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The Museum Of
The Jewish People

JAMES D. BESSER

Special to the Jewish News

C

urators are starting to cope
with this mind-bending fact:
museums can never be the
same, now that the World
Wide Web offers vivid slices of their
exhibitions to a planetary audience.
Sure, looking at
multi-media images on
a 15-inch video screen
isn't the same as absorb-
ing the ambiance of a
real museum. But the
Web can provide at least
a taste of what the great
museums of the world
have to offer — a boon
for folks who may never
get to actually visit
them.
Beth Hatefutsoth, the
Nahum Goldmann
Museum of the Jewish
Diaspora, is one of the
museums that does the
Internet right.
There's no getting
around the fact that this
site is downright gor-
geous. It provides a selective offering
from the museum — tastefully and
effectively presented.
The homepage offers a number of
options, including an extensive section
on Jewish communities, past and pre-
sent.
The offerings are far from exhaus-
tive, but they are interesting and well
presented.
Another section, accessible from
the opening page, provides informa-
tion about the museum's genealogy
services. Some can be accessed online,
such as the museum's "Ilanot" Jewish
genealogy software. With it, you can
enter your own family tree into the
museum's database.
Or send a search order for a
detailed genealogical search by e-mail.
The service is a nominal $5 per
search.
A music section provides informa-
tion about rhe museum's extensive
holdings of recordings. Unfortunately,
you can't listen to most of it on the
Net. A section devoted to the muse-

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um's photographic archive is a big dis-
appointment, with only four pictures.
The centerpiece of the site — a vir-
tual exhibition on the Jews of
Romania — is nothing short of spec-
tacular.
But be warned: the exhibit opens in
a separate browser window, with none
of the usual navigation controls. That

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means you have to follow the
onscreen instructions to get around
the exhibition — not a problem, but a
little confusing at first.
Once you've started the tour, hit
the "Open Menu" button to see a lay-
out of the exhibition. That will make
navigating a little easier.
The exhibition artfully combines
detailed text with archival photographs
and documents. One example: a
remarkable 1920-vintage photo of
Rabbi Joel Teitlebaum of the Satmar
Chasidic group in the "Religious Life"
section. -
To get a fuller description of each
picture, move your cursor over the
"T" box.
A lot of Jewish museums are devel-
oping their- own Web sites, but many
offer little more than what you'd see in
a fund-raising brochure.
Not so the Beth Hatefutsoth site,
which provides a tantalizing glimpse
of how the information age may bring
museums right into our own living
rooms.

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