1000 REMNANT SALE!! We're jammed in our new location. We've misjudged our space and must make room!! We're clearing out our old stock regardless of original cost! Iherspor America Online Gets A Bit Of Yiddishkeit JAMES D. BESSER WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT ewish cyberspace is grow- ing by leaps and bounds, but making the most of the on-line world can be daunt- ing for new users. There's so much information in so many places, and too often, it's all a mystery to people who don't know a "C-prompt" from a hole in the ground. If you want a window into the world of Jewish on-line commu- nications that's a bit more user friendly, check out the brand-new Jewish COMMunity Online fo- rum at America Online. In case you've been living in a cave, AOL is the biggest of the commercial on-line services, with hundreds of forums, news and in- formation services, shopping fa- cilities and connections to the broader world of the Internet. AOL's strength is ease of use; if you can click a mouse, you can navigate through AOL's sophisti- cated, well-designed interface. The Jewish COMMunity On- line forum preserves AOL's one- stop shopping approach to computer networking and its ease of use. The opening screen includes a group of pictures that make menus pretty much unnecessary. Click on the guy holding an Israeli flag, and you are pointed to a daz- zling assortment of information about Israel: Israeli food, travel to Israel, programs for students, de- tailed information about Israel's political system. Want to know how the Knes- set works? Or are you confused about Israel's many political par- ties? Then the Jewish COMMu- nity Online is the place to look. You can touch base with pro- Israel groups across the spectrum, from Americans for Peace Now to Likud USA. Click on an organi- zation's name to get more infor- mation. In the past, commercial services like AOL were criticized for being little worlds unto themselves. No more; now, AOL is fully integrat- ed into the vast reaches of the In- ternet. So when you select the American Israel Public Affairs Committee in the section on pro- Israel organizations, you are swift- ly and painlessly connected to AIPAC's "home page" on the World Wide Web, without ever seeing one of those incomprehen- sible "hap" addresses. (If you don't - know what that is, report for re- medial Internet training in the morning.) Back at the main menu, the food section offers meat and dairy recipes, detailed information 461 Take with at time of purchase—No installation available. Cash, check or charge. Final Sale. Hours: Mon., Thurs., Fri. 9 to 9 Tues., Wed. 9 to 6 Sat. 9 to 5 Sun. 12-5 Mill Floor NEW STORE! 2380 Orchard Lake Road just E. of Loading Dock Plaza, Sylvan Lake CO VERINGS • • • • • (810) 738-6554 WE Do EVERYTHING To SATISFY OUR CUSTOMERS, THAT'S WHY PEOPLE STILL TEE OFF WITH US. 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On the Jewish COMMunity Online, users can participate in real-time "chats" with prospective mates around the world; the forum soon will feature Jewish personal ads, too. Hopefully, the publishers will help decipher those baffling ab- breviations: "DJFNRNS seeks same...." Another section focuses on hol- idays and spirituality. The new AOL service opened just in time for a special section on Chanukah, featuring historical facts about the holiday, information on Chanukah foods, stories and po- ems to enrich the celebration, games for children and links to other sites with relevant infor- mation. Click on "spirituality," and you can peruse basic statements of be- lief from the Reform, Conserva- tive and Reconstructionist movements; so far, not a peep from the Orthodox. But Orthodox Jews are well represented in the message boards — electronic bulletin boards for the kind of spirited, of- ten overheated exchanges on is- sues great and small that have become a hallmark of cyberspace. The Jewish COMMunity On- line site is more than just words on a video screen. The site cur- rently features a "Jewish Tour of Prague," an offering of the Project Judaica Foundation, featuring high-quality, powerful pho- tographs of Jewish sites in the Czech city by Mark Talisman, the man responsible for the widely praised Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit. The Jewish COMMunity Online also is a good source for news, with dispatches from the Jewish Tele- graphic Agency and selections from Hadassah or Lilith magazines. Se- lections from several Anglo-Jew- ish weeklies are available to visitors, as well as the latest Reuters stories on the Middle East. And there's Jewish software and educational materials avail- able to download — files and pro- grams that can be transferred directly into your own computer. The forum on AOL also in- cludes weekly user surveys and chats about the results. A recent survey asked this question: Do re- ligious symbols belong in public places? The results: 53 percent said no, 47 percent said yes, with AMERICA page 120