Linguistic Agents, a start-up that specializes in bridging the gap between natural human languages and machine language, is launching InfoJew, to provide important information to observant Jews.

The service was designed with travelers in mind. A religious businessman, for instance, might find himself in a foreign city needing to locate a synagogue. He can send an SMS to InfoJew and receive a rapid response, also by SMS.

In the first stage, InfoJew will provide information on kosher restaurants, synagogues and mikvehs abroad. Later on will come information about worship service at various synagogues, times (such as the latest time for saying the Shema), details about local rabbis and local sites of pilgrimage. In a few months the service will be expanded to include information about Israel as well.

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The business model for InfoJew is based on sharing profits with cellular operators. Linguistic Agents is getting ready to launch a search engine based on its proprietary technology. In addition, the company is in talks with an Israeli cell phone provider about embedding its technology four use in providing other services.

InfoJew will be launched next month, when tens of thousands of observant Jews from Israel and the U.S. will be spending their Pesach in Europe. They will need to locate local synagogues and kosher restaurants.

InfoJew will be provided by a recently launched subsidiary of Linguistic Agents, Dialog Express, which is building platforms for supplying content that use the parent company's natural language technologies.

Simcha Margaliot, Senior Vice President and COO of Linguistic Agents, says that observant Jews often find themselves in places without a large Jewish community.

"A member of our team recently found himself in Prague during his return journey from attending the 3GSM conference and had to SMS his wife, asking her to search online for the nearest kosher restaurant," Margaliot said. "It was then that we realized the enormous opportunity our technology holds in aiding traveling Jews. We've all found ourselves in a strange town looking for a place to grab a kosher meal, or wondering about the local time for Shabbat candle lighting."

The fact that much of this information may be found on the Internet becomes irrelevant when one is without Internet access, he says. "Time difference also plays a role: Can you justify waking a friend in the middle of the night because you want a good steak? InfoJew fills just that gap."