Mizrachi SA Jewish Observer - Pesach 2016 | Page 38

WHATSAPP TORAH ‘G-D’S ON THE PHONE’ TORAH AND TECHNOLOGY DAN CHAITOWITZ Clint Eastwood drew his own weapon of choice in ‘The Good the Bad and the Ugly’. The dissemination of Torah has undergone a revolutionary walk - it has been forced to. We’ve become so attached to our phones, and gadgets that they’ve become our modern-day Linus blankets and it’s all credit to our Rosh Yeshiva’s and Rabbeim who have taken up the challenge of flooding us with Torah via cyber space, our understandable means. Never before have more people had access to Torah like they do today. Through contemporary tech, Torah has come to us through methods that give us very little excuse not to engage with the Divine word. In the dirty dusk of a fading afternoon, in the Beit Midrash of Mizrachi in Glenhazel I met up with Rabbi Shmueli Kagan. Rabbi Kagan has taken hold of his phone and its applications in disseminating Torah to an abundance of eager learners. Through wireless, non-physical means, he has 100’s of people delving into Torah as he copy-pastes a couple of Halochas each day, and the day-counts over the Omer period. Modernity has connected the Rov to his Rebbe in Israel, the Rov’s followers to their Rov and those followers worldwide to Torah. WHETHER YOU’RE an IT specialist or a Yeshiva bocher, we experience the world today in pixels. Most of us are plugged into the World Wide Web, fuelled with data bundles, WhatsApp smileys, YouTube clips and Facebook thumbs. And we’re bombarded with all of this. Whether it’s a message, a video clip, a phone call, or, sadly, even the compelling words of Torah, all are clamouring for our distracted attention. While I spent time in Jerusalem, I was fortunate to attend a day out at Aish’s Discovery programme in the Old City. The course on a quick time line of biblical Judaism was delivered by the surfing, biking, guitar-strumming, ever effervescent Rabbi Yom Tov Glazer. He delivered a slick PowerPoint presentation that flashed and rolled, and sang and popped. Glazer, aware of his role in speaking to a tech-savvy, attention-deficient audience, delivered like a sharp shooter speaking in their language of double clicks, LOL’s, great imagery and precision explanations. Topped with Yom Tov’s excitement and humour, the American kids giggled and hummed, awed and guffawed. It was a superlative presentation delivered to a generation quicker to draw their iPhones than 38 “Torah has never been more accessible than it is now - anyone with a computer connected to the net can access Torah in any chosen language.” With modern means of dispersing information, Rabbeim, and other organisations, such as Sefaria, YUTorah.com and Torahanytime.com, have become more professional in their presentations and more flexible in their styles of teaching, and in so doing, are appealing to a myriad of minds. Rav Shmuel speaks of how technology has empowered us, allowing us to choose when and where we wish to learn; or to not learn at all. The swift means by which we have access to shiurim and Torah learning, places the burden heavily upon us - for now more than ever we are accountable for our learning. ‘Complacency is our biggest concern’. I buzzed Rabbi Sam Thurgood on the ol’ ‘dog ‘n bone’. Rabbi Thurgood too, with a WhatsApp broadcast of 800 plus learners, has wielded technology with immaculate dexterity, speaking of the impact that technology has had on Torah dissemination, having 2 primary impacts - accessibility and quality of material. Continued on pg 40