26 | SEPTEMBER 16 • 2021 
 
 
 
 

OUR COMMUNITY

A

cross Facebook, 
Twitter and Instagram, 
antisemitism is no 
stranger to American Jews. 
Jonah Liss, 18, a recent grad-
uate of International Academy 
in Bloomfield 
Township, while 
scrolling through 
Twitter, unfortu-
nately saw messages 
such as “I wish 
Hitler was still 
alive,
” “Kill the 
Jews” and other hate directed 
at Jews. He then felt it was his 
duty to research the instances of 
antisemitism on Twitter.
Liss examined the issue 
methodically, using an artificial 
intelligence (AI) program he 
developed — and gathered data 
through Twitter’s application 
programming interface API.
API allowed Liss to scrape 
data using keywords over a 
specified time period. He could 
then take the data and apply it 
to his AI program, which can 
analyze aspects of text with 
human-like precision.
One of the applications is for 
“sentiment analysis,
” which is 
primarily used for identifying 
the opinions expressed in a piece 
of text. Opinions are sorted by 
positive, negative or neutral lan-
guage and can be very useful for 
recognizing hate speech. 
During the May battle 
between Israel and Hamas, Liss 
spent several days researching 
the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. 
“
As someone with a diverse 
group of friends, I think it’s a 
very complicated issue,
” he said. 
“Something that I found very 
disturbing in my research was 

the absurd amount of antisemit-
ic language on Twitter.
”
Liss pulled 100,000 tweets 
containing the words Israel, 
Israeli government, IDF, Jew, 
Jewish people and Judaism to 
see the relationship in rhetoric 
between the two groups. “What 
I found, unfortunately but 
expectedly, is that as negative 
language increased regarding 
Israel, antisemitic language also 
increased in general,
” he said. 
Liss found in May that neg-
ative and very negative tweets 
about Israel outnumbered 
positive and very positive ones 
by about 23,000 to 21,000, and 
negative tweets about Jews out-
numbered the positive by about 
26,000 to 17,000.
Liss used tweets in April as 
a control group since the battle 
between Israel and Gaza unfold-
ed in May. During the conflict, 
he documented an increase in 
negative tweets and hate about 
both the Israeli government and 
Jews in general.
Liss is a member of Temple 
Israel and belonged to BBYO 
Michigan Region. In the fall, 
he will attend the University 
of Michigan where he plans to 
continue his work in the social 
entrepreneurship world. 
Using technology to help 
fix what is wrong in the world 
is Liss’ forte and he has been 
involved in other technology 
projects. 
He is off to a fast start in the 
tech world. In 2020, he devel-
oped Meduimize, a software 
making it easier for people to 
shelter at home due to the pan-
demic to receive groceries and 
other essential errands. 

BRIAN GOLDSMITH SPECIAL TO THE JEWISH NEWS

Tech-savvy teen uses artifi
 cial 
intelligence to document antisemitic 
hate speech on Twitter.

Terrible Tweets

Jonah Liss

Jewish Senior Life held its annu-
al Senior Dream Cruise on the 
JSL campus in West Bloomfield 
on Thursday, Aug. 19.
With a mixture of the pan-
demic and a rain date pushing 
the event back a day, the event 
had 35 classic cruisers, fewer 
than usual.
But that didn’t stop the fun 
by any means, as seniors from 
across the JSL campus joined 
in awe, replicating the experi-
ence Metro Detroiters see on 
Woodward each year.
“We had to pick and choose 
what we did this year for safety 
precautions, but we always want 
to make it a really special expe-
rience for our residents and the 
cruisers,
” JSL
’s Leslie Katz said. 
“We’ve been doing this for so 
many years, and it’s just some-
thing we look forward to.
”
Through COVID and other 
obstacles, being able to put on 

an event such as this means a 
lot to Katz, knowing it’s a team 
effort. 
“Regardless of what the obsta-
cles are, we’ll make sure we can 
provide meaningful experienc-
es,
” Katz said. “That’s what we 
do and that’s who we are. We’ll 
figure out ways to do it in safe 
and special ways.
” 

JSL Senior
Dream Cruise 

DANNY SCHWARTZ STAFF WRITER

faces&places

Seniors on the JSL Campus 
enjoy their own Dream Cruise.

