(Beware: thar be silliness dragons beneath!)
It is a Jewish custom to utter the Hebrew phrase yemach shemo (“may his name be erased”) whenever mentioning a great enemy of the Jewish nation, past or present. For example,
“At that time, Adolf Hitler, yemach shemo, had risen to power in Germany.”
Last week I stumbled on an amusing comment over at the Or Gadol blog. In the comments to one post, blog reader Gene Shlomovich wrote of JerusalemCouncil.org,
Ah those guys – the only legitimacy they have is their domain name (may it be expired and not renewed, G-d willing).
“May their domain name be expired” – ha. I don’t think Gene intended it, but that gave me a laugh – it reminded me of the yemach shemo phrase. Kind of the 21st century tech equivalent, if you will. Amusing!
I thought of a few more techno-curses:
“May his website 404.”
“May the internet archive pass over his domain.”
“May his tweets be whaled.”
“May his hosts file be hijacked.”
“May his homepage be rickrolled.”
Any others?“May a host of trojans come upon him.”
(Hey, I warned you this post would be nonsensical! 
May his blogroll downhill?
ReplyDeleteA good one, and a word-play to boot! Ha! Love it.
ReplyDeleteOK, how about this one:
ReplyDeleteTo a [blog] owner:
"May he lose all his readers, except one. And that one should give him nothing but tsuris."
OK, another on for a [blog] owner:
ReplyDelete"May your blog be only found in Google Cache - on the 6th page!"
Hahah, love 'em!
ReplyDeleteClearly, you've been thinking too deeply about techno-curses on us poor blog owners! ;-)
I'm much more into science fiction/space rebukes:
ReplyDelete"If you don't shut up you'll find yourself behind that bulkhead floating home!"
Not too deeply - those things come to me naturally:) I grew up hearing a variety of Yiddish pseudo-curses from my bubbala - not directed at me - well, at least not most of them!
ReplyDeleteYet ANOTHER [particularly harsh] one for a [blog] owner:
ReplyDelete"May your blog be permanently taken down for ToS violation, and may all your emails to tech support be misrouted."
May your blog be full of cobwebsite.
ReplyDelete3rd try's a charm:
ReplyDelete"May your site be the target of a distributed DoS attack, and may the pings of a thousand botnets be upon you."
(I like the nerdly tech ones!)
Thanks for the techno-laughs!!! Very funny.
ReplyDeleteAnd I was just reading Deuteronomy 28 this morning!
You've got the updated version of "the botch, the scab, the itch, the blasting, the mildew. It talks about new plagues not even mentioned in the book of this Law (vs. 61). Possibly referring to cyber-plagues.
But, on a serious note, aren't we supposed to bless and curse not? (Romans 12).
"But, on a serious note, aren't we supposed to bless and curse not? (Romans 12)."
ReplyDeleteTandi... I don't think it's as clear cut as you imagine. Paul cursed the enemies of G-d who opposed him in Galatians 1:8, Galatians 5:12, 2 Timothy 4:14, and 1 Corinthians 16:22, just to give a few examples. I suppose there is a place and time for everything under the sun!
Oh, this could be *so* abused. Oy.
ReplyDelete"Oh, this could be *so* abused. Oy."
ReplyDeleteJames, grace can be *so* abused, law can be *so* abused, so called "righteous" anger can be *so* abused, authority can be *so* abused... you get the point.
It was a joke, Gene. I was commenting that word play can be bent and twisted in ways to produce many different kinds of humorous outcomes, some being less than "politically correct" than others.
ReplyDeleteYeshua said in Matthew 6:34 that each day has its own troubles. Perhaps each day also has a chuckle or two, if we know where to look. I know that there are times when I definitely need to lighten up.
"It was a joke, Gene. "
ReplyDeleteSometimes it's hard to tell over the web, I suppose.
Thank you for reminding us to renew the domain. May HaShem bless you with a desire to join our vision and make it a reality.
ReplyDelete"Thank you for reminding us to renew the domain."
ReplyDeleteDarn!
Hahah. Now that's ironic.
ReplyDelete@JerusalemCouncil,
ReplyDeleteMy post wasn't meant to demean your organization. I don't know enough about your org to say either way. Looks interesting enough, though, so I will subscribe to your RSS feed and we'll see where it goes from there.
Thanks!
"Hahah. Now that's ironic."
ReplyDeleteJudah, LOL - some curses take time:) G-d is merciful and gives ample time to repent, what is what I hope "JCouncil" site owners would do, eventually!
@Judah todah, we understand. No offense taken as we realize how intriguing the nature of modern web curses are. If we weren't the target of the original comment, we might have added our own ideas. :)
ReplyDeleteWe get misunderstood a lot. Our RSS is hardly updated since we publish articles rarely. If you really want to get to know us, we invite you and anyone interested in the vision we've posted, to join the mailing list, or at least peruse the posts to that list. We've got quite the orthodox Jewish believing community there discussing many matters of interest to MJs worldwide, and we could use your input.
@Gene may we all make teshuvah.
Fair enough. I've joined your mailing list.
ReplyDelete