Religoius Web sites offer tutoring services

As David Magid studied for his bar mitzvah, his instructor directed him to an important blessing the 12-year-old would have to recite at the ceremony.

“Barchu et Adonai ha-m’vorach (Bless the Lord, who is to be blessed),” David said, speaking into the microphone attached to his computer in his East Brunswick, N.J., home.

From a laptop in Brooklyn, Rabbi Yosef Goodman listened carefully to David’s words as part of his online tutoring session at barmitzvahlessons.com.

“I’d like to hear you say it nice and slow,” Goodman said, his voice booming through the speakers on David’s computer. “Point to the words as you read it.”

The year-old Web site is among several Internet venues for religious students to receive instruction amid increasingly hectic schedules for parents and youngsters.

QuranReading.com and Islamicity.com provide connections between Muslim students and their teachers, some of them on the other side of the world.

For David, the sessions on barmitzvahlessons.com, which cost $30 each, replaced weekly trips to the synagogue to study for the ceremony marking his passage into manhood.

“No more missing soccer practice,” Goodman said.

At QuranReading.com, young Muslims three times a week read the foundations of Islam and use software to point at specific letters and lines. The operators boast that most tutors have several years of Quranic teaching experience.

Islamicity.com partnered with the Egyptian-based Arab Academy to offer one-on-one lessons in Arabic for kindergartners through 12th-graders.

Sumaya Abdul-Quadir, marketing and development coordinator for Islamicity.com, said the program works in America because many communities lack Arabic-language services.

Not everyone is enamored with the approach.

Lynn Clark, co-author of the study “Faith Online” and editor of “Religion, Media, and the Marketplace” (Rutgers, 2007), said she is concerned that such online services make religious milestones like the bar mitzvah seem more like checking off a requirement than learning.

It also makes the instruction detached from local religious communities, she said.

“Yes, the kid can perform, but he loses out on the opportunity to actually get to know the rabbi or another religious leader in his temple or synagogue,” Clark said.

But Goodman said his service contacts the synagogue of every student who signs up for barmitzvahlessons.com and encourages students to continue with religious training.

“This is bringing people closer to the Jewish community,” Goodman said. “We try very hard, and we focus on the community.”