Marketing firm Anglo Media acquires Janglo, strikes deal with Torah Tidbits

Marketing agency Anglo Media has recently acquired English-language Israeli media platform Janglo.net and entered into a partnership with Torah Tidbits, its owner told The Times of Israel on Sunday.

Janglo.net, Israel’s largest online community for English speakers, was founded in 2001 by Zev Stub, and is visited some 150,000 times per month by immigrants from English-speaking countries seeking jobs, housing, reliable businesses, sales, events, news, and more.

Anglo Media acquired Janglo from Stub for an undisclosed sum.

Torah Tidbits is a popular parsha sheet — featuring a summary and discussion of the week’s Torah portion read during prayer service — distributed weekly by the Orthodox Union (OU) to synagogues around Israel for more than 27 years. It is the best known English-language parsha sheet in Israel, and a successful tool for advertisers to reach the English-speaking community. Approximately 12,000 copies are printed every week.

With the retirement of Torah Tidbits founder and editor Phil Chernofsky, Anglo Media will take over the publishing and advertising operations of Torah Tidbits for the OU, while Rabbi Aaron Goldscheider becomes the publication’s new editor.

Anglo Media owner, entrepreneur Ariel Topf, told The Times of Israel that the acquisition of Janglo, which hasn’t been previously publicized, happened four months ago. The Torah Tidbits deal was finalized in August, and the first edition under the new management was printed last week.

He said he could not disclose details of the financial agreements with either publication, including the sums paid.

“We have been in the market for eight years, allowing businesses to reach the Anglo community, though many businesses have not yet found a way to penetrate into the market of olim in Israel,” Topf said. “We were looking for ways to become more effective and we decided that acquisitions were the right way.”

Topf called Janglo a “very important platform” and said he was planning to make it “much wider” and include new categories such as catalogs for events and home renovations, as well as overhauling the site’s design to make it easier for businesses and customers to find what they are looking for.

He said he also decided to become a part of Torah Tidbits, which he has been reading for years, and plans to “make it more updated and run more efficiently.”

Janglo founder Zev Stub told The Times of Israel that the deal was a “great opportunity that didn’t make sense not to take up.”

He said he was “looking forward to doing great things together and making life easier for many Anglo people in Israel.”