An Appeal for Judaism

Note from the author: I've spent the past 4 days spending a total of 50 hours pouring over Rabbinic texts on gender and sexuality in Hebrew and Aramaic. Twas intense. Twas gratifying. I occasionally referred to the English translations. Actually I did that a lot. I wrote this during a lecture on female modesty, because at this point in my life I don't find that idea appealing.

 “When we look at modern man, we have to face the fact that modern man suffers from a kind of poverty of the spirit, which stands in glaring contrast with a scientific and technological abundance. We've learned to fly the air as birds, we've learned to swim the seas as fish, yet we haven't learned to walk the Earth as brothers and sisters.”
 --Martin Luther King

As I commented in the Gabrielle Giffords section, I think that this months tragedy calls for a reassessment of our central goal. Don't get me wrong, I still think a global computer network is an inevitable, desirable achievement. But I think we've been turning a blind eye to the fact that this is a human communication advancement, and does more to advance the communication than it does the human. The invention of the printing press didn't fix the world, if anything, the world became a scarier place because of it. Mein Kampf, The Protocals of the Elders of Zion, and thousands of other really shitty books were printed and still are in print. The printing press didn't stop Hiroshima, or colonialism, or slave trade. I'm not arguing that books weren't a great technological advancement, and that the world hasn't changed since Gutenberg, but while the book was enabling for good, it was also enabling for bad.

We can stand by a philosophy that if we advance the technology, human morality will eventually catch up, but humanity is already at risk of self-destruction in the world we live in, and we are in more danger than ever before in history of destroying what we know to be the cosmos's greatest creation, the human mind.

We cannot promote the technology we hold in such high-esteem with a nihilistic or atheistic philosophy. We are, but we are not responsible for the fact that we are, nor for the fabric of reality that our consciousness dwells in. We can view the world we live in as a no-rules playground to have fun in, but that is a childish perspective, and to behave as children is just as much an insult to the human mind as to destroy it altogether.

In my opinion, Judaism is the best moral, intellectual, and spiritual outlook we can adopt as we move into the technological epoch whose peak we strive to bring to the world. Throughout western history, Judaism has stood as the non-dominant cultural binary. Beginning in ancient Egypt, Assyria, and Babylon, on through Greece and Rome, in the Iberian Peninsula and in Nazi Germany [1], Judaism is western history's longest standing persecuted counterculture.

The central difference between the philosophy of the majority culture and Judaism is best enumerated in the prayer the Jew begins each day with, the Modeh Ani. Modeh Ani means, "grateful am I". The syntax is essential, first there is gratefulness for existence, then there is me. The modern era of western philosophy began with a much different sentence, "I think, therefore I am". The Modeh Ani could be rephrased to something along the lines of "there is, therefore I am grateful". We were created as stewards of the Earth, if not the greater cosmos, but no human created that for themselves, and we must be grateful for the fact that there is anything at all. (Rav Shai Held, lecture, 12/01/2011)

The established framework of Judaism is one that imbues each of its adherents with a sense that we are not the center of the universe, we are incredibly powerful beings with the ability to change the world for better or worse, and as adults we should understand that it should be our central goal to make it better. Judaism teaches that with every act of good, God's presence in the world is increased. Doing good is the only way to create space for the divine, and for spiritual fulfillment, in humanity.

While my impression is that most of the world, including most Jews, view Judaism as rigid in its legislation, the truth is that it doesn't have to be. It is a philosophical and religious viewpoint whose laws have historically been impacted by the social reality of the world in which they were written, but upon a closer look the laws are indeed malleable to social change. If we can look beyond some of the more backwards and outdated texts, texts that emerged in what the modern world views as a backwards and outdated time, we can discover the "living Torah", one that can guide us morally as history pushes onwards.

May the people of the web join the people of the book, and may the future we blog, tweet, and wiki be the best it can be.

הגיד לך אדם מה־טוב ומה־יהוה דורש ממך כי אם־עשות משפט ואהבת חסד והצנע לכת עם־אלהיך׃

God has made clear to you what is good; and what is desired from you by the Lord; only doing what is right, and loving mercy, and walking humbly before your God. Micah 6:8