August 12, 2007 | 6:17 pm

RIP Merv Griffin

Posted by JewishJournal.com

Entertainment great Merv Griffin died today, Sunday, at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center.  He was 82.

Griffin, right in photo above, made in his last appearance in The Jewish Journal in June, when he was photographed with Fred Hayman, center, and Placido Domingo, left, at a ceremony marking Fred Hayman week in Beverly Hills.

RIP, Merv.  Ooooooooooooh.

—Dennis Wilen

August 8, 2007 | 10:57 pm

Stop the presses: Jews have Jewish names!

Posted by JewishJournal.com

Sometimes I wish I had more time to watch TV.  

Not really.    All the kewl video is on the Internets:

From TMZ.COM:

>>>>

“Big Brother” Shiksa Learns Jews Have Jewish Names
Posted Aug 8th 2007 11:59AM by TMZ Staff

Filed under: TV

Relations between Israel and the “Big Brother” house are strained today, after a somewhat anti-Semitic rant from crybaby housemate Amber hit the Internet this week. Oy vey!

Where to begin, already? First of all, Amber said the majority of Jews she knows are “selfish.” She then went on to say that her mom and sister explained to her that one can tell who is Jewish based on “their last name” and “by their nose.”

more @

TMZ

Of course, the ADL’s Abraham Foxman has to issue a statement.  Luckily, he just borrows from my post about hate on the WWW (see below).

Foxman:

It’s part of the unintended consequences of the communications revolution. Anybody can say what they do - but reality shows are now giving license to these expressions of anti-Semitism. Now, all of a sudden, the world is privy to their bigotry and it’s on national television… then enhanced on YouTube.

Ya think?

—Dennis Wilen

1 Comments — Leave your comment

August 7, 2007 | 2:17 am

E-mail gives Jews the ‘Heebie Jeebies’

Posted by JewishJournal.com

An anti-Semitic Web site is first on Google when you search for ‘Jew,’ and e-mail about the issue is making the rounds again.

Two people here at JewishJournal.com got the e-mail last week and both asked me what was up.  I told them not to worry, it was old news (from 2004), not to get the ‘Heebie Jeebies.’

The Heebie Jeebies—1932—the Boswell Sisters

But it really was new to them, so I thought some of you guys might want to learn more too.

Here’s some background from the Anti-Defamation League and the response from Google.

The gist: We know about it,  we’re working on it, there’s not much we can do about it. Please stand by.

The hate site everyone writes about is only the tip of the iceberg. The Web is filled with everything imaginable (both good and bad), and some things unimaginable.

Sometimes it seems to me there are people (robots?) who do nothing but post hate and propaganda to message boards all day long, all week, like it’s a full time job to blame the Mossad for 9/11 or berate the ‘Jew World Order’ for everything from Communism to Capitalism.

The hate on the venerable Yahoo! News message boards caused Y! (disclosure:  I once worked there) to close down their message boards entirely.

The videos I see every night when I cruise YouTube.com are a swamp of hate.

What to do?

My response is to “represent”—the more I see that bad stuff, the more I want to put the good stuff up on the Internets.

That’s the reason I started our JewishJournal.com YouTube Channel. Positive, fun, interesting videos.  Rabbis, rockers, rebels. 

No hate.  No anti-anything.  Just the wild wonderful world of Jews,  Judios, and Yehudim.

Tell your friends.

—Dennis Wilen

1 Comments — Leave your comment

August 5, 2007 | 12:39 pm

Hava Nagila: Funny, you don’t look Jewish

Posted by JewishJournal.com

Music is a universal language, and sometimes it has Hebrew lyrics!

Check out these versions of Hava Nagila from Texas, Bollywood and Thailand:

Hava Nagila Texas Style (Featuring Juan & Pancho)

Bollywood Hava Nagila—with subtitles in Hebrew and Russki

Hava Nagila Thai Style

All these videos are favorites on JewishJournal.com’s YouTube Channel.

Enjoy!

—Dennis Wilen

0 Comments — Leave your comment

August 4, 2007 | 2:48 pm

VIDEO: The Bible Code: hoax or holiness?

Posted by The Web Guy

Video: Michael Shermer scrutinizes the idea of ‘hidden’ messages in the Torah.

It’s just numerology, says Shermer, and serves as a supreme example of pattern-seeking (and finding) behavior of which we humans are so skilled. 

While pattern recognition helps us pick out predators hidden in the foliage, sometimes wishful thinking makes us see things that aren’t really there. So-called ‘hidden messages’ in the Torah, says the publisher of Pasadena-based ‘Skeptic’ magazine, are neither hidden nor messages.

Advocates of traditional Jewish numerology—gematria—don’t care what Shermer thinks.

Here’s Shermer’s argument:

4 Comments — Leave your comment

August 2, 2007 | 2:00 am

Shooting at the Seattle Federation—one year later

Posted by JewishJournal.com

A year ago, Naveed Afzal Haq shot up the offices of the Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle in a rampage that killed one worker and seriously injured five others.

I’d recently started as Web Director for JewishJournal.com and rushed to figure out how to add a breaking news story to our home page.

After I did the news thing (“If it bleeds, it leads”) I began to wonder what kind of security precautions we had at The Journal’s headquarters in a Koreatown office block. Noone knew then if it was an isolated incident (it was) or part of a coordinated attack against Jewish institutions across the country.

Was a combination door lock, security camera and intercom system enough? Should we hire a guard? Was I a paranoid fool with delusions of grandeur AND a persecution complex?

Even paranoid people can have enemies, of course, so I still stop, look and listen when I navigate the building’s eerily silent carpeted hallways.

But I’ve not taken off the GI Star of David I wear on a chain around my neck.

And I never will.

—Dennis Wilen

0 Comments — Leave your comment

July 31, 2007 | 12:38 am

‘Bubkis’ at the White House

Posted by JewishJournal.com

The ‘mama loshen’ made it to the White House Monday, voiced for the gaggle by Presidental Cantor Tony Snow.

Regarding continued investigations of Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez, Snow said:

“Well, what’s interesting is that there have been all these hearings on the Attorney General and yet nobody has really laid a glove on him…

“At this point, we have hundreds of hearings that have produced bupkis….

Bupkis!  The Yiddish word literally means ‘beans,’ but signifies something that’s of little real value/worthless.

So who taught Snow Yiddish? 

We’re betting he studied “Yiddish With George and Laura” like a yeshiva bochur studies the Babli.

—Dennis Wilen

3 Comments — Leave your comment

July 30, 2007 | 12:36 am

Can someone tell me why our scholars aren’t as smart as the Jews?

Posted by JewishJournal.com

Interesting post from a blogger in Singapore responding to the question “Can Someone Tell Me Why Our Scholars aren’t as smart as the Jews?”

After repeating the ‘smart Jew’ stereotype (which he calls ‘positive’) he gets to

...
The difference in Jewish History most likely comes from the demand on LITERACY placed upon the Jewish Community for the pride that was taken in being able to disseminate the Torah by the community. But while literacy does not necessarily make you smarter, on the whole it does make getting access to collected information easier, which is a huge asset when it comes to obtaining the right knowledge that society requires.
...

The Torah is the secret?

The medium is the message?

Na’aseh v’nishma?

—Dennis Wilen

0 Comments — Leave your comment