If Elvis had lived, he could have been president – after all, if it was good enough for Ronald Reagan, imagine how the voters would have gone for Elvis Presley! But I have a better idea; He was such a unifying force and a symbol of coexistence, Elvis would have been the perfect candidate for Prime Minister of Israel! And he could have qualified for the job, too – after all, Elvis was (sort of) Jewish!

On the occasion of what would have been his 74th birthday on January 8, it’s worth remembering Elvis and his impact on bringing people together. While casual music listeners tend to put down Elvis’ relatively unsophisticated music, all his biographers attribute his early use of rhythm and blues (which some accused him of “stealing from blacks”) as opening the door for the Motown sound, and later on the rise of Michael Jackson and other modern African-American superstars. So right there, Elvis was a unifying force, right on his home turf.

But less known is his charitable work for Jewish organizations in his hometown of Memphis, and his attitude to racism – and to Arabs and Jews. There are millions of Elvis fans out there, which means there are thousands of stories floating around about him, most of which can’t be corroborated. But the overwhelming consensus of the man is that he was someone who was charitable – both financially and personally – and identified with minorities, including Jews and Arabs.

During his latter years, for example, Elvis would take to wearing a big “Chai” – and when he was asked why by his friend guitarist Charlie Hodge, he supposedly answered that he didn’t want to “miss out on going’ to heaven on a technicality!”. In fact, quoting from the book “Elvis and Gladys,”, this site makes a case for Elvis’ Jewish ancestry (his maternal grandmother), which explained to some extent his affinity for Jews. According to the book:

“One day the Memphis Jewish Welfare sent a delegation to Graceland to see him and ask if he could contribute. At Christmas every year he would donate $1,000 to a number of Memphis charities and one of them was the Memphis Hebrew Academy, and so they thought maybe they could get something. They explained what they do, taking care of poor Jews and orphans. Elvis excused himself for a minute. When he came back, he handed the leader of the delegation a check. They didn’t know what to expect. They thought $1,000 would be nice. When they looked at the check, it was for $150,000. The equivalent of more than a million dollars today. The man said, ‘Elvis, you must have made a mistake.’ Elvis said, ‘I didn’t make a mistake, I know what I’m doing.’”

And Elvis had a soft spot for Arabs as well. Michael Saba, former executive director of the National Association of Arab Americans, tells a tale of a childhood friend of his in Memphis:

“Farid told me that one day at his high school, some of the school bullies started teasing him, calling him names like “you dirty Arab” and threatened to hit him. He said Elvis came along and said, “Hey, you leave him alone. I know him and his family and they are very nice people. Those ‘Arabs’ treat me well and you better treat him well also.” The bullies moved off and Elvis told Farid that if anybody ever tried that again, he should let Elvis know.”

So besides a talent for music, Elvis had a talent for peacemaking! Of course, Elvis isn’t around for us to give him a try at leadership (or is he?) but we do have Israel’s Elvis Inn, “famous for bringing Arabs and Jews together,” especially on Elvis Impersonator Nights! And as one of the impersonators told reporters,

“If Elvis Presley was alive, he could help the crisis of the Arab and the Jew. I think he’d make a song of it, of the whole situation, and perform in a lot of Arab countries and of course in Israel. He’d try to make peace between the Israelis and the Arabs once and for all. I think he would have done it if he was alive today.”

Tel Aviv University researchers, led by Prof. Yuval Shavit, have developed a computer algorithm that has shown a 50% chance of identifying pop music stars based on file sharing networks like iMesh. The system, first developed by a grad student as his project for a master’s degree in computer science, analyzed 500 million requests by users for file downloads on the Gnutella file sharing network, and developed a list of “most likely to succeed” unsigned musicians and groups whose songs were being downloaded – without even listening to the songs. When the list was compared later to the U.S. Billboard popularity charts, as many as half the groups picked by the algorithm were found to have succeeded, either with a monster hit or a record contract.

For example, the system “discovered” Soulja Boy Tell’em and Sean Kingston weeks before their first hits even entered the Billboard Hot 100, and Shop Boyz before they were even signed onto a label. All three of these had grammy nominated/winning songs in 2007, and Shop Boyz Party Like a Rockstar was the number one downloaded ringtone in 2007. According to Prof. Shavit, there are many factors involved in success, including geography (where the artist is located, how often they play live, etc.) that the algorithm analyzes, and he believes that even greater accuracy will be possible with more work.

The grad student, Noam Kingstein, won a prize from TAU for the most commercially viable project, and at least one record company has already spoken to him. This is maybe the first time a system has been developed to allow record companies to profit from online music sharing, which has so far devastated sales.