Soccer Dad, one of the early "J-Bloggers" who has spent years building up the Jewish and Zionist blogosphere, has just announced his retirement from blogging.
He is best known for having founded and maintained the Haveil Havalim Jewish/Zionist blog carnival, through which he promoted and publicized many new blogs.
His blog was fantastic. One of his specialties was skewering the NYT's Thomas Friedman, a long time before Latma . His posts were always thoughtful and intelligent. Soccer Dad was quoted with respect by general political blogs, not just Zionist ones. His political sense is excellent, and his blog had recently gotten its millionth pageview.
I have been amazed at his prodigious memory and recall of old articles and posts from all over. Today, for example, he reminded me of a post of my own from 2007 that I had forgotten about that was relevant to the video I posted earlier today.
Soccer Dad would tirelessly work to expand the JBlogosphere, cajoling people to make sure that they use links effectively to spread the wealth. He is also a mensch, always thanking me when I linked to him.
In addition, he is the JBlogosphere's "Alfred," knowing the secret identity of many anonymous bloggers, including myself.
More recently, he had been the Watcher and administrator for the weekly Watcher of Weasels list of the best, generally conservative, blog posts of the week.
I am much indebted to him for his many links to this blog and email support, especially in my early years. I felt that he was my champion, but indeed he was the personal champion for many blogs and we would not be as successful without him.
His online presence will be sorely missed.
UPDATE: How could I forget that he inspired one of my better videos, Hello Martyr, Hello Fatah:
