ANT KATZ

For the first time, the Jewish Report will remain running as a source of news, information and conversation throughout the 2013/2014 holiday season.

Whilst this is the last print edition of the year, and the first for 2014 will appear on19 January (complete with Matric Results Supplement), the new SA Jewish Report Online website – www.sajr.co.za – will be publishing throughout the holiday, be posting new content regularly (both user-generated blogs and comments and our own stories).

News and info for SA Jewry through the hols

We will continue to send out our Wednesday evening newsletters with links and info about the latest content on the website.

Our new website has had extraordinary success – to the extent that the developers have had to increase the bandwidth more than once and this week are being forced to move it on to a faster server to maintain the service our users want.

 Our gratitude goes out to the dedication and commitment of Alon Berman who made his firewater interactive team available to build and maintain the website as a community service. He clearly didn’t know what he was letting himself in for – but they remain dedicated to our success.

We have had 31,114 hits from a total of 61 countries as of Wednesday morning – just three weeks since the launch.

The bulk, of course, have come from SA Jewry. Returning SA visitors spend an average of 6:50 (six minutes and fifty seconds) on the site (while South Africans travelling abroad and using an SA service provider spend an average 10:43.

SA users visit an average of 3.56 pages per visit. These numbers are extremely high for a news website.

The other most popular countries are, in order, Israel, the US, Australia, Canada, the UK, Belgium, New Zealand and France. Of all visitors, our French users spend more time on the website than any others – even more than South Africans!

If you are not already getting the SA Jewish Report Online newsletter weekly, just click to www.sajr.co.za – type in your e-mail address – and Bob’s your uncle. If you have any holiday news, pictures or issues you would like us to cover, simply e-mail online.editor@sajr.co.za and we will respond promptly.

Holiday information: 

For those who are travelling (or even those staying at home) over the holidays, certain Jewish services can be difficult to access. Jewish Report will ensure that the required information is on the website at all times – simply search for “Emergency Services” on the site, or “sajr emergence services” on Google.

The Jewish organisations in Cape Town are mostly situated at Samson House, 87 Hatfield Street (behind Parliament, opposite the wonderful Jewish and Holocaust Museums) and they will be open throughout the holidays except for Christmas and New Years’ Days.

Emergency services such as the Chev, Hatzolla, CSO, etc will be working as normal in Joburg. Anyone who has information to add please e-mail it to online.editor@sajr.co.za and we will share it.

A great deal of information is available from the Union of Orthodox Synagogues’ (UOS)  MOBI– and WEB-SITES.

• SHULS: to find Shuls anywhere in SA if you are looking to join Minyanim and Shiurim
• BETH DIN: Joburg Beth Din
• ZMANIM: You’ll find that they offer times of religious practices anywhere in SA here.
• ERUVIM: You’ll find maps and directions here.
• KASHRUT: For both CAPE TOWN & JOBURG – get all the gen here.
• MIKVAOT: A listing of all the Mikvaot in the country 
• UOS JOBURG HOTLINE: 010 214-2600
• UOS CAPE TOWN HOTLINE: 021 461-6310

If you would like to connect with fellow-Jews socially or religiously, South Africa is famously lacking in Jewish Clubs (as foreign visitors often complain about), so the best thing to do is to make contact through a local ORTHODOX or PROGRESSIVE Shul. You will find listings of both of these by clicking on the links.

And, folks, most of all remember to look after the kids. We often loosen up a bit as parents over the holidays, our children take advantage and, sadly, the hospitals collect the bills.