Seniors: Don’t Get Taken Advantage of Online

Did you know there is an actual law in Judaism prohibiting the theft of one’s knowledge? Known as geneivat da’at, the principle states that fooling someone and causing them to have a mistaken assumption, belief or impression leads the deceiving individual to be held responsible for the deceived person’s actions. 

In Judaism, geneivat da’at is considered to be a worse offense than lying or cheating. The repercussions often negatively affect many more people than only the original individual who was duped. 

In the internet age, I have seen many instances of geneivat da’at occur when innocent people are misled by fraudulent email messages, websites, text messages or social media posts. Many times, the result of these individuals being victims of geneivat da’at is that their identity is stolen, which is a nightmare scenario. Not surprisingly, it is usually older people who fall victim to this.

Facebook is certainly one of the most common places in which users over a certain age (we’ll call them “Boomers”) become deceived. Most of the duplicate friend requests I receive on Facebook are from fake accounts posing as older users. These illegitimate Facebook requests are part of a scam. The Facebook user often will post a legitimate message on their Facebook account letting their friends know that they shouldn’t accept any new Facebook friend requests from them because their profile has been duplicated, but they may not realize the seriousness of this act.

The Social Media Conundrum

I recently binge-watched CNN’s three documentaries on Netflix, which focus on the three final decades of the 20th century. Watching “The 70s,” “The 80s” and “The 90s,” I was left thinking about how CNN would characterize the current decade. No doubt, our love-hate relationship with social media would be a principal highlight this decade.

As an early adopter of social media and an active user, I find the love-hate relationship that people have with social networks intriguing. The people who condemn social media as an evil that has plagued our way of life are the same people who scroll through their Facebook feed before they fall asleep at night and while eating breakfast in the morning. There are aspects of Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, et. al. that we despise, and there are aspects that we have embraced and don’t know how we managed without. This social media conundrum is fascinating to me and I have been curious as to how we can view it through a Jewish lens.

Jewish people are less than 0.2% of the world population and yet most of those who have led us into the social media universe are members of the Jewish faith. Sergei Brin and Larry Page founded Google, which opened the door to Mark Zuckerberg creating Facebook and Noah Glass joining his friends to launch Twitter. Certainly, their intention wasn’t to do harm in creating new forms of communication, search and sharing.

Zuckerberg was an avowed atheist who has begun to embrace his Judaism more since becoming a father to two daughters. His public posts about celebrating Shabbat and Jewish holidays with his family have led some to question whether core Jewish ethics are at odds with the way Facebook is run as a company and how this social network has created harmful outcomes in our culture. In its almost fifteen years in existence, Facebook has been blamed for an increase in teenage depression and suicide rates, altering a presidential election, giving racists and anti-Semites a platform to spew their hate, disseminating false news reports and suppressing actual news, ruining millions of friendships, and Russian intervention of our political process.

There’s no doubt that Zuckerberg, along with Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg, has been in the hot seat for the past few years. Both have demonstrated they are strong proponents of free speech and they also believe in core Jewish ethics. Have those two mantras come into conflict at Facebook? How can the Jewish community see the light amidst the darkness in social media? While Facebook, under the leadership of Zuckerberg and Sandberg, has pledged to correct the harmful aspects of the network, they have largely failed. But should they be held responsible?

If there’s one thing that Judaism has taught us over the millennia, it is that there are shades of grey in everything. The social network that Zuckerberg created has a lot of positive aspects to offer us as a civilization. It has helped us communicate with people around the world and find ways to bring us closer together. Facebook allows us to keep in touch with long lost friends, wish each other birthday and anniversary greetings as well as condolences on the death of a loved one, view photos and videos of our family at life’s celebrations, and engage in respectful dialogue over the issues that matter most to us.

Sadly, Facebook and other social networks have also aided those who perpetrate evil. Social media has a dark side as we know all too well. It has amplified the voices of those who hate and threaten our democracy. It has given a much louder voice to bullies, who damage our wellbeing and sanity. However, social media hasn’t created anything new. It has just brought more of that darkness into the mainstream.

We must recognize that social media, whether in the form of Facebook and Twitter or something else down the road that will replace those networks, is now part of our world. It is up to us to use these tools for good and to shut out the evil that tries to enter through our internet connections. Ultimately, we must remind ourselves that social media engagement will never replace real-life human interaction.

In a recent New York Times piece, Bari Weiss wrote that it seems “the organizations and the people who get the most attention are destructive. On social media, this isn’t just speculation. Outrage and negativity are the most ‘engaging,’ and so that’s what we’re fed. The disciplined among us — and I’m hoping to get there — might get off these platforms entirely. One thing we all can do is make the effort to engage in real life.”

I don’t believe quitting social media activity cold turkey is the solution to what plagues our society. I think we must seek out the positive outcomes that exist in our experiences on social networks like Facebook while working to collectively shut out the darkness that has been so pervasive. While Zuckerberg might have created this game-changing network, he shouldn’t be fully blamed for where it has taken our society. We must show responsibility and direct social media toward the light – overwhelming the evil with good. That is the Jewish ethic.

Originally published in the Detroit Jewish News

Protecting Our Kids from Online Dangers Like Fortnite

Yesterday, I took my 14 1/2-year-old son with me to Toledo, Ohio, where I officiated a funeral. It was nice to spend some time together, but I also wanted to get him out of the house so he couldn't play Fortnite all morning. The new season of this live-action video game came out yesterday and that means that millions of boys his age were glued to the screen trying to get more "kills." At the baseball practice I ran yesterday evening, it was a losing battle trying to get these teenage boys to focus on baseball and not discuss their experiences with Fortnite earlier that day. In this week's Detroit Jewish News, I write about why we parents should be concerned with live-action games like Fortnite (highly addictive and violent) and other areas of the web, where danger lurks for our teens.

Here is the article from the July 12, 2018 edition of the Detroit Jewish News:

Protecting Our Kids in the Dark Web

Earlier this year, I was a guest speaker on a panel hosted by the National Council of Jewish Women. The topic was how parents and grandparents can be more vigilant in protecting our children from predators who lurk online seeking to abduct or abuse unsuspecting youth. Sitting next to Autumn Ceci, the Southfield police officer who investigates sex crimes and human trafficking, and a local psychologist, we each spoke about how the Internet has helped those who seek to harm young people and made it easier for them to hide behind secret identities online. Keeping children and teens from being deceived online is a very serious issue that can lead to human trafficking or sex abuse, both crimes that are plaguing our country.

Police detectives like Officer Ceci investigate incidents including sexual assaults, juvenile offenses, child abuse, neglect, missing persons and gang activity. I was prepared to share with the audience ways to protect our children when they’re using social networks and video games, but I was unaware of how widespread the issue of human trafficking has become in the Digital Age.

Online multiplayer action survival games, like the very popular “Fortnite – Battle Royale’, is dangerous as it poses severe risks to children and teens. The National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC) stated that they believed Fortnite was putting children at risk of online grooming. A news story reported that a mother overheard attempts to groom her 10-year old son through his Xbox videogame console as she sat on the sofa next to him. The mother heard an adult male addressing her son by name through her TV speakers, asking her son questions about sex. In another story, a mother discovered an adult male asking her 12-year old son to perform sex acts on him, and for the boy to take and send naked images of himself. These and other reports prompted many schools nationally to issue warnings to parents.

At the panel moderated by NCJW, it was clear that many of the parents and grandparents in the room hadn’t realized just how common it is for young people to be targeted online by predators posing as other people in chat rooms, on social media sites and in video games. I recommended several ways adults should monitor and protect children using technology.

When You’re Unfriended in Real Life

The schools of the great sages of the Jewish people, Hillel and Shammai, were known to debate each other on just about every topic. The students of these two schools rarely agreed on anything; each strongly and passionately arguing the opposite position of the other, albeit always with respect for the other’s opinion.

In Judaism, we believe that each human is created in the divine image and, thus, we have the responsibility to treat one another with respect. However, many of us humans don’t act with godliness when participating in Facebook discussions involving political viewpoints.

The 2012 election was bad when it came to a lack of civility on Facebook, but the 2016 election a year ago was many times worse. I’m scared to think of what 2020 will bring us. Many close friends unfriended each other on the social network, relatives blocked relatives and, even worse, long-term relationships in real life were severed because of hurt feelings during political arguments. While the election might have been over on November 8, 2016, the heated arguments on Facebook have continued. In the past year, with a President known to send out many divisive tweets before most people have had their first cup of coffee, the Facebook battlefield has only intensified.

If you have a Facebook account, you likely witnessed at least one unfortunate interaction in the past couple of years. It has been impossible to post anything about either presidential candidate without a couple of trolls coming in to paste the latest talking points from the most extremist online blogs they could find to bolster their position or refute everyone else’s opinion.

This has been true on both sides, from the extreme left and the extreme right. On social networks, especially Facebook, people have learned to hide behind their screens when they say these hateful things, but it affects all their relationships and not only their virtual relationships. In the run-up to the 2016 election, most political opinions on either candidate would be met with attacks in the comment section of that post. Many of the comments were not fact checked and some were outright myths that had already been debunked by Snopes.com, the fact-checking web site. In the past year, tempers have flared even more with friends attacking friends on Facebook over everything from the NFL's national anthem controversy and the Second Amendment to the Russian interference in the election and Trump's policies. No topic is off limits when it comes to firing shots in the comment section of Facebook and real friendships become the collateral damage.

I was recently tutoring a young woman for her bat mitzvah and we were studying the Tower of Babel story within her Torah portion. I explained that God was so angered that humans would try to build a tower to the sky that God punished them by confounding their languages so they couldn’t communicate with one another. Immediately, this wise 13-year-old girl said, “In my bat mitzvah speech, I want to talk about how we communicate with each other.” And she immediately hit the nail on the head by explaining the negative effects that occur from the way teens talk to each other in the 21st century. Rather than speaking face-to-face, today’s teens send coded text messages, Snapchat messages that disappear after several seconds, and comments under the photos they post on Instagram. The language they use is different from what any prior generation would recognize as English. One misinterpreted emoji or abbreviation can mean the end of a friendship.

On Facebook, it’s not only the teens who resort to insults and abusive language when someone offends them with their strongly held opinion. Earlier generations wouldn’t understand how your crazy liberal uncle can get into a heated debate with some girl you went to summer camp with a few decades ago.

When adults begin threatening to “unfollow” or “unfriend,” we quickly find ourselves feeling trapped and annoyed in a fourth-grade-esque insult circus. Cutting off contact with someone with opposing ideology will never further discussion, debate and democracy. Sadly, a lot of people on Facebook are close-minded, unwilling to listen to opposing opinions.

Detroit Stand Up Comic Jeff Dwoskin Launches Twitter Hashtag Games App

Twitter, the social network known for its 140 character limitation, has been in the news a lot lately. Much of the media attention has certainly been driven by President-Elect Donald Trump who tweeted his way to an election victory over the past year. Trump will, no doubt, be the first President to tweet his thoughts and policy decisions without a filter on social media when he takes over the @Potus Twitter handle on January 20.

The other reason Twitter has been making headlines in recent months has more to do with the company that was founded a decade ago in San Francisco. Created by Jack Dorsey, Evan Williams, Biz Stone and Noah Glass, the company today is valued at around $10 billion; far less than its $40 billion valuation just three years ago. While Twitter has over 300 million monthly active users, many have questioned its health. Further, businesses have long been concerned that Twitter doesn't provide marketing value the way other social networks do.

Jeff Dwoskin, an entrepreneur, stand up comedian and creator of Twitter's Hashtag Roundup

The Day After the Election: A Postmortem

To blog or not to blog today, that was the question. As this unusual election became more divisive and, well, bizarre, I found myself blogging less. I didn't want to write about politics and everything else that I typically blog about just seemed inconsequential. Last night, the unimaginable happened. Okay, to be fair, like many I did consider the unlikely political earthquake that would happen if Donald Trump won.

Today, the day after the 2016 presidential election happens to be the anniversary of Kristallnacht. Upon seeing the posts of friends and colleagues on Facebook and Twitter making stark comparisons between this horrific night in 1938 in Berlin and modern day America, I felt this was completely inappropriate. However, last night there were anti-Semitic incidents in celebration of Donald Trump's victory (see the graffiti below in Philadelphia). Certainly, this was not a Kristallnacht -- not even close -- but, we should all be concerned about the hateful cadre among Trump's supporters.

This past Rosh Hashanah I wanted to speak out about the dangerous rhetoric of this election season. I knew that I had to do this without endorsing one candidate over the other. My goal was to express my outrage at the pomposity of Donald Trump, but also encourage all of us to be more tolerant of others and to listen to those who felt their voices had not historically been heard. I think that if we were to point to one reason so many of us were surprised by the outcome of the 2016 election it would be that we live in a bubble. The Facebook feed of the liberal elite is an echo chamber. As I recognized as the results came in last night, 99% of my Facebook connections were in the Hillary Clinton camp and so the sentiments I heard for the better part of the past two years were fully in sync with my own. I warned of this Facebook echo chamber in my Rosh Hashanah sermon and I too fell victim to it.

What follows is a selection of my 2016 Rosh Hashanah sermon from the first day of the holiday:

Gun Loving Ted Nugent's Jewish Problem

Whenever Mitch Albom launches a new book, he throws a big event in Detroit and invites some of his celebrity friends to join him on stage. I've been to a few of these and was surprised to see Ted Nugent at the most recent event. Nugent, the ultra-right wing Rocker, was invited along with his wife Shemane because of the couple's Freedom’s Angels Foundation, which helps wounded soldiers and their loved ones. Apparently, he and Albom have become friendly over the years and bonded over their love of music.

Ted Nugent, his wife Shemane, and Mitch Albom with Michael Bolton and musician Olivia Millerschin
(Regina H. Boone, Detroit Free Press)

I must say that in my brief discussion with Ted Nugent at this event, I began to reconsider my preconceived notions about him. Nugent has a reputation for being an offensive, abrasive, loud mouth who is equal parts racist and misogynistic. However, he actually seemed like a nice guy at this event (he was still loud) and I enjoyed watching Mitch Albom interview him in a fireside chat style. Before the event began Nugent was even gracious enough to join my list of celebrities who have offered "Shabbat Shalom" greetings on video.

With Ted Nugent in Detroit last year. I always add the disclaimer that a photo with someone does not constitute my agreement with their opinions. Never has that been truer than with this photo!

But then yesterday afternoon a friend told me to go look at Ted Nugent's Facebook page in which Nugent posted a very an anti-Semitic image. In the post, Nugent blames prominent Jewish people for pushing gun control by overlaying Israeli flag icons on each Jewish person's photo. The image is titled "So who is really behind gun control?" and Nugent made a photo grid of 12 Jews (Senators Chuck Schumer, Barbara Boxer and Diane Feinstein, former Senator Carl Levin, Michael Bloomberg, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, Alan Dershowitz, etc.). The graphic wasn't created by Nugent, but it has appeared on anti-Semitic websites in the past.

Mark Zuckerberg's Letter to His Baby Daughter is His Vision for the Future

No matter how much money each of us donated yesterday on what has come to be known as Giving Tuesday, it certainly wasn’t as large a charitable commitment as Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan made. On the occasion of the birth of their daughter, Max, yesterday the couple pledged to donate 99% of their stock shares of Facebook (currently about $45 billion) during their lifetimes to improve the world for the next generation.

While this level of charitable pledging is unmatched (Warren Buffet, Bill Gates and Eli Broad have been very successful in getting many billionaires to commit to donating 50% of their fortunes during their lifetime), I was more interested in two other aspects of the Zuckerberg-Chan family’s public announcement.

First, I found their open letter to their newborn daughter to be extremely meaningful and inspirational. I too penned (or rather typed) letters to each of my children on the day of their birth. So many people wait until they’re close to death to sit down and write an ethical will to their children. A truly important time to do this exercise is on the highly emotional first day of our child’s life.

In Zuckerberg’s letter to his daughter, he wrote:

Your mother and I don’t yet have the words to describe the hope you give us for the future. Your new life is full of promise, and we hope you will be happy and healthy so you can explore it fully. You’ve already given us a reason to reflect on the world we hope you live in. Like all parents, we want you to grow up in a world better than ours today. 

While headlines often focus on what’s wrong, in many ways the world is getting better. Health is improving. Poverty is shrinking. Knowledge is growing. People are connecting. Technological progress in every field means your life should be dramatically better than ours today. We will do our part to make this happen, not only because we love you, but also because we have a moral responsibility to all children in the next generation. We believe all lives have equal value, and that includes the many more people who will live in future generations than live today. Our society has an obligation to invest now to improve the lives of all those coming into this world, not just those already here.

The second part of the Zuckerberg-Chan family’s letter that struck me was that it was filled with hope for the future, but also a genuine concern. As a father, I’ve been thinking very seriously about these issues over the past several years as well. Before my first child was born almost twelve years ago, I envisioned a world for him without racism, without war and without terrorism precipitated by hatred. As my children have grown from infants to toddlers to pre-teens, I’ve watched sadly as there has been more hate and evil in our world. No doubt, Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan, likewise, wish to envision a world for their newborn daughter in which peace and love dominate.

This beautiful letter by Zuckerberg not only articulates his hopes and prayers for his daughter, but it also is a clear and poignant testament to the world he is willing to help create through his personal wealth. We should all be grateful to Zuckerberg and Chan for their devotion to the next generation and to ensuring that our children’s and grandchildren’s lives will be better than our own lives. Mazel Tov on the birth or Max Zuckerberg and thank you for your commitment to the future.

The Syrian Refugee Debate Takes to Social Media: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

In the era of Facebook, controversial topics play out in various ways on the social networking site and it's often not pretty. Such has been the case with the ongoing debate over whether the United States should accept Syrian refugees in the wake of the tragic terrorism acts in Paris.

While Syrian refugees have been seeking safe harbor in several countries over the past few years, the debate here in America has escalated in recent weeks and turned into divisive political arguments. A majority of U.S. governors have publicly voiced their opposition to providing asylum to the Syrian migrants even though immigration remains a federal issue. The debate has also become a litmus test for the presidential candidates and their views on domestic security.


FITS OF FURY ON FACEBOOK

Facebook, with its free accounts and ability to weigh in on anything in a public forum, has provided bully pulpits to anyone with an internet connection at home, at the office or on their smartphone. Now, as soon as someone offers their opinion in the form of a Facebook post as to whether the U.S. should welcome Syrian refugees, that post quickly becomes an explosive back-and-forth among commentators from every demographic and political affiliation.

After Michigan's governor, Rick Snyder, reversed his earlier position in support of Michigan welcoming Syrian refugees, debates on the social network started by local residents turned into tempestuous back-and-forth arguments with each side posting links to articles in support of their opinion on the matter. Analogies to the U.S. closing its doors to Jewish refugees in the 1930's were quickly rebuffed by those arguing that allowing the Syrian migrants into our country would lead to domestic terrorism. Others cited statistics showing the majority of terrorist attacks were caused by those affiliated with Islam. These posts garnered hundreds of comments with both sides vehemently concerned about the issues they prioritize, whether the security of our country and the refugee screening process or the ethical considerations of turning away hopeless women and young children in need of shelter.

The Jewish community, with its strong values, remains divided on these issues as evidenced by the outpouring of strongly held viewpoints on Facebook. Some descendents of those who were turned back to Europe in the 1930s took the position that the U.S. must use its moral compass and not transgress as it did before the Holocaust. Others called such a comparison preposterous as the Jewish immigrants from Europe eighty years ago posed no threat to American citizens. On such a contentious issue, strong disagreements are bound to occur online. Several such Facebook debates over the Syrian refugee topic led to Facebook users blocking each other, even those who are friends in real life.

In many instances, the Facebook discussion space has proven to be detrimental to open and honest dialogue with regard to the Syrian refugee crisis, but surely there are some positive outcomes from Facebook in this matter.

Teenage Romance in the Digital Age

Those of us in our late 30's are the last generation who got through our high school years without social media. I still remember coming home exhausted from regional Jewish youth group events on a Sunday evening only to pick up the phone and make long-distance calls to the out-of-town friends I had just hung out with over the weekend. It was only a little more than twenty years ago that high school teens used the phone to communicate with their significant others because there no one had email yet. Everything is different for teens today. In my recent technology column in the Detroit Jewish News, I wrote about how social media has changed teenage romance today. Here's the article:

Teenage Romance and Social Media: What Are Teens Up To Online?

It wasn’t too long ago that teenage romance meant passing private folded notepaper in school classes, writing love letters and mailing them in actual envelopes with stamps, and waiting your turn to use the family’s landline telephone to call the object of your affection. When it comes to teenage romance today, much has changed in a short time.

A recent Pew Research Study looks at how digital tools and social media platforms have been fully integrated into American teenagers’ dating and romantic practices. As to how this affects the Jewish community, Jewish communal leaders who have long been concerned about dating habits of Jewish teens for the sake of Jewish continuity will be able to learn a lot from this study.

Over 1,000 teens in the U.S. ages 13 to 17 were surveyed by Pew and more than a third of these teens reported that they are currently dating someone or have dated someone in the past. However, only one quarter of them have met a significant other online. This means that while adult Americans are using online dating websites, like JDate, to find romantic matches, teens are still resorting to traditional methods for finding romantic partners. However, as the Pew study discovered these teens are using social media at an increasing rate when it comes to flirting, asking out, connecting and breaking up.

Does Facebook Lead to Depression?

For the past few years I've been reading a lot about what's become known as "Facebook Depression." When an old friend who has since moved out of town came to visit and told me she had deactivated her Facebook account (I hadn't noticed), I asked why. She explained that she and her husband had been struggling to have another baby and seeing so many posts from her friends announcing they were pregnant was enough to drive her insane. Rather than endure the abundance of joyful posts of healthy ultrasound images and photos of pregnant bellies and newborn smiles, she simply pulled the plug on her Facebook account. What follows is my recent article on the so called "Facebook Depression" in the Detroit Jewish News:

In 2004 when Harvard undergraduate Mark Zuckerberg started The Facebook he never imagined that ten years later there would be over 1 billion users on the social networking site. He also never imagined that it would be painfully difficult for him and his wife to see the happy photos uploaded to the site of their peers smiling with their newborn babies.

On July 31, Zuckerberg made a public post to Facebook announcing that he and his wife Priscilla Chan were expecting a child. While nothing would be unusual about such an announcement on Facebook – they occur every day – the Facebook founder and CEO elaborated on the challenges the couple endured in sustaining a healthy pregnancy.

“Priscilla and I have some exciting news: we're expecting a baby girl!” Zuckerberg continued, “We want to share one experience to start. We've been trying to have a child for a couple of years and have had three miscarriages along the way… It's a lonely experience. Most people don't discuss miscarriages because you worry your problems will distance you or reflect upon you -- as if you're defective or did something to cause this. So you struggle on your own... When we started talking to our friends, we realized how frequently this happened -- that many people we knew had similar issues and that nearly all had healthy children after all. We hope that sharing our experience will give more people the same hope we felt and will help more people feel comfortable sharing their stories as well.”

It’s entirely possible that that Zuckerberg and Chan were suffering from what has been labeled as “Facebook Depression.” In their dark days of suffering through the emotional pain of their miscarriages, we can only assume that using the social network that he created became something of a torturous activity. Scanning through dozens of joyous memory-filled photos on Facebook of friends’ children likely had negative effects on their well-being. Each status announcement that rose to the top of their Facebook Newsfeed broadcasting another pregnancy or birth or milestone reminded this famous couple of their inability to sustain a pregnancy and produce a viable offspring – one they undoubtedly looked forward to showing off on Facebook.

Positive Side of Social Media in High School

Social Media gets a bad name when it comes to teens. Countless stories exist of teens using social networks like Facebook, YouTube, Snapchat and Twitter to bully, shame and insult their peers. We've heard of students shaming each other with unbelievably mean comments on each other's Facebook and Instagram photos. Even kids in middle school have been found to be "sexting" each other. All of these stories would lead adults to think that a complete ban of social networks is the only answer to end the negative effects of social media when it comes to our children and teens.

And then a wonderful story emerges that highlights the power of social media. A high school graduate named Konner Sauve found a way to exploit Instagram for good. During Konner's senior year at East Valley High School in Washington, he decided he would post photos of every student in his high school onto an anonymous Instagram account. In the caption of each photo Konner posted how he felt about the person.

Conner Sauve, a high school senior in Washington used Instragram to praise his classmates

Konner wanted to give some encouragement to each teen at his high school. He wrote positive, uplifting and motivational messages. If he didn't know the student personally, he did some research in the yearbook to find out if they played a sport, were in theater or had other interests. In the end, Konner posted 657 photos to an anonymous Instagram account he called "thebenevolentone3."

Sheryl Sandberg's Wise Words in the Face of Tragedy

One of the most challenging aspects of being a rabbi, in my opinion, is finding the right words to bring comfort to those mourning following the tragic death of a loved one. Aside from the traditional Hebrew phrase we offer mourners, I often find myself left with only four words to offer to those grieving: "There are no words."

After my infant nephew died and people were at a loss for words, I simply uttered, "There are no words." Truthfully though, there are words. And the words aren't necessary from those who are offering comfort. Sometimes the most meaningful words are from the mourners themselves. Those who are in pain from grief can actually find tremendous comfort in their own words.

This was not the case in the Torah following one of the biggest tragedies. After the sudden death of two of Aaron's sons, the Torah explains how the father handled his grief. Using only two words, we are told "Vayidom Aharon," Aaron was silent. So often, silence is the most natural way for mourners to deal with the shock of a sudden death of a loved one. However, after time ones own words may bring comfort.

Credit: Scott Eells/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Such was the case today with Sheryl Sandberg, the Facebook executive whose husband, Dave Goldberg, died suddenly last month. In a Facebook post today on the occasion of the completion of the sheloshim (30-day) period, Sheryl posted a beautiful and inspirational message on her public Facebook account. Her aim was to give back some of the words that were most helpful to her during her period of immense grief. She writes that she received wisdom and advice from close friends and strangers alike. She specifically singles out her close friend and Detroit native Adam Grant, who taught her three things essential to resilience. Sometimes rather than try to come up with the right words to offer to a mourner, we should just listen.

Sheryl's Facebook post has already been shared close to 40,000 times and major media outlets have helped circulate it. Mark Zuckerberg, Robert Scoble, Randi Zuckerberg and many other leading technology executives have commented on her post as well. Sheryl's words are too important and impactful not to share:

Sheryl Sandberg:

Today is the end of sheloshim for my beloved husband—the first thirty days. Judaism calls for a period of intense mourning known as shiva that lasts seven days after a loved one is buried. After shiva, most normal activities can be resumed, but it is the end of sheloshim that marks the completion of religious mourning for a spouse.

Learning to Not Take Tech for Granted

In my recent "Jews in the Digital Age" column for the Detroit Jewish News I showed how much we have come to take technology for granted. We become frustrated when our GPS doesn't correctly reroute us because of construction, forgetting how much this little device has changed our traveling experience. We curse the iPad when we're talking to relatives on vacation in Australia using Skype, Google Chat or FaceTime and the connection becomes wonky, without realizing how revolutionary it is that we can video chat in real time for free with someone on the other side of the world. The idea for this article came to me after introducing my grandmother (she's almost 94) to the online music app Pandora and seeing the magic of this technology through her eyes.

Appreciating Technology Through the Eyes of the Golden Generation

A few weeks ago I found myself quite agitated. I was in the Jewish Community Center's fitness center on a stationary bicycle when the WiFi signal became too weak for me to continue watching a television show on my cell phone that I had recorded on the DVR at my home the night before. I was connected to a SlingBox at my house through the SlingPlayer mobile app on my phone. My annoyance only lasted for a few seconds as I just switched to the Netflix app, began watching an old episode of "How I Met Your Mother," and continued with my workout.

It wasn't until later that day that I realized how ridiculous it was that I was aggravated by this minor technical glitch and had become so indifferent to the amazement of this 21st century technology. I ordered my grandmother a new desktop computer from Amazon and took it over to her West Bloomfield home to install it. She watched in awe as I quickly assembled her new computer, connected the monitor, keyboard and mouse, and installed the Windows 8 operating system. This wasn't her first computer, but it was her first brand new computer. In the past she would graciously accept any of the older models her children or grandchildren weren't using anymore.

Teaching my grandmother, Adele Gudes, how to use a notebook computer in 2001

After setting up the Internet connection I asked her if she had ever heard of Pandora. She had not. I swiftly installed the app, set up a new account for her and created a few stations of music I knew she would enjoy. When she realized that she could simply type in any song, artist or genre and listen to it for free, she was amazed. Her eyes lit up like she had just seen fire for the first time. And that's when it hit me. I have completely taken technology for granted.

To truly appreciate the modern innovations we enjoy on a daily basis, we need to see technology through the perspective of an octogenarian or a nonagenarian. My children's generation can't be blamed for not appreciating technology for they were born into the digital age. The way I don't remember a time before power windows and answering machines, my children don't remember a time before smartphones, GPS, DVRs and digital cameras. My 93-year-old grandmother, Adele Gudes, on the other hand remembers when there was no FM radio and now she can have an algorithm select songs for her based on her musical taste. Her sense of amazement was a wake-up call for me.

Rabbi Dovid Winiarz Exploited Facebook for Good

Just last week I blogged about the importance of Jewish leaders and teachers using social media to reach out to their following in the 21st century. One of the premier examples of a rabbi who exploited social media, and Facebook specifically, for good was Rabbi Dovid Winiarz.

Rabbi Winiarz was a popular outreach rabbi on Staten Island who had over 12,000 followers on his public Facebook page, which was called "The Facebuker Rebbe." Like Rabbi David Wolpe, who similarly has built up a massive following on Facebook to teach and inspire, Rabbi Winiarz posted his religious teachings to inspire more Jews to embrace an observant life.

Tragically, The Facebuker Rebbe Facebook page yesterday turned into a tribute page after Rabbi Winiarz was killed in an early Sunday morning car accident in Maryland while traveling to Baltimore for a kiruv (outreach) retreat. He was the father of ten children.

Your Facebook News Feed and Your Emotions

Thirty years ago in 1984 Bananarama had the hit song "Cruel Summer" in which they sang "Trying to smile, But the air is so heavy and dry, Strange voices are saying, What did they say, Things I can't understand, It's too close for comfort, This heat has got right out of hand, It's a cruel, cruel summer, 
Leaving me here on my own, It's a cruel, cruel summer, Now you're gone." Ironically, the summer of 2014 really seemed to be a cruel summer. While fun summer activities continued as planned, the news around the world, as well as locally, may have led many of us to exclaim as Bananarama did three decades prior, "What did they say? Things I can't understand."

Now that the summer has come to a close and the kids are back to school, we can only hope that the news improves. What follows is an article I wrote for the Detroit Jewish News in which I took a look at how our Facebook News Feed affects us emotionally. My prayer is that all of our News Feeds stay positive for the remainder of the year. Thanks for reading!

Let’s be honest here. You spend a lot of time scrolling through your Facebook News Feed. Whether you’re on a desktop computer, your iPad or a mobile phone, it feels like a mindless activity to swipe through your friends’ posts. Well, you might not realize it but your mood will be changed by what you see on the screen.

According to a research paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science earlier this year, Facebook altered the news feeds for some users as part of a psychology experiment devised by the company's on-staff data scientist. Sheryl Sandberg, the Chief Operating Officer of Facebook, later apologized for altering the News Feeds of some 700,000 different English-language Facebook users during a short period during 2012. Whether Facebook acted ethically or not, the results are quite revealing. The experiment sought to learn about the way positive and negative effect travels through social networks. The study concluded that "in-person interaction and nonverbal cues are not strictly necessary for emotional contagion."

To test the hypothesis, the researchers identified and began removing emotionally negative posts for one group and positive posts for another. According to the paper, "when a person loaded their Facebook News Feed, posts that contained emotional content of the relevant emotional valence, each emotional post had between a 10 percent and 90 percent chance (based on their User ID) of being omitted from their News Feed for that specific viewing." It should be mentioned that nothing Facebook did to manipulate users’ feeds was in violation of the Terms of Use each account holder agrees to when registering for the social network.

Jewish Teens and Social Media: The Good, the Bad and the Inappropriate

In the early 1990s I was an active leader in my synagogue’s high school youth group. Even as a young teen I appreciated the importance of communication in cultivating new members to the congregation’s chapter of United Synagogue Youth (USY) and for keeping current members abreast of upcoming events. This membership communication came in the form of photocopied flyers on colored Xerox paper, phone messages left on the family’s answering machine, and hand drawn posters attached to cork boards with push pins in the synagogue lobby. Once every two months we assembled a cut-and-paste newsletter to be photocopied, stapled and sent to members’ homes.

Teens and Social Media - sheknows.com

Much has changed in the past twenty years when it comes to teens and communication. Everything is now instant. Those mailed event flyers often took as much as a week to arrive in teens’ mailboxes, but today’s texts and tweets arrive in the blink of an eye. Direct communication, of course, has become easier as we’re almost always available to chat. No more leaving messages on answering machines as teens can connect virtually anytime using Skype, FaceTime or text messaging. Parents, however, are often out of the communications process in the 21st century. Each teen has her own cellphone to talk, text and video chat so parents often don’t know what their teens are doing or where they’re going unless they ask (or snoop).

For the most part, the growth of instant communication and social media has been a positive for teens in general and the success of Jewish teenage youth groups in particular. But despite the ways social networks like Facebook and instant messaging services have made it easier for teens to communicate with each other and for Jewish teen leaders to promote their group’s programs in more efficient ways, there are some very scary consequences that come with this high tech communication and social sharing.

WhatsApp's Jan Koum and the Kiev Protests

With the ongoing political uprising and violent demonstrations in Kiev, my heart breaks for the people of Ukraine. I first visited Ukraine in 2005, but only spent a short time in the capital city of Kiev as my group's main purpose was meeting with Jewish students in Kharkov (Kharkiv) and the surrounding areas like Konotop and Sumy. I returned to Ukraine a year ago in February 2013 on an American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC)/United Jewish Communities (UJC) Rabbinic Cabinet Mission and spent much more time in Kiev, where I was able to feel the tension in the air.

In Kiev, political protests calling for the downfall of Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych took a violent turn at the end of last month and dozens have died in the fighting. Yanukovych, ousted from power in the coup, has fled Kiev. The fact that Kiev has exploded in violence over the past month really wasn't surprising to me. In the almost 25 years since the breakup of the Soviet Union, Ukraine has never really felt completely independent. On both of my visits to Ukraine I heard members of the local Jewish community as well as professionals with the JDC ("The Joint") explain how Ukraine was actually ruled by several oligarchs, including some Jewish oligarchs (Vladimir Putin recently slammed these wealthy, influential Jewish families).

I spent an hour at this sick, elderly woman's apartment in Kiev listening to her (through a translator) explain how she survives on very little assistance from the government and the JDC.

Extreme poverty has plagued the Jewish community of Ukraine, which has been estimated to be around 300,000 members (some argue it is closer to 100,000). There are tens of thousands of at-risk elderly and families with young children who are struggling each day. Today, the JDC works with the local community to help save Ukraine’s poorest Jews by providing for their basic daily needs, revitalizing Jewish life by supporting synagogues, Jewish camps and Jewish community centers, and through developing Jewish leaders among Ukraine's Jewish youth.

Ukraine is deeply divided between eastern regions that are largely pro-Russian and western areas that seek closer ties with the European Union. The ongoing political protests were set off by Yanukovych’s shelving of an agreement with the EU in November. Demonstrators have cited political corruption and human rights abuses in their calls for Yanukovych's resignation.

If there can be a kernel of optimism in Ukraine's struggles during its independence from the Soviet Union in the past two decades its the success stories of some of the entrepreneurs who have emerged from Ukraine to form flourishing publicly traded companies.

At the end of last month the world quickly learned of the rags-to-riches story of Jan Koum. The 38-year-old Jewish founder of WhatsApp grew up in Ukraine in poor conditions. (As an aside, I'm the same age as Koum, meaning that while I was celebrating my bar mitzvah in Michigan in 1989, he was still a Soviet Refusenik in the USSR unable to observe this Jewish rite.) Koum's messaging company was bought by Facebook for $19 billion in a deal announced by Mark Zuckerberg in February. WhatsApp's 450 million customers use the app as an easy way to send messages across borders and between different mobile devices. As the crisis in Ukraine escalated, Koum posted photos of revolutionaries and tweeted "praying for peace and quick resolution to the crisis #ukraine #freedom."

Koum grew up in a village near Kiev and immigrated to Mountain View, California as a teen along with thousands of other Soviet Jews as part of the exodus from the former Soviet Union after its collapse. According to Forbes, Koum was "the only child of a housewife and a construction manager who built hospitals and schools. His house [outside of Kiev] had no hot water, and his parents rarely talked on the phone in case it was tapped by the State."

With government assistance, Koum and his mother first settled in a small two-bedroom apartment in Mountain View, Calif., when he was 16 (his father, who died in 1997, never made it to the U.S.). To make ends meet, his mother (who brought pens and notebooks from the former Soviet Union so she wouldn't have to buy school supplies in the U.S.) babysat while Jan swept a grocery store.

In an interview with Wired's editor David Rowan (video), Jan Koum said his interest in WhatsApp was partially inspired by his memories of how difficult and costly it had been as a new immigrant to stay in touch with relatives back in Ukraine.

While Jan Koum's story from Jewish Refusenik growing up outside of Kiev to a billionaire tech icon is inspirational, it's not the first of its kind. Other Silicon Valley success stories that began in the Jewish community of the former Soviet Union include Google's Russian-born Jewish co-founder Sergey Brin and Max Levchin, the Jewish Kiev-born co-founder of Paypal and chairman of Yelp.

Sergey Brin's early childhood in communist Russia contributed to Google's famous "Don’t Be Evil" motto. In Mark Malseed's insightful biography of Google's Brin in a 2007 article in Moment Magazine, we see how the anti-Semitism of the Soviet Union played a major role in Brin's upbringing. Sergey's father Michael Brin explained how he was forced to abandon his dream of becoming an astronomer even before he reached college because the Communist Party heads barred Jews from upper professional ranks by denying them entry to universities. "Jews were excluded from the physics department, in particular, at the prestigious Moscow State University, because Soviet leaders did not trust them with nuclear rocket research. Unfortunately for Michael, astronomy fell under the rubric of physics."

Malseed writes, "The Brins' story provides me with a clue to the origins of Sergey's entrepreneurial instincts. His parents, academics through and through, deny any role in forming their son's considerable business acumen -- 'He did not learn it from us, absolutely not our area,' Michael says. Yet Sergey's willingness to take risks, his sense of whom to trust and ask for help, his vision to see something better and the conviction to go after it—these traits are evident in much of what Michael Brin did in circumventing the system and working twice as hard as others to earn his doctorate, then leave the Soviet Union."

Max Levchin grew up as a Soviet Refusenik in Kiev

Like Sergey Brin and Jan Koum, the Kiev-born Max Levchin's story of emigration from the former Soviet Union has contributed to his vast success as a tech titan and hugely successful entrepreneur. Life in Kiev for the Levchin family was difficult and they endured virulent anti-Semitism. Levchin's grandfather was a prominent physics professor in Kiev, but was very uncomfortable with Ukraine’s anti-Semitism, so he encouraged the family to emigrate. Since Levchin's mother had an uncle in the Chicago area, his family moved there where he spent his last two years of high school.

Living in Chicago in 1991, the 16-year-old Levchin completed high school and went on to study computer science at the University of Illinois, earning his bachelor degree. While studying there he was involved in the establishment of two Internet orientated companies, NetMeridian Software and SponsorNet New Media. Following graduation, Levchin founded his third online enterprise in partnership with another fellow graduate Peter Thiel. The company was originally named Fieldlink, but later changed to Confinity. It was at Confinity, that Levchin, Thiel and Elon Musk developed PayPal. Levchin founded Slide in 2004, which was sold to Google in August 2010 for $182 million. He also helped start Yelp.com and is the largest shareholder today. In 2011, Levchin founded HVF (standing for Hard, Valuable, and Fun) that was intended to explore and fund projects and companies in the area of leveraging data, such as data from analog sensors. The following year Affirm was spun out of HVF, with the goal of building the next generation credit network. In May 2013, HVF helped launched Glow, a company with an eponymous app to help parents conceive babies.

Today the Kiev-born Jan Koum has a net worth of $6.8 billion, the Russian-born Sergey Brin is worth about $27.7 billion and the Kiev-born Max Levchin has a net worth of about $300 million. These three young tycoons are not members of any Russian or Ukrainian oligarchs; each man has his own impressive story of growing up as a Jewish Refusenik in the former Soviet Union and, despite that childhood, becoming a tech superstar.

While these three Jewish entrepreneurs with roots in the former Soviet Union have become immensely successful and astronomically wealthy, there are thousands of other young businessmen with similar stories who have become very successful, albeit on a smaller level. In the Metro Detroit Jewish community, there are several young entrepreneurs who cite their upbringing behind the wall of Soviet communism as their motivation for business success today.

Vladimir Gendelman (far right) with other young former Soviet Jews who have built profitable companies in Metro Detroit.

Vladimir Gendelman, 39, of West Bloomfield, a suburb of Detroit, founded Company Folders, Inc., which produces custom made folders and other promotional print items using the latest printing technology. Gendelman was raised in the former Soviet Union. He explains that "growing up in Kharkov, Ukraine my family experienced poor living conditions and seeing the opportunities that America had to offer made me believe that I can make a difference one day." In Ukraine, Gendelman points out that his family wasn't considered "customers" because they were Jewish. Instead, he remembers waiting in long, uncomfortable lines to receive basic goods. "For that reason, I make a point to always provide my clients with the highest standards of customer service and print quality."

Gendelman says he's happy the Ukrainian people have risen up against the corrupted government and are seeing the importance of moving toward the European Union rather than Russia. He hopes that one day things will quiet down and Ukraine will move forward in a more Westernized manner. Regarding the rags-to-riches story of Jan Koum, Gendelman remarks, "that is a great story similar to others such as Sergey Brin, but the fact that Koum's parents both died (Koum's mother died in 2000) while he was young and before he achieved success makes it much more dramatic. I can't even imagine how much he would want his mom to know that he is a billionaire now."

As the world continues to watch the escalating political uprising and violent protests in Kiev, it's important to understand that there have been some remarkable success stories to emerge from behind the Iron Curtain. Although Ukraine has been free from the grip of Moscow for almost 25 years, it is still struggling to find its true independence from Russia. The wealthy, controlling oligarchs of Ukraine will not be a positive influence for young Ukrainians in the Jewish community, but hopefully these successful entrepreneurs who emerged as wealthy victors in the technology age despite their challenging upbringing as Soviet Refuseniks will provide the inspiration to the next generation of Russian and Ukrainian Jews.

Rabbi Arie Hasit - Facebook's 4th Account

I was in Jerusalem in December 2012 with a dozen of my Conservative rabbi colleagues on a mission to support our sister movement in Israel -- the Masorti Movement. At a lovely dinner on the first evening of our stay at the Mamila Hotel in Jerusalem I was seated next to Arie Hasit. The two of us immediately began to talk over appetizers and commenced a game of Jewish geography. Turns out we know countless mutual people. As a high school student Arie was very active in United Synagogue Youth (USY) and knew many of my colleagues who were youth directors or working for USY international headquarters in New York during Arie's high school years. Now, Arie is a student at Machon Schechter (Schechter Institute of Jewish Studies) studying to be a Conservative rabbi and also working as the Acting Rabbi of Naom, Masorti's youth movement, where he's doing wonderful and important work.

Most of my colleagues on that mission traveled back to the United States a few days later before Shabbat, but I chose to extend my stay for a Shabbat in Jerusalem. Rather than visiting friends for Shabbat I took Arie up on his kind invitation to have dinner with him and some friends at his apartment in the Baka neighborhood of Jerusalem.

Today marks ten years since Mark Zuckerberg founded The Facebook in his Harvard dorm room.

It was over Shabbat dinner at his home that Arie mentioned that, like me, he was a member of the Alpha Epsilon Pi (AEPi) fraternity. I asked him which chapter of AEPi and he told me that he attended Harvard University. I explained that I had led a Birthright Israel trip for college students at both the University of Michigan as well as Harvard back in 2004 and of course he knew many of the students on my Birthright trip. Knowing that Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg was also a brother of AEPi at Harvard, I asked him the obvious question: "So, were you friends with Zuck?"

That's when Arie Hasit looked up from his salad and told me that he was Number Four. "Wait a second, you had the fourth Facebook account ever?" I asked him incredulously.

Rabbinical Student Arie Hasit representing the Masorti Movement at the Tel Aviv Pride Parade
(Photo Courtesy of Arie Hasit)

It's a story that Arie no doubt had recounted many times since his time at Harvard. I always enjoyed telling people that I had one of the first Facebook accounts in Michigan since I had known about The Facebook and as soon as the University of Michigan was brought into The Facebook, I used my umich.edu e-mail account (I worked for Michigan Hillel) and signed up. But Arie clearly had me beat. After three of The Facebook's co-founders created their accounts, Arie Hasit became the fourth user on the famous social networking site.

Plastic Surgeon Michael Gray Reconstructs the Social Network

I jumped at the opportunity as soon as I received the press release from Jackie Headapohl, the editor of The Detroit Jewish News, asking me if I'd like to interview Dr. Michael Gray, the well-known plastic surgeon here in Michigan. The press release described a new social network called Pegged that Dr. Gray had created. It sounded as if this cosmetic surgeon was about to give Facebook a Face Lift. I spent an hour in Dr. Gray's office learning about Pegged and the entire time I kept thinking that people will both love and hate this controversial social networking site. Here's the front page article from this week's Detroit Jewish News:

Plastic Surgeon Reconstructs Social Media
Detroit Jewish News

Dr. Michael Gray, a popular and successful plastic surgeon, spends his days transforming the way people look on the outside. But one thing he can’t do is fix who they are on the inside. That doesn’t mean he isn’t interested in trying though.

Gray, who is from New York, heads the Michigan Cosmetic Surgery Center and Skin Deep Spa in West Bloomfield. He wondered whether he could at least learn more about people’s character on the inside and create a social platform that would force them to try and change themselves internally. “The world is broken. What if we had a resource to assess who we meet? Would we be able to make better decisions about what we do in life? Would people be self-reflective after they get a review? Would they change?”