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
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“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