Gear: Another "Obvious" Google Breakthrough

What makes genius? Sometimes it's just seeing what is obvious and going out and doing it. That is why Google succeeds. It created the culture of the obvious.

"Let's copy all the information of the world onto our servers and index it." Gee. That was obvious.

Now, "Let's make software that works both online and offline." Gee. Another obvious invention.

Google takes big step to make Web work offline By Eric Auchard
Wed May 30, 9:25 PM ET

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Google Inc. said on Wednesday it had created Web software that runs both online, and offline, marking a sea change for the Internet industry by letting users work on planes, trains, spotty connections and even in the most remote locations.

The technology, called Google Gears, would allow users of computers, phones and other devices to manipulate Web services like e-mail, online calendars or news readers whether online, intermittently connected to the Web or completely offline...more

Time: Putting God on Trial

Time magazine interviews Peter Irons about what sounds like a sober book that treats the religious battles of the culture wars in America.

Putting God on Trial

The never-ending march of court cases about church and state sometimes seems so rapid that they blur together. But Peter Irons, a longtime professor of political science at the University of California, San Diego, and a member of the Supreme Court bar, has slowed down time to take in-depth looks at several highly symbolic disputes in his new book God on Trial: Dispatches from America's Religious Battlefields (Viking $26.95). He talked to TIME's David Van Biema about swing votes, death threats, and the rule of law.

TIME: Your book treats six First Amendment religion cases, several of which went to the Supreme Court. Briefly, what were they?

There was the San Diego case against a 43-foot Latin Cross erected in a veterans cemetery in San Diego; the football-game prayer case from Santa Fe, Texas, two Ten Commandments cases, the attempt to remove "under God " from the Pledge of Allegiance and the Intelligent Design case in Dover, Pa. ...

Jewish Press Tells Live Reform Rabbi Not to Quote a Dead Orthodox Rabbi

Well just when you think you have seen everything along comes the alleged newspaper, the Jewish Press and takes up arms against an enemy soldier who dares to invoke the name and words of a beloved saintly deceased Rabbi.

That's one way to avoid discussing the real issue. Orthodox rabbis who are employed by the State of Israel are in revolt against the liberal conversion policies in place. It was Sharon who made decisions to grow the Jewish people faster by converting more willing souls to Judaism.

The state population stands now at over 7 million. The State is strong and growing stronger. Sure, this decision meant allowing more non-Jews to convert.

This is a big struggle. Grow faster via conversions or grow slower or not at all via conversions. There ought to be a debate over the issues.

It's pretty hard to avoid speaking to this issue and all the allied questions of who controls marriage and divorce in Israel. But lo and behold the Jewish Press found a way to sidestep it all.

It turns the debate over the lifeblood of our people into an excuse for carping about Rabbi Yoffie's choice of which authorities to cite.

I'd like to know where the JP stands on the question of whether to fire the insubordinate rabbinic employees of the State who refuse to carry out its deliberate policies.

How's That Again? - Eric Yoffie Invokes The Rav
By: Editorial Board Wednesday, May 30, 2007

The Reform movement has long chafed at the so-called life-cycle standards maintained by Israel’s Chief Rabbinate. Despite the importuning and protestation of Reform leaders, since the founding of the state such matters as marriage, divorce and conversion have been accepted as being under the purview of the chief rabbis, who were mandated to enforce Orthodox standards as a common bottom line.

The frustration of Reform leaders with that state of affairs is quite understandable, given the movement’s revisionist approach to fundamental issues bearing on the integrity of the Jewish bloodline.

Even so, it was dismaying to read a recent article by Rabbi Eric H. Yoffie, president of the Union for Reform Judaism, titled “Reform Reflections: The Rav Was Right.” The gist of the piece was that the great gaon Rav Yosef Dov Halevi Soloveitchik, zt”l, would have supported efforts to prevent the Chief Rabbinate from enforcing Orthodox standards on marriage, divorce and conversion.

Rabbi Yoffie referred to a reported comment of the Rav regarding his refusal to accept an offer to become Israel’s chief rabbi: “One of the reasons why I did not accept the post of chief rabbi of Israel – and the offer was made to me several times – was that I was afraid to be an officer of the State. A rabbinate linked up with a state cannot be completely free.”

While the Rav expressed admiration for Israeli rabbis, he nonetheless explained that “the mere fact that from time to time halachic problems are discussed as political issues at cabinet meetings is an infringement on the sovereignty of the rabbinate.”

But in a lecture delivered in 1972, Rabbi Yoffie writes, the Rav was less complimentary about the Israeli rabbinate. Therefore, he postulates, it is wrong to assume that only Reform and Conservative rabbis oppose the current unholy alliance in Israel that marries the Orthodox rabbinate to the apparatus of the state and makes each party the servant of the other. In fact, a significant stream of modern Orthodox thinking has expressed profound doubts about the advisability of relying on the coercion of the state to enforce halachic precepts. The Rav…was always insistent that Mizrachi could best encourage observance of Torah through education rather than through legislation resulting from political influence.

The notion that the Rav would side with the likes of Eric Yoffie – particularly on the question of whether there should be an enforceable Orthodox standard in Israel – is the epitome of absurdity.

In his classic November 19, 1954 article in Der Tag, the Rav presented his now famous challenge to non-Orthodox groups, dismissing the Reform movement for acting “as the Christian apostle, Saul of Tarsus, did in his days. It rejects the halacha and its mitzvos ma’siyos [performance of commandments] entirely and selects the universal ethical principles of the Torah.”

The Rav proceeded to excoriate the Conservative movement, writing that while at least we know where we stand with regard to Reform ideology, the Conservatives speak of halacha without delineating what they mean by the term. “Against this kind of confusion Orthodoxy wages a battle, for its sees in it a very great danger,” he declared.

And then he wrote something that, while directly addressing Conservatives in 1954, can well serve as the ultimate rejoinder to Eric Yoffie some 53 years later:

I hope that the representatives of the Conservative camp will act just as carefully as the atheistic Mapai did in Israel. The Mapai realized that if it wanted to avoid a schism in the ranks of Jewish family life, it must transfer the authority on the laws of marriage into the hands of the Chief Rabbinate. The same must be clearly understood by the leaders of the Conservative movement, because obstinacy in this instance may split the American Jewish community into two camps.

We think Eric Yoffie needs to leave the Rav alone and look elsewhere for support.

Israel prepares massive dismissal of insubordinate rabbis

"Rabbis, rabbinical judges and registrars employed by the state" are going to be replaced -- i.e. fired from their employment -- because of insubordination.

We agree that they should be shown the gate.

Their recalcitrance to accept the governmental conversion process is detrimental to the growth and well-being of the Jewish State and the Jewish People.

State to reform conversion process to counter rabbis' stringency
By Amiram Barkat

Rabbis, rabbinical judges and registrars employed by the state are becoming increasingly reluctant to acknowledge state-approved religious conversions, and the government intends to retaliate by implementing a far-reaching reform of the conversion process, officials who deal with conversions told Haaretz recently.

One example of this reluctance was the case of a woman whose conversion was recently annulled by the Ashdod Rabbinical Court, as reported last week.
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The woman, who converted 15 years ago, was declared a non-Jew along with her children because she did not observe religious law.

The court also declared Rabbi Haim Druckman, the director of the government's Conversion Administration and the rabbi who performed the conversion, to be sinners who brought non-Jews into the Jewish community.

According to Rabbi Shaul Farber, founder of Itim (the Jewish Life Information and Advocacy Center), registrars in several religious councils have been instructed not to acknowledge conversion documents issued by the Conversion Administration.

Instead, they were ordered to direct the converts to a rabbinical court for further review.

Immigrant Absorption Minister Ze'ev Boim is therefore advocating the formation of an alternative conversion apparatus, independent of the rabbinical courts.

"Conversion should be entrusted to progressive rabbis who recognize the national importance of the matter and the immigrants' needs," he told Haaretz.

To address this issue, the director general of the Absorption Ministry, Erez Halfon, is currently drafting a reform of the Conversion Administration.

Halfon's reform committee is expected to propose unifying all institutions that deal with conversion under one administrative umbrella.

It will also advocate doubling the number of rabbinical judges who review conversions and appointing progressive rabbis to the panels.

"Rabbinical courts are intimidating converts as well as rabbis by setting unreasonable requirements," Halfon charged.

"For example, they even demand that converts' partners adopt a religious lifestyle," he continued.

The Conversion Administration was created by former prime minister Ariel Sharon, who sought to increase the number of converts within the Russian immigrant community.

Currently, the number of converts totals approximately 1,000 per year, which constitutes a 20 percent increase since the Conversion Administration was established.

But the state had hoped for more converts and is not satisfied with this figure.

Herald Tribune: Israel and the Price of Blindness

Who is to blame for the ongoing "situation" in Israel? Roger Cohen apportions the blame to both sides:

Op-Ed Columnist

Israel and the Price of Blindness

By ROGER COHEN

International Herald Tribune

JERUSALEM

A three-minute Palestinian movie says what needs to be said about estrangement and violence in the Middle East. It features a woman driving around Jerusalem asking for directions to the adjacent West Bank town of Ramallah. She is met by dismay, irritation, blank stares and near panic from Israelis.

The documentary, called "A World Apart Within 15 Minutes" and directed by Enas Muthaffar, captures the psychological alienation that has intensified in recent years and left Israelis and Palestinians worlds apart, so alienated from each other that a major Palestinian city has vanished from Israelis' mental maps.

Never mind the latest flare-up in Gaza. What matters in the world's most intractable conflict is the way the personal narratives of Israelis and Palestinians, coaxed toward intersection by the Oslo Accords of the 1990s, have diverged to a point of mutual nonrecognition.

Ramallah is about 10 kilometers north of Jerusalem. For most Israelis, it might as well be on the moon. It is not just the fence, called the "separation barrier" by Israelis and the "racist separating wall" by Palestinians, that gets in the way. It is the death of the idea of peace and its replacement by the notion of security in detachment.

I can understand that notion's appeal. Israelis have had reason enough to throw up their hands since 2000 and say: To heck with suicide bombers, Gaza mayhem, inept Palestinian leadership and annihilationist Hamas. They would rather focus on their dot-com boom, high-speed trains and Goa vacations. They would rather be safe than worry about peace.

But detachment is an illusion. Life goes on behind the physical and mental barriers Israelis have erected. Or rather, it festers. As Itamar Rabinovich, the president of Tel Aviv University, remarked to me: "Palestine is a failed pre-state."

For that failure, Palestinians must take responsibility. But this aborted birth is also Israel's work. I drove recently from Jerusalem to the West Bank city of Nablus. A beautiful terrain of terraced olive groves is scarred by the cold imprint of Israeli occupation: shining garrison-like settlements on hilltops, fenced highways for settlers alone, watchtowers, check-points.

The West Bank, after 40 years under Israeli control, is a shameful place. If this is the price of Israeli security, it is unacceptable. Power corrupts; absolute power can corrupt absolutely. There are no meaningful checks and balances in this territory, none of the mechanisms of Israel's admirable democracy.

The result is what the World Bank this month called a "shattered economic space." If Israelis could be as inventive about seeking bridges to Palestinians as they are now in devising restrictions on their movement, the results could be startling. As it is, the bank noted, Israeli policy has produced "ever smaller and disconnected cantons."

This has been achieved through remorseless permit and ID checks, roadblocks, checkpoints and the creation of closed areas. Palestinians are caged in islets where doing business is near impossible.

More than 500 barriers hinder Palestinian movement. Meanwhile, Jewish settlers move freely; their number, outside East Jerusalem, has increased to about 250,000 from roughly 126,900 at the time of the Oslo Accords. These numbers alone make Palestinian political and religious radicalization less than entirely mysterious.

In his April 14, 2004, statement on a two-state solution, President George W. Bush offered concessions to Israel. He said it was "unrealistic" to expect "a full and complete return" to the Green Line. But he also urged "the establishment of a Palestinian state that is viable, contiguous, sovereign and independent."

More than three years later, there is no such state. What there is of a nascent Palestine is non-viable, non-contiguous, non-sovereign and dependent. While denouncing terrorism with appropriate vigor, Bush has an equal obligation to pressure Israel to accept that ruthless colonization is unworthy of it and no enduring recipe for security.

Israel has an obligation to open its eyes and do some wall-jumping. The country has just been shaken by the Winograd Report, a devastating look at last summer's war against the Lebanese militia, Hezbollah. It is now time for a report of similar scope on Israel's West Bank occupation.

I can see no better way to arrest the cycle of alienation. Time is not on the side of a two-state solution. A fast-growing Palestinian population inhabits a neighborhood where the Ahmadinejad-Hezbollah-Hamas school has leverage.

If Israelis do not rediscover where and what Ramallah is, they may one day be devoured by what they choose not to see.

How Google Recruits New Talent

The business section of the NY Times explains how Google recruits its new talent:

In Fierce Competition, Google Finds Novel Ways to Feed Hiring Machine

By MIGUEL HELFT

Pizza parties, treasure hunts and programming contests are meant to create excitement around a company and impress potential recruits as young as college freshmen...

JTA: Kaddish and the Pope

JTA NEWS cleared up some of the ambiguities of other reports on the Pope's 2006 visit:

Poland's chief rabbi, U.S.-born Michael Schudrich, not only said Kaddish in the presence of the pope and the country's top elected leaders, but also recalled those non-Jews who risked their lives to save Jews from the gas chambers.

The pope prayed with clasped hands as Simcha Keller, director of the Jewish community of Lodz, sang El Maleh Rachamim, a solemn prayer said to honor close relatives who have died.

Rome Rabbi Rips Pope

Agenzia Giornalistica Italia - News In English (2006 - translated):

AUSCHWITZ: ROME HEAD RABBI: THE POPE DID NOT SAY MANY THINGS

(AGI) - Rome, May 30 - Rome head Rabbi Riccardo di Segni, does not share everything pope Benedict XVI said in Auschwitz. Rabbi Di Segni comments the pope's speech on the online daily Affaritaliani.it. 'The pope's speech has raised many issues mentioning principles that we do not share. In detail I refer to Germany's lack of responsibility in the Shoah as if Germany after what has dared to do had no responsibility' he says.

"We must also mention the issues of the men's silence. The issue of God'silence is a strong theme we can share it, but it is not only it. There is also the men's silence and the pope did not speak about it" he says. "Our difference of opinions is the basis for the dialog" he says.

Di Segni also criticises the quotation made by the pope of the six million Polish people who have died in the concentration camps. "We do not share it because the Polish people who have died were not six million but five and three million of them were Jews. They remember the Jews as Polish people only when they must count the Polish dead.

The pope has marginalised the Jew martyrdom in Auschwitz, considering it one of the many elements of a complex process that is central instead. There is also the Christianization of this martyrdom because the only Jew martyr mentioned by the pope was Edith Stein who was a converted Jew" he says.

God: Where was the pope?

Pope: Where was God during Auschwitz horror? - News from Israel, Ynetnews 2006:

In a place like this, words fail. In the end, there can only be a dread silence - a silence which is itself a heartfelt cry to God: Why, Lord, did you remain silent? How could you tolerate all this? - he said in a speech delivered in Italian.

I don't hear silence. I hear a deafening roar from the heavens. "Where was Pius XII during the Holocaust?" "Why were you sir a Hilter-youth?" "Why did you fight in the German army?" "How dare you wear white to Auschwitz!"

Polish Chief Rabbi Attacked in 06:

A shadow was cast over the papal visit by Saturday's attack on Poland's chief rabbi, Michael Schudrich, who was to say Kaddish, or the Jewish prayer for the dead, during the ceremony led by the pope.

Schudrich told The Associated Press he was attacked in central Warsaw after confronting a man who shouted at him, 'Poland for Poles!' The rabbi said the unidentified man punched him in the chest and sprayed him with what appeared to be pepper spray.

Was he or was he not with the Pope during his visit to Auschwitz? Did he say Kaddish there? Will anti-Semitism never cease?

Now that's a sack of potatoes

JTA Reports: Scholar wins big for Holocaust project

A UCLA scholar won a $1.5 million prize for a three-year project on the impact of the Holocaust on American literature. The Mellon Foundation Award presented to English and literature professor Eric Sundquist is America's largest in the humanities.

Sundquist, 54, argued in his study that English-language books are largely responsible for “Americanizing” and universalizing the Holocaust in the world’s consciousness.

He is described by colleagues at Columbia and Harvard universities as "the most productive American literature scholar of his generation." His book "Strangers in The Land: Blacks, Jews, Post-Holocaust America" won the Weinberg Judaic Studies Institute Award last month from the University of Scranton in Pennsylvania.