New: Social Media and Social Networks Resources

Hi Everyone!

I created on my website a new hotsites section for Social Media and Social Networks.

The link is:
http://www.jr.co.il/hotsites/social-media.htm

The new section includes sub-sections on:
- Blogs, Twitter, Podcasts, Videos
- Forums / Discussion Boards
- Social Bookmarking
- Social Networks
- Social Media Articles

Feedback is welcome!

Shavua Tov - Have a Good Week,
Jacob

Uploaded New Learn English Video - Human Body Vocabulary

Hi Everyone!

I uploaded a new Learn English video to the Internet.
The topic of the new video is Human Body.

The address is:
http://www.learn-english.co.il/videos/index.html

The updated page also contains past videos that I uploaded.

Feedback is welcome.

Please forward this message to anyone that may be interested in learning English. Thank you!

Have a good day,
Jacob

Jerusalem Day on the J Site and 160 Hotsites

Hi Everyone!

Jerusalem Day is celebrated on the 28th day of the Hebrew month of Iyar. This year (5768 / 2008) the day falls on Monday, June 2, 2008.

The J Site - Jewish Education and Entertainment
http://www.j.co.il

has several entertaining features to celebrate Jerusalem Day:

Jewish Trivia Quiz: Jerusalem

Who built the first temple ?
How many people were involved in constructing the first temple ?
What are the colors of the Jerusalem Beitar soccer team ?
Which animal is on the emblem of the Municipality of Jerusalem ?
What three Jewish holidays is Jerusalem the focal point ?
How long ago was Jerusalem established ?
On what mountain was King David buried ?
How high is Jerusalem above sea level ?
What is the name of the famous art school in Jerusalem ?
What is the length of the wall surrounding the old city ?
When was Hebrew University established ?
Which group defended Jerusalem in 1948 ?
How many open gates does the old city of Jerusalem have ?
What is the name of the largest shopping mall in Jerusalem ?
Who was the first mayor of Jerusalem ?
What was Jerusalem called in the days of Abraham our patriarch ?

The above questions are examples from the multiple choice Flash quiz. There are two levels of questions, two timer settings. Both kids and adults will find it enjoyable.

Additional Jerusalem Day resources and games on the J site include:
Free Jerusalem Clipart
Hebrew Hangman Game
The Multilingual Word Search Game (English / Hebrew / Russian)
My Jewish Coloring Book (online / offline)
Jerusalem Hebrew Songs with Vowels (Nikud)

The J site has something for everyone, but if that is not enough, I posted on my website 160 links about Jerusalem, ranging from history and tourism to photographs and stamps.

All 160 links have been reviewed / checked this week.

The web address is:
http://www.jr.co.il/hotsites/i-jer.htm

Please forward this message to relatives and friends, so they can benefit from these holiday resources.

Enjoy!
Jacob

My Interview on Israel National Radio

Hi Everyone!

On Wednesday May 21, 2008 at 3:30pm
Eve Harow ('Judean Eve') interviewed me live (in English via telephone) on Israel National Radio (Arutz Sheva's Internet Radio Station)

I edited the two hour radio show and uploaded the 21 minute interview to my J site.

http://www.j.co.il/audio/interview.htm

Feedback is welcome.
Shabbat Shalom,
Jacob

TAU Job Fair

Hi Everyone!

This Wednesday, May 21, 2008, Tel-Aviv University is having its 28th annual job fair. This is one of the largest annual job fairs in the country.

The job fair is for students and graduates but is also open to the general public (I just verified that on the phone). I would recommend bringing with you a teudat zehut card or other picture id card and getting there early. Bring plenty of copies of your updated resume.

The job fair will take place on the Tel-Aviv university campus.
Date: May 21, 2008
Time: 10:00 to 18:00

Additional details are available on the job fair website (in Hebrew) at:
http://jobfair.tau.ac.il

Have a good day,
Jacob

New Israeli Educational Stamps Posted Online

Hi Everyone!

I scanned and posted on my website the new Israeli stamps that were issued in May 2008. I included the stamp itself, the first day cover, and an English and a Hebrew flyer about the stamp.

- "Hatikva" Israel's National Anthem (souvenir sheet)

- Israel - 60 Years of Independence

- The Israeli

- Independence Day Posters

- Memorial Day 2008

- The Israel Export Institute 50th Anniversary

- Flowers - Cyclamen Persicum, Rose

FYI - For the first time in Israel - scented stamps.
Using a unique printing technique, a different scent was
integrated into each flower stamp.

The new stamps are located at:
http://www.jr.co.il/pictures/stamps/index-2008.html

The top of the web page should display the date May 18, 2008. If the page has an older date, hold the control key and press the F5 key to refresh your browser with the updated page.

Shavua Tov - Have a good week,
Jacob

Educational websites about Lag Ba'Omer

Hi Everyone!

The Jewish festival "Lag Ba'Omer" is Friday, May 23, 2008. If you are flying over Israel on Thursday night (22nd) and you look down out of your plane, you will see thousands of bonfires dotting the landscape as far as the eye can see. There are various customs and explanations for these celebrations.

I posted on my website 36 links to learn about "Lag Ba'Omer".
All 36 links have been reviewed / checked this week.

The web address is:
http://www.jr.co.il/hotsites/j-hdayla.htm

Enjoy the bonfires!
Jacob

Top 60 plus one reasons I love Israel

Hi Everyone!
I read the article below in the Jerusalem Post and I thought it was worthwhile sending out to others.
Enjoy!
Jacob

Top 60 plus one reasons I love Israel
by Barbara Sofer
May 8, 2008

Why do I love Israel? Let me count the whys. Here, in no particular order, is an updated list, with new additions and highlights of recent years.

1. Jerusalem is so quiet on Shabbat that you can hear birds singing even on the main streets.

2. We change our calendars on Rosh Hashana, not January 1, because that's the real new year

3. Just hours after leading his Chelsea team to its first Champions League final, Petah Tikva-born coach Avram Grant joined the March of the Living in Auschwitz, and told all of Europe that his pride at Israel's emergence from the horrors of the Holocaust surpassed any football achievement.

4. We serve kosher food in the trendiest malls.

5. Streets bear the names of prophets and medieval poets. Our communications satellite is called "Amos."

6. Land of milk and honey: Big news when Israeli archeologists recently discovered evidence of the beekeeping industry - even beeswax - that goes back 3,000 years.

7. Land of milk and honey: We're so successful at making milk products that we have hundreds of choices of cheese and advise New Zealand about making sheep cheese.

8. The Nahariya-based Strauss company, started by dairy farmer immigrants from Germany in 1936, together with the Elite company started by a candy-maker immigrant from Riga in 1934, are the largest coffee manufacturers in Central and Eastern Europe, and second biggest in Brazil. Aviv Matza exports its unleavened bread to Egypt.

9. We have laboratories to check for the biblically prohibited mix of linen and wool, shatnes, and we're the first country to make men's suits from recycled plastic bottles, for sale soon at Sears.

10. At Jerusalem's Biblical Zoo, the loudspeaker announces "afternoon prayers (minha) are now being held near the elephants."

11. The Biblical Zoo is kosher for Pessah. The primates eat matza; the parrots get rice.

12. Every kindergartner knows that frogs are the second plague in the Haggada, but our "save the frogs" campaign was launched at the Biblical Zoo on Passover.

13. Mega investor Warren Buffet's first investment outside the US ($4 billion) was in Israel's Iscar company. He got so much positive publicity that he told Iscar's CEO: "I was nobody before I bought your company."

14. Sixty years after statehood, even young people refer to something old-fashioned as "from the days of the (British) Mandate."

15. Theodor Herzl's bearded image welcomes visitors to hi-tech Herzliya, and we celebrate Herzl Day.

16. My five-year-old grandson can tell you all about Theodor Herzl. Also about Spiderman.

17. Combat soldiers aren't embarrassed to phone their moms and grandmothers.

18. While Intel Haifa workers were working in an underground shelter because of the missile attacks in the Second Lebanon War, Intel announced the new multi-core processor developed there.

19. Entire families show up for military graduations, and bring enough food to feed an army.

20. Name droppers. The poet Chaim Nachman Bialik named the Egged bus company and also the Tishbi winery

21. Youngsters travel far to visit the Kibbutz Kinneret cemetery where poet Rahel and national song laureate Naomi Shemer are buried.

22. First graders read the Bible in the original Hebrew, and celebrate with a party.

23. We follow the level of the Kinneret more faithfully than we do our stock portfolios.

24. We have only one Pessah Seder but Purim, our dress-up holiday, lasts three days. In Jerusalem on Purim, it's hard to tell who's in costume and who isn't.

25. We have the highest concentration of hi-tech companies outside Silicon Valley, and also the most yeshivot anywhere.

26. After a calamity, police have trouble keeping away bystanders who want to help.

27. Thousands of free-loan societies flourish. You can borrow wedding dresses and pacifiers.

28. Despite the tensions and political dissension, Israel has the highest Jewish birthrate in the world.

29. Despite the tensions and political dissension, Israel is the fastest growing Western country in the world.

30. "Jerusalem of Gold" is still voted the favorite national song.

31. We have timeless cuisine: You can order Israeli breakfast, business lunch and dinner simultaneously at Israeli cafes.

32. Our pilots fought over the honor of taking part in a fly-by over Auschwitz 60 years after liberation.

33. Israeli fighter jets accompanied tourists safely home from Mombasa after they were threatened.

34. We have 120 members of the Knesset because that's how many were in the ancient Great Assembly.

35. We first developed candy-sweet cherry tomatoes as a TV-watching nosh.

36. On Remembrance Day and Holocaust Remembrance Day, the act of remembering halts traffic. Even kindergartners stand silently, and understand why.

37. While dining rooms are shrinking in Western homes, Israeli dining room tables are getting longer.

38. We invite strangers for a home-cooked Shabbat meal.

39. An Israeli artichoke farmer with a sore back developed the sophisticated Hollandia beds and exports them from Sderot to many countries, including Holland.

40. Strangers feel free to tell a parent to put a hat on the baby in a country where we wear scarves, snoods, spodiks, streimels, wimples, fedoras, berets, tarbushes, homburgs, kippot and keffiyot.

41. While other Western nations debate immigration, we absorb more immigrants per capita than any other country in the world. Almost immediately all learn the Hebrew word for patience, savlanut.

42. Our street musicians can play in symphony orchestras; our supermarket clerks know calculus.

43. Our biggest shopping seasons precede Rosh Hashana and Pessah.

44. Municipalities' decorating contests feature succot, not trees. The Succot holiday is high season in Israel; book hotel rooms a year in advance.

45. Even politicians from anti-religious parties say "Baruch Hashem."

46. "Where were your grandparents from?" is a common question. Where else would anyone care about my grandparents?

47. We celebrate Mother's Day, now Family Day, on the yahrzeit of Henrietta Szold who, with Recha Freier, organized Youth Aliya but who had no children of her own.

48. For all the talk about the greening of the planet, we're the only country in the world that started the 21st century with a net gain of trees. (Thank you, Jewish National Fund)

49. During the Second Lebanon War, JNF rangers stayed in the forests during Katyusha attacks to save the trees

50. We're among the most Internet-connected people on the planet.
We invented the cellphone, instant messaging, the chat room and the silent prayer, but still talk best with our hands.

51. Before Purim, the TV weather forecast relates specially to the day the kids go to school in their costumes. For a week before Yom Kippur, the weather report focuses on the upcoming fast.
52. We love children, and have more IVF per capita than any other country. It's free up to the first two children.

53. We celebrate Independence Day with a Bible Contest.

54. Israelis developed both the system to see photos from Mars and cameras to monitor crime on buses in Brazil.

55. Despite our soul connection to chicken soup, per capita we're the world's biggest eaters of healthier turkey, bigger even than America. Go figure!

56. We're among the first to help countries that experience disasters, and the first to have our field hospitals up. When Israel helped Turkey after an earthquake, an Israeli doctor made an incubator from a matza box.

57. Jewish soccer players for Bnei Sakhnin compete against Arab players for Maccabi Tel Aviv.

58. Childbirth and burial are free. Even the homeless have health insurance.

59. On Saturday night, the radio summarizes the news for all those who don't listen on Shabbat.

60. We're agricultural high achievers, producing seven times the output with the same water we used 25 years ago. Our date trees average 182 kilos - 10 times more than the average in the Middle East. One date tree is growing from 2,000-year-old seeds found in Masada.

And, as on a birthday cake, one for next year:

61. We come from more than 100 countries and dream in Hebrew.

I just joined Twitter

Hi Everyone!
I am waiting for the dryer repairman to pay a visit and then I hope to get some sleep.
Meanwhile.....

I just joined the very popular, free, Twitter social network.

My page on Twitter is:
http://twitter.com/jacobrichman

Some of you may be asking what Twitter is.

Here is the definition from Wikipedia:

Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that allows users to send "updates" (or "tweets"; text-based posts, up to 140 characters long) to the Twitter website, via short message service (e.g. on a cell phone), instant messaging, or a third-party application such as Twitterrific or Facebook. Updates are displayed on the user's profile page and instantly delivered to other users who have signed up to receive them. The sender can restrict delivery to those in his or her circle of friends (delivery to everyone is the default). Users can receive updates via the Twitter website, instant messaging, SMS, RSS, email or through an application.
------------------
Ok...in short it is a one line blog. I am not sure how often I will update it and what I will include. Some people twitter several times an hour. Maybe I will start with several times a week.

Feedback is welcome.
Have a good day,
Jacob

Educational Resources and Cool Videos for Israel Independence Day

Hi Everyone!

Israel Independence Day is celebrated this year on Thursday, May 8, 2008.

The J Site - Jewish Education and Entertainment

http://www.j.co.il/

has several entertaining features to celebrate Israel's 60th birthday:

Jewish Trivia Quiz: Israel

What is the national emblem of Israel ?
"Pehsek Zeman" and "Egozi" are what type of Israeli foods ?
Who was the first president of Israel ?
What was the 1917 British Balfour Declaration ?
What is Israel's Internet country code ?
What was "Operation Babylon" ?
Who were the first two countries to recognize Israel ?
What are Amos and Offeq ?

How many lanuages are engraved on Israeli coins used today ?
The above questions are examples from over 200 multiple-choice questions about Israel that may be randomly selected by the online quiz. There are two levels of questions, two timer settings. Both kids and adults will find it enjoyable.

Additional Israel resources and games on the J site include:

Free Israel Clipart
The Israel Geography Game
The Multilingual Word Search Game (English / Hebrew / Russian)
My Jewish Coloring Book (online / offline)
Hebrew Hangman Game
Israeli Hebrew Songs with Vowels (Nikud)

The J site has something for everyone, but if that is not enough, I posted on my website 126 links about Israel, ranging from history and tourism to photographs and stamps.
All 126 links have been reviewed / checked this week.

The web address is:
http://www.jr.co.il/hotsites/j-hdayil.htm

and......
This year I added a new Israel section to my YouTube Video sections. I gathered 106 cool Israel videos on YouTube.
Enjoy the videos at:
http://www.jr.co.il/videos/israel-videos.htm

Please forward this message to relatives and friends,
so they may benefit from these holiday resources.

Happy Israel Independence Day!
Jacob