Table Talk from the desk of Rabbi Alexander Seinfeld
January 12-13, 2024 • 3 Teves 5784 • Vaeira (Ex 6-9).
The purpose of this blog is for something amazing to emerge at the Shabbat table ... please forward/print/share.
Do you know how many days until Tubishvat, Purim and Pesach?
+ + + + +
Do you know how many days until Tubishvat, Purim and Pesach?
+ + + + +
Following last week's missive about Mad magazine and the 7 Friendly Sins, here is another blast-from-the-past....
Maybe some of you are old enough to remember them?
(Turns out their demise has been greatly exaggerated ... you can still get a new-word-a-day calendar.... a sudoku-a-day calendar. ... a cat-a-day calendar .... thanks to Workman Publishing, they're still a thing.)
So about 20 years ago, I had this vision of creating an Amazing Jewish-Fact-a-Day Calendar.
What did Louis Armstrong say about the Jewish influence on his music?
What does the Talmud say about airplanes and telescopes?
What are the 10 Jewish inventions that you can't live without?
What does Judaism say about reincarnation?
And so on.
And each amazing fact has links to related content.
More than a vision:
- I wrote a year's worth of material (a lot harder than you'd think - it's like writing a book);
- Pitched it to publishers.
- Got quotes from printers for self-publishing.
- Pitched it to donors....
The problem was that we couldn't make the economics work. The most optimistic projections wouldn't come close to breaking even.
Then along came the iPhone. Since I was a very late adopter (I loved my flip phone and then my Blackberry's physical keys), I didn't see the iPhone's potential until around 2012. But by then it became obvious that the iPhone was the perfect platform for the Amazing Jewish Fact-a-Day Calendar.
The iPhone tech allows me to give you your nugget of Jewish inspiration on your screen at the time you choose. Super cool.
And just to make it fun (and exponentially more difficult to develop), we added a Hebrew calendar that changes at sunset based on your location and we synced certain facts with the Jewish calendar and others with the secular calendar.
Super hard to get that right, and the first version came out in 2013. It was well-liked with only 5-star reviews, but very hard to maintain, and after 5 years, I stopped maintaining it.
Well, over the past 9 months we've been attempting to resurrect it for the newest iOS. It's the same basic vision, but with better features.
While there are still a couple glitches, it is working fine for most testers, so today I'm pleased to officially announce its release. Here's the link. (Even without an iPhone, you can see screenshots there.)
If you have an iPhone, please download it and send me your honest feedback. (It's free for the first 2 weeks, after that 5¢/day.)
(Note - you'll want to enable location and notifications to get the best experience.)
If you don't have an iPhone, kindly click here to email the link or below to forward this email to someone who does.
Let's end as we always do with a question for your table. How would you answer a non-Jewish person who asked you, "Tell me one amazing thing about Judaism or the Jewish People..." — ???
(If you send it to me and it gets used in the app, your bragging rights will be tremendous.)
Shabbat Shalom,
Then along came the iPhone. Since I was a very late adopter (I loved my flip phone and then my Blackberry's physical keys), I didn't see the iPhone's potential until around 2012. But by then it became obvious that the iPhone was the perfect platform for the Amazing Jewish Fact-a-Day Calendar.
The iPhone tech allows me to give you your nugget of Jewish inspiration on your screen at the time you choose. Super cool.
And just to make it fun (and exponentially more difficult to develop), we added a Hebrew calendar that changes at sunset based on your location and we synced certain facts with the Jewish calendar and others with the secular calendar.
Super hard to get that right, and the first version came out in 2013. It was well-liked with only 5-star reviews, but very hard to maintain, and after 5 years, I stopped maintaining it.
Well, over the past 9 months we've been attempting to resurrect it for the newest iOS. It's the same basic vision, but with better features.
While there are still a couple glitches, it is working fine for most testers, so today I'm pleased to officially announce its release. Here's the link. (Even without an iPhone, you can see screenshots there.)
If you have an iPhone, please download it and send me your honest feedback. (It's free for the first 2 weeks, after that 5¢/day.)
(Note - you'll want to enable location and notifications to get the best experience.)
If you don't have an iPhone, kindly click here to email the link or below to forward this email to someone who does.
Let's end as we always do with a question for your table. How would you answer a non-Jewish person who asked you, "Tell me one amazing thing about Judaism or the Jewish People..." — ???
(If you send it to me and it gets used in the app, your bragging rights will be tremendous.)
Shabbat Shalom,
Alexander Seinfeld
PS - Out of 2,000,000 iPhone apps, can you guess which one keeps Shabbat?
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As always, this message can be read online at http://rabbiseinfeld.blogspot.com.
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