By now, you have to be living under a rock to miss the fact that the Internet is revolutionizing another medium — radio.
Suddenly, listeners in Jerusalem or Japan can listen to radio broadcasts in New York or Baltimore through the multimedia capabilities of the World Wide Web.
Now there’s a full-time Jewish radio station on the Net, thanks to the Jewish.com Web portal.
The all-purpose site, operated by the same folks who gave us the venerable Jewish Community on America Online, provides access to Shalom America, a 24/7 radio station that offers a wide array of Jewish music, features and news.
To listen, your computer must have the Windows Media player installed, but if you have a halfway up-to-date version of Windows, you’re probably all set.
Have a Mac? Don’t worry; there’s a version for you, too, and if you don’t have it, there’s a link here where you can download it.
The radio programming on Shalom America is reasonably varied, including shows devoted to Israeli rock and American Chassidic pop, cantorial music, klezmer and “mainstream rock & roll from artists you never knew were Jewish.”
You can also listen to daily news broadcasts from Arutz Sheva, the right-of-center news service in Israel.
For variety, there’s also a 30-minute weekly show on “what’s new and exciting in Kosher food.”
The sound quality is surprisingly good, even on the little plastic speakers that come with most computers.
The home page for Shalom America provides a weekly schedule — most shows are repeated several times — and some basic instructions about setting up the media player. But you won’t need instructions; getting Internet radio is a breeze.
While you’re checking it out, go back to the Jewish.com home page for a good overview of the Jewish Web and an excellent Jewish search engine. Check out the Jewish radio site at www.jewish.com/radio.
The World Wide Web offers incomprehensibly vast amounts of information, but much of it brings to mind former Federal Communications Commission director Newton Minow’s assessment of television: a vast wasteland. But there are oases of culture that offer something more than a few cute graphics and intellectual fast food.
One example: the expanded Web site of the Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture. The home page for this New York-based organization is sedate and proper, but with enough graphical zip to fit comfortably into the multimedia world of the Web. But unlike a growing number of Web sites, the content is what counts here, not the electronic facade.
The site opens with a statement that lets us know up front what these guys think of themselves: “The National Foundation for Jewish Culture (NFJC) is the central cultural agency of the American Jewish community,” they inform us. Obviously they’re not talking about strolling accordionists specializing in Jewish-sounding renditions of “Moon River.”
To make their point, these culture vultures offer a tasty sampling of the kind of Jewish culture they try to preserve through grants and cooperative programs with other institutions. There are essays with titles only an academic could love: “Emmanuel Levinas: Where Philosophy and Jewish Ethics Meet.” Sounds like an intellectual singles bar. Other examples: a fascinating essay on Purim and the Spanish expulsion and a thoughtful piece on the communal realities of Jewish studies. And if you like creepier stuff, a Ph.D. student examines the origins of the dybbuk in “Jews and Demons.”
A theater section tells wannabe playwrights how to apply for one of the foundation’s play commissions, and offers a handful of articles. The most intriguing is “The Talmud: Coming to a Stage Near You,” a review of Theatre Company Jerusalem’s attempt to make Talmud come alive for neophytes.
Another section describes films supported by the Fund for Jewish Documentary Filmmaking, and includes a few high-toned essays on Jewish films, although the material here is a bit thin.
“Culture Currents,” a monthly electronic magazine featured on the site, provides interesting scholarship that even ordinary shleps can understand.
Besides, they have the classiest-sounding URL (Web address) in Jewish cyberspace: www.jewishculture.org.
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 [email protected].