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

I Always Rave About Technology, But Here are Some Rants

Originally published in the Detroit Jewish News and on The Huffington Post

As part of a recent panel discussion I was asked how technology has improved our lives in general and made us more productive and efficient in particular. I gave my typical response to such a question, responding that the Internet has vastly made our lives better and provided us with a wealth of information at our fingertips that previous generations could not have imagined. I talked about the communication revolution and some of the technology innovations that I cannot believe we ever lived without like GPS, text messaging and Google Search, not to mention the ability to pause live television.

After giving this response I decided that it would only be fair to rattle off a few rants about technology in the 21st century as well. I'm always raving about the latest innovation so I figured I should also present the other side of the coin. I stopped myself after naming four negative characteristics about technology, but I realized I could keep going. So, here are my 10 rants about technology. Do you agree with these and what would you add to the list?

What Social Media Has Done to Religious Life

This summer I'll be teaching at Kenyon College's Beyond Walls Spiritual Writing program in Gambier, Ohio. This one-week writing intensive program will teach clergy and seminary students how to be a more expressive, authentic, and skilled writer. The focus will be on writing op-eds, blogs, personal essays and social media. Below is the essay I wrote that was published in the Beyond Walls monthly digital magazine, in which I look at how the Internet and social media have disrupted religion and broken borders:

Social Media as a Borders Breaker in Religion
How the internet has disrupted Religion for good. Not just intrafaith, but interfaith too.

With billions of users between Facebook and Twitter alone (not to mention the dozens of other popular social networks), religion is being discussed in a borderless environment like never before. It's fair to say that the internet in general and social media in particular have disrupted religion for good. This disruption has not only been intrafaith, but interfaith as well. Religious leaders around the globe have never before had this level of engagement with each other and that means that religious life for future generations will be shaped by this new form of dialogue.

As social media increasingly becomes part of our daily lives, people will find new ways to interact with religion and spirituality. For some, this may be interacting with like-minded people on a synagogue or church Facebook page. For others, it may be learning a different holy text each day through a Twitter feed. In the Digital Age, religion and spirituality are being disseminated virtually and that means that time and location are no longer limiting factors. Answers to religious questions -- no matter from where they emanate -- are responded to in a fraction of the time they once were.

Each year of the 21st century, we are also seeing dynamic growth in the new communities of people of faith who do not affiliate with a bricks and mortar religious institution. These people, throughout the world, are nevertheless engaged in many aspects of a faith community through social networking. Increasingly, people will say they are religious or spiritual or inspired by religious texts, but only because they have chosen to plug in and engage with social media.

Jennifer Preston, writing in the NY Times explains that "while it’s too early to say that social media have transformed the way people practice religion, the number of people discussing faith on Facebook has significantly increased in the last year, according to company officials."

As a rabbi and a social media consultant for several synagogues around the country, I can report that congregational leaders (rabbis, educators and program directors) are noticing that large swaths of their membership are becoming more engaged in congregational programs, classes and discussion groups, but these folks are not walking into the synagogue building any more than they had previously.

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.

10 Years of Blogging

I started this blog 10 years ago today on October 28, 2003. The term "blog" was only becoming recognized as a verb back then and I had no idea what to blog about in my first post. Over 1,000 posts later and close to 1 million pageviews, I'm close to figuring it out. Thanks for reading!

The Blogger sweatshirt Google sent me after they acquired Blogger in 2003 after I launched my blog

Case of Mistaken Identity for Good

In the past decade Google's email application Gmail has grown in popularity. With around half a billion active Gmail email accounts, it has become the free email provider of choice for most people. However, with such a popular email application like Gmail, one of the inherent problems is that of mistaken identity. That is, it is very easy to send an email to the wrong person and that can often have interesting results.

Such was the case recently with an invitation for a retreat for Jewish leaders. In 2005 Gary Rosenblatt, the editor and publisher of The Jewish Week, created an annual conference called The Conversation. Each year Gary invites some 50 participants (a cross-section of artists, rabbis, entrepreneurs, educators, philanthropists, activists and communal leaders) who converge on the Pearlstone Conference and Retreat Center outside of Baltimore, to discuss the issues of day in an Open Space forum.

Rabbi David Ingber of Romemu

Looking Through Google Glass at Jewish Education

How will Google Glass affect Jewish education? This is the blog post I recently published on The Jewish Week's "Jewish Techs" blog on that subject:

In 1982 when I was in first grade at Hillel Day School, a Jewish day school in Metropolitan Detroit, my father brought in our family’s Apple II computer for show-and-tell. There were no computers in the school at that time so it was a seminal technological moment for the school. I’m sure my father figured he would blow my classmates minds by showing them how to type a few lines of the LOGO programming language and get the turtle cursor to turn and move across the screen. However, my peers didn’t have any mind-blowing experiences that day -- it was only the beginning of what our generation would come to expect from computers and technology.

Fast forward to 2013 when, earlier this week, I was a guest speaker in my son’s third grade classroom at the same Jewish day school. Speaking on the subject of technology and Jewish education, I became nostalgic and told the students how when I was their age we would save one word processing document on a floppy disc. I then took a USB flash drive out of my pocket to explain Moore’s Law -- the observation that, over the history of computing hardware, the number of transistors on integrated circuits doubles approximately every two years. They weren’t impressed. These young people have become accustomed to better, smaller, faster technology being rolled out every few months. They see their parents turning in their smartphones for better ones and downloading new versions of operating systems. They know that the graphics on the next generation of video game consoles in their basements will be more realistic than the ones before.

Google's Android App Marketplace Offers Inspirational Hitler Quotes Apps

Apple has been criticized by mobile app makers for the difficult process involved in getting their apps into the AppStore. The reason for all the red tape in this process, however, is so Apple can approve each app for content ensuring there is no hate speech or racist material in the app. In France, Apple has even removed an app that was in violation of that country's strong policy on anti-Semitism.

Google, on the other hand, has made it much easier for developers to offer their apps in Google's Android marketplace called Google Play. According to Google’s website users are asked to “not distribute content that promotes hatred or violence towards groups of people based on their race or ethnic origin and religion.” When Google is notified of potential policy violation, it “may” review and take action by removing or restricting content, however, it doesn't have the same screening processes in place that Apple does for its app marketplace. Google's checklist for app developers to submit their creations for consideration in Google Play includes the requirement that one informs Google Play users of the app's maturity level before publish. The available content rating levels are: Everyone, Low maturity, Medium maturity, and High maturity. However, Google does not provide for apps that are created in bad taste. A Google spokeswoman explained that the company removes apps that violate its policies against hate speech.

Such is the case with a new app for users in search of inspiration from non other than Adolf Hitler. One app in the Google Play store is simply called "Adolf Hitler." The description states, "All about Adolf Hitler. Get everything in one place - Bio, Pictures, Videos and Quotes. Not only can you get them in one place, you can share all your favorites with your friends in a click." Another app, Infamous Adolf Hitler Quotes, proclaims: “Looking for Adolf Hitler Quotes?? Then this is the App for you!” The apps often provide a quote of the day and allow the users to search a database of anti-Semitic quotes including such things as, "Jews are like mosquitoes that suck our blood.”

While quotes from The Fuhrer are searchable throughout the Web using any search engine in any browser, mobile apps dedicated to glorifying Hitler's hate speech are something else entirely. Hitler's writings, famous quotes and excerpts from Mein Kampf should be readily available for research purposes on the Web, however, Google should think twice before marketing mobile apps that celebrate the words that motivated the Holocaust.

According to the Anti-Defamation League website, the free app from kutaa provides users with vile quotes attributed to Hitler and has been installed by over 10,000 users within 30 days through Google Play. The Arabic-language app, "Hitler’s Sayings," allows users to read and share what it describes as Hitler’s "beautiful sayings that we could benefit from in our lives" via social media networks. A description of the app says, "Hitler combines the charisma of the skillful physician and the grand juggler…Read in this application all of Hitler’s sayings and share them with your friends."

These free apps (some have been downloaded as many times as 50,000 times) are not being used by Holocaust scholars or those seeking to gain a better understanding of the Third Reich. Rather, they are being downloaded and installed to extend the reach of Neo-Nazis in the U.S. While the Arabic language app Infamous Adolf Hitler quotes from the Arab app maker kutaa seems to have been removed from Google Play (it's still available for download at AppsZoom), other mobile apps tauting Hitler as an inspirational leader are popping up in the Android app market.

The other issue with these Hitler apps that extol the Nazi leader is the vitriolic language in the comments section on the review pages of the apps. In the user review section of one of the free English-language apps dedicated to Hitler's quotes, one of the more than a thousand reviewers called Hitler a great moral leader. Another user writes in a review dated August 2012 that the “app is so great and useful,” and explains that he wanted to learn how Hitler was able to “kill all the yahudi people.”

In September of last year, Google removed a mobile app of the conspiracy theory book The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Google eventually removed The Protocols app from its website amid a large public outcry. Google will continue to remove these apps that praise Hitler, but more Android apps will crop up to plague its app market. Google needs to be more vigilant in prohibiting such hate spewing apps from ever residing in Google Play in the first place.

Cross-posted to the Jewish Techs blog on The Jewish Week's website

Social Media Sites Get Political About Israel

Cross-posted to the Jewish Techs blog at The Jewish Week

Spending a week in Israel earlier this month I kept my eyes open to the way Israelis use technology. Even on my first time in Israel over 18 years ago I noticed that Israelis thirsted for the latest tech gadgets. Being a country that struggled with telecommunications early on in its existence primed Israel for a telecom revolution. In the first decades of statehood, stories persisted about families who waited years just to get a telephone in their own home. So when mobile communications took off in the middle of the 1990s, Israelis were eager to adopt the new technology.

One thing I noticed during my recent visit was that the Apple iPhone is much less common in Israel than it is in North America. I also got the sense that Israelis prefer the GPS app Waze over other GPS services. That could be in part due to Apple’s decision not to link Jerusalem as the capital of Israel in its Maps application or World Clock on its new operating system. Back in September when Apple CEO Tim Cook admitted that Apple's mobile Maps application was inaccurate and had many flaws (including the Jerusalem situation), he advised users of OS5 to download alternative navigation apps including Waze which was designed by Waze Ltd., an Israeli company.

Other questionable situations in social media have led many to question whether these are really honest mistakes or politically motivated actions. A recent Huffington Post article titled Did Flickr Delete Israel From Its Map? raises questions about the maps plugin of the photo social networking site Flickr. When the user zoomed in on Jerusalem there were no streets or landmarks as there would be for every other city in the world. The article triggered two responses from Yahoo which now owns Flickr. The first email from a company representative stated that Yahoo was aware of the issue and was working to quickly improve what is a third party map provider problem. There was no mention of why Israel was the only city in the world affected. The full email message from Yahoo read:

The geographical data that appears on Flickr and Yahoo! Maps comes from a third party map provider and we are working with them to understand and improve the gap in geographic coverage that has been reported. Yahoo! always wants to ensure the best possible product experience for our users, and this falls short of those expectations. We are continually working to source and roll out coverage where there is room to provide greater mapping details. In particular, we hope and expect that you will see improved maps coverage of Israel shortly.

The next day Flickr debuted a map that rendered Jerusalem as a normal city with its streets and landmarks returned to the way it was. There was no explanation for the error.

Dead Sea Scrolls Go Online

After the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered in a cave in Qumran in the winter of 1946–47 by Muhammed edh-Dhib, a Bedouin boy, and his cousin, it still took two decades until they were placed on display in a museum. Now, about 65 years after their discovery they can now be accessed online.

Today, the Israel Museum launched the Dead Sea Scrolls Digital Project, which provides access to high-resolution images of the scrolls, as well as additional data and background information. This is a joint project between the Israel Antiquities Authority and Google, which has a research and development center in Israel.

So far, five scrolls have been digitized: the Great Isaiah Scroll, the Community Rule Scroll, the Commentary on Habakkuk Scroll, the Temple Scroll and the War Scroll. It marks the first time that the collection of scrolls is being photographed in its entirety since the 1950s. The entire collection includes 900 manuscripts comprising about 30,000 Dead Sea Scrolls fragments.

“We are privileged to house in the Israel Museum’s Shrine of the Book the best preserved and most complete Dead Sea Scrolls ever discovered,” said James Snyder, Anne and Jerome Fisher director of the Israel Museum. “They are of paramount importance among the touchstones of monotheistic world culture, and they represent unique highlights of our Museum’s encyclopedic holdings. Now, through our partnership with Google, we are able to bring these treasures to the broadest possible public.”

The site allows for comments from users and offers insightful videos to further ones understanding of the scroll being viewed. The Leon Levy Dead Sea Scrolls Digital Library project is being funded with a major gift from the Leon Levy Foundation, with additional major funding from the Arcadia Foundation and the Yad Hanadiv Foundation.

Academics once had to travel to Israel to research the Dead Sea Scrolls, but the scrolls' accessibility online should now yield an even greater amount of higher biblical scholarship in the coming years. This is not Google's first time being involved in digitization project of this nature. Past projects have included the Google Art Project, Yad Vashem Holocaust Collection and the Prado Museum in Madrid. The scrolls are accessible online.

Israelis Merge Facebook and Google

Google is making another effort to successfully compete with Facebook in social networking. Google Buzz and Google Wave never caught on, but Google can't afford to fail with their latest attempt Google Plus. The problem is that over 750 million people worldwide have already built up their Facebook profiles and might not be willing to invest the time in Google Plus.

Leave it to the Israelis to find a way to merge the two platforms. Crossrider, a network of Israeli web developers, just released a new browser extension called Google+Facebook that combines the old Facebook profile with a new Google Plus profile. This merger allows the user to view and post to the Facebook news feed from within Google Plus. The extension was created in only one day on the Crossrider Java framework for browsers, which allows users to create free cross-browser extensions in minutes.

According to Alexandra Man, already "more than 10,000 users have already downloaded the Crossrider extension for Chrome, Firefox and Internet Explorer. After installing the extension and allowing it to access Facebook, a small Facebook button will appear in your Google+ window, right next to the Stream button."

While Google and Facebook will likely never merge and never create any official combination of the Facebook and Google Plus platforms, the Israeli innovators at Crossrider have created a useful extension.

Watch the Crossrider video about the Google+Facebook extension here:



Cross-posted to the Jewish Techs blog at The NY Jewish Week

How Do You Spell Hanukkah?

The #1 question during Hanukkah is: What is the correct way to spell the name of this holiday? Since it's a Hebrew word that is transliterated into English, there are several acceptable spellings. But people still want to know if there is a consensus.

A non-profit theater company in California, the North Coast Repertory Theatre, even performed a show this past weekend entitled "How Do You Spell Chanukah??- The Stage Show." Their website described the performance as "What is Hanukkah... or Chanukah? How do you really spell it, anyway? What's it ever done for me and why should I care? Hash it out (a nice lean kosher hash) with our hosts Marc Silver and Doug Dickerman for a unique evening of fun and music and story telling. We'll share, we'll kibitz, we'll have a little something to eat! What can I tell you, even if we don't solve any baffling Jewish mysteries...we'll have a lot of fun not getting anywhere together. Oy! Did we mention that we'll have a little nosh?"

Melissa Bell, writing on the Washington Post's blog, recalls that NPR's "All Things Considered" addressed this very question back in 2005. They quoted Rabbi Daniel Zemel of the Temple Micah in Washington who said, "There's no uniformity in transliteration." Rabbi Zemel ordered a steering committee at his synagogue to come up with a uniform spelling. They decided on: Chanukkah. But then Bell noticed that this year, Zemel's synagogue website was using "Hanukkah." When she asked him what ever happened to his resolute steering committee's decision, he explained that he was overruled and "an editor in the congregation made the convincing push to adopt the spelling used by the Reform Jewish movement in North America. Transliteration is an art, not a science."

I've been using the "Hanukkah" spelling and I believe that this has become the most accepted option based on Twitter. While some might do a Google search to determine which spelling of Hanukkah appears the most, I just looked at Twitter where #Hanukkah was one of the trending terms this past week.

I was thinking about this Hanukkah spelling debate today while listening to the Sirius-XM Satellite Radio Hanukkah station. I had to laugh at this song by The Leevees which makes the confusion surrounding the ambiguous spelling of Hanukkah very funny. Check out "How Do You Spell Channukkahh?":

Google Doodle for Israel

Cross-posted to Jewish Techs

Google.com's logo has quickly become one of the most recognizable corporate logos. It also has been changed more than any other logo, sometimes even daily.

According to the Wikipedia entry, "The current official Google pop logo was designed by Ruth Kedar, and is a wordmark based on the Catull typeface. The company also includes various modifications and/or humorous features, such as cartoon modifications, of their logo for use on holidays, birthdays of famous people, and major events, such as the Olympics." When Google adapts its logo for special occasions it is called a "Google Doodle." I was curious to know whether Google would honor Israel yesterday on its 62nd anniversary of statehood with a special Israel-themed Google Doodle.

Well, it did and didn't. There was no Israeli Google Doodle on the U.S. Google search engine site, but the Israel version of Google featured a Google Doodle with an Israeli flag (pictured).

The first Google Doodle was in honor of the Burning Man Festival in 1998. The doodle was designed by Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, who were attending the Burning Man, as an "out of the office" notification.

Israelis are already familiar with Google Doodle because of the Doodle 4 Google competition in 2008. Google Israel invited first to 12th grade students to reinvent Google's homepage logo around the theme "My Israel" for Israel's 60th anniversary. Google Israel received thousands of wonderful doodles and chose 40 drawings which would go on to the next stage. The winning doodle, selected from over thousands of entries, was created by Ilona Flaxsman, an 11th grader from Givatayim.

Ilona's doodle graced the Google Israel homepage on June 30th, 2008. Ilona described her Google Doodle on the website: "My picture has simple symbols that everyone is familiar with. A white dove, known for bringing peace, and the flag with the colors that make it distinctive. The fact that we have a country that is 60 years old is testimony to many things (strength, hope, unity…). And what remains to achieve is peace. We all hope that some day a white dove will fly bearing witness to this."

Another Google Doodle for Israel appeared on Israel's version of the search engine in 2008 for Israel's 60th birthday and had an Israeli flag with the number 60 replacing "oo" in "Google" behind the flag. It's reprinted on the Googlified blog in which the blogger adds the Wikipedia definition of Yom Haatzmaut (Israel Independence Day) followed by the phrase "Now talk about being controversial."

Hopefully in the future Google will pay tribute to Israel on her Independence Day with a Google Doodle on the U.S. version of the Google.com website too.