Great, one more reason to never let go of that BlackBerry

Cedarhurst resident, Lawrence native, behind software Siddur maker Jewberry.com

By Mayer Fertig

Issue of Oct. 31, 2008 / 2 Cheshvan 5769

Just about any BlackBerry addict — ahem, user — can lecture at length as to why his or her choice of smartphone is smarter than a crash-prone Palm Treo. Many have horror stories about the old days when they, too, carried a Treo. (Full disclosure: I suffered through the trials and tribulations of more than a half dozen Treos – Windows and Palm versions – before switching to a BlackBerry World Edition several years ago.) But one thing most Torah-observant former Treo users will admit they miss is all the Jewish content available on the Palm operating system — the Siddur, the calendar, Tehillim, just to name a few — that they do without on the BlackBerry.

It turns out BlackBerry users don’t have to do without a digital Siddur, at all. For the past year or so, Jewberry.com, a small company that offers Jewish content for BlackBerry products, has been flying under the radar, with virtually no marketing at all, slowing picking up users through word of mouth.

The company was founded by Jonathan — “my friends call me Naftali” — Bennett, a Cedarhurst resident and Yeshiva of South Shore parent; and Jonathan Kestenbaum, a Lawrence native and HAFTR alum who now lives in Jerusalem. Both are Yeshiva University alumni.

Bennett was an early adopter of the BlackBerry, he said. People would see him sending e-mail from what looked like a large pager and ask where the cable was. He and Kestenbaum had seen the many Hebrew language products available for the Palm and assumed similar software for the BlackBerry would not be far behind.

You know what they say about assuming.

“At a certain time I got fed up with waiting,” said Bennett. He and Kestenbaum hired a developer and went to work.

The turning point came one day when he was working in the city and went to daven Mincha in a stairwell.

“You don’t always have a Siddur, and you want to have a little kavanah. If there’s one thing that people are never without it’s their BlackBerry, so why shouldn’t you then allow those users to have tefilahs on their BlackBerry, so they’ll always have it?”

The current version of the software, which is available for download for $30, offers Shacharit, Mincha and Maariv in four different nusachim: Ashkenaz, Sefard, Edot Hamizrach and Ari. Other offerings include Tehillim, Kriat Shema Al Hamitah, Tefilat Haderech, and Bracha Achrona.

People often ask, ‘why not just carry a Siddur?’ Bennett said.

“I can tell you that I found myself in Las Vegas last year and I found that I thought I had packed a Siddur but had accidentally packed a Selichot.”

Although he declined to provide specific numbers of subscribers Bennett said they are “in the four figures.” The “some 10,000” figure mentioned in a recent article in Crain’s New York Business is not correct, he added.

Those subscribers are spread across the globe, said Bennett, “which to me was just a peleh.” The wonder of it, to him is that “people from Brazil, England, South Africa — people all over the world — have downloaded it. We get the most amazing e-mails sometimes from people who are so thankful that they can have a Siddur in their pocket.”

Bennett and Kestenbaum are also partners in PL Holdings — the PL stands for Promised Land — where they work to introduce new technologies to Israel, and to introduce new Israeli technology to the United States. They don’t make their livings from Jewberry.com.

“It wasn’t really about making money — it was about paying for the development,” he said of the fee. “And there’s more development to be done now.”

The next project for Jewberry.com is to integrate the software with GPS and the minyan database godaven.com, “so you’ll be able to get z’manei tefilah and nearby minyanim.” A similar feature is already available to users of Apple’s I-Phone.

“In today’s economy people might not be using their BlackBerry to close business deals,” mused Bennett, “but they can use their BlackBerry to get closer to G-d.”