16 Pages In Thirty Minutes At Stumbleupon

I like my job. I really do. Nonetheless, all jobs involve well, WORK. Even when you like what you do.

I’m a writer and I love to write and I love that I get to write about education for the car donation program known as Kars4Kids. I like it because I know I’m helping kids and their parents with this work. My work offers meaning beyond the satisfaction of a job well done, not to mention it pays the rent.

Still, I love it when the day is done and I get to goof off. One of my new fave things to waste time on after a hard day at work is stumbleupon. I um, stumbled upon stumbleupon while looking for ways to shamelessly self-promote my blogs.

Screenshot of Stumbleupon

I share my blogs on my Facebook timeline, on my Facebook author’s page, on Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, and tumblr. I even created a board for my articles on Pinterest. But all those other share buttons on the various blog interfaces I use had me intrigued. I began exploring some of these other venues and stumbleupon was one of the happier experiments I enjoyed in checking out these various social media networks.

Stumbleupon is FUN. On the other hand, it won’t be much use to me in my profession. I’ve shared about 10 pages on stumbleupon, but don’t really expect them to play well there. Stumbleupon is more about fun and delightful games and graphics than education, politics, and other serious stuff. But fun is good too, right? I mean, within reason.

So the interface is fairly simple. You’re shown a webpage. If you like it, you click the thumbs up symbol. Don’t like it, click the thumbs down symbol. Ready to move on? Click stumble and a new page comes up.

Or Be Brave

By voting thumbs up or thumbs down, you offer stumbleupon a way to refine your preferences and show you more of what you like. When you sign up (yes, it’s free), you check boxes next to all your interests. If stumbleupon sees you clicking thumbs up for many pages within one interest, a window will come up asking if you want to add a related interest. You can always say no. Or be brave and say yes.

I wanted to show you what it’s like to play on the stumbleupon playground (that’s my story and I’m sticking to it) so I went through 16 pages today to show you how I use it as well as my reactions to what stumbleupon chooses to show me.  

The one downside to stumbleupon is that not every webpage is accessible outside of stumbleupon which makes sharing kind of difficult. I linked to all the pages I came across today that CAN be accessed on their own. The others, well, you’ll have to sign up with stumbleupon to see them. Sorry about that.

1) Collected Quotes from Albert Einstein. Meh. email forward. Seen it 100 times. Thumbs down.

STUMBLE

2) Crafts I'd never do. Toilet paper roll finger puppets. Seriously? Thumbs down.

Screenshot from website

STUMBLE

3) Gorgeous 360 degree interactive August sunset in Moab, Utah. THUMBS UP.

STUMBLE

4) Takes a long time to load but NEATO. It’s an interactive scene the nature of which I don’t want to spoil for you by telling you about it here. It takes a while to figure out what you need to do to get the neato stuff to happen. Once it does, it’s so cool it’s almost overwhelming. Very, very creative.  Thumbs up.

STUMBLE

5) Gosh. I don't LIKE the art here, but it is so lifelike and realistic and drawn from CHALK, yet! I have to appreciate the artist’s amazing work in spite of my dislike. Thumbs up.

STUMBLE

6) Oh definitely. These are still pictures with embedded gifs so that the pictures move in only one or two small areas of the scene. It’s an extremely effective device. The dice. The cat's ear. I couldn’t figure out what was moving in the photo of the woman standing at the railing, though I looked for a long time and I’m a fairly observant person. That was disappointing. Still: Thumbs UP.

STUMBLE

I get a message from Stumbleupon: "You’ve liked the animation pages several times. Would you like to add graphic design to your interests?"

I choose yes.

7) A black and white photo of apartment building windows during a sideways blowing snowstorm at night. Okay.

Screenshot from Stumbleupon

Not wild about this particular photo, but in general, I like photographs and want to see more, especially black and white photos, so I'll click thumbs up.

STUMBLE

8) Hmm. Thumbs down, though I feel guilty, since it's Winslow Homer and all. Just don’t like this particular painting.

STUMBLE

9) Prank video. Australian guys rig up buddy's plumbing with BEER. Hot and cold running beer from every spigot in the house. Web cams set up so the friends can watch. They must really love their friend to go to all that trouble and expense. FUNNY! Thumbs up.

STUMBLE

10) Sesame street alien puppets discover computer. Weird. Pointless. Thumbs down.

STUMBLE

11) Dumb, dumb, dumb joke. Thumbs down.

STUMBLE

12) Stylish mommy blog. Boring. Thinking: people who stumble upon my blogs on stumbleupon will be thinking the same thing. Gulp. Thumbs down.

STUMBLE

13) Laser cure for Alzheimer's that can distinguish between healthy proteins and toxic amyloids "So simple,

Screenshot from website.

it's incredible." Medical breakthrough dated only yesterday. Cool, if not fun. Thumbs up.

STUMBLE

14) Neatoooooooooooooooo! Canvas Pinball, a game of pinball set up as if on the page of a spiral bound

Screenshot from Stumbleupon

notebook. You use the arrows on your keyboard. Several balls in play at once add a surprise element. I like it. Thumbs up.

STUMBLE

Worried about the artist's diet. (screenshot from Stumbleupon)

15) Drawings of liquid by a Chinese artist. Amazing but um, yuh. The eyeball thing. weird. You wonder if the artist needs a change of diet and you wouldn't want to um, meet him. Oh all right. Thumbs up.

Screenshot from Stumbleupon

STUMBLE

16) Last but not least: a wikihow on how to escape from Handcuffs. That should be a right handy thing to know if I should ever decide to commit a crime. Thumbs UP.

The end.

Birthday Blessings and Baseless Hatred

A Blessing On Your Head

hen I joined Facebook, I noticed that many of my Orthodox Jewish friends dispensed blessings to their Jewish friends on their birthdays. Not being orthodox from birth, I like to try out new customs for myself and see how they feel. In this case, I liked the idea that I had a special superpower on my birthday.

It reminded me of being a new bride. According to Jewish custom you see, a bride is granted whatever she prays for on her wedding day. Except that in this case, it seems, I had the power on a single day each year. I’d just never been aware of that power.

I didn’t look into why people were giving out blessings on their birthdays. It may be a Chassidishe custom and I am a Litvak. But it seemed like a nice enough custom to adopt; one that would result in no harm to anyone and might even be beneficial. Who can’t use a brocha—a blessing? Besides, the sudden assumption of power seemed a heady thing that I wasn’t about to forego.

And so it was that I made my decision. This year, when Facebook informed everyone it was the day of my birth, I would answer each and every birthday greeting I received with a blessing. Not only would I give out blessings, but I would do so in the same way my mother taught me to write thank-you notes: each and every blessing would be particular to that person.

No rote blessings would be allowed. There would be thought and intent behind my blessings. My blessings would be caring and specific. I didn’t want my power wasted on emptiness. I wanted that power imbued with and applied with meaning.

My friends seemed genuinely pleased with my largesse and in many cases, commented on how apt my blessings were—how much they desired those very blessings. But toward the end of the day, I received a birthday greeting from a fellow blogger and writer who wrote only half in jest, “Happy birthday. Are we still friends?”

Interesting, considering how many times I’d thought of unfriending this particular woman. My hand had even once hovered over that, “remove from friends button,” on the precipice, so to speak. But each time, I had refrained from completing the action.

The issue in question was this woman’s adamant dislike of Haredim, or black-hat Jews as we called them back in the alte heim (old country), expressed over and over again on her own blogs, in talkbacks, and in other people’s blogs. She had an utter hatred, it seemed, of my co-religionists, and could not be reasoned with on the subject. Though I tried. Repeatedly.

But every time I thought of unfriending her, I thought that if I just continued to be a shining example of the breed, I would ultimately persuade her and make her see another side of the story. It was a long shot. But it seemed to me that it was in both our interests for me to continue to try and cajole her into seeing a different, good side of Haredim.

So when she greeted me on my birthday, I thought of it as an opportunity to drive home the point. My blessing to her was, “May you come to see the good in all your fellow Jews and shun baseless hatred. May you learn to strive for the unity of our people and develop a true love of Israel.”

Yes. I’ll admit. It was a dig. She knew where I was coming from with that. But then again, she’d opened the topic by asking if we were still friends. She knew exactly what was between us and what it was that needed to be resolved.

As far as I am concerned, what needed to be resolved was a willingness to include me and other Haredim as part of her people and not single out specific negative actions perpetrated by a few rank individuals as justifying her mental exclusion of us from “her” nation.

Hatred: like an arrow (or several) to the heart

Consider this: a month ago, my grandchildren, who look quite obviously Haredi, came to visit me in my town, which is overwhelmingly of a National Religious character. My 13 year-old son took them to the park and immediately, the resident children at play, began to shout epithets at my grandchildren, “Stinky dirty Haredim,” they cried. “Go play in your own parks.”

Now, where did they learn that? You know the answer to that as well as I do. They learned this bias and hatred from their parents.

Starfish are People Too

It was a horrible, even traumatic experience for my grandchildren who immediately left the park and returned to my home to spend the rest of their visit indoors and safe from the hatred extended toward them during what should have been a pleasant visit to Grandma.

Going back a few months further, my husband and I attended the wedding of a friend and at our table, the guests vied to best each other’s jokes which focused on denigrating Haredim. They must have thought my husband and I were of them and not Haredim, though I wore my sheitl and was otherwise dressed according to Haredi shita (fashion).

My husband and I sat through it all, not saying a word, waiting it out, not wanting to create any kind of dissension at our friend’s daughter’s wedding. When I returned home, my whole body ached from the tension of holding back a response, of deflecting the hatred in each word and glance and trying to defend from any sort of penetration. Like the meltdown of adrenaline after an incident. Like the aftermath of fending off a rape.

I thought of all this as I typed and sent my blessing to my Facebook friend. Can you guess what happened next?

Of course you can. She unfriended me. She took offense at my blessing. She took offense at the obviousness of the lesson I was trying to impart: at the inference that she was at fault for her hatred rather than I for the sins of a few people who wear similar clothing to my own and adhere to the rulings of some of the same rabbis.

I shook my head in despair when I realized that this woman had finally found me annoying enough to unfriend me, rather than work toward resolving the issues between us.

This is the three-week period during which Jews mourn the destruction of the First and Second Temples due to baseless hatred. I hope that at least, from time to time, during the next 20 days or so, my unfriended friend will think about my blessing and let it sink in, as it was meant to be, as a blessing on both of us, for all of us, for our people.

Career Moves IV

oday's blog is a continuation on the subject of social media and career promotion.

We're up to Twitter. So for me, Twitter just feels, um, limited. I love, adore, delight in words, words, and more words. I don't find it a challenging game to force myself into a minimum of letters--it doesn't make me feel successfully competitive when I am successful at staying within the lines. Instead, it feels like a crime.

Makes me kind of sad, really. People forcing their most important moments into 140 characters and spaces. You can call it art. You can say it is beautifully spare and minimal. Contemporary. All chrome, glass, and neutrals. But I call it "limiting."


I had the same problem with the word limit at the much more generous Facebook. And that was the main thing Google+ had going over Facebook. Yeah, you could write a note on Facebook. But notes were weird. They were like getting up on a stage.

On Google+ you could keep on going way after you could on Facebook, realize it, and tie it up, Folks. But you could have those few extra dots, squiggles, and lines of meaning.

Did you think that was enough to sway me to Google+? Nope. I just can't like it there. Is it some loyalty I feel I owe to Mark Zuckerberg who never misses an opportunity to hurt his own people? Can't be, right? I mean this is the gal who organized a one-day boycott of Facebook if the social media space refused to take down the violent Intifada pages. I have proven my commitment to activism.

(Note: There was a deadline and Facebook met the deadline, so I canceled the event. Which was really, really dumb. I should have changed the date to "anytime" or something. What I did was make the whole thing disappear. Facebook didn't archive the page which means that we the public do not have access to all the viral activity there. I can't show it to the world or even to potential employers. I can't say: I did this. *dumbkopf* *smacking myself upside the haid*

Worse yet, within hours, the pages were back. *sigh*)


But back to MZ. I don't feel loyal to him. I just don't feel a need to switch. I'm comfortable on Facebook. Any place else seems foreign in comparison. No matter how bright and colorful and unlimited. Dumb, right? Well, there it is. Could there also be a bit of the anti-Google in me? I do sometimes worry at Google's supremacy in the world. It feels almost like a mitzvah to knock it down a notch or two.

That leads me to here. My blog. I talked about blog narcissism back in 2009 So, you know my tentative feelings about sharing feelings. But something I read the other day in an excellent blog by Carol Tice on 113 Things You Can Do to Grow Your Freelance Writing Income — Now may be changing the way I think about blogging.


Number 111 on Tice's list of tips is: "Remember your blog is a writing sample. Have a clean design, show you understand social media, and write every post like it’s a $1-a-word magazine assignment."

Now that was a tip I could implement with ease. I can write in my blog. In a sense, unemployment is freeing: I finally have the time to exercise my writing muscle.

Of course, poverty means taking the time to do things the old-fashioned way, like grating cheese to save the shekels it costs to buy the already-grated stuff. On the other hand, there is nothing like hand-grated cheese and the satisfaction of having been the one to produce the same. There is joy and immediate gratification in "just being a housewife."

The kids come home to a gourmet lunch and say, "I love you, Eema," whereas when I'm working, it doesn't make sense to cook complicated items. Why should I when I can cook something fast and easy they all enjoy? And I am amply suited to do just that. Thank God. Though I confess my sewing borders on sadomasochism--a topic to save for another blog, maybe, if I dare.

Meantime, I am here a lot, at Judean Rose, experimenting on what works to generate a comment and a following and what does not. I get the luxury of indulging my creative writing bent just for me. And it's good for my career, too.



A person needs calm and space in which to write. That makes writing a luxury for me. Calm and space are items that sometimes seem well out of reach to me.


Sometimes I dream about it: having time and space to write. As much as I want. Well, short of a sugar daddy (ha!) or a grant from some discerning org, time and space to write remains the provenance of the wealthy. And anyway, who'd want to read the thoughts of a poor person?

But please spare me the comments about poor being relative and how rich I really am and so forth. You know what I mean. Don't force me to pretend for your sake. Your silence on this issue feels supportive in this case.

Please DO leave comments about the use of social media and weighing friendships versus business moves.

Career Moves III

esterday's blog was a continuation on the subject of social media and the use of friends as vehicles for career promotion. Today's blog is a continuation of this topic.

I spoke about Facebook, Quora, Pinterest, and putting the word out to friends about my job search. But employers are also asking me about other social media.

3) Are you on LinkedIn? Twitter? Google+?

I have put some work into LinkedIn but just can't get excited about going there. I also end up in sticky water when people I REALLY DON'T LIKE send connection requests. You can say it's only about business, but that's just the point: if I don't like the person, why on earth would I want to help them professionally? Okay, so yes, I have a nasty spot in me.

On the other hand, I sent out LinkedIn contact requests to everyone I could find through my own contacts, who was even remotely connected to any profession that interested me. I clicked the space next to "friend" which was the only way to send a request to someone you don't know for free, but explained what I was doing in the copied and pasted message I sent with the requests. I was honest about my motives.That actually got a hugely positive response. All the writers and so forth, to whom I'd sent requests thought it a mutually beneficial idea to become LinkedIn contacts and gladly accepted.

But then I had a painful experience regarding the woman with whom I'd apprenticed under for one month. I learned so much from her. She promised me the earth, hinting more than once that I would soon be offered "a more global position." She said that salary reviews would be undertaken after the High Holidays and that's when it would happen.

Then two days before Rosh HaShana, she called to tell me a different office had nixed the idea and had already hired someone else in New York. I felt my heart dip and fall into a place of pain, way down deep. I hovered on the brink of depression.I had just written my mother about the upcoming promotion. My family had rejoiced at that news. It was a triumph. 

A month later I sent the woman who spoke of a more global position a LinkedIn request for a recommendation and she never responded. We'd been in constant contact for a month as she taught me the ropes and made me dream. Shee-oot. Reminds me of a mantra I used to have and have tried to since disown: "Life sucks and then you die." I can't tell you how many times I got chastised for that one until fed up, I changed it to: ""No matter how short your wife is, lean down and take her advice."
(Bava Metzia 59a)

Everyone loves this one. Especially men with short wives.

So that would be all I have to say about LinkedIn. See tomorrow for more about social media and career promotion.

Career Moves Part II

esterday's blog was about the pros and cons of using Facebook to promote a career. Today's blog continues the subject of social media and friends as vehicles for career promotion.


                                       Putting the Word Out There

I put the word out to friends that I need help with my job search. Some friends have done their best to help me by forwarding me job opps. I have been very touched by their kindness and this has really been, in general, quite helpful.

But in one case, someone actually spoke to a friend about me to try to help get me back on my feet. My friend's friend had politics at odds with my own. My friend was upfront about that fact. And the bottom line is Dov and I agreed it would be wrong for me to take any work that came through that venue.



It looks ungrateful, or maybe stupid. But in fact, it was only a moral decision about being true to our (mine and my husband's) own beliefs, politically and otherwise.

In another case, a friend gave me a hot lead, including an email address, but the contact never responded. I went back to my friend who said, "Write in the subject line: 'SO-AND-SO SENT ME,'" (substituting her name of course and not so-and-so) which still elicited no response from the contact. *shrug*

Well, onward and upward: in the first installment of this series, I wrote about the number one question from employers, "How many friends on Facebook?"

But employers are also asking about other social media sites.

2) "What about Quora and Pinterest?"

I had no ideas what these spaces were, but I figured it out and wangled invites for both sites. I need to say this: I HATE that by-invitation-only stuff. I think they do it to make people feel elite. Which is really obnoxious and insults our intelligence.

But once on Pinterest, I enjoyed myself. I made a nudnik of myself by posting luscious food pix one after the other on Facebook. People said, "What? Are you trying to KILL me??" LOL.


Quora was less successful. But only because I found myself "into it" right away and then had a negative interaction with someone within hours that is still having ramifications until now. I answered a question and got pressed for more proof. My proof was not this person's proof and I had none other to offer. But the other person insisted that meant I was wrong. Argh.

What do you think of the invitation only social media sites?

To be continued.

Career Moves

 have been thinking about a lot of ideas this week in a kind of ephemeral haze. I am stalled in my career. My attempts to find employment are still met with resistance.

What is, is written in the cosmos for reasons unknown to me. As a result, I came to decide that my best career move at the moment is to focus on this one space: my blog.

Here's the premise:

This is a space where potential employers can test my mettle as a writer: Am I good enough?

And this is a space where I can build a following.

Still, it is clear that to be anyone today, you have to be here, there, and everywhere. A blog isn't enough. eMail isn't enough. One blog and eMail is equivalent to having no presence on the World Wide Web. You'll have barely left a footprint. How do I know this? Potential employers have been asking me about my social media qualifications:

1) How many friends on Facebook?

This question forced me to assess my Facebook habits. I have tried to keep Facebook honest. I didn't want to make friends for business' sake. I have LinkedIn for that.

But today's employer expects you to exploit all social media for his/her benefit. That means that numbers count.

It also forces you to decide on your perspective--what do you deem a prudent career move and what borders on performing immoral acts? Do I agree to exploiting the numbers in this equation? Do I rack up friends to drive the numbers up without giving a damn about them? Do I friend famous or successful people, hoping that our friendship somehow leverages me to a different stratum of the social sphere?

If you were to do your own assessment of your Facebook friends, you may find that you have many friends you know are not interested in you in the least. Some of them never wrote a word on your wall or pitched in on a thread. Some never said a word but saw you in the supermarket and told you that they read everything you write and share--it's just that s/he's a lurker. Now that's a horse of a different color: an honest statement like that must be savored and appreciated.

But if they see you and still say nothing. Or they live far away but you see they wish everyone else in your old crowd Happy Birthday except for you.

Maybe you had a warm, even BEAUTIFUL reunion, seasoned with the wisdom that comes with age. But one party sensed the other's antipathy over the decision to divorce a spouse, or asked for financial help after having no connection for 3 decades. Or perhaps you posted too many youtube clips. Or perhaps it's really your constant politicizing but the other must find a noncontroversial excuse to unfriend you that doesn't seem anti-Semitic so the person says that you post too many youtube clips.

And what of lurkers who comment on every single posting and make everything all about them? Personally, I would love to do an honest clean-up of my facebook list. Keeping friends who do not like you feels like RAPE and it's not much better when it's you who doesn't like THEM.

But the numbers. I'd go down to so few real friends. Okay, not by that many, I'm exaggerating. But I'm thinking one-third would stay by my side, given a choice. Can I afford to be honest at the expense of doing what needs to be done to help me pay my bills?

Here is what I have considered then: Perhaps I will tell people that I will unfriend anyone who doesn't wish me happy birthday on the date Facebook tells them is my birthday (As an aside: I celebrate my birthday according to the changeable lunar calendar, for religious reasons. My lunar birthday is ט"ו סיון or the 15th of Sivan.)

At that point, if you wish to continue to be my friend, so this line of thought goes, you will have to send me a new friend request. If you have unsubscribed from my feed, then you likely will not receive notice that this blog entry has been posted. I post my blog entries from here, Twitter, linkedIn, Facebook, and Google+.

When I write something new, it is out here in the blogosphere. So, shall I adopt this policy? If you don't wish me happy birthday, you're gone and the numbers be damned? I feel I need to have some scruples, you see.

So maybe I shouldn't do that. What do you think? Should I keep the numbers and let two-thirds of my friends just be numbers? Is my career more important than calling nonfriends, "friends?"


To be continued.

Dov was Right

y son Natan is very proud of having been a very early user of Facebook. He saw Facebook’s potential way before most people caught on to the addictive social networking site. Four years ago, I caved in to Natan and let him set up my Facebook account.

At 21, Natan is too young to appreciate what it meant for me to find friends I hadn’t seen in over two decades. The early days of my Facebooking were heady indeed and life seemed fuller for having allowed social networking into my life. Every once in a while, I still find someone I cared about and had lost touch with, via Facebook, but those occasions are now rare, the heady early days long past.

Facebook has become part of the fabric of my life. I read my newsfeed two or three times a day, catching up with friends, the news, and the newest video clips to go viral. I play word games and Bejeweled Blitz to wake up in the morning, take a break from work, or to wind down at night.

Sometime after I became active on Facebook, my husband did, too. He wanted to see what the fuss was all about. That’s when we discovered that there seems to be a generational cut-off point for Facebook. Dov is eight years older than I and his buddies, it seems, just don’t appreciate or understand Facebook to the same extent as my own generation.

Feeling wiser than Dov in this one particular arena, I didn’t hesitate to express my annoyance at his insistence on posting links to articles echoing his right-wing Middle East political sentiments. Since we were Facebook friends, I was embarrassed by this inappropriate use of a social networking site. Dov and I didn’t agree on what was and was not an appropriate use of prime Facebook real estate. He stuck out his chin in that pugnacious way of his and I just rolled my eyes, continuing to cringe whenever he posted one of THOSE links.

Then there was the incident with the Mavi Marmara. It happened the day after my 49th birthday. Israel was forced to board this flotilla for flouting Israel’s Gaza blockade. The blockade was meant to prevent weapons from flowing into hostile territory and was a legal blockade according to international maritime law.


The Israelis who boarded the flotilla were armed with paintballs. The Mavi Marmara people lay in wait for the Israelis, beating them with iron bars and attacking them with knives. There was footage! But the mainstream media suppressed the truth and made the Israelis sound like brutal barbarians while painting the Mavi Marmara participants as saintly martyrs.

Having previously lambasted my husband for posting pro-Israel articles I was forced overnight to take up my fork and eat humble pie. I was so distressed by the slanted media reports of the Mavi Marmara incident that I was unable to rest or sleep. I realized that as a patriotic Israeli, I had no choice but to exploit Facebook as a platform for combating the rampant universal delegitimization of Israel.

Dov was right to have been posting those political articles. I had been very, very wrong.

Since that time, a year and a half ago, I have become a member of an unofficial Facebook group. The members of this group spend their days at their computers, posting every pro-Israel link they can find and countering the lies said in the mainstream media about the Jewish State.

I know that a lot of people find us very annoying. They think we abuse social networking for our political cause, just like I thought my husband was misusing Facebook for this purpose. I know that some of my friends, even those who share my politics, have stopped following my newsfeeds and some have unfriended me altogether over my insistent and constant politicization of the social networking site.

I care. It wounds me. But I care about Israel more.

I felt vindicated when members of the Israeli Knesset encouraged Israelis to keep on posting pro-Israel articles on Facebook. It seems that we are an important asset in combating the PR war against Israel’s enemies. We tell the real story when the media is quiet. We report the daily missiles emanating from Gaza and targeting our civilian population when the media will not. We expose the false propaganda spread by the other side by citing the facts, when the media would rather print the falsehoods for the sake of higher ratings.

And that’s because we don’t live by ratings or even by how many people send us friend requests on Facebook. We live only by our consciences and our strong moral sensitivity for right and wrong.

Maybe you think I have an inflated sense of self—that I fancy myself a sort of true-life, contemporary superhero? Maybe you think that some things shouldn’t be discussed in public: religion and politics. I don’t, CANNOT worry about that anymore.

As far as I’m concerned, the truth must out lest my people and my country perish. More than that, I believe that the world has failed to identify the enemy in its midst. I fear for world order. It’s a life and death situation. And like it or not, no one is safe. It’s coming to a theater near you.

Ten Worst Facebook Status Updates Ever

en Worst Facebook Status Updates Ever





1) Hard to believe I showered just two hours ago.

2) Bobby loves corn but I hate changing his diaper afterward.

3) How do you know when fish is bad?

4) It’s not so much the sound that gets to me when DH blows his nose; it’s the spatter art.

5) What else works besides prunes?

6) Little Timmy meant well, but drying Spot in the microwave was a bad idea. Someone said boiling lemons in there might help?

7) If you see Granny at the supermarket, see if you can git her car keys. She’s been at the crème de menthe again.

8) Gawd I’m so itchy down there, does anyone else ever get this?

9) I didn’t know a cat’s stomach could hold so much.

10) If you ate the burgers and you feel queasy, you’d best call me quick.

Red Lines

Last week, I sacrificed the feelings of a friend on the altar of humor. I heard about a Facebook page with a clever name that made me laugh and I couldn't resist signing on as a fan. As my finger hovered over my left mouse, a little voice niggled at me, "Some of your friends may be offended by the sentiment expressed here—Rhonda, for instance."

The idea put forth by the name of that group crossed over societal red lines by expressing the hope that someone holding a hallowed American office would die. But the way it was worded was so clever! I didn't so much care about the meaning of the words, I just liked the wording. So I ignored that little voice and it's been bothering me ever since. Why did I choose humor over the feelings of a friend?

It isn't the first time I've crossed red lines for the sake of humor. I offended another friend around the time of Michael Jackson's death by quoting an MJ joke on Twitter. The same thing happened. A little voice said, "This might be offensive to Viki, for instance," and I stilled the voice and ploughed forward.

I cannot figure out why I ignored the little voice, not once, but twice. I know that people's feelings matter to me. I did not have the intention of hurting feelings. I think I hoped that the humor would prevail over any offense caused. But why was I so misguided? Why did I repeat and compound the error by ignoring the voice a second time?

I decided to explore the psychology of humor with my limited resources to see if I might gain insight. I discovered the work of psychologist Rod Martin whose research involves studying the ways in which people employ humor. Martin says that being funny may not be an expression of social skills, but rather the sign of a personality flaw.

Humor can be used to improve relationships or help the individual to cope with difficulties. But humor can also be self-deprecating or antagonistic. "It's a form of communication, like speech, and we all use it differently," says Martin. The clown who puts himself down has low self-esteem. When the put-down is directed toward someone else however, it may be an adaptive response. The tense air of the office can be lightened by ridiculing a tyrannical boss in his absence.

The world abounds with Jewish comics. Jews have long used humor to cope with oppression. It breaks the tension. Laughing or causing laughter takes away the stress of the situation. Making fun of the enemy knocks him down a peg or two. Remember the scene in Fiddler on the Roof where the Hassid asks his rebbe, "Rabbi, is there a proper blessing for the Czar?"

The rabbi says, "Of course my son, there is a blessing for everything," and thinking a moment recites, "May God bless and keep the Czar…far away from us!"

Humor is a key facet of my personality. I've always loved generating laughs. Sometimes I'm not even aware I'm being funny until someone laughs. Making others laugh involves generating a kind of surprised gut reaction. Socializing involves a certain protocol, being polite and adhering to norms. Laughter, on the other hand, is genuine and comes unbidden. It needn't conform to the standards of Emily Post. It just is.

So making someone laugh is about the nicest thing I know how to do. I like it better than anything. I don't even care about the sense of the words in the joke. I just want to hear those laughs. But maybe there's something else going on.

President Obama scares me. He poses an existential threat to me, my family, my country, and my fellow Israelis on many levels. I feel a sense of urgency that is not shared by many of my friends. Was my joining that page perhaps a way of pushing the boundaries, saying: "Please see my situation: my dilemma?"

I think so.

So, how do I explain away the MJ jokes?

I guess it boils down to how I view Michael Jackson. He had to change anti-Semitic lyrics in the song, They Don't Care About Us. He swore that these lyrics were benign. But then, in 2005, tapes were aired on Good Morning America, "They suck … They're like leeches. … I'm so tired of it … It is a conspiracy. The Jews do it on purpose."

It doesn't matter a bit to me that he changed the lyrics of that song to accommodate the ADL or got in bed with Shmuely Boteach. As far as I'm concerned, Jackson was an anti-Semite—a very talented person, but an extreme anti-Semite. I can never again listen to his music without the thought of his anti-Semitism coming to mind.

It isn't just his anti-Semitism, though. I also think about the baby-dangling incident. To me, MJ was not a good person. The court cases don't have anything to do with these feelings. I only look at facts. The facts makes him fair game as the butt of jokes—but NOT at the expense of my long friendship with Viki.

I think that joking about these two personalities boils down to wishing that my friends would share my passionate beliefs or at least see and recognize my feelings and fears. I crossed their red lines to make them see my own red lines. I think I would rather make my feelings known through humorous asides than by lecturing or being strident. But twice now, all I succeeded in doing was to cause offense.

I think what I learned from these two incidents is that friendship is not predicated on agreement. No matter how urgent an issue feels to me, it does not follow that a friend must agree. It's hard to take this in when I feel the issues are existential. But losing a friend is even harder.

I resolve to listen to those little voices, the next time they whisper a warning. I don't promise not to fail sometimes, but I hope that setting down my thoughts like this will firm things up in my mind and help me avoid future pitfalls that threaten my friendships with the people I love.