Judaica Librarianship Volume 10 Number 1–2 6-13 5-1-2000 Strongly Traditional Judaism: A Selective Guide to World Wide Web Resources in English Jacob Shulman Brooklyn Public Library Follow this and additional works at: http://ajlpublishing.org/jl Part of the Bilingual, Multilingual, and Multicultural Education Commons, Information Literacy Commons, Jewish Studies Commons, and the Reading and Language Commons Recommended Citation Shulman, Jacob. 2000. "Strongly Traditional Judaism: A Selective Guide to World Wide Web Resources in English." Judaica Librarianship 10: 6-13. doi:10.14263/2330-2976.1145. ALEFBIT Strongly Traditional Judaism: A Selective Guide to World Wide Web Resources in English* Jacob Shulman Brooklyn Public Library Brooklyn, NY Abstract: Annotated list of about forty The Web pages listed here were chosen face. An entry in the format mutt>jeff sig­ selected World Wide Web sites in Eng-_ from more than a hundred sampled. While nifies the steps through a path where click­ lish that are relevant to understanding some items were discovered using the Web ing "mutt" leads to a page where one the more traditionally religious Jewish guides of Romm (1997), Green (1997), and should then click "jeff". URLs (see Glos­ community. The sites include resource Levin (1996), the bulk of the research was sary) have been provided for most listings, indexes and information about kosher original. [Of these three guides, Romm because sometimes those "addresses" food, Jewish calendars, music, commu­ cites the most pages, but Green has the are more durable than the links created to nities, and Torah learning. The sites are best balance between comprehensiveness get at them (or those links' names). URLs · classified into 13 categories. The article of coverage and quality of annotations, in sometimes become detached from home­ concludes with a glossary, references, my opinion.] pages altogether (examples are Jewish and an index. Updated mid-January Music Network, Kashrus Magazine, and 1998. There are some important limitations to the newspaper Yated Neeman. On the this guide. No gopher (see Glossary) sites other hand, a few webmasters have been Introduction are listed, as all relevant ones have appar­ kind enough to retain their old homepages ently been discontinued; neither were any alongside new ones [Orthodox Union, The purpose of this guide is to assist librar­ newsgroups encountered that deal specifi­ Jewishnet]). The sequence (introduction, ians and other users in sampling the atti­ cally with this topic. The indexes by Tan­ outline of contents, guide itself, index) fol­ tudes and interests of the strongly tradi­ nenbaum and Ruttenberg [entries 1, 2] are lows that of The Internet Compendium: tional Jewish community, or in answering indispensable and have been included. Subject Guides to Social Sciences, Busi­ questions about Jewish practice. Included Mailing lists of Torah thoughts are so ness, and Law Resources (Rosenfeld et are web indexes to resources and informa­ numerous that no one list has been singled al., 1995). tion on communities, calendars, kosher out for description. A small number of them food resources, and centers for Torah are detailed fully by Adlerstein (1997). No From an examination of the Web itself, it learning. A brief glossary of Internet terms sites dealing specifically with the traditional may be difficult to build up a true propor­ has been added to help inexperienced Jewish community's history or sociology tional representation of the traditional Jew­ users. The article concludes with an index were discovered. The standard Internet ish community. Many institutions that might of titles and subjects. guide services consulted-Yahoo, Magel­ have websites, including communal organi­ lan, Webcrawler Select, Excite-searched zations such as Agudath Israel, large A number of these sites assume a relatively under Life or Lifestyle-Religion, only pro­ yeshivot, day schools and hasidic groups, high level of Jewish knowledge, although vide links to resources of general Jewish are not represented. One can speculate some are aimed at beginners; most origi­ interest. America Online: Communities' J. that they will not put up sites in the near nate in North America (ascertained by Comm (available only to AOL members) is term. checking contact addresses). There is also aimed at the general Jewish audience sparse content for children. The scope of and was similarly excluded. A section cov­ Quality is always a concern with the Inter­ this guide barely overlaps that of Romm ering news from Israel's "settlement" areas net. Each person recommending Web sites and Steinberger's article (1995), which was added in consideration of the high is a selector. No two individuals will agree focused primarily on librarians' tools. proportion of religious residents with roots on the best ones. In many Web sites, there in North America. are good parts and bad ones, as well as All pages cited are in English. Some tran­ undeveloped parts. It would be impossible scribed Hebrew words may be encoun­ Each major source is listed by page title, to describe and evaluate every page of tered, but these can usually be understood often of a homepage; rarely, a file name is every site. As for authoritativeness, many in context. (Some may be explained by the added. The arrangement is topical, but pages offer ostensibly rabbinical feed­ glossaries at UC Davis [see entry no. 33 wherever possible, instead of breaking up back-"Ask the Rabbi"-but the authority's below] and at Kallah Guide [see no. 42].) sites and categorizing their webpages, name is not provided. whole sites or selected parts of sites are summarized, with cross-references There has been spirited practical debate *Revision of a term project submitted for a between entries where needed; this about whether exposure to even the bene­ course in Advanced Reference in the should prove a more natural arrangement ficial side of the Internet is acceptable, for Humanities at Queens College (New York) to surfers. A subject/title index is also fear of the seamy side. (See, for example, Graduate School of Library and Informa­ included for locating specific items. Within Herman [1995] and Levine [1997].) The tion Studies, May 1997. the text, the titles of Web pages are in bold shortage of material suitable for traditional 6 Judaica Librarianship Vol. 10O No. 1-2 Spring 1999-Winter 2000 1 Jewish children is acute, as they could F. Calendars calendars, and other items. One visually exhaust the available ·resources in a few G. Torah Study attractive short page with audio is entitled hours. H. Texts Sight and Sound Guide to Shabbos ~ I. Publishers Koidesh. Staying up to date J. Newspapers and Magazines K. Music Host: Scott (Oizer) Alpert, who learned at Besides quality, currency is a major con­ L. News from Israel Yeshiva Ohr Somayach in Jerusalem and cern when consulting guides to Internet M. Towards a Wedding at Harvard. resources. The printed guides are months behind as soon as they are published, and A.Resource Indexes [4] Virtual Jerusalem even online indexes to the Web are often <http://www.virtual.co.ii stale; sometimes they are updated and/or These sites contain links to most of the weeded. Both of these are time-consum­ other pages in this guide, and then some: A major hub of the Internet in Israel, this ing activities; Web teams, rather than indi­ jam-packed homepage leads to commer­ viduals, can make the necessary repairs. [1] The Ultimate Jewish/Israel Link cial Web pages, bulletin boards, tourism Web pages represent more than a conver­ Launcher information, and chat rooms. There are but­ sation but less than quality-controlled pub.­ <http://ucsu.colorado.edu/-jsu/ tons for ten news/media services, including lishing. Bear in mind that as the Web ages, launcher.html Jerusalem Report magazine. more sites will turn out to be even two or three years old. The largest American Jewish launch site A visually appealing area is the Tour of contains over 4500 links regarding all Jerusalem. An archive of images taken by The preliminary version of this guide was aspects of Jewish life, grouped into 12 a camera mounted above the Kotel Ha­ prepared in May 1997, ·but everything was broad categories ranging from people to ma'aravi (Wailing Wall) is to be found at rechecked thoroughly in September 1997 politics, and antisemitism to academia. Of < www.kotelkam.com; live images can be and in January 1998; the list is up-to-date as special interest are the extensive listings in seen too. Send a Prayer-arranging for of January 16, 1998. Most research surfing the category History>Diaspora History. prayers to be recited at holy sites-requires was performed using a PowerMac 7200/90, Some of the links may be stale, as the last user registration (free). Humor is still under a 14.4 kbps (kilobytes per second) modem, update was in June 1997. construction. and AOL 3.0 and Netscape Navigator 2.01 Webmaster: Steve Ruttenberg of the Uni­ browsers (see World Wide Web in Glos­ versity of Colorado Jewish Students' Union. For many Torah mailing lists, select Torah. sary). [Many of the URLs were rechecked Archives of these are maintained as well. by the journal's proofreader in 1999.-Ed.J [2] Judaism and Jewish Resources (file­ name: Andrew Tannenbaum's Judaism B. Community Overview If you want more up-to-date information and Jewish Resources) than that which is presented here, or wish <http://www.shamash.org/trbljudaism.html [5] OU Online-The Cyber Home of Torah to broaden your perspective, you can use <http://www.ou.org the strategies which went into the making of This excellent resource (listed in Web­ or, perhaps better this list. The easiest method is to consult crawler Select) is kept up to date and has <http://www.ou.org/siteindex.htm the excellent index/launch sites described over 500 links to Web guides, divided into below; these lead you to even more web about 30 broad topics; in turn, these lead to This is the website of the Union of Ortho­ sites.