Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
The Schmooze

More Jewish Conspiracies? Avent and Microsoft

We’re convinced that all these Jewish conspiracy theories originate with an in joke.

For instance, anyone with a young child, sleep deprivation and a history of working in the Jewish media would see how infant-product company Avent is a secret Jewish cabal.

And furthermore, a few weeks ago, Darren Garnick spotted the uncanny resemblance of the new MS Office for Mac icons to Hebrew letters and wrote about it on his Culture Shlock blog.

He went as far as contacting Microsoft about it, and a representative responded that the company merely attempted to create a new look that is “Approachable, Energetic, Exacting and Elegant. Any resemblance… is purely coincidental.”

The Hebrew letters, positioned one next to the other, as on the image above, spell out the word “kash,” which means “straw” in Hebrew (the alef is extraneous but phonetically it works out). What could all this mean? Nothing, of course, but we’re sure conspiracy-theory fans will find yet another message of Jewish world-domination here. The straw that broke the camel’s back! Camel being the white Western male, of course. The straw they sip their hummus through! The straw they gathered to make Pharaoh’s bricks — Israel is about to reclaim the storage cities of Pithom and Ramses.

No, no, we swear, we’re just being… Approachable and Energetic!

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.

Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.