Specious claims

Responding to my post JTA plagiarized mentalblog.com JTA editor Peter Ephross writes:

I am the JTA editor who edited the story that Tzemach says was plagiarized. We did no such thing. The first line he cites is similar, but I wrote it while editing the piece, and I had never seen his site until Tuesday, after our story went out over our wires. (It did allow me to see his fascinating blog, though, and I�m grateful for that!) As far as the other citations, the only similarities they contain are factual ones that Rabbi Karpov must give any people who interview him. There are only so many ways to say the same thing.

Steven I. Weiss comments on his blog Canonist:

Tzemach Atlas' plagiarism claim was quite specious to begin with, and that pretty much puts the lid on it. Too many J-bloggers are taking too much credit for items in traditional Jewish media reports, which is rather disappointing. It's good to see a blog like Tzemach Atlas doing original reporting, but being too boastful of that reporting, to the point of making specious claims like this one, undercuts the credibility of the blogger and upholds that of the reporter.

The reporter of the JTA story was Lev Krichevsky but I spoke to Peter on the phone on Tuesday. From the tone of his voice I am pretty sure that he indeed did not know about my blog before I called him. On Thursday I asked Rabbi Karpov about this similarity and he just chuckled and said that his interview with Lev Krichevsky was conducted on the phone and that indeed there is a possibility that he told us both the same thing.

Let's take the first example of the alleged plagiarism. The phrase "congregation from scratch" appeared in both interviews. It is important to remember that both interviews were conducted in Russian. The word Congregation is an English translation of what is in Russian a Synagoga or Obshina (community). And indeed the original story by Walter Ruby translated the name three different ways Shul, Synagogue and Congregation. So I and Lev or Peter all decided to use the same term "Congregation". So far so good. Now comes the scratch. This is unique English expression and similarly to "touching a base" is a metaphorical translation. It is possible that we both came up with this "scratch". But I was thinking about this story intensely when I wrote it and I even remember where this word popped into my head in relationship to this story. I was walking on the bridge over Fort Point Channel towards the Hook Lobster Market.

Next example was "50-60 people on Shabbos" versus "50-60 people to its Saturday morning services". During my interview with Karpov he actually said 50-60 people, "noshim, anoshim v taf" (men, children and women). It is possible that Lev and I used the same shorthand.

My last example brought up in the original post is actually from my telephone conversation with Karpov�s wife Nadia. Again it is possible that Karpov himself said the same thing to JAT reporter as his wife to me but the coincidental probability is rather amazing.

I wish much success to Lev and Peter because in the bigger scheme of things I don�t mind if they take what I wrote without attribution as long as this important story sees the light of day. Nevertheless if you Steven I. Weiss or anyone reads this unusually similar translation you might come to the same conclusion as I did. During my telephone conversation with Peter he said that he was going to ask Lev if he read my interview with R. Karpov before he filed the story from Moscow and before Peter edited it. I would be curios to know.