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"A communal organization has recently been established called the Fiji Jew- ish Association; religious life has been confined to a communal seder organized by the Israeli Embassy." Or click on Bahrain in the Middle East and Northern Africa section, and read about the 30 or so Jews there. The site also offers some well- designed charts and lists, in- cluding cities with the largest Jewish populations and total Jewish population figures (El Salvador: 120 Jews; Zimbabwe: 925). The site also invites visitors to add information; if you know a lot about the 200 Jews in Suri- name, be sure to pass it along. Check it out by setting your Web browser to: http://www.jerLcoll/communi- ties/wjcbook/index.htm. — James D. Besser Israel's Knesset On The Web S Casual Dining Aiwa cis ews live in the unlikeliest places, and thanks to a ter- rific site on the World Wide Web, learning about most of them is a snap — or a mouse click, to be more precise. The Jewish Communities of the World site, a joint project of the Institute of the World Jew- ish Congress and Virtual Jerusalem, a jam-packed Jew- ish Internet service, makes it easy to explore Jewish geogra- phy. First, you select a continent, and then a country from a list of some 120. What you get is a ba- sic history and description of the Jewish population there. Or you can ask for information on a ran- domly selected nation. Don't look for anything ency- clopedic here; each entry is brief and easily digestible, perfect for kids doing school projects or adults interested in some casual learning. In Asia, for example, you can select from 17 countries — Afghanistan to Thailand. An entry for the Fiji Islands reveals that about 40 Jews live ometimes, the World Wide Web is a metaphor for real life. There's nobility and sleaze; there's education and time-wasting pop culture — and there's democratic govern- ment, the surest proof yet that the shortest distance between two points isn't- necessarily a straight line. The Knesset's new website is a case in point. As we all know, the Knesset is one of the world's most confusing parliaments, not to mention one of the most ram- bunctious. Its new website, while offering tantalizing glimpses of Israeli government and promising to help us fath- om its complexities, is a bewil- dering mishmash. The homepage opens with a handsome picture of the impos- ing Knesset building and a choice of English or Hebrew menus; the Web, many North American Jews are discovering, is a great place to polish that rusty Hebrew. From there, the going gets rough. A classy-looking map of the site offers a bunch of possibili- ties, including information about the Knesset's composition and operation, details about com- mittees and some of the basic documents that underlie Israeli law. But too often, clicking on those icons leads to an electron- ic wild goose chase — come to think of it, a process not unlike the operation of any democrat- ic parliament, where good ideas too often go in circles. The Israeli Web site does have an amusing little animation telling us that various pages are "under construction," but that only serves to lessen the frus- tration the first few times you see it. To be fair, the Knesset Web- site opened for business only re- cently; when the empty pages are filled in and the kinks worked out, this should be a ter- rific resource for anybody inter- ested in how Israel works. Eventually, you'll even be able to use the site to contact Knes- set members and read about the latest hot debates. So check back often by set- ting your Web browser to: http://wvvw.knesset.gov.il . — James D. Besser