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How Judaism is like the Internet
By David E. Y. Sarna
author
In "Googled: The End of the World as We Know It , the fascinating insider's tale of Google's successes and challenges deftly written by Ken Auletta, we are reminded of The Cathedral and the Bazaar, a seminal work by Eric Steven Raymond, first delivered at a Linux developers conference in 1997. The paper expounds on the merits of "bazaar-style" software development in contrast to the top-down, centrally controlled management style used in most corporation.
I happened to be reading Auletta's book on a recent Friday night, after our Sabbath dinner. It suddenly dawned on me. I describing the community of open-source software users, Raymond could just as well have been describing Judaism. While a bazaar may not be the first descriptor of Judaism that comes to mind, it is apt. Walk into most any decent-sized Yeshiva, or even into a synagogue, during most parts of the service, and you confront a cacophony of voices. As Raymond says, "No quiet, reverent cathedral-building here." In comparison, in most cathedrals, silence is golden.
In a Yeshiva, you usually study together with a study-buddy, a "havruta." Kent Beck's "extreme programming" technique for rapid, more bug-free development is similar. He suggests deploying coders in pairs each one looking over the other's shoulders .
The Talmud has been likened to hypertext, full of internal links, as Jonathan Rosen observed.
Like the Internet, Judaism is highly decentralized, a property which provides for inherent fault-tolerance. While a few countries, such as the United Kingdom have chief rabbis, most, like the United States, do not. There is no supreme ecclesiastical body. No one person or group is "in charge." Each synagogue has its own customs and rituals, based on a common core. Just as the Internet has some major paths and core routers (the Internet backbone), so too Judaism has its major strands, often called Orthodox, Conservative, and Reform. But actually, it has many more strands than Howard Johnson's 28 flavors of ice cream.
There are (self-described) fervently Orthodox, (haredi), Hassidic Orthodox, plain old Orthodox, "Modern Orthodox," (also self-described), right wing, left wing (no Blue dogs that I'm aware of). There are groups who consider themselves "Yeshivish," "Litvish" (based on the study methods popular in pre-War Lithuania), feminist, anti-feminist, and so on. And that's just among the Orthodox, who comprise perhaps 11% of the total.
There are similar divisions among the more "liberal," "progressive," and reconstructionist strands.
Judaism has its core principles, but even these, other than monotheism, and a belief that God is a "unity unlike any other possible unity" (Maimonides) are much debated.
Reynolds says that "the developer who uses only his or her own brain in a closed project is going to fall behind the developer who knows how to create an open, evolutionary context in which feedback exploring the design space, code contributions, bug-spotting, and other improvements come from hundreds (perhaps thousands) of people.
So it is with Talmudic study, and it has always been so for nearly two millennia. It is a marketplace of competing ideas. Not only is the Talmud itself replete with controversy, but in the standard editions of the Talmud, the text is surrounded by commentaries and super-commentaries, and thousands more glosses have been written over the generations, many flatly contradicting each other. What emerges out of all this seeming chaos, is like the results of a spectroscopic analysis, with bands of different colors whose width represents the degree of consensus. On some issues, there is a wide band signifying broad agreement, while on others there is a colorful rainbow of narrow bands reflecting an enduring lack of consensus. Of course, the range of opinion is ultimately constrained by the Torah, which functions like a constitution in establishing boundaries.
There is an interesting dichotomy between the range of competing ideas for intellectual discussion in Talmudic study, and normative practice, which was codified by the Shulchan Aruch ("the set table") written by Rabbi Yosef Karo (1488-1575) in Safed, Israel, and first printed in Venice in 1565. It was adapted to Ashkenazi Jewish customs with glosses written by Rabbi Moshe Isserles, known as the Rema, who was the Maimonides of Polish Jewry, in a work known as HaMappah (the tablecloth, first published with the Shulchan Aruch in 1569.
Given the Talmud's preference for inclusion and respect for multiple opinions, such codification was not without criticism. The principle objection is that codifications inherently violate the ancient precept that halakha (Jewish law) must be decided according to the later sages; a precept known as hilkheta ke-vatra'ei (the halakha follows the later decisors).
Menachem Elon, a Rabbi and Professor who was from 1977 to 1993 a Justice on the Israeli Supreme Court, and its Deputy President from 1988 to 1993 commented in his major work, Jewish Law: History, Sources, Principles , "This rule (that the halakha follows the later decisors) dates from the Geonic period (589 to 1038). It laid down that until the time of Rabbis Abbaye and Rava (4th century) the Halakha was to be decided according to the views of the earlier scholars, but from that time onward, the halakhic opinions of post-talmudic scholars would prevail over the contrary opinions of a previous generation .Elon goes on to quote Rabbi Asher ben Yechiel (1259 - 1327), known as the Asheri. He famously said, "If one does not find their [earlier] statements correct and sustains his own views with evidence that is acceptable to his contemporaries...he may contradict the earlier statements, since all matters that are not clarified in the Babylonian Talmud may be questioned and restated by any person, and even the statements of the Geonim may differ from his...just as the statements of the Amoraim (rabbis living from 200 to 500 CE) differed from the earlier ones. On the contrary, we regard the statements of later scholars to be more authoritative because they knew the reasoning of the earlier scholars as well as their own, and took it into consideration in making their decisions ." My teacher, the late Professor Isadore Twersky has written extensively on the tensions associated with codification.
The Rema himself cautioned against over-reliance by judges on his code, saying, "in any case, a judge must be guided only by what his own eyes can see." Many others voiced even stronger objections to codification.
Deciders of Jewish law deal with new problems, (such as air-rights and precise determination of death (brain death or cessation of heart and lung activity) by derivation from comments made in the Talmud.
This healthy tension between authority and opinion is nowhere more evident than on the Internet. Google uses its famous (and secret) PageRank methodology to give great weight to authority and frequency of citation in its rankings. Yet, by attempting to index all of the pages in the Internet, it doesn't totally disregard minority opinion or comments by individual bloggers; it just pushes their pages further down in the rankings of the search results that it presents.
The bazaar appears to operate on the edge of chaos, as does the Yeshiva. But there is order in chaos, as the famous French polymath Henri Poincaré (1854 - 1912) first identified. And this near chaos is not a bad thing, as Madhu M. Kurup pointed out: "From elementary chaos theory and evolutionary biology, we know that the most adaptive, dynamic and successful systems operate at the edge of chaos. Too much rigidity and the system dies as it cannot evolve. Too much chaos and the system is destroyed." Chaos Theory was popularized by James Gleick in his 1987 best seller, "Chaos: Making a New Science."
Rabbi Abraham Issac HaCohen Kook (1865-1935), the first Ashkenazi chief rabbi of the British Mandate for Palestine was notable for building bridges among the various factions in Judaism. He famously called for and envisioned a spiritual renaissance where "the ancient would be renewed and the new would be sanctified."
While a patent examiner in 1871 (the year that Mark Twain was granted his first patent) is reported to have resigned, believing that everything possible had already been invented, the U.S. Patent Office denies this as a myth, and we know that innovation in both technology and Talmudic study are free-wheeling, ongoing, and never-ending processes.
Perhaps it is the inherent elasticity, flexibility, and somewhat controlled chaos of the bazaar that has enabled Judaism to renew itself and remain relevant after thousands of years, and it bodes well for the future of the Internet as well.
David E. Y. Sarna is a writer, technologist and former investment banker. His new book "History of Greed" will be published by Wiley in 2010.
By David E. Y. Sarna |
November 30, 2009; 1:23 PM ET
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Posted by: tojby_2000 | December 1, 2009 10:29 AM
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One wonders why Mr. Sarna failed to mention one of the great documents of 21st century Judaism, ''Etz Hayim'' (''Tree of Life'' in Hebrew) aka the New Torah for Modern Minds. Copies are available at any United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism.
To locate one, see http://www.uscj.org/Synagogues5011.html
Posted by: ccnl1 | December 1, 2009 1:13 AM
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Fascinating, thought-provoking, and full of interesting, deep knowledge. Thanks for this great article.
Posted by: AriT | November 30, 2009 8:02 PM
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Mr. Sarna,
Please don't be annoyed by ccnl1, our resident Christer homophome, Islamophobe, Judeophobe. He's been pasting this same stuff on this blog for several years.
Despite protests to the producers from scores of bloggers, the most he could do at this point was to keep ccnl1 from posting on the panel.
At all events, do read the comments, unless the Nazis (I'm being literal come on board; then, you might as well pack it in.).
Just skim until ccnl1's name disappears. One good thing about him. He isn't a Nazi. (Insane, paranoid, phobic about many things, but not a Nazi.)
Posted by: Farnaz1Mansouri1 | November 30, 2009 5:48 PM
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What Mr. Sarna forgot to mention:
refs: the NY Times and on the Internet:
New York Times
| March 9, 2002
"New Torah For Modern Minds"
By MICHAEL MASSING (NYT)
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F20E1EFE35540C7A8CDDAA0894DA404482
Abraham, the Jewish patriarch, probably never existed. Nor did Moses. The entire Exodus story as recounted in the Bible probably never occurred. The same is true of the tumbling of the walls of Jericho. And David, far from being the fearless king who built Jerusalem into a mighty capital, was more likely a provincial leader whose reputation was later magnified to provide a rallying point for a fledgling nation.
Such startling propositions -- the product of findings by archaeologists digging in Israel and its environs over the last 25 years -- have gained wide acceptance among non-Orthodox rabbis. But there has been no attempt to disseminate these ideas or to discuss them with the laity -- until now.
The United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism, which represents the 1.5 million Conservative Jews (about 10% of global Jewish population) in the United States, has just issued a new Torah and commentary, the first for Conservatives in more than 60 years. Called ''Etz Hayim'' (''Tree of Life'' in Hebrew), it offers an interpretation that incorporates the latest findings from archaeology, philology, anthropology and the study of ancient cultures. To the editors who worked on the book, it represents one of the boldest efforts ever to introduce into the religious mainstream a view of the Bible as a human rather than divine document.
''When I grew up in Brooklyn, congregants were not sophisticated about anything,'' said Rabbi Harold Kushner, the author of ''When Bad Things Happen to Good People'' and a co-editor of the new book. ''Today, they are very sophisticated and well read about psychology, literature and history, but they are locked in a childish version of the Bible.''
''Etz Hayim,'' compiled by David Lieber of the University of Judaism in Los Angeles, seeks to change that. It offers the standard Hebrew text, a parallel English translation (edited by Chaim Potok, best known as the author of ''The Chosen''), a page-by-page exegesis, periodic commentaries on Jewish practice and, at the end, 41 essays by prominent rabbis and scholars on topics ranging from the Torah scroll and dietary laws to ecology and eschatology.
continued below:
Posted by: ccnl1 | November 30, 2009 4:01 PM
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These essays, perused during uninspired sermons or Torah readings at Sabbath services, will no doubt surprise many congregants. For instance, an essay on Ancient Near Eastern Mythology,'' by Robert Wexler, president of the University of Judaism in Los Angeles, states that on the basis of modern scholarship, it seems unlikely that the story of Genesis originated in Palestine. More likely, Mr. Wexler says, it arose in Mesopotamia, the influence of which is most apparent in the story of the Flood, which probably grew out of the periodic overflowing of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. The story of Noah, Mr. Wexler adds, was probably borrowed from the Mesopotamian epic Gilgamesh.
Equally striking for many readers will be the essay ''Biblical Archaeology,'' by Lee I. Levine, a professor at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. ''There is no reference in Egyptian sources to Israel's sojourn in that country,'' he writes, ''and the evidence that does exist is negligible and indirect.'' The few indirect pieces of evidence, like the use of Egyptian names, he adds, ''are far from adequate to corroborate the historicity of the biblical account.''
Similarly ambiguous, Mr. Levine writes, is the evidence of the conquest and settlement of Canaan, the ancient name for the area including Israel. Excavations showing that Jericho was unwalled and uninhabited, he says, ''clearly seem to contradict the violent and complete conquest portrayed in the Book of Joshua.'' What's more, he says, there is an ''almost total absence of archaeological evidence'' backing up the Bible's grand descriptions of the Jerusalem of David and Solomon.
The notion that the Bible is not literally true ''is more or less settled and understood among most Conservative rabbis,'' observed David Wolpe, a rabbi at Sinai Temple in Los Angeles and a contributor to ''Etz Hayim.'' But some congregants, he said, ''may not like the stark airing of it.'' Last Passover, in a sermon to 2,200 congregants at his synagogue, Rabbi Wolpe frankly said that ''virtually every modern archaeologist'' agrees ''that the way the Bible describes the Exodus is not the way that it happened, if it happened at all.'' The rabbi offered what he called a ''litany of disillusion'' about the narrative, including contradictions, improbabilities, chronological lapses and the absence of corroborating evidence. In fact, he said, archaeologists digging in the Sinai have ''found no trace of the tribes of Israel -- not one shard of pottery.''
Hmmm, no Abraham, no Moses? And therefore no Judaism, no Christianity and no Islam???
Sounds like a recipe for world harmony!!!!
Posted by: ccnl1 | November 30, 2009 4:00 PM
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Excellent essay, Mr. Sarna, although for nonJews, more definitions of terms, more context would be helpful, since most have no idea what Judaism is.
On the internet and the Talmud: Some years ago, I was inspired to develop a journal that included previously published articles with commentaries by scholars in the margins. I did not, at first, realize whence my inspiration.
However, a colleague, also knowledgeable in Talmud, recognized it immediately.
We had a half-shoe-spring budget, but managed to get out three issues, with commentators unpaid, free permissions, blood, sweat, tears.
The success was enormous, notwithstanding word of mouth publicity, and we had a lot of trouble getting enough copies.
Well, we're at it again, with more money, more support. We'll be online and in print.
The debates, dialogue, reasoning, argument that the three issues generated was what any Talmud scholar would expect, brilliant.
Some wrote papers on the discussions that followed.
Posted by: Farnaz1Mansouri1 | November 30, 2009 3:45 PM
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I agree with Mr. Sarna's parallel comparing post-Temple State Judaism with the Internet and would argue that the meaning of Jerusalem to Jews should be nil.