It's the last great frontier.

For some Jewish educators and organizations, the Internet represents a crucial front in the war to woo Jewish teens back to Judaism, an opportunity to spiritually and cultural

Kids from Beth Am Temple, Pearl River, gather around the laptop.

connect with teens on their own turf.

"The biggest challenge is probably engaging Jewish teens in the first place," said Kali Foxman, the associate editor for JVibe.com. "The Internet is where teens are now."
JVibe.com is the online counterpart to the print magazine of the same name. The Web site, geared toward teens aged 12 to 18, features blogs, discussion boards, weekly polls, giveaway contests and articles - both those originally published in the magazine and other, teen-generated pieces written specifically for the Web.

Traffic on JVibe.com was up 51 percent last year, with an average of more than 35,000 visits per month, Foxman said.

 "Having an active and engaging website allows us to correspond directly with teens in a casual, informal environment," she said. "Our goal is [to be] the destination site for teens who may want to explore their Judaism, without sacrificing their pop culture interests."
 Millburn High School senior Rachel Sacks, a member of JVibe's Teen Advisory Board, agreed.

 "The benefit to a site like JVibe.com is that it creates a springboard for Jewish teens, making Judaism relevant to so many different topics, from pop culture to the environment," Sacks, 18, said. "I think it's crucial for teens in the tri-state area to bear in mind that most American public schools are not ten or twenty or thirty percent Jewish, and that Jewish sites like JVibe.com are especially important in areas where Jewish teens do not have ways to connect like we do in New York or New Jersey."

 Some teens, though, said Judaism should be separate from their online lives.
 "I think kids see AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) and the Internet as a place to escape, not a place to be constantly reminded of a task or religious obligation that remains to be fulfilled," said Amital Isaac, 18, a freshman enrolled in the Columbia University/List College of Jewish Studies dual-degree program.

 Liore Klein, 18, a freshman at the University of Pennsylvania, said it seemed "very contrived" when Jewish organizations attempted to use the Internet to attract teens.
 "It's kind of tricky because the Internet is something our generation will just naturally gravitate toward," Klein said. "I'm just not sure how the greater Jewish community would be able to utilize it in a way that wouldn't seem [like] another one of those cheesy ways in which adults try to use the Internet to connect with them when kids just do it themselves."
 Klein said she uses AIM, Facebook.com, Myspace.com, and Skype - another online messaging program - to keep in touch with the friends she's made at Hillel and USY functions.

 Prospects are not as rosy for all Jewish Web sites as they are for JVibe.com, said Sarale Cohen, a developmental psychologist who is one of the co-founders of Teen-to-Teen (www.ttt.org.il).

 "The last year, our membership has really dwindled," Cohen said. "The Internet is a very different place than it was when we started ten years ago."
 Cohen, who said she began the site with co-founder Susan Suna as a "way to give voice to Jewish teens," attributed the decline in Teen-to-Teen's popularity to the rise of social networking sites.

Teen-to-Teen will probably shut down within the year, Cohen said.

 "Somebody suggested that we put our site onto Facebook or Myspace, but I don't think that's the way we would want to go. It's a very exhibitionist approach - pretty shallow and seeking more showing off than serious discussions," Cohen said. "It's a new phenomenon - and I don't know that it's going to go away, and I don't know that it's going to help build a Jewish community."

Solomon Schechter School of Westchester junior Dov Berkman, a New City resident, said Facebook actually fosters greater Jewish involvement in the teens who use it. In fact, there are currently 363 people from his school enrolled on it. (Networks are either regional, high school-based, or college-based. The Web site takes users' word for it with high schools, but students need a correct "edu" email address to join a college network.
"Jewish groups that exist on sites like Facebook spread the word," he said. "The anonymity of it lets people show more of their pride in being Jewish - by displaying a Jewish star or even just by saying that they're Jewish in their profile."

Berkman, 16, said Facebook had far more of an impact on Jewish teens than more explicitly Jewish Web sites like JVibe.com or B'nai B'rith Youth Online (www.bbyo.org).

 "They look nice," Berkman said, "but I've never heard of anyone using them."