Why ignore the potential for networking all major Jewish library collections' catalogs? for making Bar Ilan's responsa database available to any scholar [or] Halachist writing a tshuvah? Can't find genealogical information? Telnet to Beit Hatfutsot's database server and look up your heritage!Since 1992, tremendous strides have been made to take advantage of and promote the potential of computer networking for the Jewish community. The Diaspora Museum does not have a database server, but there is a site for Jewish recipes at http://www.eskimo.com/~jefffree/recipes/ and a Kashrut Primer by the Orthodox Union at http://www.ou.org/. You can research your geneology at JewishGen http://www.jewishgen.org/. There are over hundreds of discussion lists that represent all shades of religious and secular, Israeli and Diaspora communities. You can get daily translations of the Hebrew news, go job hunting or advertise your apartment, discuss politics, religion, philosophy or education, chat with your friends in Australia, read weekly Torah, search library holdings, and meet Jewish singles from around the world.Suppose we started a forum for "Jewish" recipes, putting them into a database for anyone to access? I think that the potential is there for Jews to make use of the network in many aspects of Jewish life.
Remember, during the Russian coup, some of the only information smuggled out of the country was through Amateur Radio and computer networks...when all official communications channels, especially news and phones, were cut off. If the Jews had had such a network at the time of the Holocaust, the entire world would have heard what was going on very quickly, and the war might have been over much sooner.
The Internet is no single place or institution, with one ideology, technology, method, or goal. It is a network of different networks, based on the TCP/IP protocol that makes it possible for many different kinds of machines to talk to each other. As a result, educational, commercial, nonprofit, government, and military networks have gatewayed into each other over the last 27 years to create a network of networks that today we call the Internet or simply the 'net.'
The Internet originated with ARPANET (Advanced Research Projects Agency), created in 1969 by the US Department of Defense in order to enhance research and communication between computer scientists. By 1986 ARPANET was replaced by the NSFNET (National Science Foundation Network) which became the US backbone for a global network of primarily educational institutions.
In addition to ARPANET, there were other networks important to creating what we call the Internet, today. USENET News (Unix Users Network) was a program created by two students in 1979 at Duke University and University of North Carolina for people with UUCP (Unix to Unix Copy Program) connections. It organized threaded discussions which were passed as files via ordinary telephone lines. BITNET (Because It's There Network) was created in 1981 by City University of New York and Yale. It was adopted by academic institutions that used IBM protocol machines. BBS's (Bulletin Boards) and networks such as Fidonet and Keshernet, are DOS based networks that used ordinary telephone lines to connect to a local server.
Today, most of these various forms of computer networking have founds ways to speak to each other, based on a common language of file transmission called TCP/IP, which forms the basis of the Internet. The opening up of the "net" to commercial interests in the mid 1990s prompted a sudden growth. You can find some good histories of the Internet at the following sites:
Today (1996), most of the world has full Internet access. Areas in Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Poland have BITNET only. Areas northeast of Iran near India, mid Africa, and parts of South America have UseNet only (that is email). In parts of Africa, Mongolia, and South East Asia there is no connectivity at all. You can find a map of global Internet connectivity located at the Internet Society (at http://www.isoc.org/), which has all kinds of statistics and information on the Internet. To locate whether a country has an Internet connection, use the netfind service. Telnet to bruno.cs.colorado.edu. and logon as "netfind". Choose the seed database lookup and type the name of the country you are looking for.
According to a survey by Network Wizards (http://www.nw.com), as of January 1996 approximately 9 million 472 thousand hosts are connected to the Internet. A host (or node) is a computer with an address that is connected to the Internet 24 hours a day and can serve thousands of users. In Israel, according to the European Network Operating System (RIPE), the DNS (Domain Name Server) host count on March 1 was 34,626. By March 29 there were 37,511. That is a growth of 2,363 hosts in 29 days. It is very difficult to estimate the number of individual users. Estimates range between 16-19 million world wide.
After the U.S., the countries with the most Internet hosts are Australia, Canada and Germany. The countries with the most hosts per person are Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Finland and Iceland. The Internet, which equals the population size of a small country, constitutes the largest, most directly connected community in the world.
BITNET was introduced to Israel by one of its founders, Hank Nussbacher, who came to Israel in 1982. In an e-mail interview, he recalls that he had "a sort of net-withdrawal symptom and lobbied everyone in site to connect up." When IBM Europe was convinced to fund BITNET for an initial 3 year trial run, Israel was one of the first countries to connect. BITNET was established by August 1984, and the Internet protocol was introduced in Israel by end 1989. They were both run by ILAN (Israeli Academic Network) and Nussbacher is today a senior networking consultant to MACHBA, the Israeli Interuniversity Computer Consortium. He notes:
Nowadays, it has become irrelevant where one sits in the world. The network has reduced distances as well as time. For people in Israel, the network is especially crucial. Israel is surrounded by hostile neighbors and all our commerce is done with Europe and the USA. The best way to remain in touch with colleagues is via the network.
By 1990 efforts to promote the potential of Jewish communities through networking prompted discussion via email lists and a number of electronic "landing sites" were established to maintain databases, and help find things Jewish on the net. Dov Winer created JewishNet at Ben Gurion University, and Avram Goodblatt formed the NY-Israel Project at Nysernet in New York. Soon after, Jerusalem One was created in Jerusalem. Efforts were made to go out into the field to teach skills, demonstrate applications, and promote the potential for increased communication between Jewish communities. These efforts be described in this article.
Documents such as this article tend to get outdated rapidly as addresses change or go obsolete. This document is not a list of all of the interesting pages and projects and sites in Jewish networking. It is an introduction to key efforts in Jewish networking, with an overview of basic resources, and a sampling of projects that have formed in the last year. Even if some of the addresses should become obsolete, the overall picture I present is accurate. I aim to give the new user a bit of history and point them in the right direction so they can begin to create their own presence on the net.
The most important resource for learning about the net is the net itself. Learn to use it, navigate through it, conduct your own searches, and talk to the people on it. You will most likely find whatever you are looking for, many things you never knew of before, and some wonderful people along the way.
There are some good user's guides to networking. See Ed Krol's The Whole Internet, Tracy LaQuey's The Internet Companion, and Brendan Kehoe's Zen and the Art of the Internet an old version of which is available electronically at http://www.zen.org/~brendan/ and the fourth edition just came out.
Drora Cohen's Hebrew guide, Free Jump to the Internet is at http://wissgi.weizman.ac.il/CC/freejump.shtml.
Networking centers around four basic application protocols:
WALLA is a Hebrew Search Engine. http://www.walla.co.il/. There are several indexes and search tools specifically for Jewish topics:
In order to browse through the Hebrew listings in the library, download Hebrew files, send e-mail or read web pages in Hebrew, you need communications software that runs Hebrew. You can find information about Hebrew standards at http://www.il/ and Hebrew fonts at http://www.snunit.k12.il/.
For discussions on the latest developments in this area, subscribe to il-board at listserv@vm.tau.ac.il. Technical files are available via anonymous ftp from ftp://vm.tau.ac.il/hank.400 /hebemail.rfc, or ftp://vm.tau.ac.il/hank.400/ hebrew.doc.
You can download Hebrew Kermit via anonymous ftp from ftp://noa.huji.ac.il/cd pub/hebrew_kermit/heb_kerm.zip. If you need egahe.com to run the Hebrew Kermit, you can get this program at the same site.
At the 1993 AJL meeting in New York, Reflection4 by Walker Richer & Quinn in Seattle was also recommended as software for Hebrew networking.
For discussion *in* Hebrew you can join the mailing list "mikhtav." It was started by Doug Shivers in Portland, Oregon and runs out of a server in Israel. A web site with all the utilities you need to participate is at http://www.hevanet.com/dshivers/mikhtav. To sub, send email to majordomo@mofet.macam98.ac.ilwith the message: subscribe mikhtav.
A Hebrew mailer for macintosh - Mac Eudora - is available via anonymous ftp at mofet.macam98.ac.il/pub/incoming/mac-heb.
A library catalog on the Internet may not fully reflect its holdings. Many libraries have yet to complete retrospective conversion of their holdings or to computerize new holdings.
Each library's menu and commands differ slightly so be sure to read the instructions at each site as soon as you log on, especially instructions on how to exit! You can telnet to an individual library if you know its address, or you can use a search service.
RLIN (Research Libraries and Information Network) contains cataloging records from the Library of Congress as well as the Research Library Group (RLG) - 30 major university and research libraries and many smaller affiliates. A search will locate all the sites that have a particular item. This saves you the trouble of searching each library separately. Bibliographic files are subdivided into books, serials, manuscripts, recordings, scores, maps, visual materials, and machine readable data files. There are also specialized databases.
You can log onto RLIN from a terminal in most libraries. If you want to work from home you will need an account. Private accounts can be costly so ask your university or research institution to get one for you.
Libraries on RLIN relevant to Jewish studies include Brandeis, British Library, Columbia, Harvard, Hebrew Union College, Jewish Theological Seminary, Library of Congress, New York Public Library, Stanford, Yale University, YIVO Institute for Jewish Research. Libraries for folklorists include University of Indiana Bloomington, Penn State, UCLA, and UC Berkeley.
A document from 1994 called "Internet Accessible Library Catalogs & Databases" is available via anonymous ftp from ftp://vm.tau.ac.il/hank.400/library.text.
ALEPH is the Israeli Interuniversity Computerized Catalogue System. Through a menu, you can access libraries and databases in Israel, both in Hebrew and other languages. Seven universities in Israel constitute the ALEPH network. Their catalogs are interconnected and users can switch from one to another once they are inside any ALEPH catalog.
You can access ALEPH by telneting to any of the following sites. Login as "aleph". To exit type "stop":
The index to Hebrew Periodicals and the Eretz Israel Database from the University of Haifa Library.
RAMBI (Index to Articles on Jewish Studies since 1986), at the Jewish National Library of The Hebrew University in Jerusalem, Givat Ram, is compiled from thousands of periodicals with full bibliographic data.
An index to the Israeli legal journal (Mishpateach) and the decisions of the Supreme Court of Israel, at Tel Aviv University.
The Institute of Microfilms' Hebrew Manuscripts at the National Library of The Hebrew University.
The Microfilm Masters of Jewish and Israeli Periodicals indexes originals and negatives of periodicals in selected libraries in England, the United States, and Israel.
The Jewish Theological Seminary of America also uses the ALEPH cataloging system, telnet://jtsa.edu. Login as "aleph." JTSA has a web site for the library that presents portions of library exhibits, lists of recent acquisitions, and the friends of the library newsletter. http://www.jtsa.edu/library/. You can telnet to the library catalog from the website
Virtual Libraries. There are a few sites where the text is accessible online. The text of the Bible and the Koran, in English, can be found in WAIS (Wide Area Information System) and in Project Gutenberg through searching the Rutger's University reference section, among other sites. Encyclopedias can be found in CARL (Colorado Alliance for Research Libraries). Information on different countries can be found in the CIA World Fact Book, at different sites through Gopher. You can read these texts online or download them.
An electronic discussion list is a group of people who exchange email, usually around a topic. Sometimes it is referred to as conferencing. When an individual posts a letter to a list, all subscribers receive a copy. Lists are handled by a server (a piece of software) at a particular node (a computer at an institution), monitored by an individual (usually a volunteer).
There are over 35,000 discussion lists worldwide. You can search the "list of lists" at http://www.liszt.com.
There are between 300-400 lists related to Jewish interests. There are several places with lists of lists related to Jewish interests, with descriptions and instructions on how to subscribe to them: Discussions cover all subjects imaginable: political activism, Holocaust research, women, religious studies, the UJA and Hillel, Yiddish scholars, music lovers, Ladino and German speaking Jews, Jewish seniors, and rural Jewish communities. Many discussion lists are archived so you can retrieve past discussions.
Global Jewish Network http://www.jewish.net lists about 335 discussion groups worldwide, organized by subject or alphabetically. JewishNet also connects you to other major sites on the Internet with Jewish lists. JewishNet itself has a discussion list that sends out announcements and information relevant to the Jewish community. To subscribe, send email to listserv@techunix.technion.ac.il with the msg subscribe JEWISHNET-L yourname.
A file of ILAN based lists was last updated by Hank Nussbacher in 1993. You can download the file via anonymous ftp from ftp://vm.tau.ac.il/hank.400/israel.lists. Or through Tel Aviv University or Bar Ilan gophers. The file describes about 40 lists originating in Israel, pertaining to scientific research, computer networking, absorbing olim, discussing music, and Japanese board games, to name a few.
Shamash: The Jewish Internet Consortium hosts about 250-300 lists. You locate them on the web at http://shamash.org or through gopher://shamash.org. Discussion lists are arranged alphabetically. Many of the lists are for community organizations but there are also general purpose lists for holidays (yomtov), torah study, 2nd-generation discussions, Russian Jews, proverbs, Pollard, hiking, Hebron news, gay Jews, bridges (a women's group), and Israel news.
Approximately 50-60 lists originate at Jerusalem One. You can find them at on the web at http://www.jer1.co.il or at gopher://gopher.jer1.co.il. Lists cover aliyah, tourism, halacha, student programs in Israel, Jewish singles, CJI for computer jobs in Israel, Camera Media Reports, a newsletter from Judea, and the Arab press.
Lists both serve an existing community and create new communities. At the 1993 American Jewish Libraries (AJL) conference, Yael Penkower reported that a member of a synagogue in England printed out all the issues of the mail-jewish discussion list for halacha, and added them to a folder in the shul each week, much to the delight of the congregation.
In April 1993 the Durham Orthodox Kehillah at Beth El Synagogue in North Carolina started its own e-mail list for members, with the help of the Duke University Computer Center. They sent out announcements such as recruiting a minyan for observing a yortsayt. This was reported on the Jewish Electronic Meeting list (JEM).
A more recent example is the Ramat Negev Freenet that opened this May 1995. One of the hopes is that it will enable the 15 or so participating settlements to establish better communications. Experience shows that when it is geographically feasible, people that communicate electronically choose to meet face to face as well. Many lists periodically arrange face-to-face gatherings referred to as "flesh meets" or simply "meets."
Even when it is not possible to meet, lists can create a sense of community among the subscribers. In that case, a shared interest or topic replaces geographic proximity as the key link between people -- "topos" meaning place in Greek (Kirshenblatt-Gimblett 1995). Every discussion list nurtures its own sense of etiquette and protocol to handle differences in taste and temperament. New lists are being created or dropped every day.
Newsgroups are like bulletin boards, named by subject area. Individuals post to a public site and read them at their leisure. The software that reads a newsgroup should thread the posts according to their 'subject' headings. This allows for a filtering not possible in email lists. As a result, people are careful with the accuracy of their subject heading and exchanges on a newsgroup can be probing and ongoing.
There are over 20,000 newsgroups worldwide. About 45-50 are related to Jewish concerns. Topics range from politics to geneology: talk.politics.mideast, and alt.revisionism regarding Holocaust revisionism, il.job, soc.culture.israel, soc.culture.jewish.holocaust. Some e-mail lists are also available as newsgroups: il.ads, il.board, il.talk, il.israel.mideast, and il.israel.israeline (the last two are translations of the press, not discussion groups). There is good index of Jewish newsgroups on the JewishNet at http://www.jewishnet.net.
One of the most active newsgroups is soc.culture.jewish -- a discussion of Jewish culture and religion. Past discussions of soc.culture.jewish are archived at the NY-Israel Project at gopher://shamash.org. In March 1993, a hilarious thread appeared on soc.culture.jewish under the subject heading "Talmud Fortran." It was a cross fertilization between computer science and Purim humor on the problems of kashering buggy software programs. One letter was arranged like a page of Talmud.
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Electronic networking decentralizes power by encouraging the reproduction of information and communication between otherwise isolated communities. What seems like a duplication of efforts at times, simply reflects the diversity of interests and emphases within the Jewish community. There always seems to be room for one more point of view in this medium that thrives on diversity and interactivity.
The Global Jewish Information Network or JewishNet, is a project of the government of Israel, initiated by Dov Winer in 1988 when he presented the idea to the Ministry of Communications. In 1991 he won the contract to implement the project and headed a team of Makash/SIBAM to develop it. By May 1993 a committee for the project was established at the Jewish Agency and the Policy Planning Commitee for Telematics in Israel included the project into its policy for a national infrastructure.
JewishNet was originally established at Ben Gurion University. In June 1993, it received a server at The Hebrew University, with full Hebrew support. Since spring 1995, it is located at http://www.jewishnet.net
Winer came to Israel in 1966 from Brazil. A psychologist, he has taught at Ben Gurion University and established the Evaluation and Applied Research Unit of the Negev College. He was active in intervention projects in development towns and the kibbutz movement and helped establish networking projects through the Makash association, a non-profit organization for furthering social and educational goals through computer communications. In an e-mail interview, he notes:
"When I got acquainted with the possibilities implied by worldwide networking....it was clear that we may reach unprecedented global integration of the Jewish community. Jewish education, community life, Jewish political action, the countering of processes of decay and disintegration - all these may benefit of such integration. All this may suggest a better prospect for the Jewish People than that foreseen by Jewish demography for the beginning of the next century."Winer envisioned a network that caters specifically to the information and communication needs of Jewish communities all over the world, accessible from every Jewish congregation, institute, school and home, providing services such as e-mail, directories, easy access to databases, electronic newspapers, bulletin boards and conferences, software, educational services and a Jewish electronic university. Much of his vision has come to pass in recent years. Today, JewishNet is but one of many servers catering specifically to Jewish needs.
Jewishnet contains links to a comprehensive list of Jewish resources on the net: discussion lists, homepages, gopher sites, libraries, anonymous ftp sites, newsgroups. The "virtual exhibits" is an eclectic collection of links that range from the Dead Sea Scrolls to the Virtual Shtetl, a tour with Israel's Nature Society, Jews of Uganda, Chagall, and the First Israeli Group Internet Art Exhibit.
Browse through Jewish Educational Resources to learn more about the diversity of Jewish community networks world-wide, including The Twinning Project at http://www.makash.ac.il/twin/main.htm that links up students and teachers from Jewish schools in Israel and the Diaspora. Macam98 is a National Teachers' College Network in Israel. Their homepage is at http://www.art.macam98.ac.il/.
For updates and questions regarding Jewish networking subscribe to the discussion list jewishnet-l. Send email to listserv@techunix.technion.ac.il with the msg subscribe JEWISHNET-L yourname.
A collection of files about ILAN (Israel Academic Network) is available via anonymous ftp at Tel Aviv University. The files are a little old, but still relevant. You can download an index of the directory from ftp://vm.tau.ac.il/hank.400/@index.index. "Frequently Asked Questions" about the Israel Academic Network are answered in israel.faq (1995) Some other useful files include israel.lists (1993) about ILAN based discussion lists, and RFC1555.text a "Request for Comment" on Hebrew networking protocols, and a guide to information on the Internet that pertains to religious studies.
If you want to dialogue with the computer networking community in Israel, subscribe to Nussbacher's discussion lists (gatewayed as newsgroups): il- board, il-talk, or il-ads at listserv@vm.tau.ac.il.
More recently, Machba nad Ilan created a web server that points to most of the Internet servers in Israel (gopher, anonymous ftp, and web sites) http://www.il/. There is also information concerning Hebrew.
Shamash is a consortium of worldwide Jewish organizations, governed by an elected board of directors. The project developed out of the New York-Israel Project, founded in 1992 by Avrum Goodblatt (originally from Cleveland), at the invitation of Richard Mandelbaum, head of NYSERNET (New York State Research and Educational Network). Goodblatt had been actively promoting Jewish networking since 1989. Nysernet serves as the physical link between Israel and U.S. research networks.
The server for the NY-Israel Project was originally located in Liverpool, NY. Hebrew College recently assumed responsibility for the Shamash Jewish Internet Consortium. They have also established a Center for Information Technology to undertake research and development for Shamash and to explore how the Internet can be harnessed to enhance Jewish education and community life.
You can view the Shamash website at http://shamash.org, or at gopher://shamash.org. You can download their files via anonymous ftp from ftp://shamash.org/israel/.
Accounts on Shamash are available to Jewish community organizations only. In an email interview, Goodblatt explains that the project's goal is to help Jewish organizations provide better services to their communities. Shamash helps them structure their information systems to use the Internet effectively and cooperate with each other to maximize limited resources. Groups include non-profit, social service, cultural, and commercial interests.
Organizations listed on Shamash include: Hillel, Bronfman fellowships, American Jewish Congress, United Synagogue of Conservative Jewry, National Foudnation for Jewish Culture, Orthodox Union and OU Kashruth database, National Jewish community on Scouting, Jewish Week, Association of Jewish Family and Children's Agencies, Peace Now, Bnai Brith, World Zionist Organization, Jewish Studies with Hebrew University.
Shamash provides information on these organizations, runs 250-300 discussion lists, a Holocaust database, Andy Tannenbaum's Judaica site, American-Israel business exchange, Jewish graphics, aliya information, Hebrew programs and software.
YiddishNet is a recent addition to Shamash yiddish1@shamash.org It is a newsletter about Yiddish language and culture, sponsored by the Workmen's Circle in New York City. It is not a discussion forum - that's what the "Mendele" forum is for. It will publish "Global Yiddish" (which is also a print newsletter) and cover information about media, computers, email conferences, performances and meetings around the world. It will seek to publish in Yiddish. For more info, you can contact Reyzl Kalifowica-Waletzky at reyzl@aol.com.
The Jewish Studies JUDAICA eJOURNAL recently published a list of Jewish Studies and related conferences in Israel, going from June 1995 through September 1996. The journal lists events and research in academic Jewish Studies. The email list is jewstudies@shamash.org and their web site is located at http://shamash.org/~ajhyman/jsjej.html.
Jerusalem One was established in the summer of 1993 by the Jewish International Communications Network (JICN), a branch of the Jewish International Association Against Assimilation (JIA). The network is a privately funded, non-profit organization, managed by a board of directors comprised of Israeli business people, professors, and members of Knesset. As its name implies, it is located in Jerusalem, and was among the first public service sites to be built through an independent access provider in Israel, rather than at an educational institution.
Jerusalem One maintains a gopher server at gopher.jer1.co.il. Its web site is at http://www.jer1.co.il.
Jerusalem One provides over 50 discussion lists and maintains a center for Zionist education, a center for youth organizations and schools, news from Judea and Samaria, databases for art, Holocaust and neo-Nazis, Jewish Events and communities, travel, kashrut, and a Jewish electronic library.
For more information about Jerusalem One, contact the network manager, Zvi Lando at lando@jer1.co.il
Jerusalem One used to provide an email gateway to Chabad users on Keshernet, a private BBS system. Today Chabad has two main web sites at http://www.chabad.org and http://www.utexas.edu/students/cjso/Chabad/chabad.html.
JewishGen is a Jewish Geneology Discussion Group that was started as a message area on FidoNet (a network of DOS based BBSs) in 1988 by Susan E. King, Sysop of Trace in Houston, Texas. The Purpose of JewishGen has been to share information and research in Jewish geneology and origins. The discussion group utilizes a three-way gateway between a mailing list, newsgroup, and fidonet discussion area.
If you are in Texas, you can dial in to the following Fidonet number: (713) 862-6400. The FidoNet message base is jewishgen. Since 1994, the group became available as a moderated newsgroup soc.genealogy.jewish. The mailing list version is jewishgen@mail.eworld.com. To sub, send email to listserv@mail.eworld.com with the message: sub jewishgen firstname lastname.
Their web site http://www.jewishgen.org/ provides additional information on Yiskor books, catalogs, records, libraries and maps. The site contains INFO files, a number of SIG (special interests groups), special projects, and the Jewish Family Finder (JGFF), a searchable database. JewishGen College offers email courses on various aspects of geneology. You can get more info about the college from the web page or write to http://www.memo.com/jgsr. It searches the English indexes (name and geographical) of Dr. Genrich Deych's Russian language book on Jewish communities in the Pale of Settlement and Kurland and Livonia provinces of the Russian Empire 1853-1854.
Avotaynu is Gary Mokatoff's site for Jewish geneological research at http://www.avotaynu.com. A Consolidated Jewish Surname Index covers several databases and includes more than a million entries. Avotaynu also publishes books on researching Jewish family history and a journal called Avotaynu, the International Review of Jewish Genealogy.
There are two major discussion lists related to the Holocaust:
Two news groups are soc.culture.jewish.holocaust and alt.revisionism.
The Niskor Home Page was created by Ken McVay who has been very active on Usenet in locating and rebutting revisionists and neo-nazis on the net. The URL is http://199.60.231.65.
McVay has compiled an archive of files about the Holocaust and fascism on the Victoria Freenet in Canada: telnet://freenet.victoria.bc.ca and login as "guest". After many introductory screens, select 'Government Building' from the main menu, and then choose 'Libraries and Information' and go to 'Special'.
A number of Holocaust museums and collections are on line:
Cybrary of the Holocaust at http://remember.org is maintained by Michael Declan Dunn who writes that he is overwhelmed by the "outpouring of content" and people "expressing their viewpoint in a rich thoughtscape of information." The site is a combination of survivor testimonies, stories by children of survivors, rescuers and liberators, a web chat conference on Yom Hashoah, poetry, prayers, and links to sites of education and inspiration.
Personal pages include sites such as Claudia Cornwall's "Letter from Vienna: A daughter uncovers her family's Jewish past" at http://vanbc.wimsey.com/~cornwall/ or Shai's photo exhibit from her participation in the March of the Living at http:www.edu.yorku.ca/~tcs/~shai/default.html. Two photo exhibits are currently at http://www.hooked.net/users/rgreene. One is of Chiune Sugihara and how he saved 6000 Polish Jews. The other is of Dachau survivors who returned to Germany last year.
In 1995 there were a number of attempts to teach Holocaust studies online. David Meier at Dickinson State University, North Dakota announced a "Holocaust Course Web Site that "attempts to pull together the best of the WWW with a course on the teaching of the Holocaust. http://www.dsu.nodak.edu/course/artscience/socbehav/holocau.html.
Robert Michael announced a 3-credit course on the Holocaust through the University of Massachusetts in 1995. The course used the Web and email. http://www.umassd.edu/cybered/distlearninghome.html.
Sam and Carol Edelman offered a 3-unit course entitled "The Holocaust: Foundation, Tragedy, & Aftermath" through California State University, Chico in 1995. They noted that students would "visit" the archives at Jerusalem1, Shamash, the US Holocaust Museum, Yad Vashem, and the Simon Weisenthal Instititue. The course was conducted in a MOO, a virtual environment that allows groups to work together in a classroom. Lectures and reading assignments were disseminated weekly via email. Interaction with instructors took place via email or telnet to the MOO. More information was available by email to dbarger@oavax.csuchico.
If you are looking for a mate, you can subscribe to the Jewish Singles Mailing List (JSML) which is run by Hillel Steinberg at zeus@cs.umd.edu. For information about how to join, view his new webpage at http://www.tcg-inc.com/JDS-1985/jsml.html. There is a FAQ that will answer your questions. You can request a template to fill out, after which you receive a list of hundreds of postings from other singles, with you on it.
There is also a "shidduch maker" at Cybertouch, an interactive site in Toronto, Canada - http://www.cybertouch.com. Get the connector on the web page and click on the self extracting file and then add the following domain 206.186.49.5 in the 'add' section. Call it Cybertouch.
The Tanach in Hebrew (an almost complete copy) is available at Shamash:
The README files
tell an interesting story of how Dan Rice found and prepared the Tanach
files and why some of the books are missing. On a philosophical note, he
reflects:
"I have thrown out all the specifically messy-dos stuff and written some extremely simple programs to play around with the so-called 'codes,' so that Unix users can also investigate them. No disrespect to the Tanach is intended. I hope that no one will mistake this sort of thing for actual Torah study."
Tanach, Talmud Bavli and Talmud Yerushalmi are available for browsing online, in Hebrew, at Snunit of The Hebrew University http://www.snunit.k12.il.
In Finland the Hebrew Bible (as well as in 13 other languages!) is available via anonymous ftp: ftp://nic.funet.fipub/doc/bible/texts/hebrew. It comes with a Hebrew quiz and a Biblical Hebrew language tutorial.
An indepth discussion of the Babylonian Talmud in the form of a clickable image map was created by Eliezer Segal at http://www.ucalgary.ca/~elsegal/TalmudPage.html.
Torah Jewish Cyberspace by the Orthodox Union provides links to Torah related sites, Rambam's Thirteen Articles of Faith, Parashat Ha Shavua, and more at http://www.ou.org. They also provide a synagogue network which links Orthodox shuls.
The Web Torah Library is a collection of religious texts online in English and Hebrew provided by the "virtual beit midrash" Yeshivat Har Etzion at http://www.etzion.org.il/yhe.htm.
Dor L'Dor provides software for learning and reinforcing Hebrew skills, prayers, and decoding Rashi commentary. Their homepage is at http://www.radix.net/~dor_l_dor/.
David Porusch's personal talMUD under construction is an idiosyncratic meditation on the Hebrew language at http://www.rpi.edu/~porusd
Mark Hurvitz writes that he edits and prints a haggadah every year. This year he hung one on the web - http://www.computergeeks.com/haggadah.
Lawrence Wieder published a plain text version of the Haggadah to America Online. Daniel P. Faigin who moderates the Liberal Judaism Mailing List has made it available in their archives. You can retrieve it by sending email to: faigin@shamash.org with the message: send infofiles liturgy/wieder.hagadah.txt. You can also use the link ftp://shamash.org/israel/lists/mail.liberal-judaism/info-files/liturgy/wieder.haggadah.txt. Wieder also posted a hypertext version of the Red Sea Haggadah at http://users.aol.com/wiseacrebk/Haggadah/. He welcomed midrash or legend or recollections to be sent to mosesmuses@redsea.com, which he added in the appropriate place. He views "the e-text, like the Seder service, as a collaboration unrolling in time."
Larry Yudelson (larry@jcn18.com), editor of the Jewish Communication Network http://www.jcn18.com set up a framework for a collaborative Haggadah at http://www.pesach.com. The Haggadah was cut into 16 pieces so that teachers and students could enter relevant remarks, recipes, thoughts, stories, anectdotes, poems and political manifestos. A program then selected from the comments and assembles a Random Haggadah, with comments in each section. The vision was "for you to print out multiple random, different Haggadah commentaries, letting the insights of Jews around the world be shared at the Seder table."
Temple Emanu-El in New York City broadcast their "cyberseder" live online. Anyone with an Internet connection, sound capabilities and Xing's StreamWorks 2.0 player or the RealAudio Player, which are available free of charge, could tune into the audio broadcast at their web site http://www.emanuelnyc.org. They plan to have more such broadcasts for the High Holidays in September. For more information you can contact Rita Haves at info@emanuelnyc.org
Jewish communities are using the Internet to serve the interests of local residents and reach out to the world. A comprehensive web page on Jewish Folklore is located at http://www.tau.ac.il/~gila1/folklore.
The Ramat Negev FreeNet is the first freenet in Israel. It provides low cost Internet access to residents of 13 settlements in the Negev desert. On their homepage http://ramat-negev.org.il/jewish.html you can find descriptions of the settlements, R&D in the area, tourist sites, and a good collection of Jewish links, as well this paper.
In the near future, I will list a collection of Jewish community networks here on this page. Meanwhile, here is a sample of community related network services that were announced over the past year (1995) on the jewishnt@bguvm.bgu.ac.il mailing list:
Italian Jewish Network http://www.inrete.it/al/isola.html.
Shadar - the Jewish Community Network established in Argentina as an initiative of the JOINT and administered by the ORT, led by Jorge Schulman.
Sparkles - The Jewish Seniors Network List, started by Elizabeth E. Weiss in Huntington Woods, Michigan, and run out of a server at Ben Gurion University. The list is for serving the needs of senior citizens. Sub to listserv@bguvm.bgu.ac.il with the message: sub sparkles yourfullname.
Canadian Jewish Historical Society - http://www.oise.on.ca/webstuff/otherprj/cjhs1.html
La Communaute Juive Francaise - http://www.iway.fr/col.
The Jewish Bulletin of Northern California claims it is the only weekly Jewish newspaper in the world to put its entire printed edition on the Web every week. The paper covers the San Francisco Bay area http://www.jewish.com/jb.
JACS is a website for Jews in Recovery from Alcoholism and Drug Dependencies located at http://www.jacsweb.org/. They also have a discussion list jacs@sjuvm.stjohns.edu. Subscribe to: listserv@sjuvm.stjohns.edu with the message "subscribe jacs firstname lastinitial".
The World Zionist Organization is located at http://www.wzo.org.il. It provides aliyah information, Israel programs for students, and a Jewish University in Cyberspace (JUICE) that gives classes over the Internet.
Israel Online provides the newspaper HAARETZ DAILY in Hebrew - http://www.haaretz.co.il. There is a free trial period of 30 minutes. Hardware and software specifications are listed.
The Babylon Jewry Heritage Museum is located at http://www.BabylonJewry.org.il.
God's Hotline is a service that will place a note in the wailing wall, or read your prayer or wish at a synagogue, church, or mosque in Jerusalem. The service costs $4.99, payable by credit card. They do not do curses - http://www.aquanet.co.il.
Jewish Resources Network of the Mountains and Plains (har V'Kikar) was created by Rabbi Steve Forstein to serve the needs of "rural Jewry." It's prime service area is Montana, Wyoming and North and South Dakota, as well as any community that has less than three synagogues. It recently started a mailing list: Olam Katan (small world). To subscribe, send a message to the Rabbi Forstein at rebsteve@dakota.net. Include your first and last names, and preferably your surface mail address and telephone.
Kulanu-l is an organization of individuals of varied backgrounds and practices dedicated to finding lost and dispersed remnants of the Jewish people. The mailing list is run by David Turetsky Subscribe to: listserv@ube.ubalt.edu with the message subscribe kulanu-l yourname.
Most of what has been described so far is asynchronous communication -- information is stored in the memory of a computer for you to access at your convenience. Synchronous communication is not stored in memory, although it is possible to log a chat session. Two parties must be logged on at the same time in order to read and write to each other.
CyberTouch http://www.cybertouch.com is an example of an interactive web site in Toronto Canada where you can play chess online, use chat lines, and use the shidduch maker described above.
The Judaic Studies Center is an interactive MOO (MUD Object Oriented) located at the Diversity University (http://www.du.org). Interaction on a MOO is synchronous, on-line, real-time communication. It goes beyond the chat room concept because it is programmable and customizable. Diversity University has been the site of many college classes in creative writing, biology, etc. It is also the home base for an international support team for librarians which sponsors seminars, classes, and on-line people resources.
So far, the Center consists of a classroom, a room focusing on the Hebrew calendar, and a room focusing on Jewish stories. Douglas Danforth, the creator, writes: "a few members of DU from Connecticut to Hawaii gathered last Chanukah to light candles together, eat latkes, etc. In the future, I hope to have someone give a presentation. Also, I might get a Hillel from a local University involved so they can have collaborative events with other Hillels nation (or world) wide." If anyone wants to know more you can reach Doug at danforth@cris.com.
Interactive, real-time communications gained publicity during the Gulf Crisis in 1990 when computer networks were able to provide communication while conventional phone lines were overwhelmed. Many users used RELAY (on BITNET) or IRC (Internet Relay Chat). These are network programs that allow users worldwide to chat simultaneously. On IRC, for example, people met 24 hours a day on a channel called #war to discuss the ongoing crisis.
David in Cleveland relates how he logged on and "fingered" a number of sites in Israel till he found someone at The Hebrew University and used interactive talk to contact him. He recalls:
He was connected from his "sealed room" at home via modem. After he updated me on the latest radio reports, I asked him to make a few phone calls and gave him a list of names/numbers. As each call was complete he typed the name and status of the family. After that, he asked me to contact some close friends of his in the Cleveland area to let them know he was all right. I continued to contact him throughout the war for status reports during the missile attacks. He was always logged in during attacks.Many Israelis used discussion lists to communicate with the world during this time. Shahar from the Technion in Haifa remembers that his 15 year old brother was subscribed to the KIDS-91 list and communicated daily with other kids on the list. Three Israelis posted "diaries" during the Gulf War. Werman's and Shimshoni's postings are archived at the numerous sites detailed above. Judy Koren from the Technion Israel Institute of Technology wrote diaries that are archived with the HUMANIST list. You can ask for help in searching HUMANIST archives by sending email to listproc@lists.princeton.edu with the message help.
The net has become known as a place where people who are far apart can meet during times of crises. There are over 60 web sites published in memory Itzhak Rabin's assassination, web sites, on some of them, people could light a memorial candle (Di Segni-Garbasz 1996). During the recent bombings in Israel, America Online had a Jewish Community Online section (keyword Jewish). One user who participated reported:
There were voluminous chats and messages coping with the recent bombing. ....We said Kaddish. People were on the phone with Israel and reporting directly online. it was a very supportive community. .... You can see how our beloved cyberspace is especially helpful and comforting by allowing mourners to reach out to each other around the world.
For political reasons, some people wonder how computer networks may influence communication between Israelis and their Arab neighbors. Because the Internet had its roots in the academic tradition of open information sharing, security has not been a priority.
A discussion of this issue appeared during June 1993 on the il-board discussion group, upon learning that two universities on the Westbank had connected to the Internet. One user commented:
"Now that El Najah University (najah.edu) and Bir Zeit University (birzeit.edu) are on the Internet, I just wonder if they, too, will be able to subscribe to il.board :-)."Someone replied, "Is there a reason why not?" Others commented, "and we should be able to subscribe to the PA-BOARD :-)" or "No, they'll have their own palestine.board (autonomous, of course!)" and a third asked, " Wouldn't the Army or ministry of defence restrict or cencor communication via e-mail between Israel and Arab countries?" Finally, someone asked "Does anyone know how they are connected?" which prompted a curious user to do some investigation and report back.
There is a discussion list and a newsgroup for Palestinian issues. The newsgroup is soc.culture.palestine. The PNet mailing is not run by an automatic listserver. Send mail to PNet-Request@banumusa.csl.uiuc.edu with an introductory note about yourself.
salaam-v-shalom is a discussion list for dialogue between Jews and Arabs. Sub to listserv@csf.colorado.edu with the message sub salaam-v-shalom yourname.
In response to the above discussion, a user from the Weizmann Institute, shared a letter he received from a professor in Iran looking for a text editor for Farsi:
Dear Mr. [deleted], I am in the process of developing FarsiTeX, based on tex--xet. I am in need of good text editor for that. I downloaded hed, it is fine for hebrew. But needs to have a completely different mapping for the keyboard. How can I do this? Is it possible to have the source? thanks a lot Dr. [deleted] Sharif Univ of Tech Tehran, Iran
Direct e-mail between Rehovot and Tehran. Some people like to think about peace, academic cooperation across militant borders, and the power of computers to do good. What is this world coming to!
Di Segni Garbasz, Yaara. 1996. "The Internet Community in Times of Crisis: Is IRC Better when Things get Worse?" Electronic paper available at http://www.sover.net/~trophy/papers/CMC.
Kehoe, Brendan P. 1992. Zen and the Art of the Internet: A Beginner's Guide to the Internet. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall. Electronic version (in PostScript only) available via anonymous ftp from ashley.cs.widener.edu/pub/zen.
Kiener, Ronald. 1993. "Visiting Libraries Around the World with Internet: A Powerful Tool for the Judaicist." AJS Newsletter, No. 43, Spring.
Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, Barbara. 1995. "The Electronic Vernacular." Electronic publication at http://www.nyu.edu/faculty/bkg.
Krol, Ed. 1989. The Hitchhikers Guide to the Internet. Electronic document available via anonymous ftp from nis.nsf.net/internet/documents/rfc/rfc1118.txt.
Krol, Ed. 1992. The Whole Internet: User's Guide & Catalog. Sebastopol, CA: O'Reilly & Associates, Inc.
LaQuey, Tracy with Jeanne C. Ryer. 1993. The Internet Companion: A Beginner's Guide to Global Networking. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley Publishing Company.
Laurel, Brenda. 1991. Computers as Theatre. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley Publishing Company.
Penkower, Yael. 1993. "Internet and Judaica: The Reference Librarian's Perspective." Unpublished paper presented at the 28th Annual Convention of the Association of Jewish Libraries. June 20-23, 1993, New York City. You can reach the author at yapenkower@jtsa.edu.
Quarterman, John S. 1990. The Matrix: Computer Networks and Conferencing Systems Worldwide. Bedford, MA: Digital Press.
------- 1993. Internet article in Computerworld, February 22.
Steele, Guy L. Jr.. 1991. "Confessions of a Happy Hacker" in Eric Raymond, ed., The Hacker's Dictionary. Cambridge: The MIT Press. Available online as the jargon file: http://www.eps.mcgill.ca/jargon/jargon.html.
