When Paul Walfish was looking for something to say at a New York wedding feast, he knew Jewish tradition obliged him to elucidate a passage from the Torah. Although the task might once have required hours of preparation, Walfish needed just a few minutes. The database programmer simply visited www.torah.org and expropriated a handy rabbinical commentary.

God has gone digital. Just as commerce start-ups are proliferating on-line, searching for riches, religious groups are rushing onto the Internet, searching for souls. The churches and religious groups even may have a thing or two to show businesses. Management guru Peter Drucker says churches and other nonprofit organizations are about to go through a surge in sophistication as they figure out how to take advantage of new technologies, such as the Internet.

Willow Creek Community Church in South Barrington, Ill., already could serve as a model for lots of businesses. While many companies proclaim they want to become customer-centric—with Web sites organized based on customer needs, rather than the company’s internal organization or product lines—Willow Creek already has done so.

It isn’t surprising. Willow Creek has been called the nation’s largest and fastest-growing congregation. It has been the subject of a Harvard Business School case history, as well as lauded in Drucker’s 1989 Harvard Business Review article, “What We Can Learn from the Nonprofits.”

But it’s still impressive. Willow Creek has grown so fast because of an insight in the mid-1970s, that people would flock to a church designed for people who can’t stand going to church. Pastor Bill Hybels felt people would come to the church only when someone personally asked them, “Why don’t you go?” So, continuing in that tradition, Willow Creek set up its Web site as a giant “invitation tool” for members to use. To make newcomers feel like they’re among friends, Willow Creek stratifies its www.willowcreek.org into just about every imaginable kind of human and life stage—from the “Axis Church” for Generation Xers who meet Saturday nights, to support groups for women executives.

The site is aimed solely at Chicago, because that’s the only area Willow Creek aims to serve. “The way Willow Creek does business is all person to person,” says David Stahl, the church’s Web strategist. (The church does have a sister site that supports 5,000 affiliated churches worldwide.)

The strategy seems to be working. Today, there are more than 17,000 Willow Creek members. As to whether that does, in fact, make it the largest church in the U.S., Stahl cheerfully says, “If there are larger ones, that’s great, because that means a lot of people are going to church.”

Even if few religious sites can match the sophistication of Willow Creek, many bring plenty of interesting content and ideas—and the sheer volume of sites is overwhelming.

A Yahoo! search turns up more than 20,000 Christian Web pages. Such new on-line presences as www.crosswalk.com (“The Intersection of Faith & Life”), www.Christianity.net, www.ChristianAnswers.net, and the Global Christian Network are building on-line communities. At www.churches.net, there are video and audio versions of sermons on-line, plus Bible searches and links to the home pages of every church in the world that has submitted a Web address.

Traditional sources of Christian faith and solace have taken notice. At www.guideposts.org, daily devotionals composed of a personal story and reflection, along with a Bible verse, supplement the pamphlets created decades ago by Norman Vincent Peale. At www.thedailybread.net, chat rooms offer people with problems a chance to receive faith-based advice.

For Roman Catholics, an AltaVista search turns up more than 200,000 related Web pages offering such services as the ability to search for the nearest Catholic church. At www.catholicgoldmine.com, there are links to 2,300 Catholic sites. For those seeking a dialog with fellow believers, the site lists short biographies and provides page after page of photos of “Catholic pen pals.”

At www.Jewish.com (“Your Jewish Place in Cyberspace”), there are 40 indexes, most of which contain at least hundreds of links to Jewish sites. Virtual Jerusalem (www.virtualjerusalem.com) has more than 5,000 links. The Ultimate Jewish/Israel Link Launcher (ucsu.colorado.edu/~jsu/launcher.html), weighs in at 4,600-plus. Many Jewish sites extend well beyond religion, dedicating themselves to history, politics, education, archaeology, family, social action (along with social life), cooking, entertainment, the arts, philosophy, sports, hobbies, Yiddish, feminism, health, world and regional news, business and economics, and more.

Using www.JewishGen.org, a genealogical site, Philadelphia investment manager Marvin Kline searched for information on his father’s family, which hailed from a Jewish community in Poland that disappeared in the Holocaust. His search turned up a site devoted solely to his father’s village. Today, Kline has made the acquaintance of 25 relatives he hadn’t known existed.

Meanwhile, thousands of individual synagogues and temples, like their Christian brethren, have established sites to keep members informed of services, social events, and, often, much more.

Of course, the Internet has also attracted its share of, shall we say, religious characters.

Surf & Soul Online, overseen by Nachum Shifren, a.k.a. “the surfing rabbi,” tells visitors that ocean surfers can “gain Torah insights with every ride.” The site encourages visitors to come to the site and take classes in kabbala (Jewish mysticism) when the surf’s not up.

'BAMBOO SHOOTS' MAY TAKE ON A WHOLE NEW MEANING

Anyone who has ever shopped for a house knows that there are 4bdrms3bths, and then there are 4bdrms3bths. The trick is to figure out which you might remotely consider living in, without traipsing all over town with some eager realtor as chaperone.

Enter Bamboo.com, which uses video cameras to provide virtual home tours on the Web. The idea is intriguing enough that realtors in 4,000 North American cities and towns are adding 15,000 tours a month to their Web sites. Bamboo’s founder, 28-year-old Kevin McCurdy, says he expects demand to continue to grow rapidly because about 10 million homeowners will list a domicile, be it ever so humble, this year, and 36% of all sales in the U.S. will involve on-line research.

The service, which grew out of a 1995 finals paper McCurdy did at Babson College, doesn’t yet live up to his vision of being able to walk down corridors or stoop to examine hardwood floors. It isn’t even possible to slow or quicken the rotation as the camera pans around in each room. Because the camera uses a fisheye lens, rooms seem bigger than they actually are, and the video image is small enough that it’s hard to see details. A home in northern California that looked lovely in a Bamboo video turned out to be quite old and is being torn down by its new owner.

Still, McCurdy says he will keep improving the technology. Coming soon: the ability for realtors to do voiceovers on the video. At the least, the service should help buyers narrow their search.

McCurdy says he is expanding the service into commercial real estate, rental units and, with www.VacationSpot.com, resort properties. His company went public last summer, has grown to more than 350 employees, and has a market value of more than $300 million.

For more information: www.bamboo.com.

DON’T YOU IGNORE ME!

Remember when your father used to pick up the extension and bellow, “Get off the phone and do your homework?” Substitute polite technology for good old Dad, and the Web for that old avocado-colored phone in the den, and you’ve got a rough idea of Ameritech’s new Internet Caller ID.

It’s called iCID, and here’s how it works: If a call comes in on a line that someone is using to surf the Web, a dialog box pops up on the screen announcing the call. Where possible, the service identifies the caller and provides the caller’s phone number. The user then has 20 seconds to decide whether to answer, forward the call to voice mail, transfer it to another local phone number, or just not respond.

If there is no response, the caller will hear, “We are sorry, the person you are calling cannot take your call at this time.” If the call is accepted, iCID will tell the caller to hold on while it disconnects the computer from the Internet. Obviously, if a second line is available, the user can forward the call to that line and stay on the Internet. If the user has stepped away when the call comes in, the caller will be automatically sent to voice mail. If the user doesn’t have voice mail, the caller will get the “We are sorry” message, and the call will be stored on a log on the PC.

Of course, it’s always possible a call that is accepted will be for someone other than the user, in which case the user can always utilize that highly audible technology called the parental intercom. Here’s how it works: Shout loudly.

ICID costs $6.95 a month, plus a one-time activation fee of $5.

For more information: www.ameritech.com.

MAIL AND FEE-MAIL

Hear the one about the guy who heads outside to the mailbox every time his PC tells him, “You’ve got mail”? A hopeless case. But the rest of us can take advantage of some neat new gizmos and services that may make it easier to deal with e-mail and that start to integrate e-mail with voicemail and faxes:

TelMail, from Sharp Electronics, is a dedicated e-mail device about the size of a checkbook. A user types in messages on the tiny keyboard, then dials an 800 number and holds the TelMail device up to a phone. The device sends the e-mail and collects incoming messages, which can be viewed on the small screen. The suggested retail price is $149. Service costs $9.95 a month.

For more information: www.sharp-usa.com.

MailBug, from Landel Tele-com, handles e-mail almost like a phone answering machine. The device, which hooks up to a phone line, can be left on all the time and stores 100 e-mails. A light starts blinking whenever a message arrives. MailBug has a decent-size keyboard, for sending e-mail, and an eight-line screen. The brick-size appliance costs $149. Service is $9.95 a month.

For more information: www.landel.com.

MyTalk.com, from General Magic, is a free service that handles both e-mail and voicemail. By calling an 800 number, you can have e-mail read to you and can respond with a voice message sent back to the e-mail address. You also can handle voicemail in the conventional manner, or you can, still at no charge, place a two-minute call to anywhere in the U.S. Through the myTalk Web site, you can use a personal computer to deal with e-mail and listen to your voicemail. One catch: MyTalk runs audio ads on the phone and banner ads on the Web.

For more information: www.mytalk.com.

Onebox.com lets people use a PC to deal with e-mail, voice messages, and fax via a single, private mailbox at the Onebox Web site. Voice messages and faxes get handled much like e-mail. They are listened to or viewed, then can be stored, forwarded via e-mail, or deleted. Like e-mail, they come with headers that show the time they were sent and, courtesy of caller ID, the source. Onebox provides this free service by selling ads.

For more information: www.onebox.com.

TAKING CARE OF BID-NESS

Up in Alaska, there’s a bank that does your bidding. Literally. First Interstate Bank of Alaska is auctioning off loans and certificates of deposit by taking bids from customers on-line.

“We are the smallest commercial bank in Alaska and felt that we had to do something” to generate business, explains Ron Kukes, chief executive of First Interstate. “We were inspired by the auction markets, especially eBay.”

The bank sets a floor for interest rates on loans, and a ceiling for rates it will pay on CDs. The bidder who offers the highest rate for a loan, and the lowest rate for a CD, wins as long as he hasn’t violated the floor or ceiling. The bank ends up giving winners better rates than they could expect elsewhere but carefully sets its floor and ceiling so it can be sure to make money. The bank hopes increased volume will make up for the narrower profit margins.

The loans auction, launched last summer, has increased First Interstate’s consumer loans to 15 to 30 a month, from one or two. The CD auction hasn’t done quite as well but has generated a dozen or so sales in its first six weeks, Kukes says.

For more information: www.ubidloans.com and www.ubidcds.com.

WEARABLE AIRBAGS

The Hells Angels might not want to cover their tattoos, but those with thinner skins may want to consider a wearable version of an automobile airbag that has been developed in Japan for motorcyclists.

The Eggparka from Mugen Denko in Nagoya is designed to be worn on the upper body when someone is operating a motorcycle. If a rider falls off the bike—whoosh!— he goes sliding down the road looking like a sleeveless version of the Michelin man.

The jacket has a tether with a ball that fits into a “key box” on the bike. When a rider tumbles or is knocked off, the ball is pulled free, causing a cartridge to release gas into the lining of the jacket. It inflates in 0.9 second, providing a cushion to absorb the shock of the spill.

Its Japanese makers take great pains at their Web site to stress that the Eggparka, also called a “shock-buffer protection jacket,” doesn’t operate the same way as an airbag. “The gas cartridge in Eggparka is completely different from the one used in automobile airbags,” a Mugen Denko spokes-man says. “There is no chemical explosion...when it activates.... There is no harm to the body. Please don’t call our product an ‘airbag jacket.’”

The Eggparka, which weighs two and a half to five pounds, was designed to protect the neck, waist and back. It comes in a range of colors, including one called “blue black.” That sounds a lot like black and blue but may still become de rigueur for a crash-prone Leader of the Pack.

Eggparka is not available outside Japan, and the company hasn’t announced a price.

For more information: www.eggparka.com .

WHO WAS THAT MASKED MAN?

If you ever had the urge to go to a masked ball, you might want to try out Odigo from NovaWiz, which lets you create a cryptic identity for yourself and then waltz it all over the Internet, interacting with others who have decided to play along.

All you have to do is make up a moniker and select a cartoon face for yourself from among the visages that mix male and female characteristics. You then set out on the Web to find and chat with other incognito Odigo users.

You can “leave a mark” on a site if no one is there, “pick up passengers” to surf with, “be invisible” as you roam in cyberspace, or even commune with “all Geminis in Oregon who like soccer,” Odigo suggests. Odigo encourages you to answer some personal questions for your user profile and then uses the information so people can interact with those who have certain interests or demographic characteristics. That’s how you find all those self-selected, soccer-loving Geminis in the Northwest.

Odigo, which means guide in ancient Greek, helps users search for each other by identifying the most popular sites among Odigo users at any particular moment.

NovaWiz regularly adds new features, one of the more intri-guing being “Rendezvous.” This allows you to create a custom meeting page for you and your friends that includes a secret URL and your choice of a virtual meeting place. The options include a cartoonish beach, bar, park, or romantic restaurant for your trysts.

For more information: www.odigo.com.