Utilizing its state-of-the-art technical wizardry, the Orthodox Union has created a multi-media source of Jewish learning and entertainment for a world-wide audience. At www.ou.org and its companion website OU Radio, www.ouradio.org , Torah is on demand day and night.
The websites combined receive close to one million unique visits each month.
“The purpose of OU’s mastery of modern technology is to connect Jews everywhere, unite the Jewish community and bring Torah to everyone. Through our websites we have accomplished this in leaps and bounds,” declared OU President Stephen J. Savitsky. “With our media center we make the Jewish experience come alive, through a wide range of programming that inspires, informs, educates and entertains the Jewish community worldwide.”
The OU website was recently redesigned to accommodate the individual preferences of its diverse audience by adding a feature that allows each visitor to customize his or her own OU homepage. This is done by setting the menu bar to include preferred features from the OU website and OU Radio, as well as links to other favorite websites.
For example, Mr. Cohen in South Africa can have on his menu bar kosher updates, the daily daf yomi (Talmud lesson), updates on Israel, and newspaper articles on topics of interest; Mrs. Klein from Los Angeles, on the other hand, can have on her menu bar the weekly candle lighting time, cooking demos, a Torah shiur (class) for women, and other preferred items.
OU Radio goes beyond the traditional radio medium of broadcasting by providing cutting-edge live and archived material that is webcast and downloadable to an iPod to listen to or to watch on-the-go. The site features a wide variety of topics on Torah, philosophy, education, family, marriage, Israel, community, health, holidays, Jewish leadership, kosher living, and famous Jewish personalities. It will soon feature children’s stories.
OU Radio programming includes Jewish music; Take Five for Torah, a five-minute lecture five days a week on five different topics; a visual sign language component for the deaf; and live webcasts of OU events.
A special component of OU Radio is the daily daf yomi (daily folio of Talmud) delivered by Rabbi Moshe Elefant, Chief Operating Officer of OU Kosher, and available in audio and visual formats to appreciative audiences worldwide.
Featured personalities on OU Radio include Rabbi Nosson Scherman, General Editor of Artscroll/Mesorah; Women’s Torah lecturer Esther Wein; Rabbi Mordechai Becher, Senior Lecturer for the Gateways Organization, who debates and analyzes questions from listeners; Mr. Savitsky, as host of Around the Dining Room Table, which features contemporary issues in the Jewish world; Rabbi Chaim Wasserman, who presents This Land is My Land, a program on Israel; Rabbi Tzvi Hersh Weinreb, OU Executive Vice President, who provides inspiration on the weekly Torah portion as well as other features.
Additional personalities include Rona Novick, Ph.D., who delves into parenting issues; Rabbi Reuven Bulka, Founding Editor of the Journal of Psychology, who has appeared on The Jew and the Secular World; and music by popular artists such as Avraham Fried, Mordechai Ben David, Matisyahu, and Abie Rottenberg.
A highlight of OU Radio is Off the Beaten Path, a program which features personalities such as former NFL player Allen Vinegrad, who played in the Super Bowl before becoming religiously observant; Daniel Brody, who was a cast member of Donald Trump’s The Apprentice; and best-selling mystery writer Rochelle Krich.
To access content without logging onto the internet and to receive it via e-mail instead, contact listen@ouradio.org.
For more information go to www.ou.org or www.ouradio.org.