	San Diego Jewish World 'There's a Jewish story everywhere'

                              Today's Postings

Ellen B. Graber in Palatine, Illinois: "Never again: Why I signed the petition to remove JewWatch from the Google list."

Donald H. Harrison in San Diego: "Temple Solel bar mitzvah student wins big on TV's Jeopardy show"

Joel Moskowitz, MD and Arlene Moskowitz, JD in La Jolla: "A genetic detective story to be told at San Diego Jewish Book Fair"

                              The week in Review
                           (click on dates to see back issues)

Friday, October 12

Donald H. Harrison in San Diego: "Movie poses question when a Jew should stay or leave a country"

Rabbi Baruch Lederman in San Diego: "Gentle art of Jewish persuasion."

Rabbi Leonard Rosenthal in San Diego: "Excellent occasions to daven mincha"

Photo Stories

Gevatron in San Diego..... Photos from Eyal Dagan

All Together, Grandma .... License Plate Photos from Melanie Rubin

Thursday, October 11

Carol Davis in Costa Mesa, California: "Shipwrecked! An Entertainment lives up to description in its name"

Garry Fabian in Melbourne, Australia: "Amcor anti-Semitic slur angers community" ... "Hilaly still teaching in Lakemba" ... "New Zealand welcomes Israel's envoy"

Donald H. Harrison in San Diego: "Local foundation funds research, counsels patients on fighting prostate cancer"

Joe Naiman in Arcadia, California: "Other actresses can have Broadway; Abrams prefers to work at the track"

Larry Zeiger in San Diego: "Hey, Jude chases Lucy in the sky with diamonds across the universe"

Wednesday, October 10

Judy Lash Balint in Jerusalem: "Creating facts on the ground in a new battle for Jerusalem"

Cynthia Citron in Los Angeles: "Begin legacy stirs memories as L.A. crowd marks 30th anniversary of Egypt-Israel peace process"

Sheila Orysiek in San Diego: "Better editing would have benefited the memoir Hilda"

Tuesday, October 9

Aaron Demsky in Ramat Gan, Israel: "Biblical names, popular in America, fraught with meaning"

Charles Gadda in New York: "Is Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit biased toward the Christian narrative?"

Gail Feinstein Forman in San Diego: "A Farewell to Marcel Marceau"

Sherry Berlin in San Diego: "Children's book author and illustrator Lori Mitchell will attend Book Fair's Family Day

Cristal Ghitman in San Diego: "Hillel sandwich' helped former Mexican Catholic realize she could become a Jew"

Donald H. Harrison in San Diego: "Foxman's book will prove valuable for American and Mideast historians"

David Meir-Levi in San Jose, California: "Hate crime suspected in torching of succah at San Jose State"

Sunday, October 7

Donald H. Harrison in San Diego: "Mision Trails reverie: Moses, Kumeyaay Indians, U.S. history."

Joe Naiman in Lakeside, California: "Youkilis played part in Red Sox ALDS sweep over L.A. Angels"

Sheila Orysiek in San Diego: "California Ballet dances Giselle"

Dorothea Shefer-Vanson in Mevasseret Zion, Israel: "Life is returning to normal in Israel as it is finally 'after the holidays.'

Archive of Previous Issues

Never Again

Why I signed the petition to remove JewWatch from the Google list

By Ellen B. Graber

PALATINE, Illinois—Within the last two weeks, I received an email from a friend that I’ve known for over 25 years. The email explained that there was a disturbing link if you “Googled” the word “Jew.” What comes up is the “JewWatch” site, run by anti-Semites. I signed the petition to protest. Here is the link:

The day that I “Googled” the word Jew, it was the 4^th link down in the search results. At the top of the results page was an explanation from Google that if we were more specific in our request for information, asking for something like “Jewish Authors” we would be led to a correct site and not to JewWatch.com. The explanation caused JewWatch to be moved down from third place to fourth, but it was still “above the fold.”

Google’s explanation also explained why sites like JewWatch continue to come up on the search engine, despite protests:

Individual citizens and public interest groups do periodically urge us to remove particular links or otherwise adjust search results. Although Google reserves the right to address such requests individually, Google views the comprehensiveness of our search results as an extremely important priority. Accordingly, we do not remove a page from our search results simply because its content is unpopular or because we receive complaints concerning it. We will, however, remove pages from our results if we believe the page (or its site) violates our Webmaster Guidelines, if we believe we are required to do so by law, or at the request of the webmaster who is responsible for the page…. We apologize for the upsetting nature of the experience you had using Google and appreciate your taking the time to inform us about it.

I like to research something before I commit to paper, so on I went on to search using Google’s two main rivals, Yahoo and Ask.com.

On Yahoo, a search for Jew produces a list of possible links starting with other search terms people might want to consider. The very first is “Jew Watch.”
On Ask.Com, there is no link to “JewWatch” on the front page, but below the fold there is a link to Google’s above-quoted explanation. It is obvious that there are steps that Google could take to move this site from the top 3 or 4 listings, to an obscure place in the search.

Now, on to the site’s content: I went to JewWatch.com and was appalled at its content.

In the site’s logo, the letter” c” has been transformed to the Communist hammer and sickle with a Jewish star above it. The site is full of hate. It is an equal opportunity hater. Along with generalized hatred of Jews, it targets Israel and Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff for particularly venomous articles. The hatred also spills over to other minority groups. A look at this site will chill you to the bone.

If you click on JewWatch founder Frank Weltner’s photo, it links to a video of him delivering a "news: cast in which, in a quiet voice, he spews fresh venom on a regular basis.

When I was a young person (about 20) there was a group out there called the Jewish Defense League. Its slogan was “Never Again.” Hence, the title of this article.

In protest of that site, some people styling themselves as “Cybersquatters Against Hate” created a JewWatch.net (net not com) site, which urges viewers to stop racism. It also quotes Elie Wiesel: "The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness, it’s indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it’s indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, it’s indifference."

Outside ads placed on the site, however, direct readers to another virulent hate site for the Aryan Nations.

People of the Books

A genetic detective story to be told at San Diego Jewish Book Fair

Abraham’s children—Race, Identity and the DNA of the Chosen People by Jon Entine, Grand Central Publishing, 410 pages.

By Joel A. Moskowitz M.D.
and Arlene S. Moskowitz J.D.

LA JOLLA, California—“Who is a Jew?” Jon Entine, international columnist and adjunct fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, poses some provocative theories. Self described as a secular Jew, personal encounters with cancer in his family led him to explore genetic predispositions to that scourge. DNA, the script for each of our biologic destinies, suggests Entine, may hold answers not the least of which is that the study of genetics may lead us to an understanding of the genesis of life.

Jon Entine

With the same word root applying to "genocide," any authority (the Nazis believed theirs was true) can espouse that race purification will lead to dominance of their society. Entine’s earlier book, Taboo, postulated that Blacks were genetically programmed to be better at sports. A TV show with Tom Brokaw in 1989 on the same subject elicited charges of racism. In Abraham’s Children – Race, Identity and the DNA of the Chosen People, Entine takes the

reader through a twisted narrative not unlike the DNA strands. Entine quotes President Bill Clinton, “Today we are learning the language in which G-d created life.”

The author asks, “What can DNA tell us about the shared legacy of the Israelites?”

Is the Torah true when it asserts that Abraham’s descendants will be unique? Can some modern Jewish people trace their ancestry as Jewish priests to Aaron? Do we all carry “the Book of Life” in our chromosomes?

For the scientifically unsophisticated reader, Jon Entine provides a synopsis of DNA anatomical physiological chemistry. Once past that, the reader will learn that each of our DNA ‘instructions’ may be both a blessing and a curse: a great talent for music perhaps, and inversely a predilection to breast cancer or Alzheimer’s disease, or a myriad other weaknesses of the flesh.

These traits are programmed in our individual DNA but shared with others of our groups who have remained circumscribed geographically, or because of political forced isolation (read ‘ghetto) or because of societal dread of the stranger (xenophobia) or pride in a separate identity i.e. gypsies, or endogamous (rarely marrying outside of their religion (Orthodox Jews). These populations are now being investigated in the hope that we may unlock the secret of life or at least how life began. The study of the Human Genome is not unlike the religious archeologists prying secrets of the origins of our Western religions from the Dead Sea Scrolls.

“Abraham’s Children” is a class A mystery story. Better still, the denouement, as it becomes known, may alleviate long held misbeliefs about group identities and qualities, may provide medical insights so that we may dodge the splinter in our soul, a faulty gene.

For some, studies of DNA will permit the inquisitive to penetrate their cloudy ancestry.

Entine offers vignettes of some such as Father Sanchez who having learned that his biology includes Jewish strands (remember the Inquisition and the flight from Spain), is studying Hispanos (Mexican-Americans) of Sante Fe and Albuquerque for evidence of a Jewish past.

But studying the past through the DNAscope is much greater than whether a present day tribe once might have had Israelite genes. Consider that the first modern human didn’t come from a HE but a SHE according to a British Journal (January 1, 1998). Alas, the name of the journal is not provided, nor the authors of this outstanding find – a concern regarding the research or at least the writing on which this book’s substantiation depends. Still, Entine offers a range of tantalizing themes in this work: (who was Anastasia; are the world’s Casanovas descendants of the lusty Genghis Khan, the 13^th Century Universal Ruler)?

For Jews, the dynamite lay in the discovery that in testing Cohanim, regardless of whether they came from the Middle East, Africa, Europe or the Americas , 98.5% of those tested had a signature mutation pattern. A marker that was only present in 3% of the general Jewish population (Nature, January 1997). A biologic test which lines up with biblical history, archaeological evidence and oral tradition – WOW!

An array of eminently informational discussable topics follow: Jews and Race; Smart Jews; Zionism and the Right of Return; Family Feud? Jews and Palestinians; Scientific racists and Genetic diseases. The latter should be of interest to almost anyone who hopes to survive the misadventures of mitochondrial misbehavior.

Entine is an adjunct fellow of the American Enterprise Institute that helped support his authorship. AEI scholarsinclude Lynn Chenney, Newt Gingrich, Paul Wolfowitz and other luminaries.

Author Jon Entine will discuss his book, Abraham's Children: Race, Identity and the DNA of the Chosen People, at 5 p.m., Thursday, Nov. 8, at the Lawrence Family Jewish community Center. For more information about the San Diego Jewish Book Fair, click on the logo at the left.

____________________

The Jewish Citizen
by Donald H. Harrison

Temple Solel bar mitzvah student wins big on TV's Jeopardy show

SAN DIEGO—The category was “body parts” and when Jeopardy host Alex Trebek asked a question about a part of the eye that shares the same name as a flower, you could just feel the tension emanating through the television screen on Friday, October 12.

No, the tension wasn’t coming from Elijah Granet, 12, a bar mitzvah student at Temple Solel in Cardiff by the Sea; he was confident and cool. But I was certain I could hear his father, Dr. David B. Granet, director of pediatric ophthalmology and pediatrics at the Ratner Children’s Eye Center at UCSD, thinking, “Oh, please, you’ve got to know this!”

JEOPARDY CONTESTANTS—Elijah Granet, second from right (and wearing a light tie and dark blue shirt), poses with other contestants who played Jeopardy
during kids week. His opponents were Shay Collins (back row, right side) and Michelle Cinguena (back row, left side) on the game aired Friday, October 12. In middle is the television show’s host Alex Trebek. (Jeopardy photo)

Yes indeed, Elijah certainly did know the correct answer was the “iris.” In fact, it was the 14^th question he successfully answered on the popular television show en route to an overall tally of 18 questions correctly answered, including two “daily doubles, while guessing wrong on three other questions, one of them a “daily double.” At the end of the game, Elijah was the winner, having accumulated $18,300.

Matched against Michelle Cinguena of Stamford, Connecticut, and Shay Collins of Averill Park, New York, Elijah had formidable opposition. Michelle jumped out to the lead in the first round, $5,200 compared to $1,200 each for Shay and Elijah.

After Trebek did a brief interview of the contestants, in which Elijah, who hopes to be a veterinarian, demonstrated his mastery of British accents, Elijah began to dominate the game. One of the topics was mythology, and he was able to identify from the clues both Poseidon (Greek God of the Sea) and the Sphynx, and also proved himself either knowledgeable or a good guesser on the subjects of tongue twisters. At the end of Round 2, Michelle, a devotee of music and theatre, was still ahead $7,400 to $7,000, with Shay, a budding rock n’ roll singer, in third place.

In the third round, also known as the “Double Jeopardy” session, when the money to be won is higher, Shay launched a come from-behind-charge by acing every question in the sports category. Nevertheless, Elijah was able to go out in the lead, his love for U.S. presidential information and for biology paying off.

He knew that Thomas Jefferson had lived in Paris around the time of the French Revolution, and that Jefferson sold his book collection to the Library of Congress. He stumbled on a drawing by Jefferson of an obelisk: Elijah thought it was perhaps of the Washington Monument, but in fact it was Jefferson’s own tombstone.

Love of biology helped Elijah answer questions correctly not only about the “iris” but also about “white blood cells” and “bacteria.” At the end of that round, he was in a comfortable lead with $12,000; versus $9,400 for Shay, and $7,000 for Michelle who slipped on a few questions.

All three contestants correctly answered the “Final Jeopardy” question, which sought the name of the 2003 film that spawned a craze for clown fish. So it came down to how much each of the youthful contestants had wagered on the fact that the answer Finding Nemo was correct. Michelle bet $5,059; Shay bet $8,000; and Elijah bet $6,300.