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Jews For The Preservation of Firearms Ownership, Inc.
P.O. Box 270143
Hartford, WI 53027

Phone (800) 869-1884
Fax (425) 451-3959


June 13, 2001

What Hath G-d Wrought!

The bad news first. It is "Small Arms Destruction Day" on July 9, 2001. Plans are underway for government agents to ignite huge bonfires of handguns, rifles and other firearms in major population centers worldwide. (http://jpfo.org/alert20010525.htm)

Now some lighter news. JPFO's "Ask the Rabbi" column has placed among the funniest seven web pages on the Internet in Henry Alford's latest release, Out There: One Man's Search to Find the Funniest Person on the Internet. It is available as of today from www.Amazon.com --

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0812991516/jewsforthepreser

"This is some kind of weird joke", you're thinking. Yes, we are inclined to agree with you.

When Samuel Morse sent the first message via his telegraph invention from Washington D.C. to Baltimore in 1844 he coded the verse "What hath G-d Wrought" (Numbers 23:23).

We will never know the first words of Tim Berners-Lee when he invented the Internet in CERN, the European Particle Physics Laboratory in Switzerland, in 1989. History was kind to him by not recording that first sentence for posterity. He probably got a busy signal. No verse from the Bible seemed to fit the occasion. Whatever he said may have been unprintable.

A curious telephone (first patented by Alexander Graham Bell in 1876) call sometime in 1998 from Rabbi Mermelstein to Aaron Zelman, JPFO Executive Director, set the foundations of JPFO's Ask the Rabbi page. It has gained hearty praise and acrimonious vilification from opposing ends of the political and Jewish spectrums since its inception.

The first posts were typewritten replies to questions from our website's visitors received by our first webmaster whose name will not be divulged to spare him any embarrassment. He faxed them to Rabbi Mermelstein and they were dutifully faxed back with replies. Said webmaster had to copy the faxes, word for word, convert them to HTML and upload them to the website. Friend (you know who you are), if you read this, we hope you've forgiven us by now.

Rabbi Mermelstein's PC was a resurrected pre-Pentium 286 and he had not the foggiest clue about the Internet or email. After a few angry calls from that anonymous webmaster to Aaron Zelman the problem was solved. Rabbi Mermelstein was about to be dragged into the cyber culture kicking and screaming despite his feeble protests regarding the constitutionality of such coercion.

Our plans for JPFO's Ask the Rabbi page were the same as Tim Berners-Lee's plan for the Internet in general: Global information sharing. Our new page would be serious, informative and innovative. If a bit of tasteful tongue in cheek humor could be interjected where appropriate, all the better to maintain reader interest. We never envisioned a slapstick comedy act in hypertext markup language.

After the best laid plans of mice and men, JPFO's Rabbi Mermelstein was voted the fourth funniest person on the Internet. In case you are wondering who was voted the funniest, you'll have to buy the book. Here's a hint: Rabbi Mermelstein isn't especially flattered.

Out There is not a book about the Second Amendment. It is written as humor, pure and simple, by a freelance writer in New York City.

JPFO cannot give this work a Suitable for General Audiences rating. Like the Internet itself parts of it are, shall we say, a bit risqué.

Why do we bother to mention this book at all, then?

In our business of disseminating the truth about the US Constitution and the Bill of Rights we tend to draw lots of fire from those who wish the truth never got out.

Out There, by Henry Alford, will bring our presence on the World Wide Web to others who would have never otherwise found us.

And in the world of global information sharing every bit of advertising helps.

The Liberty Crew

[If you buy "Out There" from Amazon.com via this link:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0812991516/jewsforthepreser

JPFO will get a small commission]


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