His son, Binyamin, came up with a way to keep sermons on point: He created a Web site, Jwisdom.com, that features talks of 11 minutes or less by rabbis and other Jewish lecturers.

His original slogan choice -- dropped so as not to offend, he says -- "Our rabbis know when to stop!"

A Brooklyn, N.Y., resident, Jolkovsky, 41, spent hours researching for the project, taking word of mouth suggestions and listening to online lectures.

"I challenged some very good speakers to cut their lectures to under 11 minutes," he said, and then have what he calls their "G-dcasts" professionally recorded.

Many of the speakers were unable to meet his time constraints, Jolkovsky said. Others turned out not be to effective enough to put on the site. "A lot of speakers need an audience to give them a sense of electricity," he said, noting they lost their charisma when recording in a studio. "Some people came across two-dimensional."

He launched the site, in memory of his parents, Julian and Pauline, about a week before Rosh Hashanah, and already has some 250 mini-lectures on it. Lecture titles range from "Is There A Little Zoroastrian in You?" to "Plagues of Indifference," to "Six Questions You'll Be Asked in Heaven? -- Uh -- Let's Just Take One for Now"; speakers from Lisa Aiken, a psychologist and author, to Rabbi Abraham Twerski, a chasidic rabbi and psychiatrist, to Gavriel Aryeh Sanders, a Catholic turned evangelical minister turned Orthodox Jew.

"It's all uplifting," he said. "I don't like negativity. I don't like degrading people."

Jolkovsky, publisher of the Web sites Jewish World Review and Political Mavens, acknowledges that most people won't spend too much time studying, but he hopes Jwisdom's lectures will keep them coming back and spur their interest to learn more about Judaism.

"Spiritual growth should not end with the High Holidays. The idea is to give them a taste, if you will, of the Torah," Jolkovsky said.

Sarah Chana Radcliffe, a family counselor in Toronto, is one of the site's regular contributors doing a lecture series called Family Secrets.

"I think there's something for everybody," Radcliffe said, noting that the lectures are geared toward a wide audience.

She described her own lectures as "almost secular with a nod to where Judaism has a comment or value," adding her hope that people interested in Judaism "might accidentally come across" the site, "not recognize the names and hopefully stumble upon something interesting."

If it hadn't been for his father's death due to a botched surgery in 2007, Jolkovsky might not have created Jwisdom.

Julian Jolkovsky, then living in Baltimore, died when his aorta was severed during surgery to remove his gall bladder. His family sued for malpractice, and his son is using his portion of the proceeds for Jwisdom. (Under the terms of the settlement, he may not disclose the hospital where the surgery took place or the amount of the settlement.)

Working on the site, Jolkovsky said, was a way to "invest all my excessive energy I had."

Jolkovsky plans to add a new lecture daily -- "until I see there's no interest, or I run out of money."