviet Union. By the time World War II finished, Stalin and his henchmen had dispatched close to 20 million innocent people. In a matter of 3 years, 1928-1931, 8-10 million Kulaks were killed, cannibalism was rampant during the famine, specially in the Ukraine. All Inquisition victims are less than a bad year of Hitler or Stalin crime sprees.

2) This Kulaks and others in the Soviet Union was 100% a Holocaust, with clear planning, purpose, etc. However, it was downplayed by European (especially French, Malraux, Gide) and US socialists and communists and other Fellow Travelers like Bernard Shaw. The Kulaks did not have support, Noble prices, politicians, rich people, behind them.

3) One of the greatest criminals on earth was Lenin. He surrounded himself with 4 horrible criminals: Trotsky, Kamenev, and Zinoviev, who were Jews, and Stalin, a Georgian. Later, Criminal-in-Chief Stalin used eternal acolyte and mass-murderer Lazar Kaganovish, a Jew, and the worst of all, OGPU-NKVD chief Genrikh Yagoda, a Polish Jew who, right before being shot by Stalin, said his greater failing was to turn away from God and his Jewish roots. Litvinov, the same, had to be substituted because Ribbentrop would not deal with him, and many more NKVD lieutenants and executioners were Jews.

4) I do not believe Jewish interests, or the State of Israel for that matter, engage in purposeful denial of these other crimes, but, because clearly embarrassing to Jews, perhaps unconsciously they are not entertained as the Shoa, and as it has been proven, each aggrieved group tends to highlight its own Holocaust. This is human, expected, and obvious. However, this part of the Jewish people’s history serves to corroborate Eric Hoffer’s contention that urban, assimilated, European Jews in the 19th and 20th century, were the most frustrated group, and prone to flock to mass movements. Also, Hitler’s contention of a Judeo-Bolshevik conspiracy, although erroneous, was not far fetched.

5) Finally, the statement: [in general, the most horrible crimes in history, including the Inquisition and the Holocaust, were caused by people who knew they had nothing to gain but were simply doing what they thought was virtuous.]
Although Hitler surely believed that it was virtuous to kill the Jews, this statement can’t apply to Stalin and his henchmen. In them, the Sadist element was prevalent. They knew that what they were doing was not virtuous, and reveled in it out of evilness and sadism. They drank at night together and reviewed and reenacted their crimes and the agonies of the victims, laughing at them. They consistently (Yagoda, Ezhov, Lavrenti Beria) killed husbands, fathers, brothers, to rape their women with impunity, or hunted down school girls along the streets of Tbilisi or Moscow to rape them. Puritan mass-murderer Himmler would have never considered that.

In his heart of hearts, Barack Obama would characterize this as blaming the victim. The United States is the predominant racist oppressor of dark skinned people everywhere. It does not have a right to criticize Muslim leaders who are merely doing their best. We are the guilty ones.