I am a big advocate for celebrating our Jewish holidays. Making it a point to draw attention to these important dates helps link each of us to our rich heritage, traditions and rituals and creates wonderful opportunities to engage more Jews and encourage their Jewish involvement. The web offers so many fun and low cost ways for celebrating Purim yet, in a search of Jewish organizations’ Purim activities, I found but a few. Chabad and Aish both cover the ground pretty well, but the winning site for celebrating Purim 2009 is Jewish St. Louis.

First, the landing page is visually full of life and easy to navigate. It offers a Purim 101 educational component, recognizing that not every one knows the Purim story or why Jews celebrate the holiday; a full calendar of community activities including an event parodied off of the hit musical Mamma Mia (Megillah Mia!); a clever poll to determine whether hamatashan or latkes are more popular; Purim recipes; an Ask the Rabbi component; a Purim karaoke section; links to Aish.com for songs and lyrics; and a list of fun Purim games. The site is enough to get everyone’s grogger going.

This is a wonderful example of how a Jewish community can integrate its use of technology and traditional approaches to bring people together.

Take a look at their “Celebrate Purim” page and you will see what I mean. And, if you aren’t already planning your Passover celebration using technology, there is still a little time to get moving!

Chag Purim!

Gail Hyman is a marketing and communications professional, with deep experience in both the public and private sectors. She currently focuses her practice, Gail Hyman Consulting, on assisting Jewish nonprofit organizations increase their ranks of supporters and better leverage their communications in the Web 2.0 environment. Gail is a regular contributor to eJewish Philanthropy.