Yeah, this is a Jewish site, and I can’t find anything particularly Jewish about PAC-MAN, but we’re all Jewish geeks…and this is damn geeky! Â 
Apparently, today is the legendary PAC-MAN’s 30th Birthday, and Google had the awesome idea of making their logo today into a live, interactive PAC-MAN game. So incredibly awesome. Just go to Google.com‘s homepage today, and there it is! And if you click twice on “insert coin,” you get a second player option — and that second player is none other than Pac-Woman, complete with her little bow. You control Pac-Man with the normal arrow keys, and for Pac-Woman, it’s D = right, W= up, A = left and S = down.
And hey, anyway, I heard that Pac-Man’s name was actually Pacmansky — his ancestors just changed it at Ellis Island.
_ _
Sharon Udasin is a staff writer at The Jewish Week. Follow her on Twitter or e-mail her at sharon@sharonudasin.com.
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saw you on jerry’s blog today
what do you make of the guy?
i know many from all different levels of yiddeshkeit
i have never in my life met a modern ortho revisionist
who is Jerry? do you have a link?
http://themagneszionist.blogspot.com/
jerry is his pen name
he claims to be a modern orthodox jew
read his blog and you tell me if he is telling the truth
Magnes Zionist actually identified himself for a week or so on his site and then removed his name. I didn’t mark it down because I don’t frequent his site and it was a fluke that I visited it that week. I don’t recall who he is other than that he does indeed seem to live both in the US and Israel and he is a published professor. I think he was based in Baltimore or Maryland. I can’t recall.
He’s intelligent, but he misreads a great deal of what he looks at regarding Israel and the conflict because he is so driven by his ideology. He is an extremist, but of the leftist persuasion. Extremists are bad for peace.
he has reposted his name in his about section
Charles Manekin, who,if it is the same prof manekin, is a tenured prof at u of m in the philosophy dept, and who is allegedly an expert on the rambam
but his analysis that the rambam only became the rambam because of his exposure to islamic culture is true apikorsus.
i never heard of the guy…i found his blog through a google search on stuff regarding goldstone….same google search led me to dickie silverstein’s socalled peace blog.
manekin isnt a leftist, he is a revisionist. he may keep shabat and kashrut but his mindset is not orthodox in nature.
Well, here is an essay about Rambam being influenced by Islam:
http://www.illc.uva.nl/~seop/entries//maimonides-islamic/index.html
The author seems to be pushing the coincidences of language and ideas, but it isn’t overwhelmingly convincing. It’s obvious that Rambam would be influenced by the society around him, but it seems to me that some of the parallels she finds between Rambam and the Muslim philosphers she lists, can be attributed to coincidence, as opposed to influence.
As for Manekin being the Magnes Zionist, services for his father, upon his death, were held at a prominent Conservative synagogue. That doesn’t mean he can’t be Orthodox, but it probably relates something about his upbringing. Here’s a bio:
I’m still looking for where Jerry wrote about me…. I don’t know why I can’t find it….
He didn’t. Uncle Joe assumed that all the posts on Jewlicious were written by me. They’re not.
my apologies….someone posted as jewlicious…thought it was you
Someone posted as “Jewlicious” on his blog? Where?
http://themagneszionist.blogspot.com/2010/05/where-we-orthodox-jews-have-gone-wrong_21.html
That’s ck, Uncle Joe.
The most important part of that discussion is Magnes Zionist’s admission that he views the outcome of the War of Independence as Israel’s fault and then uses the refugees to refer to the war’s outcome, that is, a Jewish state with a majority of Jews and a minority of Arabs refusing to allow Arab refugees into the newly formed state, as “original sin.”
In order to get there, he must dispense with Jewish history as it relates to this land, and I refer to history both within the land and in Diaspora; with the views of early Zionists; with the views of later Zionists including even Right-wingers such as Jabotinsky who advocated for a democratic state; with the acceptance of the partitions proposals of 1937 and 1947; with the terrorism of the Arabs against the Yishuv beginning in 1920, and recurring in 1922, 1926, 1929, 1936-1939; the Grandmufti’s Nazi machinations in WWII; the pogroms against Jews in some Arab and Muslim countries in the early 1940s and again later in the decade; terrorist attacks by the local Arabs leading to the War of Independence such as the car bombing on Ben Yehuda in early 1948; the attacks of the Arab states; the encouragement through various means other than Jewish fighting or encouragement to have Arabs leave their homes before and during the war; the acts of ethnic cleansing conducted by TransJordan in collusion with local fighters, particularly of eastern Jerusalem; and the attempt by Israel to accept what it considered to be a third of the refugees after the war even as it accepted hundreds of thousands of Jewish refugees from Europe and Arab and Muslim countries.
That’s a lot of stuff he has to ignore or excuse in order to get to placing the blame on Israel for not accepting Arab refugees back into an area that had just been contested in an extremely costly war. I mean costly in Jewish lives.
Like I said, he is an extremist and extremists are very bad for peace. He acknowledges the same when he states that this will all end very badly. Of course it will, if one subscribes to his skewed point of view.
themiddle,
I don’t ignore the Arab resistance to Zionist attempts to invade Palestine, appropriate the natives’ land, and set up a Jewish state. I find it totally justified, and no Zionist — or for that matter any non-pacifist — would have acted differently. By the way, this was understood by Jabotinsky and by many other Zionists as well.
As for Ben Gurion’s offer to relocate refugees, couched with ridiculous qualifications and subsequently retracted, as you know, the motives were debated, and anyway, it was entirely inadequate. There is still the matter of 194. As Abba Eban should have said, Israel has never refused to offer the Palestinians a justifiably refusable offer.
The population figures speak for themselves: Compare the percentage of Arabs and Jews in the twenty year period of 1935 and 1955, with Israel refusing to let any Palestinian Arabs back into country and arranging for the immigration of Jews that would take over the Palestinian land and home. You talk about the Mufit and Hitler? That’s the sort of ethnic cleansing that the Allies didn’t do to Germany or Japan, did they? One can argue that it was justified — I don’t — but at least call a spade a spade. The Zionist goal, then and now, was an ethnocracy in the maximum amount of territory with the minimum amount of Arabs. All the disputes between left and right in Israel has been over how much territory and many Arabs.
As for my orthodoxy, isn’t it obvious that I am a baal teshuvah? I mean, I was brought up with a non-tribal morality. Becoming frum for me meant acquiring a theology and new practices, not checking my liberal morality out the window. I have yet to hear from Israel advocates what there moral red lines would be. If the Israeli government would decide to expel more Palestinians from Palestine — for security reasons, of course — would that bother you guys? It happened this week.
Jerry,
The Zionists didn’t attempt to “invade” Palestine, that distant sub-province of the Syrian province of the Ottoman Empire where Jews were taxed to the gills. No. The Jews sought to come to Palestine because they viewed it as their long-lost home. As evidence of this, they had the Jerusalem Jewish community which had a majority of the population in Jerusalem as far back as the early 1800s. And as you know, there were also continuous settlements of Jews in Hebron, Tiberias and Safed going back a good couple of thousand years.
The Zionists were also able to look at Jewish liturgy, secular though they were, and understand that the prayers and customs which had sustained the Jewish people spiritually and kept them unified across vast expanses of the globe for thousands of years, had their foundations in Zion. They recognized that despite your sense that Rambam was happy as a, uh, clam, among Muslims, in fact, the heart of Judaism always longed to return to Zion. Sure, sure, there was supposed to be a messiah somewhere in the mix, but the goal was a return to yameinu k’kedem…in Zion.
Now lest you think I am an aspiring but lousy poet, allow me to change directions and point to some hard facts. The Ottoman sub-province, Palestine, was sparsely populated. Most of it was not owned by the Arabs who lived there. Most of it was vacant land. When the new Jewish arrivals came, however, they purchased land. They paid a ton of money – I’ve seen figures comparing the real estate prices to New York City’s at the time and they were more expensive – for the land they purchased, and they worked it in order to become part of the place.
They also, as you well know, sought to have the Arabs as partners and looked at the Arabs favorably. As you also know, the arrival of Jews also improved Arab mortality rates significantly, the economy in general and drew in many Arab migrants who moved to this little, little-cared-for, outpost of the Ottoman Empire where even the Haram el Sharif was left to rot.
So you see, “invasion” is just a nasty word that doesn’t apply here. You’re not going to deny that many Arabs migrated to Palestine in the first half of the Twentieth Century, are you? Oh, wait, let me guess, they’re Arabs and therefore indigenous while the European Jews should go back to Poland and Russia. To that I say, B’Shana ha’baa b’Yerushalaim. You can twist yourself into a pretzel trying to deny the profound meaning of Zion to Jews, as you do trying to connect the Rambam to a positive view of Islam even as he was torn from his home only because of his faith, but the evidence belies your claim.
If you mean to state that because the Jews lived away from Zion, they had forfeited any right to live in it and had become foreigners to it, without any rights, then you align yourself with those who say that the Palestinians who were not born inside Israel (which I would bet are more than 80% of Palestinian alive today, looking at mortality figures) have forfeited all rights to ever return. Pick your poison.
Those Zionist Jews had no intention of “appropriating” the place. They intended to buy it and eventually form a democratic country that would have the Arabs as full partners. If, over time, the belief that this would happen was eviscerated, it was due to the Arab attacks on the Jewish minority. Why look at 1935? Look at 1922’s population stats and recognize that violence against Jews was endemic even when the Arabs vastly outnumbered Jews. Jabotinsky would never have been the man he was if not for Arab violence.
As for the rest of it, you can argue motives all day long. The Israelis did not remove every last Arab from their soil, as did the Arabs to the Jews in the areas they conquered. The Israelis offered to bring to Israel another 100,000 refugees as long as that would be the limit, and were refused. Why is that “refusable,” Jerry? Do you really think it would have been wise or even just to enable the nation that just attempted to exterminate and ethnically cleanse the Jews to come back en masse so they could try again? Didn’t 1920, 1922, 1929, 1936-1939, 1947-1948 provide enough evidence that this would be not just foolhardy but extremely dangerous?
The Zionist goal became one that excluded the Arabs because of the violence of the Arabs against the Zionists. It had little to do with ethnocracy. Perhaps it became that after the many Jewish refugees began to stream into Israel, but there again, as you know, there were many good reasons for those communities to leave and move to Israel. This was not happenstance and since you are so interested in justice, it is surprising that the idea of this being a population exchange eludes you. My friend’s grandmother came to Israel from Morocco because she came to believe she had no choice. Her comfortable life was disrupted and never recovered. However, at least she has a place where she could live. She didn’t have much, but the Jewish state gave this Jewish woman a home, means of living, education for her children and security she didn’t have in her former country. Israel had to pay all the costs, monetary and social, of absorbing her. If the Arabs didn’t accept the Jews in their midst before, what would make them accept the presence of this newcomer now? In your world, that woman should have remained in Morocco and Israel should have let the people who tried to eradicate the Jews in Palestine return (please spare us from the argument that they were mostly peace-loving Arabs, because so are most Israelis – this was war between two nations over a single strip of land).
Regarding your faith, I only pointed out what I saw on the Internet because it was interesting. I actually have no interest in your religious beliefs or the journey you were and are on, just as I’m sure you’re not interested in my religious philosophy.
And yet, ironically, it is not your faith that gives you the impression that you possess a moral philosophy superior to the likes of “Israel advocates,” it is your confidence that your “liberal morality” somehow provides you with the clarity of vision that the rest of us lack.
What are your red lines, Jerry? After all, you support the side that ethnically cleansed Jews out of all of eastern Jerusalem, and that parcel of land between there and the River – the parcel the non-native invaders, the Hashemites, promptly renamed in order to lay claim to it. You justify those actions – yes, you do – with the “original sin” and the “invader” language. Are you sure that position provides you with any form of moral superiority?
Israel today does things which I reject. We’re not a newspaper and we don’t cover everything that happens, but there are Israeli actions which I personally reject and have written about. For example, I’ve written in favor of a unilateral withdrawal from most of the West Bank, with the proviso that Israel can go in there and knock the stuffing out of the inevitable rocket launchers which surely you will excuse with your liberal morality, since they are shooting at “invaders.” If by the Palestinians who were removed from Palestine, you mean the Hamas leaders from Jerusalem, you know they are being punished for Shalit, so why pretend it’s something else?
Your position of justified violence against the “invaders” presumably extends to the violence against Israel today. After all, same “invaders” and same dispossessed. So tell us, Jerry, oh Magnes Zionist, were the Palestinian terror attacks red lines for you? How about taking a young man and locking him up for years without any outside visitors? How about anti-Semitic ideas and language permeating the media war against Israel? Are you sure your liberal morality has anything to do with achieving peace? If I were you and I was looking deep inside, I would wonder.
By the way, you have my apologies because we are in a discussion where your real name appears while I am still using a pseudonym. I do not mean to take advantage of that in this conversation, although I fear it does provide me with the luxury of remaining untouched by your criticism while you are colored by mine. If that leaves you feeling exposed or uncomfortable, please let me know and I will temper some of what I’ve written. Obviously this won’t matter in the short term, but in the long term fewer people will see it.
Chill TM. “Jerry Haber” is a pseudonym. Not a very good one mind you. Jerry’s real name is like… the worst kept secret ever, but I’ll keep calling him Jerry anyway. You know, out of respect and all that.
Ah, googling myself sent me here. Thanks ck for keeping my secret. I am sure Ahad Ha-am wouldn’t be upset if somebody called him Asher in the street. Ditto for John LeCarre
Anyway, too late in the evening for hasbara. I really liked the idea of buying up real estate and getting a sovereign country. tm probably knows the miniscule amount of the country that the Zionists actually bought. Let’s see if the Chinese can buy up Texas and start a Chinese Texan nation. Lots of good stuff up for grabs in Vegas.
Glad also to know that the Palestinians who constituted a majority of Palestine — before they were ethnically cleansed (oops, sorry to quote liberal hawk like Benny Morris) had no right to the lands where Polish Jews who had never forgotten their desire to have a state in Palestine (uh..had never forgotten for about a few decades prior to that…not a whole lot of Polish and Russian Jews planned a state in Israel for these decades)
Oh Jerry. You are SO predictable. Thanks for visiting though! Are you enjoying the Israel week festivities on campus?
Oh Jerry, re-read what I wrote. Come on, you can do better than this. Do you realize, for example, that the “miniscule” amount of land the Jews had purchased by 1948 included 20% of all the cultivable land inside what is modern day Israel and the Territory? Imagine what a few more decades would have gotten them? Or extrapolate their population growth going from 10,000 to 600,000 in 30+ years while the Arabs were only able to double their population in the same period (part of that growth with migrants, according to Sari Nusseibeh). Seeing that graph on a wall would quickly inform you where the future lay.
I do wonder though, whether the Americans can buy Louisiana from the French. What do you think?
Of course, the French were French and had a state of their own which owned Louisiana, while the Palestinians weren’t even Palestinians yet, did not own more than 30% of the land of modern day Israel and the Territory back then, and of that ownership, most was actually owned by non-Palestinians or by Palestinians who were not residents of that little Ottoman sub-province.
And what is it with you and the Palestinian propaganda lines that always ignore the Moroccan (and other non-European) Jewish refugees? What, are all Israeli Jews from Poland? There were Yemenites making aliyah while the Russians were still in Zionist diapers.