Mihael Malyshev (St. Petersburg)

English-language sites dedicated to the Jewish lifestyle

The subject of today's excursion is English-language sites dedicated to the Jewish lifestyle. The level of the majority of these sites is rather oppressive.

Let us begin from a large site

http://aish.com

This site is maintained by r. Ionathan Saks. It contains a great variety of sections – “Society & Work” “Jewish Issues”, “Family”, “Dating”, “Spirituality”, “Jewish Literacy”, “Holocaust Studies”, “Ask the Rabbi”, “Weekly Torah Portion”, “Holidays” and a little advertising. Each of the sections contains sub-sections – let me give an example of a curious sub-section of the “Society & Work” – “Gossip in the office from the point of view of Judaism”. And there are a lot of similar topics. I'd say: have a look, for the subjects are rather interesting. But the level of rendering the material is the level of the ladies' journals, such as "The Cosmopolitan", that is practical psychology plus a little, unobtrusively, of religion. The section “Jewish Literacy” contains articles about the Jewish history, mainly the Greek period. The level is practically the same. In the section “Ask the Rabbi”, to which one can send a question, at the moment there is an answer to the question “Is abortion allowed if the test shows that the child will have Down syndrome”. The answer is negative with a rather standard motivation. I have not found anything new for myself. But it is curious.

There are sites on the subject of how to prevent intermarriage. There is a lot of them, for example

http://www.j51.com/~jrsfw/im/intart.htm

which contains the article to the subject of «What to say to children, who are going to inter-marry» or

http://www.j51.com/~jrsfw/im/dt-inter.htm -

with the article «Why one shouldn't inter-marry ». I wouldn't advise to read them – though the texts are written by rabbis, the level is too low.

The following site is a little more interesting

http://www.vbm-torah.org/salt.htm -

This site contains permanently renovated materials on the Jewish rites and rituals. Now there is a text about the essence, meaning and origin of the repayment of the firstborns. Rather curious. At least it was new to me.

Now about some sites dedicated the major rituals of the Jewish life.

There are many sites dedicated to circumcision, or the rite of brith-mila, for example,

http://www.torahview.com/bris/

All the texts, that I have scanned, are similar. As a matter of fact these sites work as advertising of mohels with a brief description of the ritual itself and preparation for it. On such sites it is possible to find letters of the grateful clients (parents) with photos, etc. Their task is to help the reader choose a mohel and order his services. From the theoretical point of view it is all of small interest.

The site

http://www.kayama.org/

is dedicated to divorce. It is the site of a charity organization assisting to receive (and to give) the Jewish divorce. It is possible to address them for help in a difficult case – though, to tell you the truth, I do not know, how they are going to help. It seemed to me, that this organization not so much helps to receive get, but just explains its necessity even for non-believers. The site is somewhat constructed the way ad sites are: you enter it and read - « Jewish divorce will change nothing in your life », then appears « except whom you can marry » and then «and whom your children can marry”.

And finally, let us turn to the site dedicated to kaddish

http://www.mnemotrix.com/kaddish/

It is the site of an organization, which provides reading kaddish on deceased, if the relatives, for some reason, can not read it. Hardly there are people in this country who are willing to order reading kaddish via Internet with credit card payment – therefore, I think, for us more interesting would be «the theory of the problem », and there is very little of that on the site: just a page about the Jewish attitude to death and about the essence of the prayer for the dead. What the site can really help with, is to define the yorzait, that is the Jewish anniversary of death. For this purpose it is necessary to know the exact date and year of death in common calendar.

There are a lot of similar sites in the Internet. I have selected some most typical or interesting. Certainly, it is up to you, but my advice is: do not spend time on such sites. Too little can be obtained from them.
If I happen to find a site of this type, which cannot be spoken of in this way, I promise I'll write about it.
And I would again ask you, dear guests, to send me the addresses of any interesting sites – either to our website, or to me directly: clliskov@spb.cityline.ru или malishev@spb.cityline.ru.

See you next time!