Exiled in Cyberspace
Books by Jonathan Rosen and Erik Davis
Matt Dorn
October 1, 2001
The Talmud and the Internet: A journey between Worlds, by Jonathan Rosen (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2000), 132 pp., $16. Techgnosis: Myth, Magic and Mysticism in the Age of Informa- tion, by Erik Davis (Harmony Books, 1998), 335 pp., $25. Given sufficient computer power and memory, just about all of reality might one day be digitally encoded—at least if a number of today's futurologists and techno-optimists are to be believed. For the rest of us, such scenarios may seem far-fetched, but every time I find myself moved by an MP3-encoded version of a Mozart sonata, or immersed in a dvd movie playing on my laptop, such predictions start to seem a little bit more real. Flesh and physicality, the futurists tell us, are on their way out, soon to be replaced by pure data. It doesn't sound like good news for those of us who prefer to spend our time in what some Internet mavens wryly refer to as "meat-space." But what's surprising is how much of this isn't really news at all. Two recent accounts attempt to explain how, gadgetry aside, humanity finds itself confronted with the age-old philosophical-religious problem of spirit, body, and the connection between them. Jonathan Rosen's The Talmud and the Internet is a beautifully written, literate, and very personal essay detailing the author's attempts to reconcile his faith tradition with a contemporary world that is enamored with technology and hostile to religion. Rosen's consideration of the Internet turns on his analysis of Judaism as a kind of "virtual" religion, a religion of the word, not the flesh. After the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem in the year 70 C.H., Rosen explains, Judaism had to relinquish its hold on the "bricks-and-mortar" world of the Temple and recast itself ...
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