Observing a “fast” from Facebook and Twitter and even email is becoming a popular spiritual practice — at Lent, for example — as shown by this National Public Radio story from March 2009.

Observing a “fast” from Facebook and Twitter and even email is becoming a popular spiritual practice — at Lent, for example — as shown by this Star-Ledger story from March 2009.

Shamash, a project of Hebrew College Online, maintains a kosher database and information on Jewish books, the Holocaust and the Tanakh, or Hebrew Bible. It includes links to all things Jewish on the Internet.

ReligiousTolerance.org has an extensive section on Jews and Judaism, including descriptions of recent controversies, including Christian Zionism, missionary efforts aimed at Jews and recent acts of anti-Semitism.

Judaism 101 is a general clearinghouse of information about Judaism run by Tracey Rich, a Jewish layperson. It contains descriptions of the Jewish calendar, the Hebrew alphabet, holidays, life-cycle events, rituals, observances and much more.

The Jewish Virtual Library is an online Jewish encyclopedia with 13,000 articles and 6,000 photographs on topics ranging from anti-Semitism to Zionism as well as statistics on numerous aspects of Jewish life.

Beliefnet, a multifaith religion website and online community, maintains a section on Judaism that includes news articles, essays, blogs, how-to’s, discussions and reviews.

In his message for the Catholic Church’s World Communications Day of 2009, Pope Benedict XVI also cautioned that if “virtual connectedness becomes obsessive, it may in fact function to isolate individuals from real social interaction while also disrupting the patterns of rest, silence, and reflection that are necessary for healthy human development.”

Read an April 14, 2009, story at CNN.com about studies warning that rapid-fire news and constant updating via social networking tools such as Twitter “could numb our sense of morality and make us indifferent to human suffering.”