New Voices e-Gossip Print E-mail
Written by Daniel Estrin   


In this installment of New Voices e-gossip, we take you to two new sites on the information superhighway that caught a blip on our radar screens.

The first website is of linguistic interest: Wikipedia, the ever-expanding online encyclopedia, is starting to make its entries available in the fledgling Jewish languages of Yiddish and Ladino.

The second site is for the over-18 crowd: the likeness of the late Rebbe Menahem Mendel Schneerson, poster child of the Lubavitch movement, is now popping up on internet porn sites (!).

Started in 2001, Wikipedia is edited by its very own readers, who make thousands of changes an hour to its entries. The virtual encyclopedia has a combined total of over three million entries in about 229 languages. It’s no surprise that the Hebrew edition is expanding rapidly, containing over 10,000 articles. But Yiddish? In the latest development of the Yiddish revival movement gaining popularity across the country, the Yiddish Wikipedia site (pronounced Vikipedia) has now amassed about 1,000 entries. If there ever was hope for our grandparents to turn tech-savvy and read about Osama Bin Laden’s latest broadcast and other breaking news in their mamaloshen, this is it.

But wait—there’s more! Avoiding accusations of being Ashkenazi-centric from our Sephardic compatriots, Wikipedia has recently launched a new site in Ladino, with 292 Ladino entries and counting. Ladino, otherwise known as djudeo-espanyol, is the traditional language of Jews descended from those kicked out of Spain in 1492. And for all you Spanish speakers out there, no, djudeo-espanyol is not a typo. While Ladino was always written in Hebrew (in Rashi script or in Solitro, a type of cursive), it developed a standard Latin orthography in the twentieth century. The Wikipedia site contains material in both versions—in Latin characters and in Hebrew.

And while we wait for the Jewish dialects of Persian, Arabic and Berber to win representation in the Wiki world, we turn now to some more internet-savvy Orthodox Jews…who have successfully penetrated internet porn sites.

According to Yedioth Aharonot, a daily newspaper in Israel, a group of ultra-Orthodox Jewish hackers calling themselves the Da-Net group is breaking into pornographic sites and replacing lewd pictures of naked women with the likeness of Rebbe Menahem Mendel Schneerson, the late leader of the popular Jewish Lubavitch movement.

Below each image, the group includes the following disclaimer: “We, the Da-Net group, have hacked into this site and erased all of its abomination.”

Many followers of the Lubavitcher Rebbe believe that he is the Messiah and will eventually bring about an era of universal peace, freedom, and prosperity. How disappointing, then, to find out that he is merely the Playmate of the Month.
Comments
Add NewSearch
Write comment
Name:
Email:
 
Website:
Title:
Security Image
Please input the anti-spam code that you can read in the image.

Copyright (C) 2007 Alain Georgette / Copyright (C) 2006 Frantisek Hliva. All rights reserved.
 
< Prev   Next >
[ Back ]