The flood of news coverage about the suicide of Phoebe Prince has set me to thinking about what makes kids into bullies.
My children attend JCDS, Boston’s Jewish Community Day School. Students at all academic levels are admitted to the school. JCDS is less concerned about intellect than about whether the student, and his or her parents, are compatible with the school’s culture.
In the 6½ years I’ve had children at JCDS, only a few families have chosen to leave. Some of those departures were due to academic needs the school could not fulfill, but others were because their kids simply didn’t fit in.
I’m sure many of you just cringed. We all know what “didn’t fit in” means, right? Kids that are brainy, nerdy, funny-looking, or too fat. Kids who do their homework and care about getting good grades. Kids who would rather play D&D than football. Right?
Nope. At JCDS, fitting in isn’t about any of those things. Rather, it’s almost entirely about one thing and one thing only: treating others with respect. Kids with an “attitude” just don’t fit in at JCDS. What’s most interesting is that usually, their parents don’t either. (more…)
Many of you have probably heard by now about the Kentucky-bound US. Airways Express flight that was diverted last week when the flight crew was alarmed by a Jewish teenager putting on tefillin (New York Times).
The Israelis do not use racial profiling for airport security (“European response mixed to new U.S. security demands,” Jan. 4). They use profiling, which includes patterns of behavior, coordination of intelligence and sophisticated modeling of which country of origin as but one factor. Interviews at the airport are by trained army personnel and they are watching and listening to everyone, even Florida snowbirds. They are just doing it right.
Of course the U.S. should be profiling instead of harassing passengers and crippling the industry, but our technique of rounding up suspicious black men won’t catch Nigerian bombers, and it certainly won’t catch British ones.
Around twenty years ago when I was at MIT, I spent far more hours than I care to contemplate combating anti-Semitic, anti-Zionist and anti-Israel propaganda on Usenet.
This was back before the Web took off, and Usenet was the happening place for bigots, racists and nutjobs of all sort to spread their filth and lies. There were a lot of them, and they were extremely prolific. Some of them were working alone, but many belonged to, and were being supported and assisted by, organized hate groups.
My most potent weapons in the fight were Near East Report, a newsletter still published biweekly by AIPAC, and Myths & Facts, a collection of articles about the Arab-Israeli conflict which AIPAC updated and published annually. Unfortunately, neither NEAR nor M&F was then available in any sort of electronic format, so I spent a great deal of time typing in articles to post as rebuttals to the haters.
Although there were plenty of hate groups actively spreading lies on Usenet, there wasn’t a single pro-Jewish or pro-Israel group with any sort of online presence or footprint. AIPAC, the ADL, B’nai B’rith, etc. had all simply completely missed the boat — they were completely conceding the game to the haters on-line. I was completely on my own.
Some time around 1991 or 1992, I finally got enough of a life (i.e., a girlfriend and a full-time job that I had no interest in continuing to spend the many hours per week that I was spending fighting the hate. Given that I had been relying on information published by AIPAC, I decided to try to get in touch with someone at AIPAC who might be able to allocate resources to put their stuff on-line, hire some people to fight hate on Usenet, etc. Somehow, I actually succeeded at reaching the right person, and he and I had a long telephone conversation. I can still remember pacing back and forth with my cell phone in the lounge of the old Boston University Hillel building while trying, unsuccessfully, to convince him that on-line hate was a significant enough problem to warrant AIPAC expending some resources to combat it. AIPAC was completely unaware of the hate being spread on-line.
That has changed, obviously, but it was somewhat disillusioning to me to realize just how clueless AIPAC was about technology and its potential both for spreading hate and opposing it.
Now fast-forward 20 years, to November 2009. Somehow, my wife got her email address into AIPAC’s database (she insists that she never subscribed to any of their lists or gave them or anyone else permission to subscribe her), and they started spamming her. She clicked on the unsubscribe link in the first spam message she received from them. A little over a month later, they spammed her again. I sent them and their network service providers a strongly worded complaint, to which I received no response. Two weeks later, they spammed my wife a third time, so I picked up the phone, called their national headquarters (202-639-5198), and asked to speak to whoever was responsible for the fact that AIPAC continued to spam my wife despite repeated requests for them to stop.
The woman who answered the phone, who identified herself as Julia, asked for my wife’s name and email address and said that she would ensure that she was properly unsubscribed. I said that while I would appreciate if she did that, I was more concerned with what was going to be done about the larger problem that their unsubscribe link didn’t work and my email to them had gone unanswered.
Paraphrasing her response: “Problem? What problem? I don’t see a problem.”
We went back and forth several times with me trying, unsuccessfully, to get her to acknowledge that (a) when there’s an unsubscribe link in your bulk email, it should work; (b) when someone sends you email asking to be unsubscribed, you should unsubscribe them and send them a response; (c) making people call your national headquarters to unsubscribe is not OK; and (c) making the on-line unsubscribe process work properly is more important than unsubscribing one complaining person.
When I expressed my dissatisfaction with her handling of the matter and asked to speak to someone else, Julia insisted that she was solely responsible for AIPAC’s bulk e-mail processes and there was no one else with whom I could speak.
Twenty years ago, AIPAC was completely clueless of on-line hate speech, which had been getting worse and worse for years. Now, AIPAC is completely clueless about responsible bulk email practices and not being a source of spam, a problem which has been getting worse and worse for years. Go figure.
On Dec. 10, Joe Fitzgerald wrote about Irina Koltoniuc, his favorite Christmas-loving Jew, for the sixth time (“Jewish immigrant champions Christmas”). Does he keep writing about the same woman because he’s too lazy to find someone else, or because he can’t find any other Jews willing to talk about how nice it is to have a religion they do not believe in shoved down their throats?
We can talk about the “conspiracy against Christianity” when Fitzgerald can write about a public school system which marks Christian kids with unexcused absences for observing their holidays, which is what the Boston Public Schools did to to a student recently for the Jewish holidays, or a city soccer league which prevents Christian kids from playing by scheduling all of its games on Sunday morning, as opposed to the all-Saturday-morning schedule which kept me out of the league. And when was the last time Fitzgerald was unable to attend the Herald’s holiday party because he had to go to Mass? To the detriment of my career, I will (once again) this year be missing my employer’s Friday-night party.
There is no “conspiracy against Christianity” in this country. There is, rather, a long overdue recognition that it’s not nice for the majority religion in this country to impose itself on everyone else. Unfortunately, there’s a long way to go before non-Christians will truly be treated equally in the public sphere. Maybe Fitzgerald should write about that.
Last week, I received, via email sent to one of my synagogue’s contact email addresses, a flyer from someone at the Westboro Baptist Church, announcing the protests they were planning on holding this week in front of Jewish institutions in Boston.
I was appalled, and my initial reaction was to make a big deal out of it. I emailed the institutions listed on the flyer to warn them about the protest, made phone calls to personal contacts I had at some of those institutions, posted about it on my blog and on UniversalHub.com, and sent tips to the news media.
Some people commented in response that the WBC thrives on publicity, and the best strategy for dealing with them is to essentially pretend they don’t exist. I argued that things had gotten so bad in this country that the WBC was no longer completely on the lunatic fringe, and a response was therefore called for. My argument was legitimate; it’s not at all a clear-cut issue. However, as Bob Sutton says, one should always argue as if he is right and listen as if he is wrong. That’s what I did, and I’ve decided that I was wrong.
Jack Swartz, President The Vilna Shul
18 Phillips Street
Boston, MA 02114
Dear Mr. Swartz,
I am writing to you because my efforts over the past two years to resolve this matter through The Vilna Shul’s executive director, Steven Greenberg, have been unsuccessful.
Over two years ago, I embarked upon an ambitious effort to eliminate the junk mail – paper mail delivered by the postal service, not junk email – that our family receives. These mailings are bad for the environment because of the resources consumed by producing and transporting them. Furthermore, they are a waste of money for the organizations and companies that send them, because we don’t actually read them.
Eliminating all the junk mail was an ambitious undertaking, because my wife and I support many non-profit organizations, and they all felt the need to write to us at least once per year, and in many cases much more often than that. Furthermore, the non-profits we support sometimes rent and sell their mailing lists to others to whom we have not donated in the past.
Therefore, for over two years, I have contacted every company and organization that has sent us junk mail and asked each of them to remove us from its mailing list. This has been a very time-consuming process, but it has also been very successful. The vast majority of institutions I have contacted have been more than willing to remove us from their lists and have had no trouble doing so. Unfortunately, there have been a few marked exceptions. I’m sorry to say that The Vilna Shul is one of them.
It is looking more and more likely that Sholom Rubashkin will do his best to flee to Israel rather than serving his prison sentence for the crimes of which he has been convicted and/or will be convicted at his next trial.
Rubashkin’s attorneys presented more than 1,300 letters and e-mails of support, 43 homes worth more than $7 million offered as collateral from supporters, and letters from six rabbis who offered their Torahs in exchange for Rubashkin’s release.
Defense attorney Guy Cook argued Rubashkin would bring shame to the entire Jewish community worldwide if he were to flee.
Some points to consider:
The judge is not going to take Torahs from rabbis. That’s just a silly publicity stunt.
The 43 homes worth more than $7 million are irrelevant, because if Rubashkin skips bail, Chabad will raise the money to pay the forfeited bail from gullible frummies who still think Rubashkin is innocent, by embarking on one of its shady, tax-sheltered pidyon shvuyim fundraising blitzes. None of those 43 homes will end up being forfeited to the court if Rubashkin flees.
The reality, which Cook knows full well, is that Rubashkin doesn’t care about the people who think it would be “shameful” for him to flee to Israel.
If Rubashkin cared even one iota about bringing shame on the entire Jewish community, he would not have just been convicted of 86 counts of fraud and be about to go on trial on 72 separate immigration charges.
The plain truth is that once Rubashkin has decided that prison time is inevitable, he’ll be on the next boat to Israel, where he will claim persecution, demand asylum, and claim Israeli citizenship under the Right of Return. The Israeli government, in turn, will drag its feet and bog down the extradition process, as demanded by the religious parties which hold disproportionate power in every ruling government coalition, and it will be many years, if ever, before Rubashkin is extradited back to the U.S.
And that, my friends, will bring shame upon the entire Jewish community. We can only hope that the presiding judge has enough common sense to realize the insanity of letting Rubashkin out on bail.
Yesterday, the European court of human rights ruled that the display of crucifixes in Italian public school classrooms violates religious and education freedoms (story).
Spokesmen for the Italian government and the Church have, of course, made comments disparaging this ruling. Of course, these comments have been absurd and outrageous and have made it clear, yet again, that there are an awful lot of people in this world who just don’t “get it.”
Several years ago, I wrote to Congressman Michael Capuano asking why he didn’t sign an ad published by the CJP which many other politicians signed, attesting to Israel’s right to defend itself against terrorist attacks. A friend has pointed out that I was remiss in not posting Capuano’s response, which seems somewhat more significant now than it was then, since Capuano is now running for the Senate.
A member of Capuano’s staff responded in an email message which read as follows:
Congressman Capuano has referred your email message to me. You ask why he did not sign the CJP ad in the Globe and Herald. As I recall, we had a rather short time to review the text and no opportunity to contribute to its drafting.
I hope you know that he did vote, that same week, in favor of H. Res. 921, in defense of Israel’s right, as a sovereign democratic state, to take appropriate action to defend itself. He also wrote a letter of support, which I attach and which was posted on JCRC website.
Please feel free to call if you have further questions.
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Many of you have probably heard by now about the Kentucky-bound US. Airways Express flight that was diverted last week when the flight crew was alarmed by a Jewish teenager putting on tefillin (
that I had no interest in continuing to spend the many hours per week that I was spending fighting the hate. Given that I had been relying on information published by AIPAC, I decided to try to get in touch with someone at AIPAC who might be able to allocate resources to put their stuff on-line, hire some people to fight hate on Usenet, etc. Somehow, I actually succeeded at reaching the right person, and he and I had a long telephone conversation. I can still remember pacing back and forth with my cell phone in the lounge of the old Boston University Hillel building while trying, unsuccessfully, to convince him that on-line hate was a significant enough problem to warrant AIPAC expending some resources to combat it. AIPAC was completely unaware of the hate being spread on-line.