June 19: Occupy Judaism

Daniel Sieradski (aka Mobius), the founder of Jewschool and other popular Jewish websites, and a key Jewish figure in the Occupy Wall Street movement, was born on this date in 1979. Sieradski has worked as the Jewish Telegraphic Agency’s digital media director and has been an innovator in connecting the organized Jewish world with social media. In 2004, he organized an attempt to hack the Google search engine in protest of the fact that an anti-Semitic website’s would appear at the top of searches for the word “Jew.” From 2004 to 2007, Sieradski was active in Corner Prophets, an Israeli-Palestinian hip-hop collective that promotes peace through hip-hop arts. On Yom Kippur last year, Sieradski organized a Kol Nidre service at Occupy Wall Street in Zuccotti Park, which was attended by over 1,000 people. He was numbered by the Forward among its 50 most influential Jews in 2010.

“[I]f Judaism isn’t a movement for social justice — if it’s not concerned primarily with loving others as you love yourself and upholding their dignity — then there’s no point in being Jewish.” —Daniel Sieradski