From Bibles to novels, English-language Judaica from Israel accounts for much of the inventory on American Jewish bookstore shelves.

A case in point: For the first time in his 27-book run, Rabbi Shmuley Boteach has chosen to work with an Israeli publisher: Gefen will produce the Englewood writer’s forthcoming book, “Kosher Jesus.”

Shoppers at the Feb. 5-26 Seforim Sale at Yeshiva University, the largest Jewish book sale in North America (see sidebar), will find Israeli publishers well represented.

Rabbi Yaacov Haber, a former Monsey pulpit rabbi and co-founder of the year-old Mosaica Press in Jerusalem, says there are practical and emotional reasons for this trend.

Former Teaneck resident Zahava D. Englard credits best-selling authors Leon Uris and Stephenie Meyer for turning her into a novelist.

Uris’ magnum opus, “Exodus,” so inspired Englard as a teenager that she kept nudging her 15-year-old youngest child, Nili, to read it. Nili, however, prefers fantasy novels, like Meyer’s “Twilight” books.

“So to get me off her back, she said, ‘You read “Twilight” and I’ll read “Exodus.”’ And I actually fell in love with it and read the whole series,” says Englard. “After the first book, I thought, ‘I could do this.’ That’s when I decided to write a novel.”

When Maccabi came a-courtin’ last year, Steve Rosner bounced into action.

The American affiliate of Maccabi, the global Jewish sports organization, was looking for someone to help coach the men’s basketball team competing in the 12th quadrennial Pan American Maccabi games, held in São Paulo, Brazil, from Dec. 26 to Jan. 2. The games brought together 2,000 athletes from 16 countries.

“I didn’t really have to think twice about it,” said Rosner of the invitation to coach. “It was something that I jumped at,” said the Closter resident.

PARK CITY, Utah – Call it the Sundance Synaplex.

All this week, crowds of people have been flocking several times a day to Temple Har Shalom in this picturesque ski town, but they were not coming for Shacharit, Minchah, or Maariv services.

Instead, for 10 days the synagogue is serving as one of the venues of the 2012 Sundance Film Festival, with five screenings daily through this Sunday (Jan. 29).

It is the fourth consecutive year that Har Shalom has become the “Temple Theatre” — one of the many elements that make this Reform synagogue unusual.

WASHINGTON – Barack Obama will not show up on the vote tallies after polls close in Florida’s Republican primary on Tuesday, but the president’s supporters already are waging a fight for the Sunshine State.

Democrats are rolling out a campaign to rival any of the GOP candidates, with a particular focus on the state’s substantial Jewish community.

Democratic officials said that volunteers in Florida already had made nearly 600,000 calls to supporters and conducted thousands of training sessions, many of them focusing on the Jewish community, 10 months before the general election. The Obama campaign has opened nine offices in the state.

WASHINGTON – Turkey’s Jews are pleased as can be that for the first time, a Jew will be representing their country at the Eurovision song contest.

On the other hand, the singer, Can Bonomo, is not exactly trumpeting his accomplishment — at least not the Jewish part.

“We would like to inform that Mr. Can Bonomo is bound to refuse answering all the questions about his religious beliefs, anti-Semitism and political subjects,” Bonomo’s spokesman, Ece Kahraman, wrote in a statement to JTA.

Bonomo has taken pains to tell fans that he will be participating in Eurovision as a Turk, not as a Jew.

WEST BLOOMFIELD, Mich. – Toward the end of his life, Apple’s visionary leader, Steve Jobs, was visited by another computer innovator, Microsoft’s Bill Gates. The conversation turned to the future of education.

As related in Walter Isaacson’s recent biography of Jobs, both men agreed that computers had made surprisingly little impact on schools.

“Computers and mobile devices would have to focus on delivering more personalized lessons and providing motivational feedback,” Gates said.

One of the many projects Jobs had hoped to develop before he died, Isaacson explained, was “to disrupt the textbook industry and save the spines of worn-out students by creating electronic texts and curriculum material for the iPad.”

Henry Goldberg loves this country. The businessman’s Polish-Jewish parents escaped Nazi Germany and made their home in South Carolina. His father began work as a janitor and eventually became a business owner. These were the opportunities that America offered, and not a moment went by when the elder Goldberg was not thankful for his survival.

This is the background that shaped Goldberg’s Republican views. As the years went by, he and his brother expanded their father’s company, Palmetto Tile Distributors, in Columbia. In the 1950s and 1960s, this was a truly wonderful country, Goldberg said. Doors were left open at night, keys were left in the car, the country was strong militarily, and it was not in debt. Since then, he has seen the country decline into what he views as a welfare state that gives too much of its dollars to such programs as Medicare and Medicaid.