Israeli Archive and Google Team Up to Put Holocaust Stories at Fingertips... from the NY Times, February 14

TEL AVIV - When Google, the world's largest search engine, joined forces with Yad Vashem, keeper of the world's largest Holocaust archive, the first thing one Google employee here did was search for his grandfather's name.Google and Yad Vashem have teamed up to digitize Holocaust records, making them searchable online.

A link took the employee, Doron Avni, to a Google-operated page on the Yad Vashem Web site showing a photograph of his grandfather, Yecheskel Fleischer, taken in 1941 just after he was released from a Nazi-run prison in Lithuania. Under the photograph of his grandfather, then 27, dark-eyed and gaunt, Mr. Avni was able to type in details of his grandfather's story. Icons on the page from Facebook, Twitter and other social media outlets allow for immediate sharing of the images and attached information.

"It's a milestone that marks a new era in our ability to disseminate and bring useful accessibility to Yad Vashem's databases," said Avner Shalev, chairman of Yad Vashem, at a news conference last month at Google's offices in central Tel Aviv. Yad Vashem began digitizing its holdings in the 1990s and has an extensive Web site, but the technology of Google, and the expertise of a team of employees who have been working on the project for three years, will make the information easier to find in search engines.

The photographs have been scanned using optical character recognition, which identifies any text in the pictures, making it searchable. So if Mr. Avni's grandfather's name had not been listed in a document but had been inscribed on a photograph, whether in Latin or Hebrew letters, he would still have been found.

The first stage of the Holocaust memorial's partnership with Google includes about 130,000 photographs in full resolution, stored on a Google server, with the option for users to add commentary, including historical backgrounds and personal family stories. The long-term goal is to include Yad Vashem's larger archive of millions of documents, including survivor testimonials, diaries, letters and manuscripts. Two years ago Google and Yad Vashem began their first joint project, a YouTube channel for viewing Holocaust survivors' testimonials.

John Palfrey, co-director of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard, said that although such public-private partnerships could make significant contributions, the private control of a public resource raised potential conflicts. "Down the road this altruistic project could look different," Mr. Palfrey said by phone from Cambridge, Mass. "I would say it's a good thing that information is made available to the world, but many of us worry about the central role a company is playing in the preservation of the world's cultural information." "It is about unknowns," he said. "We don't know where the corporate interest might get misaligned with the public interest down the line." For now, the interests appear to have converged.

After viewing his grandfather's photograph, Mr. Avni, the policy manager at Google's research and development center in Israel, added comments about how his grandfather hid in the forests of Lithuania until the end of World War II, only to be discovered by Russian soldiers who initially mistook him for a German and wanted to kill him.

When the soldiers were presented with the same photograph, clearly identifying him as a Jew because his shirt bore the Star of David that Nazis forced Jews to wear, his life was spared. "What my grandfather wanted was for the next generation to know about the Holocaust," Mr. Avni said. "He would have been inspired by this, to know his message is now being communicated to so many people around the world."

The Stranger In Your Midst by Rabbi Reuven Hammer, from the JP

Many organizations have been getting into the business of giving so-called "kashrut certificates" that deal not with the ritual aspects of kashrut but with ethical concerns. The Rabbinical Assembly in American now has a Magen Tzedek certificate it issues to indicate that the kosher food is produced in ways that meet the standards of business ethics of Judaism so that the food is ethically pure as well as ritually pure. Other rabbinical associations have followed suit. Here in Israel there is a group that issues certificates to firms indicating that they follow ethical business practices. All of this only emphasizes that Judaism is more than a set of rituals, it is also an ethical way of living.

I was shocked recently, however, to see a newspaper report recently that there is a Jewish organization here that is planning to give "kashrut certificates" to stores and companies that can prove that they do not employ "enemies of Israel," which the head of the group explained means that they do not employ Arabs. My immediate reaction was to say that any business displaying such a sign would be one I would absolutely refuse to patronize. The most disturbing part of the report was that this certificate was being sought after by many places in the ultra-religious areas of Jerusalem. What evil spirit is getting into such groups that would offer such a thing and that would want to display it? This is yet another discriminatory measure together with calls not to rent to Arabs and demands for loyalty oaths. I hope that common sense will prevail and that this "kashrut certificate" - which should more properly be called a certificate of shame - will disappear as if it had never existed.

Is it even legal in the State of Israel to discriminate against any group in employment on the basis of race or religion? After all, Arab citizens are guaranteed freedom and equality by our Declaration of Independence. It states quite clearly, "The State of Israel will uphold the full social and political equality of all its citizens, without distinction of race, creed or sex; will guarantee full freedom of conscience, worship, education and culture."

It would be well for us to remember both our history, in which for centuries Jews were denied employment in so many fields, and our tradition which forbids us to discriminate against non-Jews. For centuries in pre-emancipation times Jews suffered under the restrictions that were placed on them in regard to ways that they could make a living. They were prohibited from engaging in so many different trades and forced into such enterprises as money lending out of necessity. And in the Nazi era, among the first anti-Jewish laws that were passed in Germany and Italy were those forbidding the employment of Jews. They were forced out of universities, out of schools, out of orchestras, and their stores and businesses were boycotted. Then there was the informal discrimination against Jews that existed even in England and the United States, where it was difficult for Jews to be employed in banking and in certain law firms, as well as quota systems that kept Jews out of prestigious universities and medical schools. Do we now want to imitate that by encouraging businesses not to employ Arabs?

That religious Jews should do that is particularly disturbing because the Torah goes out of its way to prohibit discrimination and persecution of "the stranger." The Torah takes it for granted that when Israel inhabits it own land there will be non-Israelites who will dwell there with them and makes provision to protect them. This is analogous to the fact that non-Jews, Arabs, dwell in the modern State of Israel. The Torah is emphatic is emphasizing that these strangers must be treated well and fairly. In the very first of the Torah's legal codes it is stated, "You shall not wrong a stranger [ger] or oppress him, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt" (Exodus 22:20). This is repeated again even more explicitly in the very next chapter: "You shall not oppress a stranger, for you know the feelings of the stranger, having yourselves been strangers in the land of Egypt" (Exodus 23:9). The holiness code in Leviticus reiterates this and equates the stranger to the native, i.e. the Israelite: "When a stranger resides with you in your land, you shall not wrong him. The stranger who resides with you shall be to you as one of your citizens; you shall love him as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt: I the Lord am your God (Leviticus 19:33-34).

When the theme of the stranger is taken up by Deuteronomy it requires the judicial system to protect the rights of the stranger: "...decide justly between any man and a fellow Israelite or a stranger" (1:16). "For the Lord your God....upholds the cause of the fatherless and the widow, and befriends the stranger, providing him with food and clothing. You too must befriend the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt" (10:17-19). They were easy victims of economic exploitation, the deprivation of property, or denial of legal rights. Therefore the Torah provides for their protection and it is God who upholds their cause!

Yes, we were "strangers" not only in Egypt, but in Spain, in France, in Germany, in Morocco, in England and so many other places. We know and understand what that means and therefore should be ultra-sensitive to how we treat others. Israel has sufficient laws to protect us against traitors and enemies, internal as well as external. It does not need vigilante groups to work outside the law to keep us safe and untainted by the 'strangers' in our midst.

Israeli Archive and Google Team Up to Put Holocaust Stories at Fingertips... from the NY Times, February 14

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