Oh, the sweet feeling of counting days and nights till several great projects come to life, what can be compared to you? Well, several things: being a part of one of these projects, working for a beautiful cause and looking forward for an event greater project to launch and succeed current enterprises.
It all began this October, at a seminar with a promising name ‘Future Jewish Media Makers’, which gathered 12 Jewish media enthusiasts and professionals for four days in Berlin – a city full of fresh initiatives and endless inspiration, from the Jewish perspective in particular. Participants made their way from different cities and countries, brought along different professional and personal backgrounds, but shared the same intent of using media to change perceptions and bring out the truth. Be it Israeli affairs, Jewish community life in Germany, Jewish-German shared history or other areas, there are countless topics suffering from significantly imbalanced media coverage. Blaming the offenders or recalling the past will hardly restore justice, but raising awareness and providing another viewpoint will certainly do.
If you are looking for a trendy definition to fit the fancy title, I would suggest ‘the Jewish startup incubator”. It is indeed about great ideas, young teams, innovation, social media and the whole bundle of startup-related terms; yet it has a strong Jewish and, if you prefer, social focus. It is not enough for the ideas born here to sound cool (though it is required too); most importantly, they have to make some social or political impact.
The seminar’s initiator Oren Osterer, who is also active as a program director at the European Janusz Korczak Academy and as a researcher at History Channel, invited some truly inspiring presenters in order to provide a solid ground for the future projects. A veteran of German pro-Israeli and pro-Jewish activism and a leading PR and communicational psychology expert Leo Sucharewicz, a delegate of Jewish Agency in Germany and a social media activist Dan Fayutkin, European correspondent of Israeli newspaper Yedioth Achronoth Eldad Beck along with chief editors of Germany’s leading Jewish newspapers Jueddische Allgemeine and The Jewish Voice From Germany David Kauschke and Hartmut Bomhof – there is hardly a better mix of people to teach some great lessons on the essence of media and its implementation in Jewish issues and let the work begin.
Wanna hear more? Well, let’s wait till January, when the second seminar will take place in Munich and bring together the achievements of the past four months and the new project, which is still to be revealed by Oren, but was already perfectly labeled by one of the participants as “GUP” (“Grosses Unbekanntes Projekt’, aka “Big Unknown Project” in English). By that time the current projects are expected to go through the pilot phase and roll out at a full scope. And yes, since this article was delivered to you via another Jewish media project, be sure all exciting updates will come your way.
