• Home
  • About
    • About
    • Policies
  • Submissions
    • Op-eds
    • News / Announcements
  • Contact
  • Donate
  • Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer

eJewish Philanthropy

Your Jewish Philanthropy Resource

  • News Bits
  • Jewish Education
  • Readers Forum
  • Research
  • Show Search
Hide Search
You are here: Home / Summer of Innovation / Jewlicious Goes International

Jewlicious Goes International

May 18, 2008 By Dan Brown

Upon learning this morning of one of the new ROI Small Grants being awarded to jewlicious.ru, I asked David Abitbol, aka Mr. Jewlicious, Machane Yehuda resident, friend, and occasional contributor for this guest post on the new jewlicious.ru; it’s in the third person; but here is the original “ck”:

Jewlicious recently announced the creation of Jewlicious.ru – a Russian language version of our popular Jewlicious.com web site. Jewlicious.ru originated as a result of a conversation that began at the 2007 ROI summit between summit participant Tanya Gutsol and David Abitbol, the creator of Jewlicious.com, who was moderating the Content Delivery track at the Summit. Tanya, who hails from Kiev, Ukraine where she was staff at the local Hillel, had recently visited the Jewlicious Web site.

Tanya enjoyed the various posts related to Israel and Jewish related issues. The combination of politics and pop culture was something she hadn’t ever seen before and she thought it would be something Russian language readers would enjoy. “There are all these Russian Jews who have no idea that Jewish culture can be cool.”

At first Tanya suggested a Russian language Jewlicious magazine made up of both original content and content translated from Jewlicious.com. Mindful of the expense and time involved in such an undertaking, David suggested instead a Web site, just like Jewlicious but in Russian. Given the size and geographical dispersion of Russian speaking Jews around the world, this was clearly the way to go. Sure enough, a week later, the site was ready and Tanya and a small crew of other Russian speaking ROI alumni got to work translating and creating content.

Recently, Jewlicious.ru received modest seed funding from The Schusterman Foundation and the Center for Leadership Initiatives in the form of a grant from the ROI Small Grant Fund. These funds will be used to help promote the Web site and recruit more staff. A mere two months old, and using only word of mouth publicity, Jewlicious.ru is attracting an impressive 500 unique visitors a week. Of course the site’s potential is much greater than that and with a little more hard work and support, Tanya is certain that she will be able to reach 10 times that number of readers in the short term.

The site itself is slickly designed and the content includes a number of interesting stories. For instance, there’s a post about Dmitry Salita, a native of Ukraine who is both an undefeated boxing champion, an Orthodox Jew and the subject of a recent feature length documentary called “Orthodox Stance.” There is also the first person account of a Muscovite who went to Jerusalem and described her time studying at Pardes, a progressive, co-ed Yeshiva that specializes in text study. Add to that the usual collection of Jewish events and cutting edge music and you have some pretty compelling content geared towards Jews between the ages of 18 and 36, regardless of the language they speak.

Jewlicious.ru seeks to act as a bridge between young Russian speaking Jews and the English speaking Jewish community. It is hoped that this cross cultural fertilization will serve to encourage greater unity and communication amongst communities that traditionally have very little informal contact with each other. These efforts are already bearing fruit as Jewlicious contemplates various real-world activities and events in the Former Soviet Union.

If you want to help or if you’d like more information, feel free to send an email to jewlicious@gmail.com.

updated May 25: Meet Tanya and read her poignant and personal post, Israel and Judaism: What’s normal, weird, awesome, cute, eternal? on 60 Bloggers.com.

Print Friendly, PDF & Email

Filed Under: Summer of Innovation, The World Tagged With: connect, Hillel International, ROI Community / Schusterman, Taglit-Birthright Israel / Birthright Israel Foundation

Click here to Email This Post Email This Post to friends or colleagues!

Reader Interactions

Trackbacks

  1. Summer of Innovation | eJewish Philanthropy says:
    May 20, 2008 at 1:59 pm

    […] For more on the Summer of Innovation and to meet another ROI grant recipient, check out Jewlicious Goes International. […]

Primary Sidebar

Join The Conversation

What's the best way to follow important issues affecting the Jewish philanthropic world? Our Daily Update keeps you on top of the latest news, trends and opinions shaping the landscape, providing an invaluable source for inspiration and learning.
Sign Up Now
For Email Marketing you can trust.

Continue The Conversation

  • Email
  • Facebook
  • RSS
  • Twitter

Recent Comments

  • Lyn Light Geller on Being Heard: What We Owe Jewish Community Professionals
  • Sheila Katz on The Unfinished Work of Inclusion
  • Sarah Schuminsky on The Unfinished Work of Inclusion
  • Paul F. Resnick on Toward a Strategic Philanthropic Approach to Field Building
  • michael shire on The Big Jewish Question On My Mind:
    Where Am I Complicit in Perpetuating Bias?

Most Popular Recent Posts

  • BBYO receives historic $25 million Pledge to Support Women’s Leadership and Empowerment
  • Words to Avoid – 2019 Edition
  • Being Heard: What We Owe Jewish Community Professionals
  • Redefining Jewish Education: Federations’ Goals for a New Century
  • Caregiving – The Big Issue No One is Talking About

Categories

Archives

Footer

What We Do

eJewish Philanthropy highlights news, resources and thought pieces on issues facing our Jewish philanthropic world in order to create dialogue and advance the conversation. Learn more.

Top 40 Philanthropy Blogs and Websites to Follow in 2019

Copyright © 2019 · eJewish Philanthropy · All Rights Reserved