Rabbi Deborah: You know, we talk a lot about disruption. The significant driver of a lot of that disruption is technology. Bryan S.: From the recording studios of Reconstructing Judaism, this is #TrendingJewish with Bryan Schwartzman and my fabulous cohost Rachael Burgess. Although, Rachael, you should be first. Alphabetical, right? Rachael Burgess: Well, by first name, it makes sense because it's Bryan Schwartzman versus Rachael Burgess. Bryan S.: Or is it by last name? Maybe we'll alternate who goes first each time. Is that like shared billing? Rachael Burgess: We can do that. It's a little bit of equality there. I like that. I dig it. Bryan S.: We'd have to remember what we did the previous time though. Rachael Burgess: Well, that's why we have Sam here. Sam is shaking his head going, "Don't worry, I got this. " Bryan S.: That's our producer Sam Wachs Sam, can you say hi? Sam: Hello. Rachael Burgess: He is the glue that binds us together and keeps us on track. Bryan S.: Absolutely. It's great to have you with us as we continue. It hasn't been every episode but it's been an ongoing theme of ours looking at Judaism and technology and we're back at it again. Is this a miracle, a curse, is it both? Does Judaism tell us how to live online and comment on a Facebook thread? I thought this interview went pretty well. What'd you think? Rachael Burgess: I think this article that we were talking about in this interview, it's definitely a start to a very, very rich conversation that will I think forever be present in our lives from this day forward short of a solar energy spurt that knocks out all technology and wipes out the electric grid. Bryan S.: That is optimistic. Rachael Burgess: Yeah, you watch a lot of Doomsday Preppers and you know where to store your pasta and you know how to prepare. But yeah, that's kind of a, that was actually a whole series actually about what happens when the electric grid goes out and what happens to humanity. Bryan S.: I've definitely read some- Rachael Burgess: We're going in the other direction. Bryan S.: Post-apocalyptic literature from Stephen King's The Stand to Cormac McCarthy's The Road. And every time I always think how little skills I have to survive in that kind of world. I can construct a sentence or ask a question but I don't know. All right, so I could have this be a show about our favorite works of apocalyptic literature but that's not why we're here. So let's get to the topic at hand which is a fascinating one. Rachael Burgess: Today, we have the two authors of Harnessing Technology which addresses many interesting ideas, from how we can use technology for positive purposes and how we can remain in touch with our spiritual selves while engaging in social media. Bryan S.: To talk about harnessing technology, we have two amazing guests in the studio today, one of whom needs absolutely no introduction: Rabbi Deborah Waxman Ph.D., leader of the Reconstructionist movement, president of Reconstructing Judaism, scholar, writer and if you haven't checked it out a really great podcasting host, Hashivenu. If you just listen to us and #TrendingJewish, you might want to check out Hashivenu Podcast. That's H-A-S-H-I-V-E-N-U wherever podcasts are found. Rabbi Waxman also happens to be our boss. Great boss. Bryan S.: We also have Rabbi Nathan Kamesar who just graduated from the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College in June, and now is the Associate Rabbi at Society Hill synagogue in Philadelphia not far from the Delaware River. He was previously a lawyer who worked on technology issues in Silicon Valley. Welcome Rabbi Deborah and Rabbi Nathan, thanks for being here. Rabbi Deborah: Thanks for having me and us. Bryan S.: Before we really get into this subject, I want to get into the framework of how and why this essay was written. So, I know it's part of the Evolve conversation project that Reconstructing Judaism is launching. It's a new project. So Rabbi Waxman, can you help explain to our listeners what this project is, what we're what we're hoping to accomplish with it? Rabbi Deborah: Sure. Thanks for that question. One of the things that the Reconstructionist movement has always been known for is our willingness to really engage forthrightly in the challenges and the opportunities that the modern world and the postmodern world now present to us. So, one of the things that our organization Reconstructing Judaism... we thought was really important was to facilitate and to further those conversations. We're doing this project in partnership with the Reconstructionist Rabbinical Association. So we have a wonderful community of about 400 rabbis, many of them are graduates from the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College. We surveyed them and said, what are the most pressing conversations, the most pressing questions that you think are facing Jews and the Jewish community in the 21st century. Rabbi Deborah: We had some sense of what those topics might be, and we really wanted to hear from the Reconstructionist rabbinate, what are the questions that they are asking, what are the conversations that they're having with the folks in their communities. Some of them are synagogue communities, some of them are on college campuses. Some of them are in hospital settings. What are the things that keep welling up and they wanted us to dedicate the resources to diving into opening up to offering up a Reconstructionist perspective. We had some grant funding that we could apply to this enough to invite dedicated reflective essays on seven different topics. Rabbi Deborah: So this was one of the topics. The others include why be Jewish --how to be Jewish in this time when we can construct our own identities; Israel/Palestine; race and racism and what racial justice looks like in the Jewish community in the 21st century; Building vital synagogue communities; new thoughts on Tikkun Olam and commitments to social justice; and then this one on technology. Rabbi Deborah: Now, I want to be forthright. We had a lot of things that came out like really clearly powerfully that this is what Reconstructionist rabbis wanted us to be thinking about. And it was abundantly clear, 70% all agreed we have to be talking about race and racism and racial justice. And then there were a whole bunch of topics that about 25, 30% thought these were important. So there was plurality. There wasn't a clear majority. I will say that technology was one of them, that a lot of people, a lot of people thought it was important but not necessarily how we should be dedicating our resources. We had to make a decision -- what would the seventh topic be. I felt incredibly strongly, so strongly that I volunteered myself as one of the writers, this is one of two essays that is co-written -- that technology really had to be one because as you said, it is so pressing, it is so consuming. Rabbi Deborah: So what we've done with the entire project before we pull back this particular topic is that each topic, a very thoughtful author or in some instances, more than one wrote an essay, an extended essay. And we then had a very rich set of conversations with the members of the Reconstructionist Rabbinical Association with some of the students who are studying to be Reconstructionist rabbis kind of wrestling and taking it apart and pushing the conversation further. And we've captured those conversations and we're using them as kind of almost like Gemara commentary on the Mishnah of the original text. Rabbi Deborah: So what we're aiming for is a conversation sometimes face to face, frequently virtual and also online. So some of the rabbinic comments are embedded around the original document. Now we're in the stage of bringing these rich conversations already curated across the essay and the rabbinic conversations out to the wider Reconstructionist community and the wider Jewish world. Bryan S.: That's interesting. There definitely seemed something almost messianic that you say it like that about the harnessing technology essay which is at http://evolve.reconstructingjudaism.org/harnessingtechnology. I'm finding it really striking that it wasn't an overwhelming choice to do this. Nathan, this could go to you too but is it almost that it's so ubiquitous that maybe some folks aren't thinking about it as this pressing issue because it's everywhere? We're not writing about Judaism and the automobile but an automobile defines so much of our lives in a way we don't think about it. Rabbi Deborah: I love how you frame the question. I think it's at the intersection of ubiquity and ambivalence. That both it is everywhere and people are, as you said, both reliant on it and resistant to it. So I think a part of it, and I think, you know, we talk a lot, I talk a lot about disruption and so many different sectors have been disrupted. So many different, the experience of people's lives have been disrupted. As the president of Reconstructing Judaism, I talk about how our organization sits at the intersection of so many different disruptive sectors from higher education, to membership organizations, to liberal religious expressions, to knowledge production like the media and book publishing, and then also all the disruption going on in the Jewish world. Rabbi Deborah: The significant driver of a lot of that disruption is technology. I think a lot of rabbis both feel tremendously reliant on technology. Preparing a sermon or researching a topic is completely different now than it was when I started rabbinical school 25 years ago. I'm heading onto the road on Sunday and next Shabbat will be teaching and haven't finished my teaching. I can get on an airplane and not worry about not having all my books with me because I can get pretty much everything I need through Sefaria or through other online resources, whereas even 10 years ago, I would have had to make certain this was all done before I got in the airplane. Rabbi Deborah: So we both use it but we're also I think a little bit stymied at some of the more problematic or oppressive things like if we are pastoring to people who have lost their jobs because of the level of disruption I was just talking about. Or if we're just like everyone, every rabbi I know, every person I know is struggling with 24/7 email all the time and how much that's disrupted a separation between work and leisure, which is a long standing Jewish question about what's the difference between Shabbat and restfulness and work. So I think it's about the ubiquity and about the ambivalence of everything. Is there anything you might add? Rabbi Nathan: No, I mean, I think it's such a great question about why about the smartphone but not about the automobile. But maybe the answer is maybe we should have written it about the automobile. It has immense climate impacts and made tremendous change for how our Earth survives. On the other hand, it also was a tool that united families who were living miles apart. So, I think part of one of the virtues of Reconstructionism is that it loves to sort of look forward and look at the frontier and love to think about how do our ancestors values inform our engagement with the future and with the present, the rapidly changing present. Rabbi Nathan: To me, when I think about technology nowadays, we have the video in the, the annual report video of the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College or the Reconstructing Judaism period is sort of this kind of sad but also accurate picture of these people marching, staring down at their cell phones, not looking at each other. So to me, that's what sort of jumps out as one of the pressing questions. And again, it's not to say we wouldn't, there wouldn't have been a herem (religious ban) against the automobile if the reconstructions movement was writing on it back then. And there's not a Herem against the, Herem, sort of excommunication ban on the smartphone. But it is sort of like a clear eyed look at, are we approaching this as meaningfully as we can. Rabbi Nathan: So again, on the one hand, a smartphone gives us access, I can, you know, in my podcasts on my way to school, be listening, be reading a history of racism in America. Or on the other hand, I can be scrolling through it mindlessly staring at memes which can also be sort of an entertaining rejuvenating thing. But it's just about being clear eyed with this technology we're facing. So, on the one hand, you're right, like why didn't we write it then and what's different about today's technological world? On the other hand, it's just important to always be engaging with cultural issues of our day and that includes what the technology, what the media is. Rachael Burgess: So, one of the things that struck me going back a little bit about something that you had said, Rabbi Waxman, was talking about how your experiences being a rabbi were so much different than we're talking with Rabbi Nathan who is just coming out, who's a fresh new rabbi. So here you write this great article but you're coming at it from two different perspectives. How were you able to combine your voices together having these two different experiences? Rabbi Deborah: I mean, just take one step back. I started rabbinical school 25 years ago and I can't believe how different the world is and the Jewish world is. Rachael Burgess: I wasn't going to out you. Rabbi Deborah: No, no, it's fine. I think about it all of the time. And for sure, technology is one piece of it. But also, it's such a different world. I'll say a couple things. As someone who spends a lot of time explaining what does it mean to be a Reconstructionist Jew, what's a Reconstructionist approach, I actually think that dialogue is the best possible way. That there's something about Reconstructionism which tends toward a pretty intellectual take that it's most lively, it's most interesting when you're actually doing it in conversation. I mean, what I say all of the time is the best possible way to understand what Reconstructionism is through demonstration and through immersion. So go visit a Reconstructionist congregation or go interact with a, come to our convention or a regional gathering and have a sense of really what it means to bring this to life. Rabbi Deborah: But separate from that, I think a kind of a dialogical model, a back and forth I think really lends itself to the, you know, because what Reconstructionism is more than anything is this stance of brave curiosity, a stance of openness to, like a deep reverence and appreciation for the inheritance that we've gotten and an openness and an excitement about what the world in front of us offers and presents and to be involved in building it and in wrestling with it and in creating it. Rabbi Deborah: So, this piece in particular really began as an epistolary exchange. This began as we were writing each other emails back and forth. I would love that to have been preserved because I think it was a really, really rich exchange. But it was too long. We really felt like it was too much and too long. And through the incredible skill of the editor and the director of the Evolved Project Rabbi Jacob Staub, he actually spent a good chunk of time harmonizing our voices. So we were writing back and forth on the same themes but he's the one who brought those exchanges into this harmonized piece. Rabbi Nathan: That's true. We basically handed him a back and forth and said "here you go." I mean, it starts with, actually Jacob asked me to write a different piece, the Israel/Palestine piece, which I wanted no part of. So he instead asked, or Deborah asked me if I would consider working with her on the technology piece. And one, I just really wanted the opportunity to contribute to Evolve and to work with Deborah. And two, to me, it's such an important question because I'm working at a synagogue, I'm at Society Hill Synagogue. Rabbi Nathan: If again, to use the term clear-eyed, if we're not clear-eyed about people's behaviors today, which do tend to be, my fiancee and I check our phones. I whisper Modeh Ani to myself but then the very next thing I do is scan through my phone and that goes from email to espn.com to Facebook and she's on Instagram Immediately. That's just what people do. There's so much attractive stuff on the internet that to kind of, to not, to be someone who's interested in engaging people with Judaism, which is both my career and to some extent, my passion to sort of cede that space as like only secondarily relevant would just be to ignore how human beings are today. Rabbi Nathan: I do kind of think of myself as a digital native. So the predecessor to AOL, to America Online is Prodigy. And so, I remember as like a nerdy like sixth grader, I guess this would have been in like 1995, I was on bulletin boards on Prodigy. I had decided at that point that I wanted to be a journalist. And so I was asking people on Prodigy what are the best journalism colleges. A couple years later in an aol.com chat room, I was signing up for my first Fantasy Football League in 1997. Then it was AOL Instant Messenger. So, I have sort of tried to, whether intentionally or just because it's in the water sort of been surrounded by this stuff. Rabbi Nathan: And sometimes they cycle back through. Like I remember my first cassette tape and I now cycled through to CDs, then iTunes, then Spotify and now back to vinyl. So you see a lot of this kind of stuff happen. And so, I'm by no means an expert. I have no Ph.D. I worked as a lawyer in Silicon Valley for a little bit. But it certainly doesn't credential me in any, other than anecdotally, but it just was a topic I was fascinated with. Bryan S.: There are a ton of quotes in the piece that really struck me. But one, I wanted to read it to you and ask if you could help us understand the questions you were exploring. "Rather than simply being buffeted by the world we encounter, we can choose to take on intentional ways of understanding and acting that infuse our lives with holiness." That is so packed and rich with meaning. What is going on there and how does that relate to everything you just talked about? Rabbi Nathan: Sure. The phrase that comes to mind right now is don't be the frog. By that I mean -- I don't even know where this came from, it's a really sad kind of gross story but whatever. There's a frog that's in a pot of water, I guess this is how you cook frogs. It starts out cool but then it heats and heats and heats and eventually kills the frog and it never jumps out because it doesn't notice until the water has gotten too hot. Rabbi Nathan: That's how I feel about technology today is that it essentially creeps up on us if we're not kind of intentional about it. If we're not being thoughtful about who I am on my phone instead of talking to this Uber driver or instead of now that we have Uber POOL, talking to the three other passengers in the car. Rabbi Nathan: The Torah was developed thousands of years ago at a time when there were not all these distractions. And to me, living as a modern or postmodern person, whatever we're calling it, is about having, and a postmodern Jew in particular is having the humility to say there are some stuff our ancestors got spiritually, emotionally, socially better than we do or at the very least their context can sort of inform this context. A lot of that is about encounters with holiness, which I think that touches on. The Torah is basically a document about interacting with holiness. And to me, bringing those values to today when we interact with everything that's around us, that's what it means to be a Jew is to essentially be thoughtful about the opportunities for holiness in the mundane. Rabbi Deborah: I think that's exactly right. I think that one of the things that we agreed upon, this is some of what I think was stripped away a little bit in the effort to make it a shorter piece and that I think it gets kind of embedded into that rather than discussed separately, is that we, if there's a question of why be Jewish, Nathan just said as a postmodern Jew -- I think what you meant by that is like all of us today, if we're Jewish, we're choosing to be Jewish. It is so easy not to be Jewish and is so easy to just be shaped by consumer culture and by what television and increasingly Facebook and Instagram tells us we should be. Rabbi Deborah: So if we are going to in a certain countercultural way put out an identity that isn't reflected everywhere and reinforced everywhere, then the answer is why. Is it just to be countercultural? I don't think so. I mean, I am Jewish because being Jewish helps me to be a better human being, to be a better citizen of this planet. It's a very particular way of achieving those very universal goals. I think the investigation of the commitment to the possibility of being filled up by holiness is one of the particular Jewish focuses and expressions that it really moves me deeply and appeals to me. Rabbi Deborah: Then it became, if we agreed that we choose to be Jewish in order to be the best possible versions of ourselves as individuals and in community and multiple communities and if being Jewish is in part about this orientation toward the luminous and the numinous in a world that is sometimes very, very hard and harsh and dark, then it opens up a really interesting conversation about like, so what are the different ways to do it and some of them are ancient practices like Modeh Ani which I do personally through an app on the phone. It's not the first thing I do. It's after my morning drink and with my wife and we chant because there's a wonderful app by our colleague Rabbi Shefa Gold with 49 different versions of Modeh Ani. So I like the variety. Rabbi Deborah: But then it become like, there's lots of the ancient, what some folks call the ancient spiritual technologies and then there's just the technology of the 21st century that could be harnessed and deployed toward this goal of holiness. Bryan S.: But I'm just thinking of being stuck on my phone or a screen in front of my face or social media, it's wrecking, I feel like it's wrecking my attention span, it's getting me angry when I read stuff that just seems off base. I don't know, why not just write all this off if we could. Sometimes it seems like there's little redeeming value and I get the sense Nathan in particular, you think that's a big mistake to hold that kind of attitude. Rabbi Nathan: Right. Well, I think there's two ways to answer that. One is to as Jewish leaders, there's always the choice, are we saying we need to just say to people stop doing this, put down your phones, don't intermarry. Or do we take a different approach, which is, people are doing this, people are using their phones, people are intermarrying. How can we be as Jewish as we can be in that context? Rabbi Nathan: So one answer to the question of what do we do with, can't we just throw away technology? And it's like, even if we wanted to, other people aren't. If we want to reach them, we sort of have to operate in that world. But you're right that I do think that we'd be throwing too much of the baby out with the bathwater to say put down your phones altogether. Rabbi Nathan: Again, I sort of alluded to this but last night, I was texting with friends around the country on a Facebook thread while watching the Sixers game, so we have the opportunity to interact around that. Really meaningful conversations happen about political events of the day. Sometimes the discourse gets bad but I think that's where we step in is to try and lay out some rules for the road of how to sort of apply Jewish wisdom to this contemporary context. I do think there's enough redeeming there. When do you stop? Are search engines... I think we've said that there's a ton you can do through that. To me, there's so much positive in how we consume technology. It's like many other things. It's about how do we do this thoughtfully and with a degree of moderation. Rabbi Deborah: A couple things. One is I am looking around the room and I'm the oldest person at 51. When I was reflecting on this that when I was younger, I really resisted commitments to practice. That had a lot to do with my relationship to halakhic Judaism and the idea that I'd have to daven every single day, to say morning prayers every single day. That seemed very oppressive to me. What I'm finding as I get older and older, I am more and more interested in practice and in regimens because it helps me to be the person I want to be and to divide up my time in the day the way I want to spend my time so that I'm really doing what I want to do. Rabbi Deborah: So, one thing is that I have certain rules around my phone which is so ubiquitous. I'm helpless with that. I travel nonstop and the phone tells me what time my plane is, gets me to the airport, gets me from the rental car to my next place. The phone died on me once at the end of a, I think it was 13 days I was in eight different cities and at the last city the phone died. Having just been moving flawlessly through the first seven cities and then I was paralyzed in Chicago and it froze because it was freezing cold which didn't help. I try really hard not to pick up the phone right away when I wake up. Even as I use it as my alarm clock than to not look at the Internet or my email until later in the morning. Sometimes I'm successful at it and sometimes.... Rabbi Deborah: So I try to have certain disciplines. I am not on my phone on Shabbat. Like for me, it's not throw it out all the time, don't use it at all, but I need a time where I unplug. And so while I might stream a movie on Shabbat afternoon because that's something to do with my family and to connect and to recharge but I'm not on email at all and as much as possible, I'm not on the phone because the phone is not the phone anymore. It connects me to the wider world. Rabbi Deborah: So there's certain practices we use and it's one of the reasons why we both crafted a kavanah, like an intention, like what would a mindful engagement be like. Certainly my practice, like I try not to check email before I go to bed because sometimes it stops me from sleeping and I've actually been really, really disciplined about that. Like what would a mindful interaction with technology look like? A kavanah, an intention is a long standing Jewish practice. Rabbi Deborah: So for us to try to bring to speech what might animate us and what might be helpful to us in terms of engaging in this work, we have a colleague Rabbi Michael Strassfeld who has set one limit that I am very sympathetic to where he declared that it was kind of treif [non-kosher], it was not Jewish to comment in the blogosphere. Like when for example, The Forward publishes an article about someone or something and then there's a whole stream of comments usually not curated and often quite toxic. His assessment of that toxicity is that it can't be redeemed. You can't do anything about it and therefore you shouldn't read them and you shouldn't contribute to them. Rabbi Deborah: That's a really interesting line to draw. That's my personal practice. I just find them really, you know, I might read the New York Times comments because they're heavily curated and approved but uncurated sections as a general rule I try not to read the comments. So my sense is that some of it, there's some line drawing. There's certainly people who do internet filters for porn. And even if you watch porn, I think there's a consensus that you don't do that in an airplane or in a public space. There are lines that we might draw but they're distinct lines rather than global lines. Rachael Burgess: So one of the pieces that you just brought up was those comments and the trolls as we call them, and also one of these pieces that you talk about in your article is treating people if they were made in God's image. When we talk about image, that's something visual and seeing a face and once you're out in the internet, that face isn't there. Then you also talk a little bit about what does an emoji do or an emoticon which made me smile. There was also a smiley face emoticon in the article as well. So how important is a face? How important is that to our relationships? Rabbi Nathan: Yeah. In some ways, the point of the article is to say remember the face, because I think we're so quick to, and I'm guilty of this, the way Facebook threads work, you can type a little comment, hit return, and it's there instantaneously. So I think the urge here is to remember the other person's face if this is going to be particularly a caustic remark. I think about it also in the work context with coworkers. We kind of get into a mode of like, oh, we're inundated with emails, we have to fire 'em off so fast. It's okay to be really curt and just have a harsh period which it can be. Rabbi Nathan: So I think the urge here is to try and remember that at the other end of this, at the other end of this exchange is a face as you point out and that that should guide us. And certainly, we're all guilty of not necessarily doing that all the time but that's the goal. Rabbi Deborah: I think that that's exactly right. That's at the heart of it if we had to sum it down is remember that this is a tool but the tool is ideally about connection rather than about disconnection or disembodiment. I've been watching how in my work life, we're using Zoom more and more and how transformative that is just to have. It's imperfect but so much better than just the writing or just the telephone or the conference call, however the technology works, so that it really just brings it to life. That's one of the things that I think a lot of rabbis and certainly those of us here at Reconstructing Judaism -- what we're really thinking about is how to use the technology to amplify connection rather than to reinforce disconnection, and what is the best possible intersection between whatever virtual community might get built up and whatever face to face community that might support it. Rabbi Deborah: I think we talked about in the article and certainly I learned this while we were writing this piece that for 12 step programs, the online versions work just as well as the face to face versions. They have the same level of effectiveness, which is not as high as a lot of them like to claim but there's no difference between the virtual version and the face to face version. I'm watching, I know folks who do Weight Watchers and they still run face to face groups but most people I know do Weight Watchers and really like it, they're doing it through an app and there's mutual support within there. Rabbi Deborah: How to take seriously that virtual community, how to work against the trolls and the dehumanization and how to marry it to what we know, we have evolved as human beings to be deeply connected and that we suffer. I was just listening to a radio show about loneliness and you know how in England they just appointed a minister of loneliness and how the pervasiveness of technology is both accelerating that and also mitigating against it in certain ways. I think that that's exactly what we're struggling with. Rabbi Deborah: Judaism teaches that the collective is non-negotiable. There are certain Jewish practices that are essential to our religious sensibility that cannot be done without a minyan, that cannot be done without a quorum of at least 10 people showing up. I do feel like that's an incredibly powerful countercultural teaching in this radically individualistic society. So how to do that both separate from the technology, which is I think a misnomer, the technology. Because the siddur that we're praying from at those moments is a book, is itself a form of technology, but how to do that separate from the electronic moment, the digital moment and how to do it through the digital moment. Bryan S.: I know I probably came off sounding like a fuddy-duddy a bit or whatever. I've taken writing workshops with people from Hong Kong and Western Africa and England and commented on each other's work all in our own time. It felt real, it felt like there was a real connection there and something that wouldn't happen otherwise. So I think that just one of the miracles you were bringing up in the way that these technologies can bring us together. Bryan S.: One thing I'm curious, and tell me if I'm getting the description wrong, does the Jewish concept of sacred rebuke come into play in social media or other forms and how do you go about thinking about that or doing it? Rabbi Nathan: I didn't discover the notion of tokhekha, sacred rebuke, what you're talking about until rabbinical school. And to me, it was so bizarre and interesting. Most of the, sort of, most of the moral interpersonal Jewish teachings are things I learned in kindergarten. Love your neighbor as yourself. Don't forget the stranger because you are a stranger. A bunch of things that are just kind of like intuitive to being a human being in the contemporary context. This notion of sacred rebuke is a notion that first of all, that constructive feedback is essentially a commandment. That if your heart's sort of like boiling up with something that is weighing you down because of something else that somebody did, that you should in most contexts, let that person know. Rabbi Nathan: A lot of times in the contemporary online world, we've sort of forgotten the sacred part of the rebuke. And so, we see a lot of again, caustic back and forths on Facebook and really sort of dragging people into the mud based on their beliefs, based on their framing of those beliefs, based on something even more superficial than their beliefs. And so, the idea of sacred rebuke is a set of principles to inform when and how one says to someone else what you did caused me pain for the following reasons. I think the most obvious example of how that should happen typically is instead of publicly, do it privately. Rabbi Nathan: So there's a whole, I guess you can say treatise of Jewish wisdom on these sort of constructive critiques that feel essential to how we are if someone says something that causes us pain, but at the same time not to just feel that that then merits any reaction whatsoever. That instead, in the online world, whereas Rachael said, we're often forgetting sort of the other person's face, to be particularly sensitive to the notion that this is another person and that we should be really thoughtful even while we feel a need to "rebuke them," that's the sort of traditional translation, that we do so with the reminder that they have been created in the divine image and to follow some of the ancient Jewish principles around that. Rachael Burgess: So one of the things that you actually go into your article about and I think it also ties into the rebuke and how we treat each other, you talk about this in this article that it's memorialized, it lasts forever. Once it's in the internet, it lasts. One of the things that I thought about when I was reading that, I was actually thinking about actually your podcasts Deborah about, on Hashivenu with Rabbi Vivie Mayer regarding teshuvah, which is the practice of reflecting and looking back at what you've done throughout the year, especially around High Holidays, and trying to do better and try and seek forgiveness if you need to do that. Is it necessarily a bad thing that all of our actions are being recorded forever so we can reflect on it and be responsible for it? Rabbi Deborah: Such a funny question. Rachael, it's so funny, like we joke sometime about the permanent record, you know like the image of the, the central, like teshuvah, it is important to say that one can do teshuvah at any point in the year and part of what the High Holidays do is invite us to mandate us to actually engage in this process of reflection. One of the central images of the High Holiday services is the Book of Life and the idea that everything is written down. So you think about that, that image, everything's written down and that God, the judge is weighing who is worthy of more life. Rabbi Deborah: There's a long conversation to have about how challenging that theology as from a Reconstructionist perspective. But the metaphor is really, really powerful. But it's a metaphor. And if you think about it, it emerged when books were not ubiquitous, when it was not, I wouldn't say it was necessarily technology, that it was a very elite practice and the people who were keeping records were the kings and the people in power. And even as Jews have always had a very high level of literacy, that didn't necessarily mean that they would have books of their own in their houses when that idea emerged. But it was always just a metaphor. Rabbi Deborah: I've never thought that the permanent record of the internet age is in fact that annal that we will be judged. There's two or three public figures who have just been pushed out of their places of responsibility because of blog posts or social media posts that have surfaced from a couple of years ago. One of whom is saying "no, no, I don't think I wrote that. No, there hasn't been a hack but I don't think I wrote that." So there it is. Rabbi Deborah: I do think that there is a degree of accountability. Part of the challenge with some of the comments and the trolls is that they happen behind handles or acronyms that divorce that kind of accountability. Just in my personality and in my public figure, I am really pretty fine with that. I'm not the kind of person who's likely to have snapshots of myself or someone else in embarrassing positions. I hadn't really thought about the rabbinic possibilities for teaching about teshuvah from this. I'll give it some more thought in the next High Holiday season. Rabbi Nathan: It's funny that you went there because my mind went straight there when you brought up, you know, some of these conversations have been happening amongst privacy advocates in the technology sphere for awhile. Some people lay out kind of the premise that you are, which is, first of all, doesn't a reduction of privacy incentivize us to be better or people who sort of say like, "I don't think I have anything to hide." If you have anything to hide, maybe there's something problematic there. Rabbi Nathan: On the other hand, the notion of teshuvah, I think about returning, and about, I guess I would say second chances - is about having not always being weighed down by past choices in the eyes of others. If you get a clean slate with Hashem, is it too much to ask to also try and get a clean slate with some of your peers? The internet is sort of a, this is definitely going to be an issue for the next several years. What if sort of someone developed a way to publicize every internet search you had ever conducted. Rabbi Nathan: The other day, I did a Google search of myself because I don't know, I'd like to and I was applying for jobs and I thought it was worthwhile. A speeding ticket from when I was 16 came up. And so, on the one hand, it's like what's some prospective employer going to think about, because a 16 year old had a speeding ticket. On the other hand, what's the value in that being out there? I could imagine it being the kind of thing where on a board some people are sitting around and they say, do you see this right here. I've discovered some things about some colleagues searching them for sort of unrelated reasons, I have to find their work phone number or something like that and you see sort of scan down some unflattering stuff about their past. I'm not sure that -- it's not relevant to my sort of current interaction with them that I need to know that. Rabbi Nathan: So it's not to say that it should never be out there and that we should have blanket rules to when and when we don't sort of have people's pasts publicized. But I guess I want to be sensitive to, again, keeping the nature of their divine, them being created in the divine image. And what I worry about is that when someone's history is so sort of able to be brought up like that, that to the broader public, we are going to basically limit them to some specific deeds that come up in a search as opposed to their full humanity. I think we live in a society where we really have a tendency to do that, where we have a tendency to sort of decry other people's faults in part because it helps us feel better about ourselves when we have our own self doubt. Rabbi Nathan: So, I guess because I'm worried about sometimes the mob mentality that comes out that way, I want to at least put a little bit of a finger on the scale of "let's be cautious before we say all previous electronic acts should be available in perpetuity." Rachael Burgess: Also, good note to self, don't carpool with Nathan because he speeds. Rabbi Nathan: At least in 1997 I did, that's true. Bryan S.: It's funny. I'll admit my phone just dinged in the middle of Nathan was saying and it was like I had to resist every impulse to check it, like the brain's hardwired. This has been great. I think so much of what we've talked about is relatable to millions and billions of people. I think it's a testament to the way you've approached this topic and also just how much Judaism and Reconstructionist Judaism has to shed light on everyday issues we're facing. Bryan S.: So, I think I wanted to close just by asking, you've put this out there as a permanent record so to speak, what do you hope happens with it or that brings about in terms of discussions, comments, dialogue? Rabbi Deborah: It's a great question. I mean, for the entire Evolve Project, what we're really hoping is both to continue and deepen the conversations on these topics. I led a parlor meeting using just some excerpts from this essay in a congregational setting. One takeaway that emerged was that they had had some very heated conversations on their congregational Facebook page about a controversial topic and that the next time they would A, set a kavanah, that they would B, put some ground rules down for how to have the conversations going forward, and that they would C, use some of the tokekhah that was from one of Nathan's postings, that they would use that in kind of monitoring the conversations going forward. Do you have thoughts? Rabbi Nathan: Yeah. I guess I would sort of point to two flip sides. The first being that in this technological age that we not allow sort of the technology, the water to sort of heat too quickly on us. That we just be thoughtful, apply some of the principles we lay out in the topic which are just co-opted from our ancestors. Apply it to the interactions we have online, that being the first one. And again, that's not about sort of throwing out the technology but just sort of not letting it sneak up on us. Rabbi Nathan: The flip side which we got into less in this particular conversation, but what are the ways that technology can allow our lives to be reinforced with Judaism that we've sort of gotten away from. So whether that's an app that dings when it's time to daven or have a reflective moment or maybe it's a virtual mezuzah on the gates you're going through i.e, the new websites are going through that says you're leaving one place entering another, here is God, proceed. So, just to start to get inventive about how can we apply our ancient Jewish wisdoms in new media that allows us to confuse the mundane with holiness. Bryan S.: Wow. This has been amazing. So we encourage you, check out the article. You can find it at evolve.reconstructingjudaism.org. Anywhere you can download podcast, search Hashivenu, an amazing podcast hosted by Rabbi Waxman really about Judaism you can use and how Judaism can help you live your life and meet life's challenges. Bryan S.: Since I'm going, if you're in Philadelphia on a Shabbat, why not stop in Society Hill Synagogue, an amazing historic congregation where Rabbi Kamesar is one of the spiritual leaders. So, thank you so much. I'm looking forward to listening to this again and really digesting. It was a great, great conversation. Rachael Burgess: I know that there's also a whole bunch of other topics in here - that this was such a rich article and there were a bunch of things I know that could not be discussed in this article. So I'm looking forward to seeing where this conversation goes from here and what the future of the relationship between technology and Judaism looks like. So thank you both so much. Rabbi Nathan: Thank you. Rabbi Deborah: Thank you. Our pleasure. Rachael Burgess: Thank you so much for joining us. You can subscribe to our podcast on iTunes, Google Play, and Spotify. And you can also check out our website with other resources as well at trendingjewish.fireside.fm. We should also mention that we have rolled out Evolve. Evolve as a project launched by Reconstructing Judaism with incredible essays and conversations from rabbis and thought leaders about urgent issues impacting the Jewish world today. You can check out Evolve and read these essays, participate in these conversations by going to evolve.reconstructingjudaism.org. Bryan S.: If you want to send us a message, ask us a question, suggest an idea, tell us how great we are, go through the website and use the Contact Us form and we will gladly hear from you and get back to you. Rachael Burgess: You can also follow us on Facebook as well. And also a note to make sure that you read Deborah and Nathan's kavanah before sending comments so we can still continue to have some holy conversation.