CONTACT: Lily Yacobi
(201) 227-6161; lyacobi@sarahdavid.com

ENGLEWOOD, NJ, November 1, 2006 – In its continuing quest to develop a new generation comfortable with Modern Hebrew, Sarah and David Interactive, the entrepreneurial educational publisher based in this city, has created a new monthly feature on its website, a column in beginning conversational Hebrew. Mah Hamatzav, the column’s title, plays off the greeting commonly used between friends in Israel, the Hebrew expression, ‘mah hamatzav,’ literally translated as “What’s the situation?” Aimed at teens, the column, its creators hope, will also serve to present Israel in a positive light to this key and impressionable demographic.

The first edition of Mah Hamatzav has been up on the Sarah and David Interactive website, http://www.sarahdavid.com, since last month and provides a glimpse of things to come.

Said Lily Yacobi, one of Sarah and David Interactive’s principals, “Mah Hamatzav is designed to reflect our signature brand and follows our proven strategy of blending of appealing, relatable characters, colorful, eye-catching illustrations and contemporary, memorable text to teach Hebrew.” In each column, we plan to have our characters ‘Sarah’ and ‘David’ turn up in cool locations around Israel, like on Ben Yehuda Street, for example, (where they are pictured in the first column) or in situations recognizable to our target audience, like school, (the subject of the second column, viewable on the website through November).”

The concept, she continued, is to have ‘Sarah’ and ‘David’ interact with one another in language that readers will relate to and remember. “It’s a great vocabulary-builder as well as a way for teens to learn about how Israelis their age spend their time. It will feature fashion, culture, slang – fun elements that as a rule don’t come together in teaching Hebrew language,” she explained.

Mah Hamatzav readers will also find a transliteration as well as audio clips of the Hebrew for those not yet familiar with the Aleph-Bet, the Hebrew alphabet. In addition to driving traffic to the website for the purpose of building their growing enterprise, Yacobi says this also accomplishes the broader goal of bringing as many potential Hebrew speakers and non-Hebrew speakers as possible in contact with the Sarah and David Interactive curricular approach, products and services. The website, which was redesigned over the summer, offers visitors of all ages and levels of Hebrew fluency a host of downloadable interactive games, activities and tools to chart their progress. Many are free and appropriate for educators as well as for the casual browser.

Sarah and David Interactive, launched in 2004 by Yacobi with her mother, Diana Yacobi, has continued to expand through innovative programming and publications, savvy marketing and personal outreach to Jewish educators. “We are determined to be the destination for people who want to learn Hebrew and learn about Israel in a fun, hip way,” Lily Yacobi asserted. “Mah Hamatzav is taking our personality a step further and giving people just one more opportunity to do that.”

Click to view the full size Mah Hamazav Page