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Then, if it's something you want to add to your already cluttered house, make a bid. To do that, you have to register, which gives you a user name and password — the same procedure as Ebay. Your registration also lets you sell items; to do that, just fill out a simple fill-in-the-blanks form.

But be aware that once the auction begins, you are legally bound to follow through.

Buying and selling is free on YidBid — other auction services charge sellers a fee. But eventually, users will pay for the privilege by looking at advertising. The site also includes free classified ads for non-Jewish items and services.

YidBid's design is clean and practical; now all it needs are swarms of compulsive buyers and sellers.

Judíos Cubanos

Did you enjoy the "Buena Vista Social Club," the film about elderly musicians in Cuba? Did the movie's striking images make you wonder about the 1,500 or so Jews still living in that country?

A page on the Jewish Communication Network — www.jcn18.com/NEWSTAND/pmargols/cubaglry.htm — offers a gallery of photographs that should satisfy your craving for more.

The pictures are the work of Paul Margolis, who traveled to Cuba in 1994 to document Jewish life there.

Among the photos is one of a memorial to the infamous Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, a Jewish couple executed in the United States for allegedly spying for the Soviet Union.

Don't come to this site for lots of text; the point here is the photography. The artful black-and-white images show both the great poverty and the resilience of these Jews.

There's nothing fancy here, just a collection of thumbnail black-and-white images, with pithy descriptions. Click on an image to enlarge it — although, truth to tell, the bigger images are still pretty small.

But never mind. This small Web outpost offers an interesting glimpse into a Jewish world most of us would never see.

Sephardi Links

The World Wide Web — with its potential to shrink geography and link communities that have existed for eons in isolation — has been a boon to Jewish genealogy, with a host of sites helping people fill in the blanks in their family trees.

A site devoted to the Sephardic community takes that process to the next level, combining attractive site design with a wealth of information that will help amateur genealogists with Sephardic backgrounds.

The first section, "Sephardic Names," includes a concise history of the Jews from the Iberian Peninsula, an explanation of the word "Sephardim" and an extended discussion of one of the big difficulties in doing Sephardic genealogy: the fact that so many family names were changed due to forced conversion, migration and assimilation.

The page ends with a search engine that allows visitors to tap into various genealogical databases to locate ancestors.

A section on Sephardic lore and history includes links to a number of fascinating pages, including a long feature story on "When Household Habits Betrayed the Jews," describing some horrors of the Inquisition period.

When you want a break from all the history, go and check out the collection of Sephardic recipes, including Turkish String Beans and Spaghetti with Walnuts.

Finally, there's a big collection of links to other Sephardic home pages that will be useful to Sephardim researching their ancestry, fascinating to other Jews.

Overall the site is attractive, although somewhat confusingly arranged. Check it out at www.sephardim.com