A great man is one who collects knowledge the way a bee collects honey and uses it to help people overcome the difficulties they endure - hunger, ignorance and disease!
- Nikola Tesla

Remember, remember always, that all of us, and you and I especially, are descended from immigrants and revolutionists.
- Franklin Roosevelt

While their territory has been devastated and their homes despoiled, the spirit of the Serbian people has not been broken.
- Woodrow Wilson

Belgrade Philharmonic Foundation's International Activities: Tasovac and Jecl in New York

Ivan Tasovac

Ivan Tasovac, Director of the Belgrade Philharmonic Orchestra, and Igor Jecl, Chairman of the Belgrade Philharmonic Foundation, are visiting New York in the period 20–22 February 2013, for the Steering Committee meeting of the foundation American Friends of the Belgrade Philharmonic Orchestra.

The principal item in the meeting agenda is the organisation of the Belgrade Philharmonic Orchestra's tour of the United States, scheduled in the autumn of 2014. The organisation of the tour, including concerts in New York, Washington D.C., Cleveland, Pittsburgh and Chicago, is currently in the planning stage.

Activities of the foundation American Friends of the Belgrade Philharmonic Orchestra are focused on the revival of charitable trusts in the field of culture and the development of public-private partnership in financing institutions in Serbia. It should be noted that the New York-based non-profit organisation American Friends of the Belgrade Philharmonic Orchestra was granted the special 501(C)(3) status in 2012, which entitles donors to significant tax exemptions.

While in New York, Tasovac and Jecl will have meetings with Paul Epstein, Chairman of Artsmart Inc, which commits to international branding and positioning of artistic creators, Leonard Stein, Opus 3 Artists Senior Vice President and Director of the Touring Division, Suzanne Ponsot, Executive Director of the American Friends of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, James Russell, architecture and design critic at Bloomberg, as well as with representatives of PR agencies in New York.

From Belgrade Philharmonic Orchestra

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Tom Jurich

Tom in his university office

By Sandi Radoja

[This article originally appeared in the American Srbobran, April 5, 2017]

LOUISVILLE, KY – On an unseasonably hot February day, Tom Jurich welcomed us to his third floor office on the campus of the University of Louisville. We were 2-1/2 hours early, but his door swung open wide despite our inability to jump time zones correctly.

Born and raised in Southern California, Tom Jurich of SNF Lodge #95-Lovcen-Los Angeles, was apologetic for the heat as if it was his fault. “We don’t turn the air conditioning on this early,” he said, an explanation we already heard from his receptionist who called her desktop fan her “new BFF.” We were immediately at ease, and the friendliness of the entire office far outweighed the heat.

It was Mercia Martich of Northridge, California, who sent us in the direction of the Tom Jurich story initially. She said he was a SNF member and someone to hoot about, adding, “He is not only successful, but a fine gentleman and a family man, too.”

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My Brother's Keeper

My Brother's Keeper

by Fr. Radovan Bigovic

Rare are the books of Orthodox Christian authors that deal with the subject of politics in a comprehensive way. It is taken for granted that politics has to do with the secularized (legal) protection of human rights (a reproduction of the philosophy of the Enlightenment), within the political system of so-called "representative democracy", which is limited mostly to social utility or to the conventional rules of human relations. Most Christians look at politics and democracy as unrelated with their experience of the Church herself, which abides both in history and in the Kingdom, the eschaton. Today, the commercialization of politics—its submission to the laws of publicity and the brainwashing of the masses—has literally abolished the "representative" parliamentary system. So, why bother with politics when every citizen of so-called developed societies has a direct everyday experience of the rapid decline and alienation of the fundamental aspects of modernity?

In the Orthodox milieu, Christos Yannaras has highlighted the conception of the social and political event that is borne by the Orthodox ecclesiastical tradition, which entails a personalistic (assumes an infinite value of the human person as opposed to Western utilitarian individualism) and relational approach. Fr Radovan Bigovic follows this approach. In this book, the reader will find a faithful engagement with the liturgical and patristic traditions, with contemporary thinkers, Orthodox and non-Orthodox, all in conversation with political science and philosophy. As an excellent Orthodox theologian and a proponent of dialogue, rooted in the catholic (holistic) being of the Orthodox Church and of his Serbian people, Fr Radovan offers a methodology that encompasses the above-mentioned concerns and quests.

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