Working From Home is Relaxing, Sometimes

Like everyone else in the country, at Israel Today we are now working from home. Our nice offices in the center of Jerusalem are shuttered and our staff and writers work comfortably at home – well most do. Those of us with small children, not so much.

The requirement to home isolate has presented our editorial staff with a challenge given that communications and cooperation are vital to the daily work at Israel Today. News needs to be researched, articles written, edited and sometimes translated, and then beefed up with graphics before being published on our different media channels. That’s a lot to talk about with a lot of staff.

Usually, we just do this the Israeli way – we shout across from office to office. “Michael, have you translated Ryan’s analysis of the elections?” Dov calls out. “I am on lunch break!” is often my answer. Nowadays Dov can no longer yell at me, although he sometimes uses a lot of capital letters and exclamation marks on Skype. Skype is a technology we use to talk to each other, and it works just fine. The large selection of emojis helps us communicate our “FEELINGS!” efficiently.

Yesterday we had first online meeting with all department heads of the company in attendance. Marketing, human resources, IT and editorial staff came together to discuss the situation and draw up a plan for the challenges of this new Corona-era. For this meeting we used Zoom, which makes it possible to hold an online conference with many participants at the same time, and it’s free.

The advantage of such a conference on the computer is that it does not have to be as monotonous as traditional meetings where you have to be present physically. Online you can upload pictures while sitting comfortably in your own office chair. The best thing is that you can read online without the boss noticing it! I found the meeting very informative. For example, did you know that Brazil is the world’s largest coffee producer and that the human tongue has around 10,000 taste buds?

Apart from that, it was decided at the meeting that at Israel Today we want to provide our readers with more content because we are all spending  a lot more time at home and want to read and learn more about Israel and the Jewish people. To this end, we are continuing our offer to make all content free, including Members Only articles on our website until Sunday. We are also experimenting with new ways of engaging, educating and entertaining our readers.

Humor is the typical Jewish way to deal with difficult situations, so I hope you don’t mind these light-hearted musings. If we have to spend so much time at home, we can at least do it in a good mood!