ZOMG!! Y1d5 Ru|3!!!!
Published on July 29, 2007 By Larry Kuperman In Internet
The question of how many Jews there are begs the definition of "What is a Jew?" and also "Who is a Jew?" Questions that have been asked many a time.....mostly by other Jews. Being a Secular Jew myself, I like the most liberal, inclusive definition that includes....well ME. The biggest number that you will see is about 18 million Jews. This works out to something like 1/4 of one per cent of the world's population. So you would expect that our impact on the Internet would be proportional to our numbers.

Not so, bubbala. (A term of endearment, darling. Can you feel me virtually pinching your cheek? In a nice way.) The impact of Jews far outweighs their numbers. Lets look at "Who's A Yid?"

Larry Page and Sergey Brin, founders of Google. Larry Page's mom, Gloria Page, is Jewish. Sergey Brin was born in Moscow, Russia, to Jewish parents, Michael and Eugenia, who fled to America for religious freedom.



Facebook was founded by Mark Zuckerberg, while he was a student at Harvard University. It was originally going to be limited to Harvard students, but expanded quickly. Zuckerberg saw the potential in the site and sought capital. He turned to Peter Thiel, a co-founder of Paypal and, not-so-coincidentally, also Jewish. Facebook is often rumored to be up for sale. How much is Facebook worth? Let me refer that to Mr. Thiel: "Facebook's internal valuation is around $8 billion based on their projected revenues of $1 billion by 2015." Founder Mark Zuckerberg is 23, or as we like to say, 10 years past his Bar Mitzvah.

Robert Kevin Rose is, comparatively, an old man at age 30. He is best known for founding Digg.com. Robert lost his job during the burst of the Dot Com bubble, ended up working as a production assistant on the show The Screen Savers He began appearing on air and stepped in as host after Leo Laporte left TechTV. On November 1, 2004, he started a site that combined social bookmarking, blogging, RSS into arguably the premier tech news site. Today Digg is rated among the 100 most popular sites on the web.

Scott Blum has been referred to as the "Sam Walton of e-commerce." Leaving a successful career as a shoe salesman as a youth, he founded Microbanks, a company that sold add-on memory modules for Macintosh computers. Before his 21st birthday, he sold Microbanks to Sentron Technology in San Diego for $2.5 million in cash. He would then co-found Pinnacle Micro with his father. Leaving there under a cloud of dubious accounting practices (he paid no penalty and admitted no guilt) he would go on to found Buy.com. He left before went public, returned to take it back private and it is now his baby.

RealNetworks is not the most beloved company in the world, nor is Real Player a favorite product. But there is no question that CEO and Founder Rob Glaser has been influential. When he founded Real Networks in 1994, at age 31, he was already a millionaire from his days at Microsoft. He has had a major impact on the Internet.

Certainly also worth mentioning are Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft, whose mother is Jewish; Larry Ellison, founder of Oracle, who was born on the Lower East Side of New York to a Jewish mother and raised by his great-aunt and great-uncle in Chicago; and Phillipe Kahn, founder of Borland.

What would the Internet be like with Google, PayPal, Facebook, Digg.com, Buy.com? It would be very, very different.


Comments (Page 2)
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on Jul 30, 2007
@old crab,

Precisely.

Racism has two sides.

@Jafo

I do indeed challenge racism (as ignorance) wherever I see it, from any side of the coin it comes from. And since Larry has posted almost nothing but stories about Jewish issues (no problem there), I made the assumption that he is indeed Jewish. That would be why I believe his post was prideful, and this self-serving.

Peace.
on Jul 30, 2007
amen...
on Jul 30, 2007
A person's worth should never be measured/determined by race, colour or creed, but by their deeds/actions. Deeds, good or bad, have no race, colour or creed....for if we attach any of these to action(s), we open the door to jealousies, prejudices and/or intolerances....
on Jul 30, 2007
He wasn't measuring a person by his race, but a race by the (net) worth of certain people.
on Jul 30, 2007
"I don't believe in "inherent" superiority. Ability may be inherent, but the willingness to use it is a matter of individual choice. Success is based on both ability and drive. To your second point, yes, I suggest that the values of Judaic culture, as opposed to the religion itself, increase the odds of entrepreneurial success."

Culture, not race or religion.

"I made the assumption that he is indeed Jewish."

Stated in the first paragraph.

"You named a handful of successful entrepreneurs out of literally thousands of billionaires."

I also cited a report conducted by Ohio State University to support my theory. There are many, many others. A People That Shall Dwell Alone: Judaism as a Group Evolutionary Strategy, Kevin MacDonald, can be viewed at Link

A study by Stanford University cited: "Today, though barely 2% of the nation's (referring to the US) population is Jewish, close to half its billionaires are Jews." Continuing on the report further cites "The role and influence of Jews in American politics is equally marked. Jews are elected to public office in disproportionate numbers. In 1993, ten members of the United States Senate and thirty-two members of the House of Representatives were Jewish, three to four times their percentage of the general population."

I cited that 4 out of the top 31 billionaires on the Forbes list were Jewish. That is approximately 13%, or 52 times the percentage of the population. Disproportionate.

Interesting that this article was termed "racism." Jews are so ethnically diverse that we never really consider ourselves a race, more often a religion or a culture. Is stating that one culture is more likely to lead to success (and supporting that assertion) prideful? Maybe, if you belong to that culture. Racist? Hardly.



on Jul 30, 2007
Jews are so ethnically diverse that we never really consider ourselves a race, more often a religion or a culture


agree with that.

More: RACISM/RACIST i'm sorry but it's dumb to talk about race about humans
English a nationality, Black white yellow a color of skin, christian jew a religion. and all of that it's HUMAN and there are only one RACE: HUMAN
At least you can talk about species in talking about different humans but not Race.
So pretend to be racist is dumb you can maybe pretend to be "specist"

To be serious a little: i guess here people take a word for one of his definition and others for the other definition
Larry i could be wrong talk about Jews as culture (who include history and religion)
And some other take this word only for nationality or religion.

No Racism/specism here only studies about culture behavior and adaptation in different society through the success of certain people from this culture.
Nothing more.
on Jul 30, 2007
So what? I mean seriously... yes so some rich people believe in one big fairy godfather in the sky instead of another big fairy godfather in the sky? If you're going to publish something like this on Wincustomize lets have some articles about other rich people and their imaginary friends too!
on Jul 30, 2007
Good Article Larry - from A Jew who lives in Israel
John
on Jul 30, 2007

I made the assumption that he is indeed Jewish. That would be why I believe his post was prideful, and this self-serving

Now, as I understand it Americans are a proud nation....they take pride in their nationalism/heritage/etc.  But gosh, darn....pride is 'self-serving'...it's a 'major sin in every religion'.

Gee....I'll have to look down on my sinful American friends, then,....lest God smite me down too.

I think those who most espouse the 'challenging of racism' actually need to redefine their interstices with reality [yes, it's a word].

Fortunately [for me] I'm Australian, not American. We don't feel 'pride' as such....but 'luck', hence we refer to 'the lucky country'.

Don't confuse 'pride' with 'arrogance'.

There IS nothing wrong with being proud....

on Jul 30, 2007
And the division of people into class and categories and religions continues ... and continues....


Sad isn't it.  
on Jul 30, 2007
hey kupe. just a simple point out! don't take much to bring the anti-semites crawling out from under the rocks does it.
on Jul 30, 2007
It would seem in reading the original post and the ensuing replies that a couple of old, meant to be funny, sayings come to mind.

"We have met the enemy and they is us" is one.

It would seem that no matter how hard we as people of the world try to move away from the insane trappings of our past, some of us just can't let go. People succeed because they do. They work harder than the rest of us, they may even be smarter (not really sure that has been proven), but most of all they believe in themselves. Nothing what so ever to do with race, religion or what color socks they wear.

Don't get me wrong, being pround of your heritage is important, it defines who we are as individuals.

The other saying, well alot of you aren't going to like it, "There's no fix for stupid". Think about it, it will come to you.

Everyone have a great day.   
on Jul 30, 2007

As someone who considers himself part of no particular race or creed, my observation, as a broad generalization, is that Jewish people, like many minority groups, are far more clanish than the majority of people.

And by clanish, I mean that they will go out of their way to help others of their clan than they would someone else even if they don't know them very well personally. This, in turn, gives them a significant material advantage over others.

It's akin to a giant fraternity where jobs, opportunities, access to capital and connections are made available purely based on the fact that they share a particular creed (in this case, Judaism). 

I've seen the same sort of clanishness with nearly every other minority group so it's not specific to Jewish people.  The difference is that in the United States, Jewish people have never faced much discrimination so that the native advantages of having a vast network of people there to give you a leg up based purely on a shared creed had a head start over later comers (Asians, etc.).

The fact that the examples given are almost all American Jews I think really hits home this observation. 

As someone with no preconceived notions on the matter and never having belonged to any clan (whether it be a fraternity, prestigious university, religion, or race) it is something that is both fascinating and frustrating as I am a big believer in pure merit and having met some of the examples you mention above personally and knowing one of them pretty well, I think that a significant piece of their success (at least in the ones I know personally) comes not from "pulling yourself up" but more of a leg up thanks to the help of other members of the clan. I don't think it would be hard to deconstruct some of the success stories listed in the article to drive the point home.

If anything, I would argue that this topic serves more as a text book case of the power of clans and how groups of people who are tightly connected in some way tend to do far better than the general population -- regardless of whether they're Jewish, Hindu, Harvard alumni, or heck Scientologists.

on Jul 30, 2007
Post # 28 is dead on. I was raised Jewish (Mother). Now I am nothing, except when I have a Jewish business associate, then I am a Jew.   

on Jul 30, 2007
don't take much to bring the anti-semites crawling out from under the rocks does it


Where? I don't see any.
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