The Jewish Week | Connecting the World to Jewish News, Culture, and Opinion

A Burial For The Books

Among Sandy’s casualties were 80 tons of sacred texts and ritual items, all requiring a respectful goodbye.

01/08/13

Stewart Ain

Staff Writer 

They too are the remnants of Sandy’s fury.

In the days after the superstorm flooded homes, synagogues and yeshivas, water-soaked Jewish holy books containing God’s name — known as shaimos — were brought by their owners to a truck in Far Rockaway,

Queens hired to transport them to a proper burial place. Read more...

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Job Search for the Rest of Us!: HOW TO TURN AND INTERVIEW INTO A JOB OFFER

Job Search for the Rest of Us!: HOW TO TURN AND INTERVIEW INTO A JOB OFFER:

THURSDAY  THOUGHT Questions about interviewing are the hands down, #1 most asked career related questions I get.  For the most part wh...

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James Bondskie At MTA Yeshiva University High School for Boys

Check These Out at the Library: Blacksmithing, Bowling, Butchering - WSJ.com

Check These Out at the Library: Blacksmithing, Bowling, Butchering - WSJ.com

To Draw Crowds, Some Facilities Offer Much More Than Books; Expanding the Tool Selection

By OWEN FLETCHER

A hogbutchering demonstration at the Overland Park, Kan., library in November.

Alex Pope had no qualms about the ruckus one of his employees made on a recent afternoon at the Central Resource Library in Overland Park, Kan. The fellow in a black apron and baseball cap sawed around the joint of a 120-pound pig carcass and snapped off the back leg.
"It was a pretty audible crack," said Mr. Pope. "We like to start with that one because it's pretty dramatic."  Read more...

—Caroline Porter contributed to this article.

A version of this article appeared January 8, 2013, on page A1 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: Check These Out at the Library: Blacksmithing, Bowling, Butchering.

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Job Seekers: Why You Should Try A Temp Job | CAREEREALISM

Job Seekers: Why You Should Try A Temp Job | CAREEREALISM

By Amanda Haddaway

Photo Credit: Shutterstock

Some job seekers are hesitant to accept temporary or contract assignments because they are concerned if they commit to something short-term, they will miss out on opportunities for full-time assignments. This may be a bit short-sighted because many employers are now using staffing agencies (and sometimes internal recruiters) to “try before they buy” job candidates. In many cases, short-term assignments are being extended and even becoming full-time opportunities for some workers.  Read more...

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Massive Open Online Courses Prove Popular, if Not Lucrative Yet - NYTimes.com

Massive Open Online Courses Prove Popular, if Not Lucrative Yet - NYTimes.com

By TAMAR LEWIN

Published: January 6, 2013

Online Learning, en Masse: More top colleges are offering free massive open online courses, but companies and universities still need to figure out a way to monetize them.

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. — In August, four months after Daphne Koller and Andrew Ng started the online education company Coursera, its free college courses had drawn in a million users, a faster launching than either Facebook or Twitter. 

 The co-founders, computer science professors at Stanford University, watched with amazement as enrollment passed two million last month, with 70,000 new students a week signing up for over 200 courses, including Human-Computer Interaction, Songwriting and Gamification, taught by faculty members at the company’s partners, 33 elite universities. Read more...

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As Use of Libraries Grows, Government Support Has Eroded - NYTimes.com

As Use of Libraries Grows, Government Support Has Eroded - NYTimes.com

Government & Politics January 8, 2013, 8:37 am15 Comments

By SAM ROBERTS

Kirsten Luce for The New York Times The after-school scene at the Corona branch of the Queens Library, where parents bring children to receive help on their homework.

To see how New York City’s library systems stack up next to other big cities’ libraries in terms of government support, you might want to check the cookbook shelves under “chopped liver.”

In Columbus, Ohio, the libraries are open an average of 29 more hours a week. San Francisco’s receive up to three times as much per capita from the local government.
Meanwhile, New York’s three public library systems — workhorses all — are trying to do more with less: the city’s contribution to their operating budgets has declined by more than 7 percent, adjusted for inflation, over the past decade, even as circulation and program attendance have increased.

That’s the conclusion of an analysis of New York’s libraries and a comparison with 21 other major American library systems, plus Toronto’s, published Tuesday morning by the Center for an Urban Future. Read more...

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Why Privacy Matters Even if You Have 'Nothing to Hide' - The Chronicle Review - The Chronicle of Higher Education

Why Privacy Matters Even if You Have 'Nothing to Hide' - The Chronicle Review - The Chronicle of Higher Education

By Daniel J. Solove originally published May 15, 2011

Daniel J. Solove is a professor of law at George Washington University. This essay is an excerpt from his new book, Nothing to Hide: The False Tradeoff Between Privacy and Security, published this month by Yale University Press.

When the government gathers or analyzes personal information, many people say they're not worried. "I've got nothing to hide," they declare. "Only if you're doing something wrong should you worry, and then you don't deserve to keep it private."

The nothing-to-hide argument pervades discussions about privacy. The data-security expert Bruce Schneier calls it the "most common retort against privacy advocates." The legal scholar Geoffrey Stone refers to it as an "all-too-common refrain." In its most compelling form, it is an argument that the privacy interest is generally minimal, thus making the contest with security concerns a foreordained victory for security. Read more...