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Friday May 4, 2001

While traveling the Internet, stop off at the Sephardi cafe

James Besser

An example: the growing number of Sephardi sites. This culture remains largely unknown to many American Jews, but thanks to the World Wide Web, its richness is now far more accessible.

The Sephardic Cafe is a good starting point for your meanderings. The home page begins with an invitation to "sit, relax, and refresh."

What follows is a well-done magazine-format site offering a little of everything for Sephardi Jews and those interested in Sephardi life.

A recent cover story looked at Sephardi aristocracy in Jerusalem. Another article looked at the vibrant Sephardi community in Johannesburg, South Africa.

Another section offers selected recipes, sometimes presented with interesting articles about their origins.

A section on Sephardi family memories includes longish essays -- some with pictures -- documenting Sephardi family odysseys. A "lost and found" section allows visitors to search for scraps of information about their dispersed families. Coming soon: stories in Djudio (Judeo-Spanish). And the site provides access to an online searchable Torah.

There's also a good collection of Sephardi links.

Nothing fancy here -- just interesting, well-presented information, pleasant graphics and a layout that makes navigation a cinch. Check it out at www.sephardiccafe.com/

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The Internet is a new medium, but it also is providing the means to preserve and disseminate material from days gone by.

Case in point: the new Hebrewbooks Web site, which is run by the Society for the Preservation of Hebrew Books.

This site is very much a work in progress -- more promise than reality. But the promise is intriguing, and material on hand is definitely worth a visit.

The idea is simple: The site provides glimpses of old seforim (Hebrew books), most dating from the early years of the 20th century--the last century, in case you've forgotten.

The site seems aimed at rabbis seeking new material to use with their congregations, but the range of topics when the site is completed should be interesting to Jewish cybernauts of all types.

The limited offerings include a rabbinical analysis of the conflict faced by Jewish women who survived the Titanic disaster while their men perished, and an early discussion of whether Coca Cola is kosher.

The site seems to have Titanic on the brain; there's also a rabbinical eulogy for Isidor Straus, the department store magnate who went down with the ship -- spectacularly.

Coming up soon are collections of sermons from famous rabbis of the past. The Web masters are actively soliciting input from visitors about new material as well.

Check out www.hebrewbooks.org/ now, and stop back in a month or two to see if these guys have lived up to their considerable promise.

***

Ever wonder what Franz Kafka looked like as a toddler? Surprisingly ordinary, a fact you'll learn from an attractive, fascinating site devoted to the writer, whose novels include "The Trial."

The home page is mostly a lengthy photographic essay on Kafka's life. There are pictures of him at different ages, shots of where he lived and images of documents about his life.

All of this is woven around quotes from his writings and biographical snippets that provide an intriguing taste of this man's thinking. It ends with images of his death notice.

One click will bring you to an extensive discussion of Kafka and Kabbalah. There is also a concise biography of the writer and a poignant, revealing letter from Kafka to his father.

There are also links to other Kafka -- not Kafkaesque -- sites on the World Wide Web.

One gripe: The home page is accompanied by some exceptionally irritating music that plays from a file downloaded to your computer; there's no off button, and it can be a chore figuring out how to shut the darned thing off even after you exit the site.

Still, this is a worthwhile wayside along the information superhighway. The strength of this site is not its depth -- you could get much more from almost any biography of Kafka -- but its use of text and pictures to provide an evocative glimpse of a life that had a huge impact on the Jewish world and the modern world. Check it out at www.kafka-franz.com/

The writer 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 jbesser@his.com

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