June 15, 2009

Welcome the Chosen Google: Koogle

Photo by flickr user cjbakker used under Creative Commons license

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It’s been a busy week for Israel. First, Obama laid down the law in Cairo, demanding a two-state solution to the protracted Palestinian-Israeli conflict. In response, Israel’s far-right prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu announced that he *might* be open to the *possibility* of a Palestinian state. Iran *almost* elected a president who doesn’t deny the Holocaust, while sporadic protests around the United States sought (ineffectively) to coerce popular supermarket chain Trader Joe’s into ditching Israeli products.

But none of that could prepare us for Koogle, the rabbi-approved, egg-noodle-punning Hebrew language search engine for the country’s exploding Orthodox population.  

Yes, Koogle—a play on Google and Kugel, a jewish noodle (or potato, or really anything) casserole—is better than all of these. The search engine (currently available only in Hebrew), filters all traif content, from sexually explicit or immodest images, to television, which is forbidden in most ultra-Orthodox communities. It also disables online shopping during the Jewish sabbath (Friday sundown to Saturday sundown). Creater Amos Azizoff told The Guardian he hopes the software will help more Hasidim—Judaism’s fastest growing sect—make the leap from the 18th to the 21st century.   

Koogle may be the most ambitious web application targeting the Orthodox, but it’s not the only one. Top 3 Orthodox-only websites after the jump:

3) Voz is Neis: Think Good magazine for Orthodox Jews. The online newspaper, “What is News?” in Yiddish, tries to answer that question with folksy stories on things like the record number of births in Borough Park and why gossip is actually good for your health. 

2) My Mikvah Calendar: You have a busy life, so why not use the magic of the Internet to help you maintain the ancient practice of “family purity”? The rabbi-approved application tracks a woman’s cycle, and actually texts her just before the prescribed period of separation between husband and wife around menstruation.

1) Shaindy.com: This site advertises itself as a place for married Orthodox Jews of all stripes (that’s Hasidish, ultra and regular Orthodox) to cheat, mutually, with other married Orthodox Jews. Yes, you read right—what would Yentl say? I don’t think the rabbis approved this one. 

 

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“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

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And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

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