First International Jewish Bloggers Convention
Last night in Jerusalem I attended the First International Jewish Bloggers Convention. There were 200 people in the room and up to 1300 on webcast! Apparently the Jewish blogging world is quite large.
Some of the highlights were:
Benjamin Netanyhu spoke – briefly – about his blog, and then about why he should be Prime Minister.
Some of the most popular bloggers talked about how they grew their blogs (most of them accidentally it seems).
Bloggers talked about how blogging can have an impact on Jewish life, attitudes toward Israel and encouraging aliyah.
A representative of Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs talked about the importance of branding Israel in order to change American public opinion of Israeli culture and society.
It was a fascinating event. Bloggers who knew each other only online met in person and acquaintances suddenly discovered they had blogging in common. And everybody starting thinking about how blogging about Judaism, Israel, or their personal experiences can have a far-reaching impact.
UPDATE: Haaretz reports on the convention.
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Zionism and the State of Israel 
August 21, 2008 at 2:09 pm
This is just the start.
Blogosphere, here we all come.
August 25, 2008 at 8:01 am
Could you give us a list of some of your favourites? I’m looking to expand my Google Reader.
August 25, 2008 at 8:39 am
Certainly. Try out these blogs:
Jewlicious.com http://www.jewlicious.com/
What War Zone??? http://www.whatwarzone.com/
israelplug http://israelplug.com/
Ill Call Baila http://illcallbaila.blogspot.com/
Kumah http://www.kumah.org/
Jerusalemite http://www.jerusalemite.net/blog/
The Big Felafel http://www.thebigfelafel.com/
My Right Word http://myrightword.blogspot.com/
I would love to hear your opinions of these blogs. And maybe you know about some blogs I should know about.
August 26, 2008 at 8:10 pm
Thanks for these Hadassah. I’m under a bit of time pressure at the moment so I can’t comment immediately. I know the Kumah website, which I find fascinating for it religious-Zionism. The blog gives me a kind of access to a segment of Judsaism which I could never have through just reading about it.
As for the blogs I know, I’ve come across a suprisingly large number of ex-Orthodox blogs. They are often places to process the trauma of leaving the community, but they are also very intelligent and are interesting sites for gaining an insight into yet another dimension of Jewish life I would never otherwise have access to. Here are the ones I know:
http://jewishatheist.blogspot.com/
http://lubabnomore.blogspot.com/
Their blog rolls have links to like minded sites.
August 27, 2008 at 5:28 am
Phil – Sorry to hear you are under pressure. Until now I have been focusing on political blogs and Jewish community blogs, like Mixed Multitudes http://www.myjewishlearning.com/blog/ but I guess now is the time to start broadening my horizons.
August 28, 2008 at 8:22 am
This also looks interesting: http://bloggadah.blogspot.com/
August 28, 2008 at 11:06 am
I have seen this blog. You might also be interested by Point of No Return
http://jewishrefugees.blogspot.com/2008/08/one-law-for-iraqi-jews-another-for.html
August 28, 2008 at 5:01 pm
Yep, got it already. Very interesting. It’s not run by a Jew though … But then Jewish subject matter is as important as Jewish authorship.
August 28, 2008 at 5:40 pm
For some reasion my other post won’t get published …
August 29, 2008 at 11:04 am
That’s totally bizarre, I can post to your site, but when I link to one particular blog it won’t go through … ?!
August 29, 2008 at 11:06 am
It’s a messiance blog called “Large Blue Footballs”.
September 1, 2008 at 6:33 am
Very odd that you can’t link to it. Not my fault 🙂