What would the Exodus have looked like online? That’s the premise behind “Google Exodus,” a two-minute video that tells the Passover story using social media.
In the video, which has been viewed more than 1 million times since being uploaded to YouTube on March 31, God Skypes Moses, Moses finds Pharoah’s palace using Google Maps, and he and Pharaoh engage in a heated email exchange about letting the Jewish people go. Moses orders live frogs and other plagues on Amazon.com, and he tweets his success to the Israelites via Twitter.
“We view this film as a natural extension of what we do, which is to reach out to Jews of every background using modern tools,” said Nechemia Coopersmith, the Jerusalem-based chief editor of Aish.com, part of the three-man team that produced the video. “We wanted to take all the social media tools — Google, Facebook, Twitter, Yahoo Answers, Google Street View, Skype — and weave them into the story of the Exodus.”
The video is reminiscent of a popular Google ad that aired during the 2010 Super Bowl, which told the story of a Parisian-American love affair conducted via Google tools.
But that ad only used Google, Coopersmith said, whereas “we wanted to expand and use every social media tool possible.”
The Aish team is now busy on its next project: a social media–rich video for Yom Ha’atzmaut, Israel’s Independence Day.
To view the Google Exodus video, go to www.aish.com.
— sue fishkoff