Thanks to Jacob Shwirtz and ROI for having me last week. I enjoyed sharing the mission of MTV Scratch with such a progressive group. Great questions, and nobody made fun of my new sweater vest.
For more on the event, click here.
And what does Carmelo Anthony of the New York Knicks have to do with this? Nothing, but welcome to NYC, Melo.
Pretty amazing video via Alana Newhouse…
The Sandpit from Sam O’Hare on Vimeo.
(By the way, if you’re not reading Alana’s magazine, Tablet, you’re missin’ out.)
Did you read the NY Times story about Sergey Brin’s $1MM donation to the organization that saved him and other Jews from death at the hands of Russian anti-semites?
Maybe the money I sent to Bolislav Vainman, my “Russian Twin,” in 1986, did find its way to him, after all. Maybe my mom was wrong, maybe Bolislav, like Sergey, did, as I predicted, use my Bar Mitzvah money to move to Israel, start a tech company, sell it to Sun Microsystems or something, and live happily ever after while I toil in Times Square?
Before Sergey Brin co-founded Google, he was a little Jewboy getting beat up in Russia. This is what he looked like…
The Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society is going to use Sergey’s donation to digitize their records. That might mean they’ll help us in our search for Bolislav Vainman. But as of tonight, when I search for Bolislav, I am left feeling like a hungry Russian dog, cold and alone in the Siberian desert:
My mother weighs in on the post about my search for the kid I gave half my Bar Mitzvah money to…
“Actually, Ross, I don’t think Bolislav has any idea who you are or what you did. The Russians intercepted your letters, and he never received anything. It was all in vain. Like his name. You like that rhyme?
“Don’t you remember we put special stamps on it? They were supposed to tell us when he got the money. We got the return-receipt back, but he hadn’t signed it.
“The Russians took your money, Ross.”
I love my mom.
Twenty-two years ago, I gave half my Bar Mitzvah money to a Russian Jew I didn’t even know.
At the synagogue, I made a poster with his name on it, drew some six-pointed stars with a red sharpie, threw a tallis over the top, and propped up the poster on its own chair on the bima, as I read from the Torah in front of everyone in the congregation.
Bolislav Vainman wasn’t just a celebrity at the center of my coming-of-age party, he was my very own international call for justice.
At the party
