Judy Siegel-Itzkovich, Jerusalem Post (11/1/2000) wrote:
Discover Jerusalem, Its History & People, a CD-ROM in English, by Torah
Educational Software (www.jewishsoftware.com) and Donchin Studios, requires
Windows 95 or higher and Pentium 133 or better phone orders in Israel 1-800-212626 and in the US 1-800-925-6853, for all
ages.
Rating: **** 1/2 Four and one half stars

Israel needs all the help it can get when it comes to explaining its cause
to the world. The Foreign Ministry seemed to wake up a bit late when the
Aksa uprising broke out on Rosh Hashana and Israel needed to counter
pro-Palestinian propaganda; in addition, there were ­ and still are ­ too
few government spokesmen blessed with fluent English, a persuasive manner
and a keen understanding of the foreign media.

Torah Educational Software, a Jerusalem-based developer and distributor of
high-quality Jewish software for children and adults, saw the crying need
some time ago for better information about the Israeli case for a united
Jerusalem.

TES president Emanuel Fishman approached Nachum Duchin,
a former US video filmmaker now living in Beit Shemesh who has
worked for ABC TV¹s Good Morning America and other US programs.

When I saw that every CD-ROM or video on Jerusalem was apologetic for our
Jewish
presence in Jerusalem, I decided to make a disk about the Old City that
speaks for us, without insulting anybody else,² says Fishman.

They then converted the video of several hour¹s length into an hour-long
CD-ROM,
losing a bit of resolution on the screen for the sake of the material and
without cutting any of the narration.

Why make a disk for a personal computer when you have a video cassette?
Fishman explains that many in the haredi audience are forbidden by their
rabbis
to have a TV screen and video cassette recorder at home, but a computer and
CD-ROM
disk drive are regarded as kosher.

Just insert the disk into your drive, and the film immediately comes up
without installation. Highly professional, the film offers magnificent
bird¹s-eye-view scenes and modern editing techniques.

Although the name of the disk refers to Jerusalem, the disk focuses on the
Old City and its
environs; ³Old City² is mentioned in red only at the bottom of the cover of
the box. The content puts much emphasis on the gates of the Old City walls,
built under the direction of the Ottoman ruler, Suleiman the Magnificent, in
the 16th century.

The disk focuses on a varied selection of important people who have been
buried on the
Mount of Olives opposite the Golden Gate: Rabbi Ovadia Bartenura (the
Italian-born sage
who wrote a commentary on the Mishna); chief rabbi Avraham Yitzhak Hacohen
Kook,
prime minister Menachem Begin, chief rabbi Shlomo Goren. Oscar Schindler,
the Righteous
Gentile who saved so many Jews from death during the Holocaust and was
buried in a
Catholic cemetery on Mount Zion, is also given prominence.

Each of the five (no prominent women are so honored) is portrayed with
narration and a series
of historical photographs. The archeological finds, the history of the
gates, the bold but hopeless
struggle of the last Jewish residents of the Jewish Quarter to hold it in
May 1948, the destruction of
synagogues from then until the Old City¹s recapture in 1967 and the
quarter¹s subsequent reconstruction
since are all depicted with moving scenes and words. But the needs of the
potential audiences sometimes conflict. There isn¹t a single glimpse of an
Arab until the film¹s midpoint ­ and then it¹s only an elderly Moslem
praying alone in the El Aksa mosque. There are a few scenes of the Arab
market and tourists in the Moslem Quarter, but the Christian
Quarter gets short shrift, with only 22 seconds dedicated to it.

Thus the disk is for people who don¹t know much about Israel¹s case for a
unified
Jerusalem, such as fundamentalist Christians, but have a potential for
giving warm support ­ or for observant Jews who know quite a lot but need to
have it reinforced. Duchin appears at the end of the film, saying he hopes
that those who have visited Jerusalem before will regard the program as a
souvenir to remember their trip, while those who have never made the trip
will be inspired to do so for the first time.

Some Christians might be offended by the minimal material about their holy
sites; haredim would have objected to any mention of Jesus, and his name is
missing from the narrative). On the other hand, viewers who have blind
sympathy solely for the Palestinian cause would dismiss the disk as a piece
of Jewish propaganda. Fishman explains: ³We screened this movie a number of
times to groups of Christian pilgrims, and they really liked it. They say
they are very interested in hearing the Orthodox Jewish perspective because
it helps them understand the roots of their religion.²