I'm new to html and web design; is java important to designing websites and what are the benefits of java? what is javascript?

First of all, Java and JavaScript are two separate and distinct technologies. The only thing they have in common is that they are both programming languages, and they share some syntactical similarities. Java is the flagship product of Sun Microsystems, and is an advanced interpreted language relying on the Java Virtual Machine for run time compilation into bytecode.

JavaScript, on the other hand, is the programming language of browsers. It has the advantage, in it's "client side" form, of being able to easily interact with HTML. Because JavaScript is interpreted by the browser, it is considered "slow", though it has been proven recently that it is possible to build a JavaScript engine that is many times faster that was previously thought possible.

JavaScript is very easy to learn the basics of, but difficult to master because its inheritance scheme is very unlike any other common language. Java and other classical languages use class based inheritance, while JavaScript uses something known as prototype inheritance. Not that you need to worry about this too much as a beginner.

If you are new to HTML, and don't know another programming language, I don't recommend learning JavaScript yet.