Tag Archives: New York

Jews of the Week: The Three Stooges

Larry, Curly and Moe

The Three Stooges. From Left: Larry, Curly and Moe

Of all the comedy acts ever produced, few can claim the wild popularity and success of the Three Stooges. The act began in 1925 as “Ted Healy and His Stooges”, with the first film produced in 1930. But it only catapulted to success after 1934, when the cast was solidified as the famous “Larry, Curly and Moe” trio. Moses “Moe” Horowitz (1897-1975) and Jerome Lester “Curly” Horowitz (1903-1952) were brothers born to Jewish-Lithuanian immigrants in Brooklyn. Despite his on-screen debacles, Moses was actually a child prodigy who had a photographic memory. His brother Curly (whose birth name was Yehuda Lev) was initially a well-known ballroom dancer and singer. They had a third brother Shmuel “Shemp” Horowitz (1895-1955) who was also part of the original act, and later returned after Curly died of a stroke in 1952. Meanwhile, Louis “Larry” Feinberg (1902-1975) was a Jewish-Russian comic and violinist from Philadelphia (who was once a professional boxer!) Together, Larry, Curly and Moe revolutionized farce and slapstick humour, and film comedians today owe a great deal to these pioneers. The Three Stooges starred in 220 films, at one point under contract to release 8 films every year because of their incredible popularity. They also appeared in four TV spin-offs, and between 1959 and 1966 recorded popular music albums. In the 1980s, a Three Stooges video game was created. It was so successful that the game was reintroduced in 2002 for GameBoy and in 2004 for PlayStation. Episodes of the Three Stooges continue to re-run around the world (and are particularly popular in East Asia). A new “The Three Stooges” movie is currently in production, reportedly starring Jim Carrey.

Words of the Week

When the mind is occupied… there is no room for stupid and vain thoughts devoid of substance.
– The Lubavitcher Rebbe in Hayom Yom, Cheshvan 16

Jew of the Week: Bob Kahn

The Father of the Internet

Bob Kahn – Father of the Internet

Robert Elliot Kahn was born in New York in 1938. After receiving a Ph.D from Princeton, and working at AT&T Labs, he joined ARPA, the US military’s massive research branch. There he led the team that developed ARPANet, which came alive in 1972 when twenty computers went online. Realizing the significance of this tremendous achievement, he moved on to develop a protocol that would allow all computers in the world to be connected. He wrote out the blueprint for TCP – Transmission Control Protocol. A man named Vinton Cerf joined him to develop this system [Vint Cerf is possibly a descendant of Jews himself, as “Cerf” is a last name common to Jewish-Hungarians]. Together they created TCP/IP, which serves as the backbone of the internet to this day, allowing computers to communicate with one another and exchange packets of information. Bob Kahn and Vint Cerf have therefore been titled “the Fathers of the Internet”. In 2004, they received the Turing Award for “pioneering work on internetworking, including… the Internet’s basic communications protocols… and for inspired leadership in networking.” The two have also been awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom (the highest award in the US). Interesting: Bob Kahn initiated what may be the largest single research project in history, the Strategic Computing Program, which cost over a billion dollars – in the 1970s!

Words of the Week

And at that time there will be no hunger or war, no jealousy or rivalry, for the good will be plentiful, and all delicacies available as dust. The entire occupation of the world will be only to know God… the people of Israel will be of great wisdom. They will perceive the esoteric truths and comprehend their Creator’s wisdom to the full capacity of man, as it is written (Isaiah 11:9): “For the Earth shall be filled with the knowledge of God, as the water fills the seas.”

– Maimonides (Mishneh Torah, Laws of Kings 12:5)

Jews of the Week: Martin Cooper and Joel Engel

Inventing the Cellphone

Martin Cooper & DynaTAC

Though many people were involved in the production of the cellphone, credit is given to Martin Cooper (b. 1928), nicknamed the “father of the cellphone”, who made the first cellular phone call in New York on April 3, 1973. Cooper was the executive of Motorola, and placed the first-ever cellphone call to his major competitor Joel S. Engel (b. 1936), a fellow Jew who was also working on cellphone technology. Engel participated in the Apollo space program and worked for AT&T before becoming the research head at Bell Labs, where he had previously co-led the team that developed “the architecture of the cellular network and its parameterization”. Meanwhile, Martin Cooper was born in Chicago to Ukranian-Jewish immigrants. Besides the cellphone, he had many more contributions to radio and communications technology, including “Cooper’s Law”, named in his honour. He went on to become Vice-President and Corporate Director at Motorola, which opened its first branch outside the U.S. in Israel. Their first phone was the DynaTAC, which weighed 1 kilogram and cost $9,000 (adjusting for inflation). Cooper described it as such: “The battery lifetime was 20 minutes, but that wasn’t really a big problem because you couldn’t hold that phone up for that long.” He said that his inspiration for the cellphone came from Captain Kirk’s Communicator device on Star Trek!

Words of the Week

Joel Engel

We have discovered how to hit the Jews where they are the most vulnerable. The Jews love life, so that is what we shall take away from them. We are going to win, because they love life and we love death.

– Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah