Meeting int’l Jews – one minute at a time

Short videos to be screened in prime time shortly before news broadcasts.

By GREER FAY CASHMAN
Taglit Mega event at Jerusalem's Binyanei Hauma (photo credit: MARC ISRAEL SELLEM/THE JERUSALEM POST)
Taglit Mega event at Jerusalem's Binyanei Hauma
(photo credit: MARC ISRAEL SELLEM/THE JERUSALEM POST)
In the hope of breaking down barriers between Jews in Israel and abroad, the Diaspora Affairs Ministry has started a campaign to familiarize Israelis with Jewish communities overseas.
Jews in different communities around the world have been asked to videotape their Jewish religious, social and cultural activities, and these videotapes are broken down into one-minute segments that are screened on Israeli television channels 1, 2 and 10 in prime time – just before the nightly news broadcasts.
The campaign, which kicked off Tuesday night, featured people in each video clip speaking in their own language, with Hebrew subtitles at the bottom of the screen.
Altogether, there are five separate clips in the series, of which one will be shown each night, and the series will be repeated in the following weeks until the conclusion of the campaign in November.
According to ministry spokeswoman Reut Moshonov, a similar campaign is being run abroad to let Jews around the world know something of the Israeli lifestyle and of what the ministry is doing to facilitate closer connections between Israeli and Diaspora Jews.