For some reason, Blodget has authored a troll-baiting piece on Business Insider asking why people do not like Jews.

The post initially looked like this. Note the slightly conspiratorial Hasidim and the assumption that "people" (non-specifically, in general) hate Jews:

Now it looks like this. Note the beautiful Hollywood Jedi/Jewess Natalie Portman, who is non-threatening and beautiful, and the clarification that only "some" people hate Jews:

Rather than link to it—or even, for that matter, bother reading it—let's just look at the superficial product he's produced here, which is likely to be the majority of what most people engaging in this will give anything resembling serious consideration to (a result partly produced by Blodget's commitment to headlines that write checks the stories below them can only occasionally cash).

Seeing as how Blodget himself is not Jewish, this is an odd question to ask, considering every race, religion, culture, ethnicity, nationality, and so on has been hated by another. If I were to ask, "Why do people hate Thought Catalog writers?" I would expect—and hope—the general population would assume I hate Thought Catalog writers, because I am "people." I am speaking as a "person."

In other words, to have a persecution complex about a religion you are not of might invite one who is of that religion (like the author of this blog post) to ask him:

Why do you think people hate Jews? Is it because you hate Jews?

For the record, I don't think Henry Blodget hates Jews.

I'm pretty sure he even has a few in his employ who he doesn't whip while building his SEO pyramids on a daily basis.

And I don't wonder whether or not Henry Blodget knows this might not be the best way to have a discussion about race and ethnicity and Anti-Semitism. Not that candor isn't appreciated, but The Internet Being What It Is, his post will no doubt invite a slew of nasty comments that will muddy anything that could remotely resemble an intelligible dialogue. And Henry Blodget is intelligent enough to know that this is the case, because he runs a business on the Internet.

Henry Blodget knows this is not the best way to have a discussion about race and ethnicity and Anti-Semitism.

The only possible motivation for writing a headline like that is to attract attention, and pageviews, and it's the kind of attention that will (naturally) only inflame parties on all sides (be they Jews, Jew Haters, Self-Loathing Jews, and so on). You can rest assured that whatever genuine intellectual curiosity Blodget has about this issue—and compassion towards marginalized and/or persecuted peoples, which I don't doubt he has—was made a moot point by that headline.

And as a Jew, I can tell Blodget, this does not necessarily help our cause.

All of which is to say: Blodget does love a juicy headline, and if he found the question at hand worth asking himself, well, it's obviously worth asking of him. Even if it's unfair to assume that Henry Blodget hates Jews.

Again, he probably doesn't.

fkamer@observer.com | @weareyourfek

New York City is unquestionably the metropolitan epicenter of Modern Jewry, a long way from the once humble home of generations-old immigrants who came from the "Old World"—as our grandparents tell us—to the one American city almost explicitly associated with the religion, its people, and its culture.  Its place as such has been documented extensively in literature and all forms of pop culture—Where to start?—and is commonly the center of Jewishness and Jewish figureheads in the news. For many Jews, a trip to Manhattan is just as much a birthright as one to Israel, as this is very likely the place their ancestry passed through in order to continue having one.

This has also resulted, of course, in an inordinate concentration of Jewish "Big Machers" (Yiddish for 'a mover/shaker' or someone who makes things happen). As distinct as New York Jews may be from the rest of the Jewish world, their own pairings are even more so: going to the high holidays at any synagogue is a loaded social affair; at New York City's Power Synagogues, it's often as much a spectacle as it is a service, whether said show is on the "bima" or in the pews.

As such, we've mapped out who we think are the Power Congregations of New York City, each with their own distinct history, power, scandal, and congregation. It's by no means perfect, or comprehensive; surely we've missed many a minyan or shul well worth considering (not a single one from the Lower East Side made it; Brooklyn only scored one), so we kindly ask that you pardon our chutzpah. Finally, for those who take offense to that, well: it is, after all, Yom Kippur. And we'll be sure to keep that in mind this evening. As they say: Good yontif!

fkamer@observer.com