Funny New Passover videos

Israeli Exoskeleton Suit Enables Paralayzed People To Walk

An Amazing Fact about the Jewish Star

Even if you are not Jewish, this is really amazing. The Jewish Star (of David) is also referred to as a MAGEN DAVID.


ALL 24 LETTERS OF THE HEBREW ALPHABET ARE FOUND IN A MAGEN DAVID (Star of David).


THERE IS NO SUCH THING IN ANY OTHER LANGUAGE.

First Plague as reported on Twitter

CNN-Alerts: Egyptian water turns to blood

Jewish-Press: G-d sends first plague onto Egypt

BBC-Alerts: Egyptian officials say there is no problem.

Egypt-Ministry-of-Health: Temporary problem with the water supply

Egypt-Opposition: Do not drink the water

Muhamed-the-Egyptian: What the #%&!?

Jacob-the-Jew: What water problem??

Hamas-Guy: Tastes great, less filling

Pharo-the-Great: Anyone see that Moses dude?

Obama-Man: Give the negotiations a chance

Hillary-Clinton: This directed assault is an insult to the United States and our ally Egypt

EU-Council: We condem this aggressive act of violence

The-Hague: We condem the Israelites for war crimes against the Egyptians.

UN-Spokeman: Securty Resolution 2 - Israelites condemed for inciting the Egyptians

Dubai-Police: We have a video of 26 foreigners tampering with the water supply

Joe's-Spring-Water: Get our Egyptian importer on the line

Sarah Palin: They deserve it! Anyone see my shotgun ?

What Makes Jews So Successful?

One could argue that because the Jews were dispersed throughout the world, they came in contact with many cultures and were thus able to take the best ideas of each nation and use them to their advantage.

But the African Diaspora spread hundreds of millions 1 of Black Africans all over Asia, the Middle East, Europe and the Western Hemisphere, yet despite their dispersal and contact with many cultures, Black Africans as a group have been dismal failures. For example, only one Black African ever received a Nobel Prize in Economics and not one ever received a Nobel Prize in Physics, Chemistry, or Medicine [see my 13 Black Nobel Prize Laureates] while more 159 Jews have won Nobel Prizes other than Peace or Literature.

A reader may object that Black Africans came from many cultures before they were dispersed and therefor they are not a homogeneous group that can act to help each other.

But the same can be said of Jews from Ethiopia, Spain, Germany, Persia, France, Morocco, China, Japan, and hundreds of other countries and cultures.

Ah, perhaps it is their religion? Black Africans have many religions and are thus not as united as the Jews. But there are billions of Christians in every country in the world and yet their common belief has not made them as successful as Jews.

There are many times more Catholics in Poland than Jews, yet more than half of all Polish Nobel Laureates [see Polish Nobel Prize Laureates]: Jews.

So maybe it's not a common religion but Judaism per se, that makes Jews successful. But that does not explain the remarkable influence and power of Jews in film, plays, music, finance, real estate, banking, fashion, and other enterprises in America where the majority of Jews are secular [see Not All Jews Believe in God].

Well then, perhaps surviving constant persecution and enduring long suffering make the Jew so formidable. Then let us consider the Armenians who have been dispersed all over America, Africa, Europe, Asia, and the Middle East since 1375 [Wiki], and likewise suffered expulsions, discrimination and even endured a genocide at the hands of the Turks.

There is no doubt that Armenians are very successful and have made their mark in finance, science, and many other fields. Kirk Kerkorian, Garry Kasparov, Kevork Hovnanian, William Saroyan, and many others, although their achievements are great and many, they are still dwarfed by those of Jews. It should be noted that Kasparov, arguably history's greatest chess player, had a Jewish father, which is not remarkable when one considers that more than half of all the greatest chess players in the past one hundred years were Jews 2.

The answer is a bit complex: Jews helped each other, trusted each other, were forced into becoming merchants and traders, had a common language, formed communities with mutual aid societies, encouraged their children to pursue education. Indeed even during the most horrific of times for Jews, Christian royalty and high government officials had Jewish doctors for themselves.

When Spain needed to make a deal with Portugal or Portugal with Italy or Italy with Great Britain, those countries turned to Jews. Where most nationalities mistrusted others, Jews from the Mediterranean and the far flung suzerainties of the Ottoman Empire dealt with each other as if they were landsmen.

Forbidden by law from most professions by local rulers, the church and the unions, many Jews were forced into culturally abhorred occupations, such as tax and rent collecting, pawnbroking, and moneylending.

Since Jews had no problems trading with each other, many became merchants, manufacturers, and international bankers. Communication from Spain to Morocco was facilitated by speaking 'Judezmo,' a lingua franca among Jews in Southern Europe and North Africa.

Jewish merchants of Poland, Germany, Eastern Europe, Latvia, Lithuania, portions of Russia and Ukraine spoke to each other in Yiddish.

When I arrived in Israel in 1965, I lived with very distant relatives I had never before met or even heard of. Though I was a complete stranger to them, they gave me a room to sleep in and helped me register at the Hebrew University. Imagine a French Christian cousin 12 times removed coming into town and getting help from very, very distant Italian relative. Not likely.

After a few weeks I met a Persian Jewish young man (completely unrelated to me) who invited me to his home for tea and I stayed for two years.

In 1967 I had an opportunity to study in Paris. A distant-distant-distant cousin helped me find lodging and register for classes.

I can travel anywhere in the world and hook up with a Jewish relative or a friend of a relative and settle down, if it suited me to do so, helped by fellow Jews.

Many immigrants who emulate those habits of helping one another also succeed in America. In New York one can find Koreans helping other Koreans to open up delis, Chinese help other Chinese open up jewelry stores or restaurants, and so on.

What you will rarely see are Blacks helping other Blacks. Once a Black entertainer, businessman, sports hero makes a fortune - poof - they're gone. Nothing comes back to their community - it's every man for himself.

Or woman for herself. What does Oprah do for urban youth? Nothing. Instead she spends her money on non-American Blacks.
But I digress.

Last year I was looking for a person to do some printing for my telecom business. He took me to a Jewish restaurant to discuss business and before my meal was finished he had introduced me to a half-dozen other Jews that could fill other needs of my business.

That's what makes Jews successful. Not being afraid to share a customer, to network, to help a fellow Jew.

Sure a Harvard man will help another Harvard man but the guy has to be in the same social class. Among Jews, a millionaire can be eating in the same booth as a poor man and each can still do business with the other.

It's what made Hollywood Hollywood, it's what made Broadway Broadway.

Arnall Patz, a Doctor Who Prevented Blindness, Is Dead at 89

By LAWRENCE K. ALTMAN

Dr. Arnall Patz, an ophthalmologist whose research upset medical convention but ended up saving countless babies from blindness, died on Wednesday at his home in Pikesville, Md. He was 89.

The cause was heart disease, said his daughter, Susan.

Dr. Patz, a former director of the Wilmer Eye Institute at Johns Hopkins University, also did pioneering research, using lasers, that has been credited with preserving the sight of adults with common conditions that cause blindness.

In 2004 President George W. Bush awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian award. Dr. Patz, Mr. Bush said, was “the man who has given to uncounted men, women and children the gift of sight.”

Dr. Patz began his pathbreaking work in the 1950s, when he discovered that the high doses of oxygen widely administered to help premature infants breathe could cause a form of blindness. Known then as retrolental fibroplasia, it is now called retinopathy of prematurity, or R.O.P. The oxygen, he found, led to overgrowth of blood vessels in the eye, damaging the retina irreparably.

At the time, doctors were puzzled about why R.O.P. had quickly become the most common cause of childhood blindness in the United States and other countries, counting among its victims Stevie Wonder.

To prove his theory that oxygen was the cause, Dr. Patz had to overcome the hostility of many doctors and nurses who believed he was harming, not helping, the infants. The National Institutes of Health rejected as unscientific his initial application for a grant to study oxygen’s role.

In the late 1960s, Dr. Patz helped develop one of the first argon lasers. They are now a standard treatment for macular degeneration and for certain eye disorders that occur among people with diabetes and other ailments.

Using an argon laser, eye doctors could focus intense beams of light to spot-weld leaking blood vessels in the retina. The procedure preserves nearly normal vision for many diabetics, said Dr. Morton F. Goldberg, Dr. Patz’s successor as director of the eye institute. It was “a technological revolution,” he said.

Arnall Patz was born on June 14, 1920, in rural Elberton, Ga., the youngest of seven children. His father, an immigrant from Lithuania, was a peddler who insisted on maintaining Jewish customs in Elberton, where his was the only Jewish family.

After earning undergraduate and medical degrees from Emory University in Atlanta, Dr. Patz served in the ambulance corps during World War II, often transporting patients from Camp Lee, Va., to Walter Reed General Hospital in Washington.

During stopovers there he learned of a vacancy in the eye clinic. After obtaining that position, Dr. Patz trained as an eye doctor at Gallinger Municipal Hospital, later known as the District of Columbia General Hospital, which closed in 2001.

While in training, Dr. Patz observed 21 infants who had developed severe R.O.P. after receiving continuous oxygen therapy delivered through a cone made from folded X-ray film. Four of the children showed a narrowing of the blood vessels in the retina that seemed to lead to R.O.P.

Dr. Patz and the pediatrician in charge of the nursery, Dr. Leroy Hoeck, who died last year, suspected that oxygen was toxic in the amounts administered, Dr. Patz wrote in an account in The American Journal of Ophthalmology in 2006. Despite a lack of training in research and grant support, Dr. Patz carried out a clinical trial to test his theory with a loan from his brother, Louis.

The theory was considered radical at the time, and Dr. Patz met strong opposition from colleagues. During the test, two well-intentioned nurses surreptitiously increased the amounts of oxygen the babies were being given, believing they were protecting their welfare. (After being lectured on the matter, the nurses became committed members of the research team, Dr. Goldberg said.)

In the first report on the test, in 1952, the research team found that 7 of 28 infants receiving high doses of oxygen experienced severe R.O.P., compared with none in the group receiving low doses. Although the findings strongly suggested a causal relationship, Dr. Patz sought more proof. So he and Dr. V. Everett Kinsey helped design a trial involving 18 hospitals. It was the first controlled clinical trial in ophthalmology, and it produced convincing data.

Their findings led to widespread restrictions on high-dose oxygen therapy, resulting in an immediate 60 percent reduction in the number of blind children in the United States.

In 1968, Dr. Patz began working with colleagues from the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory to develop one of the early argon laser photocoagulators to treat diabetic retinopathy and other eye conditions. Overgrowth of blood vessels and leakage in the retina can occur in many eye diseases. Dr. Patz recognized the potential of lasers to seal leaks and stop the blood vessels’ growth.

Dr. Patz became a full-time faculty member of the Wilmer Eye Institute in 1970 and its director in 1979. At the age of 78 he went back to John Hopkins to earn a master of liberal arts degree, his wartime service having curtailed his education. In one term paper he explored how Beethoven’s progressive deafness affected his music.

In addition to his daughter, Susan, of Baltimore, Dr. Patz is survived by his wife, the former Ellen Levy; three sons, William, of Seattle, David, of Grand Junction, Colo., and Jonathan, of Madison, Wis.; and eight grandchildren. After his brother, Louis, and his wife died in a plane crash, Dr. Patz raised their children: Samuel, of Boston; Harry, of Acme, Wash.; and Sarah Anne, of St. Louis.

Dr. Patz was a ham radio operator, and before coordinating centers were developed, he made calls late at night to facilitate the transport of corneas as they were flown around the country for transplants.

In 1956, Helen Keller, who became deaf and blind as a toddler and who became an advocate for handicapped people, presented the Albert Lasker Clinical Medical Research Award to Dr. Patz and Dr. Kinsey.

She told Dr. Patz: “Never tell a patient there is nothing more to be done. Rehabilitation is always an option.” He repeated the advice many times in lectures.

Jefferson, the Chosen President?

U.S. President. Author of the Declaration of Independence. Force behind the Louisiana Purchase. And ... Jew? A new genetic study raises the tantalizing possibility that Thomas Jefferson may have had Jewish ancestry.

Researchers at the University of Leicester have found that the Founding Father's Y chromosome is part of a line known as K2; estimated to be about 20,000 years old, the line has been found scattered about Western Europe, notably in Iberia, France and Britain, but it is most prevalent in the Middle East. Since K2's European distribution "lacks clear structure," as Mark Jobling, a coauthor of the study, puts it, scientists aren't able to trace an exact origin. But how might a 20,000-year-old chromosomal line predominantly found in the Middle East end up dispersed across Europe? One of the best explanations is the Jewish Diaspora, in which the Jews spread west through much of Europe.

Without more data, the University of Leicester researchers can't be certain—but that didn't stop the American Jewish and Jeffersonian communities from buzzing about the prospect. "Monotheism, Moses and Monticello? We should be so lucky," wrote David A. Harris, head of the American Jewish Committee, in an e-mail to NEWSWEEK. "I think it's delightful to find through genetic studies more and more that different people are inseparable in their origins," says Peter Ochs, a professor of modern Judaic studies at the University of Virginia, which Jefferson founded. "We also like him. He's a brilliant, complex, imperfect person, like the great Biblical models—brainy, who uses his mind to build things, and yet very human." The Leicester team previously researched Jefferson's genes to determine whether he had fathered children with a slave, Sally Hemings.