Just got back from NY where I gave a workshop at the Torah U’Mesorah convention and wanted to share with you how far Torah Live is spreading: I was in Woodmere standing outside a 7-11 on Sunday morning, when a 10 year old kid comes over and asks if I am Dan Roth. Turns out his class had watched the Mezuzah DVD and learned all the halachos from it!

Thank you Michael and Karine Bloch for first suggesting the idea of putting our material on DVD over a year ago. You generously sponsored the project and the fruits of your kindness are spreading all over the world.

There’s an incredible write up about Torah Live in this weeks Mishpacha by Jonathan Rosenblum including 32,500 DVD’s delivered to every Mishpacha reader worldwide!

Thank you Yonason Perl, Rabbi Issamar Ginzberg, Eliyahu Rubinovich, Gavriel Horan, and Nomee Shaingarten who all had a direct hand in making it happen.

A special thank you to Conrad, Ruth, David and Karine Morris for their gracious support with Torah Live.

It is only through the wonderful people I am fortunate to be surrounded with and the graciousness of Hashem that Torah Live has merited the incredible success it has had to date.

Wishing you all a wonderful Yom Tov,
Dan Roth

Torah Live is pleased to announce the release of the Teacher’s Version of our Jealousy: The Ultimate Drive Presentation. Available in our store now.

Relevance: Pirkei Avos for the 21st Century by Rabbi Dan Roth is now available in Kindle edition. Kindle ebooks can be enjoyed on Kindle readers and PC, Mac, iPad and iPhone. Get your copy now.

With gratitude to God, we are delighted to announce that Blessings: The Ultimate Acknowledgment (Teacher Version) is now complete. This informative, clear, and entertaining presentation provides over 6 hours worth of teaching material and comes with an instructor’s guide and workbook.

To receive a free sample of the presentation, please write to info@torahlive.com. The full version is available here.

Thank you to the following people for their generous support in making this presentation possible: Jeremy and Ruthie Finn, Alan and Yvette Goldberg, Philip and Suzie Goldberg, Jake and Devorah Greenberg, Peter and Janice Sugarman, Graham and Belinda Calvert, Ben and Natalie Rosenfelder, Daniel Lyons, Bruno and Karen Serfaty, Shulie and Ahuva Meyers, Danny and Tova Fluss, Berele and Tammy Morris.

Masada College in Australia just signed up for NINE Torah Live presentations: Kashrus, Blessings, Success, Mezuzah, Charity, Chanukah, Wealth, Sukkot, and Anger.

Lisa Cohen (Head of Kodesh) and Ryan Basserabie (Teacher) pictured above skyped with Rabbi Roth at midnight their time (!) to see samples of the Torah Live material.

“We want a program that will grab our students and this will grab them! It’s a real winner,” said Mrs Cohen. “We are excited to be first school in Australia to benefit from this amazing program.”

To find out about bringing the Torah Live to your school, write to info@torahlive.com

Curious to know how many people have benefited from the Torah Live presentations, I created a “Torah Live global tracker.” So far over 650 presentations have been given in over 100 cities worldwide (Berlin, Munich, Honolulu, Moscow, Cape Town, Sydney, Johannesburg, Melbourne Efrat, Jerusalem, Kfar Saba, Quebe, Toronto, Miami, Las Vegas….)

You can see the list of schools and organizations here (PDF). Many organizations signed up to use the Purim material but since it was shareware, I’m still not clear if they did or not, so if you think you should be (or not be!) on the list, please write to me at d.roth@torahlive.com

Here are some pictures from the reading of the megillah at Mathilda Marks Kennedy Jewish Primary School, with Torah Live Stunning Megillah slideshow.

Miss E. Chody, Jewish Studies teacher at the school, comments, “It was fantastic! Really added, thank you so much.”

Above are pictures of 350 students enjoying our Purim material in Aussie.

Ryan Baserrabie wrote, “The megilla went down brilliantly. i have never seen the kids so engaged and quiet. Inexplicable success. “

Will post more Purim pictures soon as I get them!
Dan

With gratitude to the Almighty, it gives me great pleasure to share with you the exciting news that Michael and Bettina Bradfield are sponsoring a multimedia Torah Live presentation in memory of Susi and Fred Bradfield on the topic of leadership.

Michael requested that we conduct market research to determine that there would be demand for such a presentation. The results of our research are posted above: NCSY (Birthright),UJIA, TRIBE, Meor, National Jewish Outreach Program, Aish, SEED, JLE, Maimonidies, and other major educational organizations all recommending the project.

Thank you Conrad Morris for the kind introduction.

If you have good ideas or sources on this topic, please e-mail me at d.roth@torahlive.com

Click the document below for full size version.

In the Purim spirit, I’m sharing some (embarrassing!) bloopers and outtakes that were filmed during a recent Torah Live video shoot. Enjoy them!

By the way, I plan to be in London right after Purim (Mar 12,13, and 14) and hope to meet potential donors and train educators to use Torah Live material. If you can think of either, please let me know so I reach out to them and arrange to meet in person.

Wishing you and yours a very happy Purim! Rabbi Dan Roth and the Torah Live team.

The Torah Live Stunning Megillah, approved by Rabbi Yitzchak Berkovits of the Jerusalem Kollel and Rabbi Yisroel Reisman, Rosh Yeshiva of Yeshiva Torah Vodaath and Rav of Agudath Israel of Madison, Brooklyn NY, will soon be available for quick and easy purchase via download.

+Each slide will have the verse in Hebrew and English along with a picture (see sample above). There will be 167 slides (that’s how many verses there are!) and 42 pictures. (i.e. each group of 4 or 5 verses will share the same picture)

Purim Samaech!

Nicky Newfield of South Africa, founder of Jewish Interactive with her husband Jonathan on a Skype call with Rabbi Roth. “We are excited to collaborate with Torah Live,” said Nicky, “as we are both passionate about making Torah alive using the 21st century technology.”

Want to share this special moment with you…

The mezuza presentation was given in Russian in Moscow by Sara Katz AND in Hebrew by Shmuel Rind to elementary school boys – both on the same day!

 Sara Katz sent me the following note via Skype:

I took the kids to Yad Eliezer to pack food packages for people in need. As you see from the pictures we all had a really great time and can’t wait to do it again.This got me thinking….

Wouldn’t it be wonderful to make a presentation on the mitzvah of chesed and loving your fellow Jew? We need it now more than ever!

It could include video interviews with people who have excelled in this field, as well as inspiring stories, fascinating sources, and ideas of how we can all do more.

Our team of highly talented animators, 3d artists, cinematographers, special effects artists, and script writers have a track record of producing original and very creative material.

The Sages tell us that those who cause others to do kindness are greater in some ways than those who do kindness themselves. Please consider getting involved in the creation of this presentation, and leave your suggestions in the comments section below.

What do you think? Please tell us in the comments section below, or shoot an email to d.roth@torahlive.com.

Rabbi Roth gave a presentation to Rabbi Nachum Zakon’s teacher training group and the feedback was astounding.

18 out of the 18 people present rated it terrific and as you can see from the smiles in the attached picture it was a huge success.

The guys said they got a lot of inspiration from seeing what one can achieve in the world of education and are excited to use the material themselves.

Terrific – it was really captivating very clear and visual. It was presented very professionally. Thank you!
- Yitzhok Weiss

Personal anecdote at the end was very inspiring and encouraging for young men in our situation. What hard work, creativity and help from Above can do in paving a career and making a difference.
- Yehuda Markovits

Highly interesting and entertaining, Very Geshmak
- Yisroel Meir Englard

Never seen anything like it!
- Avrohom Ebbing

Terrific – I really loved it, and was really intrigued! Where were you 20 years ago when I was a kid!?
- Rabbi Menachem Schwartz

Thanks for a great presentation!
-Baruch Rosen

Terrific, Amazing! captivating!
-Shragi Chafetz

Fantastic job. Thanks for exposing me to this.
- Yitzchok Kirzner

Terrific – Very interested in learning how
- Shmuel Mordechai Horowitz

Rabbi Mayer Friedman, principal of the Rabbi Jacob Joseph School of Staten Island, was visiting Israel this week and popped into the Torah Live headquarters (pictured above) to check out the material he has heard so much about. He enjoyed what he saw so much that he purchased 6 presentations: Blessings, Charity, Anger, Materialism, Mezuzah, and Pirkei Avos. To find out about licensing material for your school, write to info@torahlive.com.

We thought it quite funny to see Yossie Weiss, one of the Torah Live staff members, drowning in all the mail from the over fifty teachers that signed up this week to get the Mezuzah presentation educators  kit.

This sudden surge of demand is the result of Torah Live’s new partnership with NJOP to make its material available to a broader audience.

Thank you Michael and Karine Bloch of Raanana for sponsoring the DVD in honor of their children: Eitan, Yoel, and Tali. Michael was not only the brainchild behind the creation of the DVD but is also the one who introduced our work to Rabbi Ephraim Buchwald, director of NJOP and made this partnership happen.

Best caption for this picture gets the Mezuzah DVD for FREE! Congratulations to Ilan and Simone Goldstein who won last month’s free Mezuzah DVD.

Dan

PS. If your organization or someone you know wants to partner with Torah Live to distribute the material, we have a sponsor who is willing to chip in in a major way to make the cost almost free to participating outreach and educational organizations.

The Financial Times praised him. Magazines called him ‘revolutionary.’ The BBC aired a 30 minute documentary about him. The Prime Minister invited him to dinner…

 But to me he was, and always will be – Zeide.

With gratitude to the Almighty, it gives me great pleasure to share with you the exciting news that the Schreiber Charitable Trust is sponsoring a multimedia Torah Live presentation in memory Mr. Chaim Schreiber – my late grandfather.

As the newspaper quotes below attest to (a small sampling from the scores of articles that appeared about him in the media), my grandfather was a master of treating workers properly. He had absolute trust in his 8,500 workers and the feeling was reciprocated. “I’ll be sick when he goes,”  said one hard-bitten union negotiator, “but they tell me his grandfather lived to 110, so there’s hope for us yet!’ Not exactly the usual tribute from an employee to his boss!

“The latest Schreiber scheme is one in which workers get extra pay when they have holidays. ‘He said we need more money to spend then,’ said a union official.

- Electrical & Trading, April 1979 

“It’s called the sick committee and it’s certainly Schreiber’s oddest innovation. It meets every Wednesday morning and it alone decides who will get sick pay and who won’t…”

- The Risk Business, BBC, October 1981

“In 1970 clocking-in was abolished. It was the kind of policing system that was highly unsatisfactory in Schreiber’s eyes. Apart from anything else it is, to him, a control that implies mistrust. ‘Now time keeping is better than ever before,’ says production director Fred Noyes.”

- Business Administration, May 1973

“When he decided in 1971 to make Schreiber public, he wanted all employees to become shareholders, and therefore partners in the company. But the government ruled that the share scheme he had developed would be considered a backhanded pay increase during a pay freeze. They said he could go ahead with the flotation but not with the share-scheme. As the banker explained, ‘A very small matter, a small detail- the flotation will be going through but you won’t be able to apply the share-scheme for your employees’.

But to Zeide this was the ultimate deal breaker: “If there are no shares for my employees there is no flotation.” He cancelled the whole thing. They were flabbergasted at how progressive he was, they couldn’t believe he wouldn’t go public because of employee benefits.

Source: Chaim Schreiber’s Way by Avital Schreiber Levy. (Thank you Avital!)

The presentation will be called, The Jewish Contribution to Industrial Relations, and will deal with such subjects as: paying workers on time, strikes, fixing executives salaries and other employer employee related issues.

The presentation will also include a short biographical video about his life legacy.

A big thank you to Mrs. Sara Schreiber (my grandmother), Ms. Judy Schreiber, (my mother), Graham and Ruthie Morris and David and Ruthie Schreiber (my uncles and aunts) for commissioning the project.

To dedicate a Torah Live presentation in memory of a loved one and leave your mark on the Jewish world, write to: sponsorthefuture@torahlive.com

Meet the faces in our new ‘behind the scenes’ video…