Staff Writer

Newspaper publishers cringe at the thought of someone like Aaron Keyak.

Though the 24-year-old had long received The New York Times on weekends, economic straits forced him to make "the painful decision to cancel" his subscription earlier this year.

"The only reason I continued my Times subscription was because I read it on Shabbat," said Keyak, who wouldn't use a computer on the Sabbath. "Then I realized that I could just print out the articles before Shabbat."

With the keyword "free" in mind, the D.C. resident began bringing home a stack of articles Friday afternoons with the thought of "making online media available on Shabbat."

The experiment, he says, led him to stretch the concept to his job at the National Jewish Democratic Council. As the NJDC's press secretary, Keyak is the gatekeeper of the group's Web site and blog, where each week new and old media collide into the definitive Shabbat Reading list.

"NJDC has been working on expanding our presence on the blogosphere so I decided if this is something I'm doing for myself, others may be interested, too," Keyak said.

On Jan. 30, Keyak wrote his first Shabbat Reading blog posting, where he included several links to feature-length articles published in a variety of mainstream news organizations.

His goal, Keyak said, was to get people reading and thinking during the Sabbath.

"Too often we read the same topics every single day, so I'm hoping to have some diversity," he said. "I'm using Shabbat as an organizing principle [and] since it's fundamentally Jewish, it's a unifying factor; this isn't Democratic reading, it's Shabbat reading."

Since that initial post, and with the help of the nouveau networking Web site Twitter, Keyak said his concept "has really taken off. People really know what Shabbat Reading is!"

Last Friday's postings -- the fifth on the #shabbatreading Twitter site -- drew more than two dozen participants.

The key to its success, explained the press guru, is Twitter, an infant online communications venture that has already gained the attention of a gaggle of media-savvy Washingtonians, including NBC News anchor David Gregory, Bush-era deputy chief of staff Karl Rove and Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.), who is one of about 60 members of Congress using the site.

The concept is simple: In 140 characters or less, answer the question, "What are you doing?"

Yet, the site's pithy nature and use of frequent shorthand symbols among users initially left Keyak a bit nonplused. Help came from Jaclyn Schiff, a staffer at the D.C.-based communications firm Rabinowitz/Dorf (Keyak's former employer).

"I thought it was a cute concept and also had seen that Aaron has just started an NJDC Twitter account," Schiff recalled. "I was just thinking about the ways Jews are connecting and identifying themselves on Twitter and approached him about the idea of turning his blog post into an interactive Twitter discussion."

The two media maestros teamed up in early February to turn the once-static Shabbat Reading blog into a real-time conversation among like-minded Jews.

"The goal is to have a conversation on Friday morning on what should be in the Shabbat reading," he said. "We could ... hop in and out of Twitter and throw in the two-cents on any topic."

Last Friday, the forum experienced its most robust discussion to date, with some two dozen Jewish "tweeters" from D.C. and elsewhere posting interesting articles and lyrical-sounding comments.

"Young Venezuelan Jews mobilize, a bass player talks leadership," wrote one participant, who calls herself EstherK. Others posted articles relating to California's Proposition 8, the corrupt financier Bernard Madoff and the Holocaust-denying Catholic Bishop Richard Williamson.

Schiff even posted an article offering timely advice to nonprofit agencies: "For all the non-profits: Advice for Charities on Making the Most of Twitter," she wrote.

A few novice Jewish tweeters also tuned in last week. "What's ShabbatReading? I am out of the loop!" wrote user PopJudaica, who nevertheless posted a link later in the discussion.

"I think that seeing Shabbat on Twitter is the aspect that's most interesting," Schiff said in an interview. "When you see it, it's a term that Jews know and understand and while it might mean different things to different people, Shabbat is an identifiable thing that indicates you're communicating amongst Jews in this very public place."

Others also said they found the Jewish twist welcoming.

"Having that little bit of Shabbat reaching into what I'm doing in my work life is a really nice thing," said Arlington's Arielle Holland, 23.

The act of conversing with fellow Jews in anticipation of the Sabbath provides Holland with a subtle sense of community in the midst of her hectic work week.

"If you're not able to get to Shabbat service where afterwards you may have dinner and talk about things, this is a way for people to still be interacting in that same sort of mindset of discussion and collaborations, but to do that within this new medium," explained Holland, a senior associate at the online communications firm M+R Strategic Services.

Ethan Porter, 23, said Keyak's forum allows him to keep on top "of what's happening and what people are talking about."

As the associate editor of Democracy: A Journal of Ideas, the District resident says he oftentimes misses the longer news articles published throughout the week.

"The great service [Keyak] performs by collecting these articles is that he points people to those pieces that are too long and we don't have time to read during the work week."

And the Shabbat hook, Porter said, helps him keep to keep an age-old tradition. "The idea of Shabbat reading is perfect because it exemplifies how Shabbat is different," he said. "It allows you to read and think in a more contemplative way."

The forum is also indicative of the tough times some Jewish organizations are having in communicating with the younger generation. For those who don't know Twitter, or don't want to, the online terrain can be altogether frightening.

"We are taking all of our clients and trying to drag them into the second decade of the 21st century," explained Steve Rabinowitz, half the namesake of Rabinowitz/Dorf Communications, whose clients include Birthright Israel and Hadassah.

"It wasn't that long ago our clients were still faxing people and now some of them think that if they're e-mailing people, then they've entered a new realm," Rabinowitz said.

To keep these organizations relevant, Rabinowitz said he is pushing them to open Twitter accounts, Facebook accounts and even YouTube accounts. "You have to reach people through the media they're consuming," he said. "If they're not reading the daily newspaper ... then that can't be the only place you're trying to communicate in."

Sean Thibault, the communications director for the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, said he was happy to move his organization into the virtual world.

"We need to be, like any other organization, aware of what users want" and "be aware of where they're building community," Thibault said. The Internet age "really is playing out very well in that young Jews are building experiences that happen online, that are just as meaningful to them as something that previously" would have occurred in the physical world, he said.

New media is here to stay, Rabinowitz added. "Old media is still alive, but just barely. Old media is for old people."