Jono David's Jewish Geography App Free for 24 Hours

This post originally appeared on the En Route blog of the Los Angeles Jewish Journal

The Japan-based photographer Jono David has used some of his thousands of images of Jewish heritage sites around the world to create a “Jewish Geography” game played via an ITunes app…. He has just let me know that the app can be downloaded for free—but just for 24 hours, from 7:00 p.m. Monday, April 16 to 7:00 p.m. Tuesday, April 17, 2012, Japan Standard Time.
Here’s what Jono says:

Jewish Geography. You know the game. Or do you? Uniquely different than the familiar “Do you know so-and-so?” degrees of separation kibitzing, this fun and challenging app quiz game measures by how many degrees you’re separated from your own Jewish geographical knowledge. Challenge yourself or compete against friends and family. The more you play, the more you’ll know, and the fewer degrees you’ll be separated from Jewish Geography!

Game description, features, and device requirements @ http://www.JewishGeography.co/
Preview on YouTube (time: 00:00:38) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d5N9Fl5T-hc

PURCHASE on iTUNES:

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/jewish-geography/id498428257?mt=8

A fun product by JonoDavid LLC featuring the photography of Jono David from his HaChayim HaYehudim Jewish Photo Library (HHJPL).

Thank you, and happy Jewish Geography playing!

Jono

Jewish spaces and places -- my new Ruthless Cosmopolitan column

My new Ruthless Cosmopolitan column deals with the concept of Jewish space(s) and Jewish place(s). It's a bit peripheral to concrete issues of Jewish heritage and Jewish heritage travel, but it fits within the broad context of the discussion and in the rich tapestry of culture, history and heritage. I also describe some surprising new places to "travel"... (By the way, you can see all my columns aggregated on my Ruthless Cosmopolitan blog.)

RUTHLESS COSMOPOLITAN
Places and spaces: Exploring
what makes up the Jewish tapestry

Ruth Ellen Gruber

Avner Gruber, the first cousin once removed of Ruth Ellen Gruber, visits a Jewish cemetery in Hamburg, Germany.

By Ruth Ellen Gruber

Published: 10/23/2008

ROME (JTA) -- We've all played the "Jewish geography" game -- you know, questioning someone we've only just met in order to discover common Jewish connections, friends or even family.
n doing so, we are mapping out our experiences, delineating a sort of Jewish topography of interlinking

backgrounds, histories and far-flung mishpocha.

Somehow I feel a sense of profound satisfaction when I discover an unexpected link with a stranger. It's like a gift, an almost magical sense of communion with the densely woven tapestry of Jewish life -- or at least with an individual or a place that helps make up that tapestry.

The idea of Jewish topography and the spaces and places -- physical and metaphysical -- in which Jews live, dream and interact forms the basis of a fascinating new book.

“Jewish Topographies: Visions of Space, Traditions of Place” (Ashgate Publishing House, 2008) is a collection of essays by a score of international scholars who participated in a six-year research project at the University of Potsdam in Germany.

Called Makom, or "place" in Hebrew, the project aimed to explore the relevance of space and place in Jewish life and culture.

In my own writing, I have dealt frequently with "Jewish space" in the way that the Paris-based historian Diana Pinto framed it. She coined the term in the 1990s to describe the place occupied by Jews, Jewish culture and Jewish memory within mainstream European society, regardless of the size or activity of the local Jewish population.

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