The Birth Of A Global Online Network

It started with one question.

'When's the next Jewish holiday?' my mother and I would ask each other, usually on

the phone, while I'd scramble to find the calendar on the side of the fridge. Being an 'instant' person, and an early email convert, I was frustrated that the holiday dates weren't readily available to email to family members.

And so, with that one question, Jewish Australia.com was born.

Today, some five years later, Jewish Australia.com and its interconnected sites, Hebrew Songs.com and Israeli Dances.com, log an average of 1.5 million hits a month, and up to 3000 individual visitors daily.

My internet involvement had actually started earlier, in 1996, with the first website for my communications training business, Painless Public Speaking. The website's advantages quickly became apparent: I could add new information and save the costs of printing brochures, and it enabled me to communicate quickly with potential clients by email.

My long-standing interest in ways to share information went back to my studies for a Diploma of Education in history and librarianship. Those were the days of microfiche – not that long ago in 'real time', but eons ago in technology time.

But 'information sharing' is about more than advances in technology. It's really another term for the ironies of the human condition. People love to talk, gossip, and share their experiences. Yet all too often individuals and communities suffer from a lack of communication.

From my involvement in many community activities in Sydney, and then when I moved to Melbourne, I had come to see the damage that not sharing information could cause. People felt left out, deprived and sometimes hurt if they believed they were missing out on what was happening around them.

This struck me particularly when I took up the hobby of Israeli dancing. It was an exciting experience with a wide variety of groups and classes and enthusiastic participants. But it was very hard to keep track of all the activities. The traditional methods of communication depended on word of mouth or printing flyers, a costly and mostly untargeted exercise which did little to overcome 'the tyranny of ignorance'.

I thought that the internet could help to overcome some of these problems and so Israeli Dance Australia was born, bringing news for the whole Israeli dance community in Melbourne and then moving far beyond it.

My learning experience in exploring the new medium for the specific Israeli dance community sparked the idea that what had worked for the dancers could work for the general Jewish community and, incidentally, ease my frustration about the Jewish calendar dates. As I added links to Jewish Australia, I had the pleasure of watching the development of dozens of websites - schools, synagogues, community groups – and loved adding them to our directory. I felt we were growing together.

And here I want to acknowledge the pioneer of the Australian Jewish internet, Geraldine Jones, whose JOIN website was the groundbreaker for all the sites that followed.

As Jewish Australia began attracting attention and readers, it became clear that we were developing a global audience beyond Australia and beyond members of the Jewish community. Amongst that audience are Christians from many denominations in many countries. The expansion of Israeli Dance Australia to Israeli Dances.com and the creation of the Hebrew Songs.com website multiplied this global audience significantly.

It has been a special privilege for me to watch these tiny acorns grow into a giant internet oak tree. And a joyful way to enjoy my Jewish heritage every day.

URLs (website addresses)
The Gateway to everything Jewish in Australia: www.jewishaustralia.com
The Global Resource for Israeli Dances: www.israelidances.com
The Online Library of Hebrew Songs: www.hebrewsongs.com