Your Very Own and Personalized Haggadah
Take a California artist and designer. Add the message of Passover, the traditional story of freedom. Stir in an ROI120 seed grant and a PresenTense fellowship experience. Connect and Incubate. The result:
Haggodot.com, an online workspace for Jews of all backgrounds to upload, exchange and personalize their own Passover Haggadot.
Haggodot.com; truly a global seder table.
Creator Eileen Levinson, in her own words:
“The Open-Source Haggadah is a website that allows users to share, personalize, and collectively publish Passover Haggadot. Users upload their pages into a searchable gallery. They may then print a Haggadah of exclusively their own uploads, or mix and match from pieces of anyone else’s contributions to create a Haggadah mash-up. The website will allow for Jews of all backgrounds to share their unique takes on the book, as well as provide a platform for Jews to create a Haggadah that is personal to their lives. As the website grows and becomes more varied, its contents will be an archive of Jewish traditions and help promote a more contemporary stance on Jewish texts.”
Haggodot.com - coming soon to your computer.
Protecxia; An Oleh’s First Word
Many years ago, on day one of Ulpan - Kitah Aleph, our excellent and high-strung Sabra instructor told us the first word we needed to learn and understand was Protecxia. As a room full of 20-somethings, with at least half planning Aliyah, we were made to understand that grasping this concept was as important as the Hebrew skills she would impart to us over the next six months if we were to have a successful klitah here in Israel.
Fast far forward to today and another one of the innovative projects to come forth from this summer’s cohort of the PresenTense Institute is
Protecxia: Immigration Integration Initiative
Founded by Erin Kopelow, a recent Olah and Jerusalem resident, whose first experience in Israel was with a one-year MASA volunteer program, Protecxia takes this long-standing concept and updates it for the 21st Century.
Protecxia’s goal is to effectively integrate immigrants as well as potential-immigrants between the age of 20 to 35 into Israeli society and culture through a network of people and activities. Read more
Yavnet: Connecting Content and Technology
It was an unusual combination of resources. JT Waldman, the creative director of YAVNET, the new interactive branch of the 120 year old Jewish Publication Society, was here in Jerusalem to attend the ROI120 Summit and then participate as a fellow at the PresenTense Insititue. 21st century innovation meets a publishing industry in turmoil.
Behind JT’s participation: JPS has embarked on its most ambitious project since 1985, when after thirty years of scholarly endeavors their English translation of the Tanakh was completed.
YAVNET is a different kind of translation project; designed to lead to the creation of the DIGITAL TORAH, it is a community collaboration involving scholars and lay people, the rich legacy of the written and oral Torahs, the vast textual resources of Jewish tradition from the Bible to the present day, and the pooled wisdom of the community.
All this is now possible, as the technologies of the Internet and Web 2.0 transform the way we learn and communicate. Read more
Connecting With People
Two University of Oregon undergraduates are the visionaries behind a new initiative launched this past week: Shomer Achi.
One of the many projects incubated this summer at the PresenTense Institute, Shomer Achi is an international organization that acts to strengthen Jewish identity and Jewish unity by fostering sustainable and community based connections between Israeli and American Jewish college students through parallel social service initiatives, dialogue, and leadership training.
In the words of co-founders Jodi Mererowitz and Jamie Zebrak:
“Shomer Achi presupposes an urgency to shift the Jewish self perception. For too long, true dialogue and understanding has been stifled by pre-existing modalities that limit the scope of the Jewish experience. America has either been the generous donor of aid to Israel or Israel has served as protector of disenfranchised Jews worldwide; a hierarchy of power that has served as the only framework within which Jews in Israel and the Diaspora have cooperated.
It is time for us to explore a world in which Jews everywhere can work together and contribute to one another. Our communities are able to cooperate as equals adding mutually to the greater goal of facilitating and enhancing the Jewish experience. Shomer Achi does not suppose that Israel now needs to ‘take care of’ America or that America needs to be the beneficiary of Israel. It is necessary to switch our understanding of how Jews worldwide can move forward and achieve greater cohesiveness as a people.”
Shomer Achi already has a pretty impressive list of partners, including B’Tzedek and Haifa Hillel, along with a few long-time and well known communal names on their advisory board. I have a hunch we will be hearing a great deal more from these two young women.
Not only are Jodi and Jamie Cool People, they’re people to watch!
Hey, Yiddle Diddle
This past Thursday night, the PresenTense Institute concluded their 2nd summer fellowship program with a presentation to the community on the extraordinary projects they have been hard at work on these past six weeks. eJewish Philanthropy will be profiling many of them for you over the next two weeks.
So today, as we introduce our newest project, Cool People, Cool Stuff ™, I find no better candidate for our first profile than Hey Yiddle Diddle Productions, one of the coolest initiatives from this summer’s PresenTense cohort.
For me, this was an easy choice. For as the summer went by, and without exception, every time I walked into the PrersenTense ‘home’ in Arnona, I was greeted by the cheerful and huge smiling, Chari Pere - the creative mind behind Hey Yiddle Diddle, Old-fashioned Jewish humor as you’ve never seen it before…
In Chari’s words: “In an increasingly cynical world filled with so much schmutz and mean-spirited humor, the good ol’ fashioned comedy of the past is getting lost between generations. These jokes and stories, treasured parts of Jewish cultural heritage, are still very much relevant today, but are in desperate need of a makeover.
Hey Yiddle Diddle Productions creates whimsically funny and captivatingly wholesome products that bridge the growing gap between generations. We incorporate a clean-cut style and attitude into cartoons, illustrations, merchandise, and animations that appeal to all Jewish denominations. We are revitalizing a culture of Jewish or Yiddish humor presently teetering on the brink of extinction.”
Check out Chari’s calendar, a great way to support this up and coming Jewish cartoonist:
A YEARLY SHPRTIZ OF JEWISH BITS
The Ultimate Illustrated Calendar of Jewish Humor (Old & New)
This is a must-own for anyone who’s Jewish, Jew-ish, or for anyone who wants to discover the Jew in you. Over 490 Holidays and more than 80 illustrated jokes and gags. Some are borrowed, some are new, but all are visually interpreted with a fresh point of view.
The calendar is available at several New York area Judaica stores, or you can order directly from Chari here.
Hey Yiddle Diddle Productions: It’s out with the old and in with the renewed.”
Cool People, Cool Stuff ™
Today we introduce Cool People, Cool Stuff ™ our most ambitious Symposia project to date. Through these posts and resources, we will look at the new and innovative entrepreneurs and the endeavors they are creating on multiple comments.
We are at the beginning stage of developing a reference library of the various organizations and foundations involved in Social Entrepreneurship Programs and New Leadership Development in Israel, North America and the U.K. This will premier later this month.
And we have recently added a Social Entrepreneurship category to our Resources Section where you will find links to organizations and foundations at the forefront of this vital field. As with other areas of our focus, we plan to add related articles as they become available.
We have more in store for Cool People, Cool Stuff ™ but you will have to wait a bit for details. For now, check out Windows into the Future, for some insight into what the cutting-edge PresenTense Institute has been up to lately.
As always, we welcome your suggestions and hope you find this section informative, interesting and useful.
Cool People, Cool Stuff ™ is a registered trademark of eJewish Philanthropy.
Windows into the Future
Last night I had the privilege of attending the 2008 PresenTense Fellowship Pitch Day at Yad Ben-Zvi here in Jerusalem. There, PresenTenses’ 2nd cohort of fellows presented their ventures to the community. It was not just the culmination event of their work, but a testimony to the hours of support that volunteers, coaches, mentors, friends, colleagues, peers, teachers, and more have invested in all the various projects.
I’ve been around the Institute quite a bit; not only this summer but for the past fourteen months. And as founders Ariel and Aharon made their summation, what impressed me most was the significant leap forward the various programs of PresenTense have made over the past year. A grass roots start-up not so long ago, PresenTense, along with their 300+ international volunteers, is making a significant mark on our communal world: through innovation, publishing and training new leaders. And like ROI120, PresenTense has very much developed into both an international brand and major player in Jewish social entrepreneurship and new leadership training.
Stay tuned; on Sunday we will begin profiling just a few of the extraordinary projects previewed last night. Also keep your eyes peeled; for PresenTense will be coming to a location near you, sooner than you think. New York / Boston / Chicago / Tel Aviv readers, are you listening?
about: The PresenTense Institute’s Summer 2008 fellowship brings together social entrepreneurs and innovators on the cutting edge of Jewish creativity - pioneers, like those of old, inspired by the simple notion that “If you do it, it is no dream“.
This summer, for six intense weeks, the fellows lived and breathed Herzl’s vision of determined creativity, developing the newest ventures in the PresenTense Network.
You are invited to join PresenTense in unleashing the innovation and creativity of the Jewish People, launching ventures to solve human problems with Jewish solutions for the benefit of the Jewish People and the World.
click the image for a video presentation of the Pitch Day presentations.
Shabbat Shalom from Jerusalem
