Matzah Time

Time has posted an article online, So You Think You Know Matzo?, mentioning the "20 Things To Do With Matzah" video I made with Michelle Citrin. And, this Passover, our video has received over 1,000,000 views on YouTube!

Passover Videos

JTA, one of the sponsors of the Pass The Candle music video I made with Michelle Citrin for Hanukkah, was busy this week with articles and blog posts about Jewish videos for Passover. Author Amy Klein took an in depth look at the reasons behind the Jewish YouTube craze in her article, Let my people post Passover videos, where she interviewed Michelle about our Matzah Song, and followed up with a Top 10 list, 10 YouTube videos for Passover, (which I'm surprised failed to mention my Shabot 6000 "Seda' Club"), placing our "20 Things To Do With Matzah" at the #1 spot. And as a bonus, a JTA blog post, Two more Passover videos, by Ami Eden, gives a shout out to Bitter Herb.

Thanks for all the attention, JTA!

Big in Israel

While attending the ROI120 2008 Summit in Jerusalem, I had the privilege of being interviewed for a podcast with creative partner Michelle Citrin for the JTA, in a piece titled Rosh Hashanah Girl (and Guy) Come to Israel; as well as a one-on-one interview about the origin of my Shabot 6000 comic strip with the Jerusalem Post!

The weekly comic strip, which is updated anew right before Shabbat and has nearly 200 comics in its four-year archive, debates questions on - and routinely pokes fun at - Jewish religious observances and traditions through a contemporary 21st-century lens.

"The robot and the pious Jew represent my own struggle with Jewish identity and religion," Levin said.

"It is my self-exploration with Judaism."

Read the rest of the article, The Shabbos Goy That Wouldn't, by Etgar Lefkovits, archived locally from the Arts & Culture section of the July 1, 2008 issue of The Jerusalem Post.

And hear me stammer nervously in the JTA Podcast.

Rosh Hashanah Girl Power

My friend, fellow ROI120 participant and musical collaborator, Michelle Citrin -- known in some circles as "Rosh Hashanah Girl" -- is the topic of a nice article, "Jewish 'it' girl in the US", in the Arts & Culture section of the Jerusalem Post. Hey, they even mentioned me in the article :-) Keep an ear out for her new album hitting shelves and online retail soon!

Ha!Aretz

It's been surprisingly difficult to blog from Israel this time. I'm writing from Jerusalem, having participated in the ROI120 2008 Summit with 119 other talented Jewish innovators from around the world. More on the conference and travels when I return, but in the meantime, here is a funny article from Haaretz.com about the ROI120 Technology track I was in. My favorite quote:

The online animation that computer consultant-turned-cartoonist William Levine from Brooklyn put on for the group featured a computerized 50 Cents saying Chag Sameach - followed by a lewd obscenity.

Read the rest of the article, Getting Google to work for us, by Cnaan Liphshiz.

Honorable Mention

After just a few days online, our "20 Things To Do With Matzah" Passover music video is definitely making the rounds: It was a featured Viral Video Hit on Yahoo! Video and even made it to the main Yahoo.com home page, bringing in over 120,000 views to date. And on YouTube, with about 90,000 views, the video has received the honor of being the #40 Most Viewed Music Video This Week (#49 Most Viewed in Canada, and #78 in Australia).

You can also find mention of the Matzah Song in The Jewish Daily Forward, YNet News, and CNET News.com!

Matzah MIA!

According to an article in the New York Times, there is a nationwide shortage of matzah this Passover, especially on the West Coast! Maybe it's because Michelle and I used all of it for our music video?

Also reported on News.com, where they also linked to our video, "clearly made in anticipation of a more plentiful matzah environment".

Shabot Sunday Strip

My friends at PresenTense Magazine have done it again, and released Issue 4 to the public. I am pleased to have a special "Sunday Strip" style Shabot comic — complete with color and longer format — featured as the "Shabot Spot" on page 32.

Click to see the full comic strip, "Antisocial Networking", which is about Jews on Facebook. While you're at it, become a Facebook Fan of Shabot, too!

Standard News

We made our mark in 2007! "I Gotta' Love You Rosh Hashanah", the music video I produced together with Michelle "Rosh Hashanah Girl" Citrin for Taglit-birthright israel, made it on the New Jersey Jewish Standard list of Newsmakers of 2007:

Amber Lee Ettinger’s "Obama Girl," a tribute to Democratic presidential hopeful Barak Obama, was already a parody of music videos about unrequited love. But Will Levin and Michelle Citrin decided the genre needed a little Yiddishkeit. [..] As for the future, Citrin says more Jewish videos "are in the making. Expect more."

Looking forward to making more music and videos with Michelle in the new year!

Marine Ecology of the Middle East

It's finally here: PresenTense Magazine Issue One has been released to the public and is available now! This premier issue is full of colorful photographs, essays, and reviews, and if you flip to the end, you'll find my full backpage cartoon illustration, "Marine Ecology of the Middle East".

You can see the complete cartoon online here, but don't miss out on the rest of the issue! Visit PresenTense to find out where you can pick up a copy for yourself, or subscribe and support this new publication.

Shabot in Hadassah

Shabot 6000 has been mentioned in the March 2006 issue of Hadassah Magazine! See Brief Reviews on page 66, for a short and sweet write-up in the Web Sighting section.

Special thanks to Leah Finkelshteyn for the blurb!

Shabot Down Under

Kosher Kangaroos! Throw another schnitzel on the barbie! I am pleased to announce that my Shabot 6000 comic strip will be syndicated in the new online publication, the Australia Jewish Times.

Sh'lom, mate!

The New Jew: Uncovering the Un-Movement

"The New Jew: Uncovering the Un-Movement"

Article by Richard Greenberg and Debra Nussbaum Cohen for B'nai B'rith Magazine, Fall 2005

Page 3 features a Shabot comic strip with the caption, "From the pen of cartoonist William Levin, 33 (AKA Ben Baruch)—a dose of bitingly irreverent New Jew-ish humor"

Download the PDF (no longer archived at BnaiBrith.org)

Iranian Jewish Chronicle

Article "Passover the Animation, 50 Cent Style" by Kristopher White, printed July 10, 2005, for The Iranian Jewish Chronicle

KALX Interview

William Levin is interviewed by Rebekah Kouy-Ghadosh of Berkeley KALX for the May Day (and Passover) Show, May 1, 2005

From the Oy Mendele! podcast site:

Shabot6000 creator Ben Baruch discusses how and why he draws a comic strip about an Orthodox man who builds a robot to do work for him on shabbat, only to have his techno-shabbat-goy aspirations frustrated by said robot's conversion to Judaism. Baruch also makes animations using the Shabot6000 cast, and you can hear a couple of bits from Seda Club, a pretty hilarious Passover/50 Cent spoof.

Oy, Robot

Beliefnet.com posts Liel Liebovitz's article, "Oy, Robot", reprinted from his article "An Unlikely Pairing" in The Jewish Week.

The Biggest Pessah Ever

Article "The Biggest Pessah Ever" by Uriel Heilman for the Jerusalem Post, dated April 29, 2005, mentions Shabot 6000:

Another Internet cartoonist, William Levin, did a version of the popular rapper 50 Cent singing about the Ten Plagues: "Blood in the river/ back off nigga'/ Don't you f--k with 50 Cent/ I'll pull the trigga'." With more than one million hits, the cartoon, at www.shabot6000.com, was ranked No. 7 in the Top 10 "movers and shakers" on the web this week, according to the web tracking company Alexa (The Cardinal Ratzinger Fan Club ranked No. 2).

"There is a growing, almost clich trend of making Jewish culture 'in-your-face' cool by mixing in elements of hip-hop and rap," Levin said. "I was trying to poke fun at that trend a little bit."

Read the article here (no longer online at JerusalemPost.com).

Shabot Makes Alexa Top Ten Movers & Shakers

Shabot's Seda' Club launches Shabot6000.com into #7 in the Top Ten Movers & Shakers on website traffic metrics service, Alexa.com, for the week of April 25, 2005!

See the web archive of the Alexa Top Ten from 2005 here.

A Robot Speaks, and Online Fans Express Joy

Article "A Robot Speaks, and Online Fans Express Joy" by Steven I. Weiss for The Jewish Daily Forward, February 25, 2005:

Christmas Eve comes with a lot of anticipation for those who celebrate the holiday. But for thousands of Jewish fans of the online comic strip “ShaBot6000,” anticipation took a different form: On December 24, 2004, their favorite cartoon character spoke.

Read the article here.

Shabot on UJC

Liel Leibovitz's article "An Unlikely Pairing" from The Jewish Week is reprinted on UJC.com.