NCSY B'YISRAEL NEWS A Brief History of Torah Tidbits on the occasion of the 9th anniversary issue Although in its current form, TT is 9 years old this week, Torah Tidbits is actually goes back 30 years this month to Rochester New York. NCSY Spring regional Convention. Many long complex Divrei Torah presented by recent graduates of the Upstate New York - Har Sinai region. When it was my turn to speak, I introduced the idea of a very short, to-the-point explanation of a halacha or minhag, or a short Dvar Torah and I named them Torah Tidbits. To the best of my recollection, the name just popped out of my mind, without pre-thinking. In the course of that converntion and subsequent Shabbatonim, upstate and in the New York City area, many Torah Tidbits were presented. The first written TTs appeared at the Israel Center around '90. They/it was a single page (one-side) Dvar Torah on Parshat HaShavua which was placed on the flyers shelf near the front door at 10 Straus, for people to pick up and take home with them. No distribution...yet. The next form that TT took was sometime in Spring '91, as a set of Divrei Torah included in the box lunches of the NITZOTZ tiyul to Gush Katif during the Nissan break of the yeshiva kids. It was called Torah Tidbits to Go, and there were four of them. Next we come to Friday, June 19th, '92, which issue #1 of Torah Tidbits (although the first many issues were not numbered at the time). Issue #1 was photocopied (in two colors) on yellow A4 paper, in 60 copies, and distributed in two shuls, one of which was Beth Jacob in Ramot Eshkol. For the third issue, we went for the same single sheet of paper, but folded in half to form a 4-page "booklet". As the weeks went by, we were printing more and more copies and finding ways to get them to more and more shuls. The first many issues were printed on a dot-matrix printer (remember those - 9-pin, 18-pin, 24-pin). We then acquired our first laser printer and the look of Torah Tidbits noticeably improved. And so it has been these past 9 years. From 2 pages to 4 to 6 to 8 to 12, 16, 20, 24, 28, 36, 40 - with an occasional jump to even more pages, counting the inserts. Our circulation went from 60 to 7700, from two shuls to countless shuls and hotels, shops, dentist offices, and other distribution points. To the electronic forms of email and website. To a weekly radio broadcast on Israel National Radio (a.k.a. Arutz-7). We are proud of the contribution that TT has made to the spread of Torah these past 9 years, with its light, pleasant style, and look forward to continual improvement in the years to come. How would you answer these questions? That's what our chanichim found out when they went on their rampage through town led by madrich, Yaakov Reichart. NESTO approached complete strangers and asked these strange questions. Then they all met back and touched base and disccussed the answers. It definitely left an imprint on them watching the reactions and looks from the people who were approached. And, we definitely had a great time. Just a very important correction is to, has to and must be made. All apologies to Yaakov Reichart when last interviewed was branded as a cookie bush when asked the question "if you could be a vegetable, which would you be?" Yaakov corrected, and I quote, "Everyone knows there's no such thing as a cookie bush, it's a cookie tree." So Yaakov, we apologize and you are now officially branded as NESTO's "Cookie Tree". [The Shlach Homepage]
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