A Journey Into Jewish Matters

If you doubt that the Internet has something for everyone, surf on over to this information site: Jewish Lesbian Daughters of Holocaust Survivors.

The JLDHS, which has to be in the running for the most exclusive club online, is one of hundreds of sites you’ll find mentioned in “The Guide to the Jewish Internet,” from San Francisco-based No Starch Press. The book, like JLDHS, bespeaks specialization.

It took television decades to reach the point where, because of cable and satellite delivery, it could support channels so specific they offered just news or history. Radio didn’t get very specific until television overshadowed it as the major, mass medium. But the Web, with its ability to make almost anyone owning a computer and modem a cyberspace publisher, was tailor-made for explorations into communities both large and small, mainstream and obscure.

The “Jewish Internet” book, by Michael Levin, a Los Angeles writer who has written a couple of novels and a pair of nonfiction books about Jewish matters, is a particularly good guide to one community, with several subsets of itself online. The book is well organized, nicely designed (“interior design” by Margery Cantor) and covers a wide range of topics, from scholarly pursuits to dating. Although Levin sometimes goes overboard with jokes, his breezy, slightly irreverent tone is a welcome one.

One of the more lightweight but engrossing sites is “Famous Jews-Interactive!” at https://ucsu.colorado.edu/~jsu/cgi-bin/famous.cgi. Divided into categories such as “Entertainers,” “Competitors” and “Activists,” the lists includes many people strongly linked with Jewish identity, but there are surprises, at least to me. On the list are Pearl Jam singer Eddie Vedder, late British comedian Benny Hill, Nell Carter (she converted) and William Shatner. Who knew?

More serious in content is “Plaguescape,” a fascinating site that provides an epidemiological analysis of the biblical 10 plagues. For example, scientists conclude that the plague about waters of the “river” turning to blood (Exodus 7:17) could have stemmed from a biological event known as an aquatic, phytotoxic bloom.

This would have turned the Nile red and also killed the fish and resulted in an overabundance of frogs. Whether or not the toxic bloom was a natural occurrence or one brought forth by God is left up to the reader.

The site is at https://www.plaguescape.com.

There are several sites mentioned in the book that examine the Holocaust from historical, political and spiritual perspectives. One of the most disturbing is the “Holocaust Pictures Exhibition” at https://modb.oce.ulg.ac.be/schmitz/holocaust.html. Many of the pictures are graphic, but even the more benign--such as one showing two Jewish pupils being humiliated before their classmates--are extremely distressing.

The book also includes information on klezmer and other music, short stories, feminist literature, dance groups, science fiction (one site is cleverly named “The Stars of David”) and the visual arts.

One of these sites is https://www6.huji.ac.il/md/chagall/chagall.html, which provides views of the incredible stained glass windows designed by Marc Chagall for the Hadassah Hebrew University Medical Center in Jerusalem. It’s a stunning site that, like many in Levin’s book, will be enjoyed by Jews and non-Jews alike.

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