Going Online to go ‘Home’: Yizkor Books, Cyber-Shtetls, and Communities of Location
This chapter focuses on online yizkor and Cyber-Shtetls that give access to the places where Jewish life once flourished and are otherwise inaccessible due to the Holocaust. It discusses how communities of the online yizkor and Cyber-Shtetls draw attention to changes in contemporary Jewish identity formation and the mediation of Jewish social connection in the digital age. It also explores how online yizkor books and Cyber-Shtetls that give people who are searching for 'home' a place to go and provide space that they occupy on the web as a surrogate for the real thing. The chapter mentions Benedict Anderson, who argues that the metropolitan daily newspaper represents a convergence of market capitalism and print technology that emerged at the start of the Industrial Revolution. It discloses the resulting 'communities of location' that are salient in Jewish life and culture that the Yiddish described the people who come from one geographic place as landsman.