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Is the Internet Good for the Jews?

Is the Internet Good for the Jews?. Rabbi Joshua Hammerman http://joshuahammerman.blogspot.com/. Session Outline. Suspension of Disbelief. There is much to be skeptical about: About 8,000 “problematic hate and terrorist websites and other Internet postings”

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Is the Internet Good for the Jews?

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  1. Is the Internet Good for the Jews? Rabbi Joshua Hammerman http://joshuahammerman.blogspot.com/

  2. Session Outline

  3. Suspension of Disbelief • There is much to be skeptical about: • About 8,000 “problematic hate and terrorist websites and other Internet postings” • an increase of 30 percent over the previous year: Simon Wiesenthal Center (Jerusalem Report)

  4. Suspension of Disbelief • Internet “leads to loneliness and isolation.”

  5. Suspension of Disbelief • Oh yes and it also appears at times to be….

  6. Suspension of Disbelief • Idolatrous…

  7. Suspension of Disbelief • "The Church welcomes technological progress and receives it with love, for it is an indubitable fact that technological progress comes from God and, therefore, can and must lead to Him." • Pope Pius XII in his Christmas message in 1953

  8. Suspension of Disbelief • If the Church can accept technological change… ….. Why can’t we?

  9. Suspension of Disbelief • “You can learn something from everything: • From the railway – we learn that one moment’s delay can throw everything off schedule; • from the telegraph we learn that every word counts; • and from the telephone we learn that what we say Here is heard There.” RabbiAvrahamYa’akov of Sadigora (19th century)

  10. Suspension of Disbelief Is Rabbi Avraham Ya’akov’s optimistic view representative of the Jewish mainstream?

  11. Suspension of Disbelief • Which technological revolution does the current one most resemble: Sadigora’s Big Three? Gutenberg? Television? The Pill? None of the Above?

  12. SO…if “You can learn something from everything…

  13. WHAT DO WE LEARN FROM THE INTERNET?

  14. We Are All Connected • “To regain our full humanity, we have to regain our connectedness with the entire web of life. This reconnecting, religio in Latin, is the very essence of the spiritual grounding of deep ecology.” Fritjof Capra, “The Web of Life”

  15. We Are All Connected “All real living is meeting” Martin Buber

  16. We Are All Connected “To assert that all is one in God is our supreme act of faith.” • Arthur Green, on the Sh’ma: “Seek My Face, Speak My Name”

  17. We’re All Connected Think about it…

  18. We’re All Connected • Sites to visit: • Where I Found My Father Online • Rashi’s Commentary on Parashat Behar • Brian Pollack’s Bar Mitzvah Commentary on Parashat Behar • Jewish Matchmakers Throughout the Ages

  19. We’re All Connected • How does cyberspace break down barriers of space, time, age and ability? • …and how has it redefined…

  20. Home?

  21. There’s No Place Like Makom • “'How full of awe is this place! This is none other than the house of God, and this is the portal (gateway) to heaven.'” Genesis 28:17

  22. There’s No Place Like Makom "[Jacob] came upon the place (makom)" (Genesis 28:11). Rav Huna said in the name of Rav Ami: Why do we rename God, using the name “Makom?” (“the Place”) Because S/He is the place of the world…”

  23. There’s No Place Like Makom • “One never reaches home, but wherever friendly paths intersect the whole world looks like home for a time.” Hermann Hesse

  24. There’s No Place Like Makom • In its annual report released Tuesday, the UNHCR said 11.4 million people were forced to leave their countries in 2007, compared to 9.9 million in 2006. • Another 26 million were displaced within their own countries by conflict or persecution, up from 24.2 million the year before. AP dispatch June 17, 2008

  25. There’s No Place Like Makom • Americans move on average once every five years • (40 million per year) Source: CNN

  26. There’s No Place Like Makom • For Jews… HOME IS AND ALWAYS HAS BEEN….

  27. Portable

  28. There’s No Place Like Makom PSALM 137 עַל נַהֲרוֹת, בָּבֶל--שָׁם יָשַׁבְנוּ, גַּם-בָּכִינוּ: בְּזָכְרֵנוּ, אֶת-צִיּוֹן. By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion. For there they that led us captive asked of us words of song, and our tormentors asked of us mirth: 'Sing us one of the songs of Zion. How shall we sing the LORD'S song in a foreign land?

  29. There’s No Place Like Makom • How has our definition of home changed in recent years?   • How can the Jewish experience of Diaspora and the portability of home be instructive in a wireless, transient world?

  30. Sites to visit: •  A Traditional Mizrach • A Personal Mizrach • Kotel Kam(Live)

  31. There’s No Place Like Makom Like Jacob’s Ladder… Can a computer screen at all be seen as a “portal to heaven?”

  32. There’s No Place Like Makom • In a world of wanderers, can the People of the Book also be the People of the Notebook?

  33. A World Imbued With Godliness • “This is an opportunity to build a new kind of international understanding, not politician to politician, great man to great man, but citizen to citizen, person to person.” • TIME MAGAZINE, ANNOUNCING IT’S 2006 PERSON OF THE YEAR: YOU Time's 2006 Person of the Year: You

  34. A World Imbued with Godliness • "…Also, humanity [was created singly] to show the greatness of the Holy One, for if a person strikes many coins from one mold, they all resemble one another, but the Holy One made each human in the image of Adam, and yet not one of them resembles his fellow.Therefore every single person is obligated to say, 'The world was created for my sake."' Mishna Sanhedrin 4:5

  35. “The era of one size fits all is ending, and in its place is something new, a market of multitudes.” • “The mainstream has been shattered into a zillion different cultural shards. • Increasingly the mass market is turning into a mass of niches.” Chris Anderson, The Long Tail  

  36. A World Imbued With Godliness • How do the “zillion cultural shards” of the Long Tail compare to the “shards of divinity” (Klipot) of Lurianic Kabbalah, which, despite divine origins, are seen as primarily evil in nature?

  37. A World Imbued With Godliness • What is religion’s role in a Long Tail world, where people have fewer common cultural touchstones? In other words…

  38. A World Imbued With Godliness If 600,000 at Sinai had all been listening to different songs on their iPods, could the Torah have been revealed at all?....

  39. A World Imbued With Godliness • …or, do we now have 600,000 remarkably different but equally sacred and beautiful songs to share?

  40. A World Imbued With Godliness • One final question… • A century of mass warfare and carnage has resulted in the cheapening of human life. A single person can push a button and kill millions living thousands of miles away. Can Web 2.0’s empowerment of the individual reverse this trend?

  41. A World Imbued With Godliness • OK… • Just one more question on this… • Remember…. You promised a suspension of disbelief…

  42. A World Imbued With Godliness Could Creation have been… …digital?

  43. A World Imbued With Godliness • "And God created the universe with books (Sepharim) with text (Sepher) with number (Sephar) and with communication (Sippur)” Sefer Yetzira (The Book of Creation), c. 6th cent.Kabbalistic work

  44. On to other outlandish assertions… • Jews think hypertextually

  45. The Wiki Jew • “The Talmud is thus the recorded dialogue of generations of scholars.  It has all the characteristics of a living dialogue.  Freshness, vivid spontaneity, and acute awareness of every subject permeate every argument and discussion.  The spirit of life breathes on every single page.” • Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz

  46. The Wiki Jew • “A page of Talmud is structured around a single text surrounded by concentric layers of commentary and commentary on commentary.  By form and content, it announces the unfinished quality of constructing knowledge and the collective construction of shared values.  Even in its layout on the page, the Talmud suggests a kind of time and space destroying hypertextual symposium rather than an authoritative, linear, and coherent pronouncement with a beginning and ending written by a solitary author who owns the words therein.” Computer-Mediated Communication, RPI professor David Porush

  47. The Wiki Jew • For millennia, Jewish tradition has evolved in much the same collaborative, incremental manner, and now it is finding a home in the global cyber-yeshiva. While rabbis still play a major role, everyone is now welcome to join in this timeless conversation. Joshua Hammerman, “No More Three Day Jews” The Jewish Week

  48. The Wiki Jew • How was Maimonides’ Mishnah Torah the Google of its day?

  49. The Wiki Jew • How is the role of the rabbi and teacher different in the age of the Wiki Jew?

  50. And so now that we can see why the Internet is sooo Jewish HOW CAN JEWISH VALUES HELP US TO MAKE IT A SAFER PLACE FOR CHILDREN AND OTHER LIVING THINGS?

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