Her goal, she said, is to provide a place “where Jewish people can communicate with one another (and with me) in a comfortable, easy forum. I don’t want it to be like a chat-room or some other impersonal discussion area.”
Yenta’s home page is simplicity itself. It opens with her observations on a current topic. There’s one of those “instant polls” that are becoming common on the Web and a weekly tidbit of folksy wisdom. At the bottom is a Jewish joke.
An archive provides easy access to earlier editions of the page. The best feature is the curious melange of discussion forums. In one, visitors ask Yenta for advice on a range of issues.
“My advice might not be perfect but it is from the heart,” Yenta writes.
In another, participants share recipes.
It’s all low-key, in keeping with Yenta’s desire to create a kitchen-table kind of environment. And it’s well organized; you don’t have to be a computer genius to find your way around.
Rose’s story
The Internet can be a medium for ordinary people telling extraordinary stories.
Bob Becker’s simple but powerful Web site is an example of both. It can be found at www.becker-kc.com/RoseLeis.
In it, Becker tells the story of his late grandmother, Rose Leis, who was born near Minsk in 1887.
Becker previously asked visitors to help him by translating pieces of her autobiography from Yiddish to English. But enough visitors responded to his request, and the translation work is finished.
The centerpiece of the site is Rose’s writing — a photo of a long-hand document in Yiddish.
Her work, “A Resentful Heart,” is a gritty, moving account of shtetl life as many experienced it — not the shtetl of “Fiddler on the Roof,” but a landscape of pervasive poverty and bitterness.
Her story is not without transcendent moments, though. She movingly described Sabbaths during her childhood years as rays of light in a dark, troubled life.
Is it great literature? Probably not. But it has the ring of authenticity, and it adds considerably to our feel for the hardships our ancestors faced.
Bisel of history
Too many Web sites emphasize glitz over content. And others have plenty of content, but are so poorly packaged that a visit is a prescription for eyestrain.
Leah Berkowitz’s “Jewish-American History on the Web” site is different. Berkowitz offers a dazzling collection of information on her favorite subject. The material is organized for easy browsing and filled with attractive pictures that add to the content.
The result is more like an informative online coffee-table book than the usual home page hodgepodge.
The site opens with a “What’s New” section that has enough to keep most visitors busy for weeks.
One article recounts the restoration of a cemetery in the Klondike, a labor of love for some Canadian Jews.
Another recounts the adventures of Rosanna Osterman, a pioneering Texas philanthropist — and Confederate spy. An old image of Osterman makes it clear this was one formidable woman.
A “Virtual Library” section offers biographies of Jews you probably never heard of, but who contributed to the creation of a distinctive Jewish American culture.
Included is the story of Rebekah Hyneman, a poet and novelist who lived from 1816 to 1875. You can read her biography and some of her poems here.
One offering in “Jews in the Wild West” is the rollicking story of a dispute between a rabbi and his congregation in Portland that led to a shoot-out.
The section on “Jews in the Civil War” is encyclopedic. There are scholarly essays, excerpts from the diaries of Jewish soldiers and civilians caught up in the war, debates between rabbis over slavery in the years before the war, and pictures — including a great shot of a U.S. Navy engineer and a yeshiva boy.
There are also monthly book reviews, with direct links to amazon.com
The Web is a uniquely accessible medium; it doesn’t take a big budget or staff to communicate effectively with the world. That’s exactly what Leah Berkowitz has done here. See for yourself at www.jewish-history.com
James D. Besser is a Washington-based correspondent who has been writing about Jewish Web sites since the early 1990s. His columns alternate with those of Mark Mietkiewicz. Besser can be reached at [email protected]