Do me a favor.

Go over to Amazon.com and search for “Jews” (no quotes) right now.

The travesty returned by such a search is in the screenshot at left.

Related Searches: jewish, protocols of the elders of zion” heads the page, with the number one search result being Martin Luther’s The Jews And Their Lies. (The Protocols are still available on Amazon, with Amazon saying that they “will continue to make this book and other controversial works available”, standing firmly against any “censorship”.)

Clicking on Luther’s work tells me that customers who bought said book also liked The International Jew by Henry Ford.

Sigh.

How did their search results get like this? An anti-Semitic text? The number one search result? Perhaps the Googlebomb for “Jew” to expel the anti-Semitic filth of “Jew Watch” from the top spot was not enough — is it time for an A(mazon)-bomb?

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About the author

Y-Love

A modern charedi Jew-by-choice since 2000, and igniting headphones with Torah hiphop since 2001.

Originally from Maryland and now holding it down in the shtetlach of New York, won the Jewish Music Awards for "Best Hiphop" in 2006. Vocally anti-prejudice and pro-unity.

Love me, hate me, or debate me, know you can't ignore me, though.

17 Comments

  • Just a guess, they probably go by items viewed most or purchased most.

    BTW, I could obtain a copy of the ‘Protocols’ for research purposes over here. As secondary literature, I recommend The Lie that Wouldn’t Die: The Protocols of the Elders of Zion by Hadassa Ben-Itto, A Rumor about the Jews: Antisemitism, Conspiracy, and the Protocols of Zion by Stephen E. Bronner and Warrant for Genocide: The Myth of the Jewish World Conspiracy And the Protocols of the Elders Of Zion by Norman R.C. Cohen.

  • I think the real offense is the top choice when you enter “Jewish” into the Amazon search box. I got “How to Raise a Jewish Dog.”

  • another form of this problem extends to Amazon’s categorizing of books.

    when you follow this path in Amazon’s categories:

    Books > Literature and Fiction > World Literature > Jewish

    the number one or two result is typically Hamlet by Shakespeare.

    there are other strange titles that make it into the ‘Jewish’ categories, including a book by a Christian minister.

    i’ve written more about this on my blog:

    http://www.jewishliteraryreview.com/post/2007/12/Monthly-roundup-of-Amazon-Jewish-bestsellers.aspx

  • Now, Steve, Hamlet was unmarried at ripe age, didn’t seem to be willing to settle down, and did have issues with his mother. A Jewish tragedy at its best 😉

  • Steve, me? Nah, I just thought since two of his best friends were called Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, it may well have been that Getrude told little Hamlet, “Hamletele, zollsti nisht shpiln mit kein goyim.”

  • So people have to pray for Hamlet on Fridays?

    (When we ask G-d to pour out his wrath on the nations who don’t know Him, we don’t say who exactly they are. It just seems tacky to make personal remarks, praying for people’s enlightenment, and mentioning them by name. Why is our unbelief any more important than anybody else’s?)

    Tom Morrissey, our exteriority has to be explained, in nice Latin, to that office: the Good News is very good, but it was brought to everybody ELSE, not to us. We already HAD the Fifth Commandment. We therefore have to do what our parents tell us to do. Our parents tell us to be Jews, so that is what we do. Should we disobey our parents? Supercessionism is so last year. I am sure your Latin is up to the task.

    It’s very grave, that letter. CK, it won’t make any Jews convert, but it is a marching order for his own flock, to get the rust off their weapons. It lays groundwork. We are declared G-d rejectors, and therefore enemies of all that is good.

  • You had me up to that last paragraph, Jewish Mother. froylein’s analysis of this is exactly right. There’ll be no effort to ‘convert’ Jews, and the new text (seems to me) can’t be read to endorse or encourage such a thing.

    We’ve discussed Catholic teaching on Judaism before: ‘supercessionism’ has been expressly rejected. You state church doctrine when you write about the unique relationship the Jewish people have with God; fundamentally, the church says, it’s up to Jews to live out that relationship independently of (or parallel to) Christianity.

    Where we disagree, of course, is the church’s view that the Gospel is addressed to all people. As ck notes, it wouldn’t be a religion unless it thought it was right. But the prayer is addressed to God, not to the Jews, still less to the storm troopers you imagine to be lurking in the parish down the street.

    The spirit of it reminds me of the 93rd Psalm– “if today you hear His voice, harden not your hearts…” As the car dealers say, there’s absolutely no obligation to buy.

    Let’s trust the God of Abraham to work it all out in the end.

    Quick now, here, now, always—
    A condition of complete simplicity
    (Costing not less than everything)
    And all shall be well and
    All manner of thing shall be well
    When the tongues of flame are in-folded
    Into the crowned knot of fire
    And the fire and the rose are one.

  • BTW, in contrast to popular misconception, the fifth commandment means that you should not abandon your elders when they get needy of assistance as was common practice among nomadic tribes back then (e.g. by abandoning helpless old people in the desert or putting them up as a defence line around a camp in case of an attack; the Inuit would abandon their elders in the snow, among non-settled Native Americans it was common to shoot them when they went to a river to drink). You could consider it a first step to aging in dignity, but it does not convey, however, absolute obedience.

  • Er, Tom and CK, the Jewish religion does NOT say it is the only way. It says anybody who obeys the (rather easy) seven Noahide commandments is fine with G-d, and will be in Paradise in the first rank. This Papal Letter re-instates supercessionism, that is exactly the problem.

    Thanks for your message of hope, Tom.

  • froylein,

    would you kindly translate: “Hamletele, zollsti nisht shpiln mit kein goyim.”

    Just wanted to be able to follow the conversation a little better.

  • Certainly. 🙂

    “Little Hamlet, you shall not play with non-Jews.” (Double negations in Yiddish add emphasis to the negation.)

  • I second Froylein’s theory, “Hamlet” was all about a nice Jewish boy. Of course, Shakespeare had to change the name; it was originally called “Ham-less.”
    😀