I know there’s probably no point, but I finally snapped and dished some truth to some Israel haters in my Facebook feed. What finally set me off was this comment: “I find it inescapable that the Israelis took Palestine from the folks who were living there in 1946. Out of that injustice springs the current strife. I think the Israelis need to (1) apologize and (2) foot the bill for building a viable Palestinian state (a la the Rand plan), and (3) pay reparations. That would be a solid start to ending the conflict.”
I dined at Stoddard’s last night with six of my Quantopian coworkers. It was not a positive experience.
Our outing to Stoddard’s was one of our regular team dinners, which are about much more than just eating and drinking. They are about solidifying relationships so that we can do our jobs better and be successful as a company. Being at these dinners is therefore important both to my own career and to Quantopian’s success.
However, I maintain a strictly Kosher diet for religious reasons, so I can’t eat any of the food that Stoddard’s serves, or for that matter any of the food served by any of the restaurants where we eat.
In the more than two decades I’ve been a working professional, I’ve attended many such dinners; I’ve brought my own food to most of them; and it has never been a problem — in fact, no employee of any restaurant has ever said a single word to me about it — until last night.
Halfway through our meal, our server informed me that the restaurant could not allow any outside food to be consumed on the premises. (more…)
Someone forwarded me a chain letter today about how offensive it is that a blatantly antisemitic web site, JewWatch, shows up at or near the top of the search results when you Google the word “Jew”.
Recently, I wrote about BNY Mellon’s inept handling of 2010 1099-OIDs for Israel bonds, my relief that the State of Israel had decided to replace BNY Mellon with Computershare as the fiscal agent for Israel Bonds purchased in the U.S., and my hope that Computershare would be better than BNY Mellon.
Less than 12 hours after I posted that blog entry, I received email from someone at Computershare:
My wife and I own a number of Israeli Bonds purchased over the course of many years (typically after annual High Holiday appeals). Many of these bonds are Original Issue Discount (OID) bonds. Dispensing with all the technical details, the general idea of an OID bond is that you get a 1099-OID statement every year showing how much you have to report to the IRS and pay taxes on as income, but you don’t actually get the money you’ve thus reported until the bond matures and you redeem it.
Until very recently, Israeli Bonds sold in the United States were administered by BNY Mellon. They’ve been the agents for some other stock I’ve owned, and they have been consistently difficult and unpleasant to deal with.
Here’s your chance to donate to the relief efforts after the Carmel fire in Israel and get something more than just a sense of satisfaction from having done a good deed and helped people in need. You can also get a good, hearty belly laugh from seeing me with no hair, half a beard, and only one eyebrow.
Sound intriguing? Well, then, click here to find out more!
(This is not a typical post for my blog. Those of you who aren’t Jewish can feel free to skip it.)
My bar mitzvah was December 18, 1982, the second Shabbat of Hanukah, parashat Miketz. Each year on the anniversary of my bar mitzvah, I read part of the Torah reading (the first four aliyot is all I’ve managed to learn in all these years), and each year, I see something new in this remarkable parasha. This year I noticed two things I’d never noticed before. (more…)
I know there’s probably no point, but I finally snapped and dished some truth to some Israel haters in my Facebook feed. What finally set me off was this comment: “I find it inescapable that the Israelis took Palestine from the folks who were living there in 1946. Out of that injustice springs the current strife. I think the Israelis need to (1) apologize and (2) foot the bill for building a viable Palestinian state (a la the Rand plan), and (3) pay reparations. That would be a solid start to ending the conflict.”![[Digg]](http://blog.kamens.us/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/digg.png)
![[Facebook]](http://blog.kamens.us/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/facebook.png)
![[Email]](http://blog.kamens.us/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/email.png)
