Jewish Steve Jobs dies, and Mel Brooks on being a Jew

Have Courage to Change

Whenever we have repeated a pattern many times, it is difficult to change. But all patterns ultimately can in fact be changed. It is a question of having a clear goal - and then being motivated to take action.

It is easier to change patterns when two parties are willing to work together. If you are the only one, it takes more strength, more courage, and more resilience. That's why cooperation is essential in a marriage.

The Almighty leads a person on the path on which he wants to go. May He gave you the wisdom to make the right decisions and choices, and the strength and courage to follow through!

Love Yehuda

According to the article below, many of the foundational inventions that Steve Jobs made famous were helped to be created by Jacob Goldman who died on the 20th.  No one mourns hims the way the world mourned Steve Jobs. Just an observation.

Jacob Goldman, Founder of Xerox Lab, Dies at 90

Jacob E. Goldman, a physicist who as Xerox's chief scientist founded the company's vaunted Palo Alto Research Center, which invented the modern personal computer, died on Tuesday in Westport, Conn. He was 90.

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Joyce Dopkeen/The New York Times

Jacob E. Goldman in 1975.

The cause was congestive heart failure, his son Melvin said.

Emblematic of a time when American corporations invested heavily in basic scientific research, Dr. Goldman played an important role both at the Ford Motor Company, during the 1950s, and later at Xerox in the 1960s and 1970s, in financing such endeavors in an effort to spark corporate innovation.

In the late 1960s, Xerox, then the dominant manufacturer of office copiers, was searching for ways to move into new markets when he proposed an open-ended research laboratory to explore what C. Peter McColough, chief executive at the time, called "the architecture of information." Computer systems were still not available in offices at that time, and little was known about the shape of what would come to be called "the office of the future."

Xerox had recently acquired Scientific Data Systems, a California computer maker, to compete with I.B.M. in the data-processing market. At the time, however, computers were largely centralized systems that were not interactive. The minicomputer market was just being pioneered by the Digital Equipment Corporation.

Xerox did not initially have a grand strategy for entering the computing business, only an inkling that the data processing world was both an opportunity and a potential threat.

"He was the one that made sure that Xerox understood there was a revolution coming behind them that might change their business," said Michael Hiltzik, author of "Dealers of Lightning: Xerox PARC and the Dawn of the Computer Age."

Dr. Goldman had originally been brought from Ford to Xerox by John Bardeen, who was on the Xerox board and was also a physicist. (He helped invent the transistor at Bell Labs.) Dr. Bardeen knew Dr. Goldman in part because of his contributions as a corporate science manager and also for running a well-known poker game every year at the American Physical Society meeting, according to his son.

The Xerox laboratory was almost stillborn in 1970 when many of the company's directors resisted the idea of a West Coast center in an area in which the company did not have an active business. It was Dr. Bardeen who backed Dr. Goldman's early vision and persuaded the company to support the venture even though it would not bear fruit any time soon.

"It was Jack who brought the idea back to management that they could not expect to get anything useful for at least five years, but maybe in 10," Mr. Hiltzik said. "It was this idea that they did have to look far ahead and nurture research."

Established in 1970 in an industrial park next to Stanford, PARC researchers designed a remarkable array of computer technologies, including the Alto personal computer, the Ethernet office network, laser printing and the graphical user interface.

The technologies would later be commercialized by both Apple Computer and Microsoft, among others, and Xerox would be criticized for not capitalizing enough on the technologies it had pioneered. Years later, Dr. Goldman explained Xerox's failure to enter the personal computing market early on as part of a large corporation's unwillingness to take risks.

"A big company will not make the investment to bring out a new product unless they see it makes a big difference," he said in a 1988 interview in The New Haven Advocate. "Look at the personal computer industry today. It's a multibillion-dollar industry today. And we at Xerox could have had that industry to ourselves."

Dr. Goldman, who was often called Jack, was born in Brooklyn on July 18, 1921. His parents, Solomon Goldman, a jeweler, and the former Sarah Goldstein, had immigrated from Russia. Jacob attended Yeshiva University and received a master's degree and his Ph.D. in physics from the University of Pennsylvania. With expertise in magnetism, he began his career at Westinghouse in 1945, before moving to teach at Carnegie Institute of Technology in Pittsburgh.

Dr. Goldman also excelled as a manager. At Ford, which he joined in 1955, he went on to head the company's research and development laboratory.

Under Henry Ford II, he was one of the company's first high-ranking Jewish executives, as the company broke with its founder's anti-Semitism. A lifelong Democrat, he resisted a corporate memorandum early on demanding that executives make contributions to the Republican Party, his son said. After Dr. Goldman complained, the company changed its political contribution policy.

After retiring from the company he became a private investor and served on the boards of Xerox, General Instrument, the Burndy Corporation and other companies.

In, 1975, while still at Xerox, Dr. Goldman, as a director of United Brands, temporarily served on a committee that ran the company after the death of its chief executive, Eli M. Black, a high school classmate of Dr. Goldman's.

Dr. Goldman is survived by his wife, Rhoda Miller Goldman; his children, Melvin, Edith and Beth; his stepsons, Shalom, Ari, and Dov; a sister, Judy Crystal; eight grandchildren; and eight great-grandchildren.

This is an interesting article about the achievement of the Jews. Mel Brooks, a comedian, gives an interesting explanation that the success and accomplishment of each individual Jew is based upon the following three reasons: Heredity, Environment and Unique Value System.   This is a must read. Read it again and be proud.    Victor   Subject: mel brooks on being a jew   Mel Brooks on being a Jew: I may be angry at God or at the world, and I'm sure that a lot of my comedy is based on anger and hostility...It comes from a feeling that as a Jew and as a person, I don't fit into the mainstream of American society. Feeling different, feeling alienated, feeling persecuted, feeling that the only way you can deal with the world is to laugh - because if you don't laugh you're going to cry and never stop crying - that's probably what's responsible for the Jews having developed such a great sense of humor. The people who had the greatest reason to weep, learned more than anyone else how to laugh. Based on the accomplishments of individual Jews, Nobel Prize winners and heroes of modern culture, as well as the amount of attention Jews get in the media, you'd never believe the correct answers: There are little more than 13 million Jews in the world, comprising less than 1/4 of 1% of the world's population !!!! Do you think it's just a coincidence? Twenty-one percent of Nobel Prize winners have been Jews, even though Jews comprise less than one-quarter of one percent of the world's population. Choose any field, and you will find that Jews have excelled in it. Think of the names of many modern-day figures most responsible for the intellectual turning points in history - MARX, FREUD, EINSTEIN - and you will find proof of the Biblical verdict: "Surely this is...a wise and understanding people." There simply is no way to deny it. Jews really are smart. There must be a reason - and I can give you three: HEREDITY, ENVIRONMENT and A UNIQUE VALUE SYSTEM: HEREDITY - Historians have pointed out a fascinating difference between Jews and Christians. In Christianity, as well as in many other religions, holiness was identified with asceticism, great spirituality with the practice of celibacy. For centuries the finest minds among Christians were urged to join the church and become priests. That effectively condemned their genetic pool of intelligence to an untimely end. Jews, on the other hand, took quite seriously the first commandment to mankind - to be fruitful and multiply. Sex was never seen as sinful, but rather as one of those things created by God that he surely must have had in mind when he declared, in reviewing his work, that "Behold everything was very good." Among Jews, the most intelligent were encouraged to become religious leaders. As rabbis, they had to serve as role models for their congregants as procreators and "fathers! of their countries." Brains got passed on from generation to generation, and Jews today are still reaping the benefits of the frequent sexual activities of their ancestors. ENVIRONMENT - If challenge and response are the keys to creativity and achievement, it's no surprise that Jews are smart; they've been challenged more than anyone else on earth. The school of hard knocks is a wonderful teacher. Jews had no choice but to learn to be better than anyone else since the odds were always so very much stacked against them. When you're born with a silver spoon in your mouth, you tend to get fat and lazy. When you're born with the lash of a whip on your back, you quickly learn to become crafty, street smart, and knowledgeable in everything that will help you make it through life. A UNIQUE VALUE SYSTEM - We still haven't touched on the most important reason of all. Jews are smart because they have been raised in a tradition that treasures education above everything else, that considers study the highest obligation of mankind, and that identifies the intellect as part of us created in "the image of God." To be illiterate was unheard of in the Jewish world, not only because it was a sign of stupidity, but, more significantly, because it was a sin. Jews are obligated by law to review the Bible in its entirety every year, dividing it into manageable weekly sections. The widespread custom when a child turned three years old was to write the letters of the Hebrew alphabet on a board in honey and have the child learn them as he licked them off, equating their meaning with the taste of sweetness. Jews studied the Midrash, and it taught them: The Sword and the Book came from Heaven together, and the Holy One said: "Keep what is written in this Book or be destroyed by the other." Jews studied the Mishna and it taught them, "Say not when I have leisure." Philosophical Tevye , that delightful creation of the Yiddish writer Shalom Aleichem and the star of Fiddler On The Roof, explained that Jews always wear hats because they never know when they will be forced to travel. What he didn't say, which is probably more important, is that they always made sure to have something under their hats and inside of their heads - because physical possessions could be taken from them, but what they accumulated in their minds would always remain the greatest" merchandise" a Jew possesses. And you thought Mel Brooks was only a funny man.

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