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:

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

July 29, 2007 | 9:09 pm

A picture is worth how many words exactly?

Posted by JewishJournal.com

JewishJournal.com’s latest ‘7 Days in the Arts’ weekly feature is getting three or four times as many page views as similar stories.  The story’s URL is spreading virally, via e-mail.

Could it be one of the photos illustrating the story is extra special?

This photo, perhaps, of ‘Nice Jewish Girls Gone Bad?’

—Dennis Wilen

0 Comments — Leave your comment

July 29, 2007 | 5:40 pm

Blogs are so vicious (according to Fox News, anyhow)

Posted by JewishJournal.com

—Dennis Wilen

0 Comments — Leave your comment

August 14, 2006 | 10:57 am

[Amy]: Who knows what to think anymore?

Posted by JewishJournal.com

The heat has abated somewhat in Israel on Monday morning.

Maybe the cease-fire has something to with it.

Maybe. Who knows what to think anymore?

I came to Israel two weeks ago in the middle of the war without a suitcase but with my American belief there was another way. That, contrary to Israelis’ mantra, “we had no choice,” there was another choice. That Israel was entering its very own unwise Iraq. That a ceasefire would be best for both parties.

But I’ve spent two weeks here, hardly in the war zones at all. I’ve spoken to a panoramic—schizophrenic—array of people: Left-wing Israelis, Israelis under fire, taxi-drivers, right-wing American immigrants, West Bank settlers, dismantled settlers, dislocated Northerners.

The news is no help either.

Read Ha’aretz or Ma’ariv and you get a completely different picture.

The war was necessary/the war was unpreventable/ the war was bungled. The army is going too much/too soft/too scattered. The ceasefire is a victory/a failure/an embarrassment.

Who knows what to think anymore?

“Reservists say they are ordered in for ten minutes, then pull back, then go in again,” a woman tells me today in the Judean Hills. “They are getting mixed messages. Israel is only using 20% of its strength.”

Watch CNN you get a different picture.

An Israeli commentator on a midnight news analysis show says we have no stomach to fight a real war. The host argues that you can’t fight against a guerrilla army successfully.

Who knows what to think anymore?

At least 154 Israelis were killed in the war; 115 of them were soldiers.

Hundreds of Lebanese were reportedly killed. “It’s not the same thing,” my settler friend says. But still.

Israeli novelist David Grossman’s son was killed in battle on Saturday. For many, this death was more shocking, if possible.

Perhaps it personalized the war for those few who had no relatives or friends in it; perhaps it’s because it happened to a national icon; or perhaps it hit the intelligentsia, because one of its heroes had suffered a fatal blow.

Uri Grossman, 20, died two days after his father came out publicly with novelists Amos Oz and A.B. Yehoshua demanding a ceasefire. They spoke to their son Saturday night, who was happy about the cease-fire.  His tank was hit a few hours later. Ha’aretz reported that ever since the war broke out, the Grossmans had been worried about their middle of three children. Did they know? Or were they just like everyone else, scared to death for the soldiers.

Meanwhile, everyone is skeptical about the ceasefire. Some think it will last days, others think a regional war is just around the corner. In any case, northerners aren’t returning to their homes just yet and reservists are advised to hang out “just in case.”

Who knows what to think anymore? There are people who do—many, many, here and in the United States—but their certitude makes me more dubious.

I listen on the radio to a song by Sarit Hadad. She’s not particularly religious, but this anthem is:

Kshehalev bohe rak elokim shomea
Hake-ev ole metoh haneshama
Adam nofel lifne shehu shokea
Vetfilat ktana hoteh et hadmama
Shma Israel elohay ata hakol yahol
Natata li et hayay natata li hakol
Beenay dima halev bohe besheket
Oo’kshe halev shotek haneshama zo-eket
Shma Israel elohay ahshav ani levad
Hazek oti elokay asse shelo efhad
Hake-ev gadol veen lean livroah
Asse shehigamer ki lo notar bi koah

When the heart cries, only God hears
The pain comes from the soul
A man falls before he invests
In a small prayer that cuts through the tears.
Shema Yisrael My God, you are Almighty!
You gave me my life, you gave me everything
In my eye is a tear, the heart cries silently.
And when the heart is silent the soul screams.
Shema Yisrael My God, I am alone now.
Strengthen me, my God, make me unafraid.
The pain is great, there is no place to run.
Make it end, because I have no strength left.

—Amy Klein

1 Comments — Leave your comment

August 11, 2006 | 12:10 pm

[Amy]: Shabbat is coming, and the war goes on

Posted by JewishJournal.com

A woman on the street is shouting into her cellphone a recipe for “pashtida”—a quiche, kugel.

The Mahane Yehuda market is bustling—people practically trample each other to buy fruit and vegetables in this Jerusalem open air market.

It’s a market that had been the site of many terror attacks in the past, but on this Friday, the war is somewhere else, up North.

As the world watches the UN resolutions—cease-fire/no cease-fire/yes cease-fire—security is raised in America from yellow to orange to red, and airports go crazy, barring even toothpaste from flights, here in Israel the attacks in the North go on, and the costs keep rising.

Fifteen soldiers were killed yesterday. “I don’t know if I would be upset if I lived in America and I heard 15 soldiers died in Iraq,” a friend of mine says. She’d be upset, but she wouldn’t be crying, like she is here, over the baby-faced 20-somethings who just lost their lives. “I mean, I wouldn’t *know* anyone or know anyone who knew anyone who was killed, and here, it’s 15 new families who have lost a father, a son, and dozens, if not hundreds more who are touched by this war.

In Yediot Aharonot, the main newspaper here, their faces are plastered across the front cover. One was on the beach Sunday, telling his girlfriend how to do his funeral. Another just came back from his “Big Trip” in Thailand, a custom after three years of service.

On the inside page, another article says soldiers are complaining that the cessation in adding ground troops is hurting the troops already there; another article next to it says that much of the Israeli public prefers more air strikes rather than ground troops.

No one knows what to think. Or, everyone has a different opinion: Israel can’t leave now till they finish Hezbullah; Israel already has a victory; Olmert should go; Olmert should stay; a cease-fire is good; a cease-fire is bad.

At 6:31 pm, Ha’aretz newspaper reports that Olmert and Peretz agree, after hours of deliberating, to approve expansion of the operation in Lebanon.

At 6:45 the Shabbat siren sounds.

Some of the country will take a rest from the news, the television, the radio, the war, but many—in Lebanon, in the army, in government—will continue.

—Amy Klein

0 Comments — Leave your comment