Congregation Emanu-El

It’s Yom Kippur—take the opportunity to spend time with family pondering past wrongs and starting the year 5773 on the right foot. As The Observer has reported, the city’s top power shuls include the Modern Orthodox Fifth Avenue Synagogue (home to Lenny Kravitz and Ronald Perelman), the Conservative Park Avenue Synagogue (see you there, Ralph Lauren!), and the unaffiliated B’nai Jeshrun (we’ll be wedged between Lloyd Blankfein and Tony Kushner). For tumbleweeds unable to admit to themselves that Labor Day has come and gone, the Conservative Synagogue of the Hamptons in Sag Harbor will open its arms.

In either case, the U.N. once again demonstrated its institutional contempt for Israel. Year after year, the U.N. has allowed itself to be used as a platform for virulent anti-Semitism, and not all of it from the mouth of Mr. Ahmadinejad. Indeed, the coddling of anti-Semites is one of the U.N.’s most durable traditions—remember that the General Assembly condemned Zionism as a form of racism in the mid-1970s.

That mind-set hasn’t changed much—otherwise the audience for Mr. Ahmadinejad’s diatribes would have disappeared years ago. It hasn’t. Indeed, the fact that he was allowed to speak on the topic of international law should tell us all we need to know about the view of some powerful functionaries at the U.N.

Israel’s U.N. ambassador, Ron Prosor, said that asking Mr. Ahmadinejad to speak about the rule of law was akin to “appointing an arsonist as fire chief.”

But it’s actually worse than that. Somebody at the U.N. clearly is willing to hand this arsonist a few matches. And somebody seems eager to see the results.

Israel has known for years that it should expect nothing but insults from the U.N. General Assembly. Still, it is imperative to remind fair-minded people in the U.S. and elsewhere of this ongoing outrage.

editorial@observer.com

Yaverbaum, a 49-year-old marketing exec who maintains offices in Manhattan and White Plains, founded Offlining Inc. with his frequent partner, Mark DiMassimo. The organization encourages people to put away their electronics and reconnect with family and nature. Since both men are marketers, they did what came naturally and created an ad campaign. "You don't have to be Jewish..." skewers various celebrities and their digital digressions.

Along with Mel Gibson, the campaign highlighted Lindsey Lohan and Tiger Woods. So far over 100,000 people have emailed these ads to friends and family, while 10,000 more have signed the Offlining pledge to have ten dinners without any electronic devices by Thanksgiving, 2010.

It's hard to tell how seriously Yaverbaum and DiMassimo are taking all this. “Eric and I have spent most of the past two decades convincing people to click, log on, trade stocks in their underwear, go shopping online, and spend more time with their digital friends," says DiMassimo. "We’re still doing that. But now we’re also going to be selling the off button!”

Last year the duo grabbed headlines for their Tappening campaign, which encouraged people to drink tap water and attacked the bottled water companies. The Tappening website features a poll that lets users vote on whether Yaverbaum and DiMassimo are greedy entreprenuers, selfless environmentalists, or both. It's a nice way of acknowledging the self-serving nature of the duo's various campaigns. Roughly half a million votes later, the answer is definitively both.