The Jewish Internet
Jewish information, like any other kind of information, abounds on the Internet. Searching with meaningful keywords specific to your interest is, of course, key! Familiarity with the Jewish information resources available on the Internet is essential for participants in Hebrew College's online M.A. in Jewish Studies. Fortunately, some dedicated folks have been hard at work organizing, categorizing, and cataloging the rapidly growing Jewish Internet.
Shamash is a great starting point for exploring the Jewish Internet. Shamash, a Hebrew College Online project, is the oldest and one of the largest non-profit resources on the Jewish Internet. Shamash also hosts the Internet's largest collection of Jewish online discussion forums: 597 mailing lists on a broad range of topics that serve over 175,000 worldwide subscriptions. Shamash offers an excellent portal to the Jewish Internet with links to 3,189 Web sites. Among the categories included in Shamash's Jewish Link Database are communities, culture, education, families, food, holidays, the Holocaust, Israel, news and media, shopping, spirituality, and travel, as well as links to other Jewish portals.
HCO's External Links Collection
HCO can also offer you some selected links to review. The “External Links” button in the menu you see on the left side of this page will take you to a page with a series of folders, each containing a category of links that you are likely to find helpful as an online student. The categories are:
- Internet Resources, Dictionaries, etc.
- Jewish Communities and Denominations
- Jewish Portals and Virtual Communities
- Jewish Studies
- Primary Texts
- The Ancient Near East
- Maps
- Time Lines
Please review these resources and spend some time at each of the sites with which you are not already familiar. This collection is a work in progress to which all of us can contribute. As you surf from site to site, you are bound to come across important resources that you think should be included in one of the categories. You may also have a new category that you'd like to see added to the External Links section.
During Orientation, please share these ideas with HCO in the Discussion Board area of the Orientation course Web site, in a forum called "The Jewish Internet,” which also has a general discussion thread for observations and questions about the Jewish Internet and online Jewish Studies resources. Outside of orientation, you may use the contact form of this Web site to comment.
