Archive: March 2026

Being Pro-Semitic: Purell!

What got you through COVID? What product did you purchase so much more during COVID than you’d ever purchased before? Besides masks. That’s right – Purell! So here’s the story: In 1946, Jewish-Americans Goldie and Jerry Lippman founded a little company they called, GOJO Industries in Akron, Ohio, where they developed and manufactured their product, …

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Being Pro-Semitic: The Bar Code

Maybe U.S. Patent No. 2,612,994 doesn’t mean much to you. But have you ever seen or used a bar code? You can thank two Jewish-Americans, Norman Joseph Woodland and Bernard Silver for developing the first optically scanned bar code, patented in 1952. You may not remember before bar codes but one had to trust the …

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Being Pro-Semitic: Waze

Do you use Waze to find your way from one place to another? You can thank 3 Israelis who developed it in 2008 to offer real-time traffic updates for drivers in Israel to avoid congestion, accidents and other activity that results in slow-downs or detours. At the time, Uri Levin, Ehud Shabtai, and Amir Shinar …

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Being Pro-Semitic: Lise Meitner

Lise Meitner (1878 – 1968), Jewish scientist who has an element on the Periodic Table named for her. In the Periodic Table of the Elements, there are two elements named after women scientists. The namesake of Curium is well known, but the other scientist is unjustly obscure– Austrian-born Jewish physicist Elise “Lise” Meitner, who overcame …

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Being Pro-Semitic: Camille Pissarro

Camille Pissarro (1830-1903) was an Impressionist and Post-Impressionist painter who was a pivotal figure in the Impressionist movement. Born on the island of St. Thomas to parents of Portuguese Jewish and French Jewish ancestry, he is regarded as the “dean of the Impressionist painters” not only because he was the oldest of the group, but …

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Being Pro-Semitic

Talking proud about Jewish contributions to society By Jerry Brodsky Men’s Club is taking a different approach to combating antisemitism. We are promoting Judaism and why you should be proud to be Jewish, by highlighting Jewish contributions to our daily lives, and how a small number of people can make a large positive impact on …

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