The Talmud and the Internet: A Journey between Worlds [Paperback]

Jonathan Rosen (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 15, 2001

The Talmud and the Internet, in which Jonathan Rosen examines the contradictions of his inheritance as a modern American and a Jew, is a moving and exhilarating meditation on modern technology and ancient religious impulses. Blending memoir, religious history and literary reflection Rosen explores the remarkable parallels between a page of Talmud and the homepage of a web site, and reflects on the contrasting lives and deaths of his American and European grandmothers.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

The Talmud and the Internet by Jonathan Rosen is a small, wise, ingenious meditation on faith, technology, literature, and love. In the book's opening pages, Rosen (formerly the culture editor of Forward) seeks solace after his grandmother's death in the poetry of John Donne. Nagged by a half-remembered phrase from one poem, Rosen tracked down the text online, and "For one moment, there in dimensionless, chilly cyberspace, I felt close to my grandmother, close to John Donne, and close to some stranger who, as it happens, designs software for a living." In the Internet's "world of unbounded curiosity, of argument and information, where anyone with a modem can wander out of the wilderness for a while, ask a question and receive an answer," Rosen finds a real parallel to the Talmud, "a place where everything exists, if only one knows how and where to look." The literary resemblance has a cultural resonance, too. Rosen observes that "the Talmud offered a virtual home for an uprooted culture, and grew out of the Jewish need to pack civilization into words and wander out into the world." And the Internet suggests to Rosen "a similar sense of Diaspora, a feeling of being everywhere and nowhere. Where else but in the middle of Diaspora do you need a homepage?" In Rosen's analysis, the Internet and the Talmud signal and salve social and spiritual isolation. His book does this same thing, too. --Michael Joseph Gross --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Publishers Weekly

In 1990, when the Forward was established as a national Jewish weekly newspaper, Rosen was appointed arts and culture editor. For 10 years, until his recent resignation, he presided over a sprightly and highly regarded section of features and book reviews. This book is an autobiographical memoir in which he muses about his experiences and his family, while comparing the ocean of the Talmud with the vastness of the Internet. Both are described in clear language as unfinished metaphors for tradition and technology. Rosen artfully mingles facts about his wife, parents and grandmothers with erudite thoughts about his broad range of reading in Judaica and the classics. He explores John Donne, the Odyssey, Josephus and Henry Adams, mingling them with his admiration for Rabbi Akiva and Yochanan ben Zakkhai (the founder of Yavneh, where "Talmudic culture was saved"). The book ends with a moving account of visiting the present-day Lord Balfour on his Scottish estate, where Rosen's father spent WWII, having escaped from Vienna on a Kindertransport. Finally, Rosen expresses the hope that his baby daughter will maintain her connection to family history and the past, represented by the Talmud, while embracing the future, represented by the Internet. The book reveals far more about the author than it does about the Talmud or the Net, but it successfully introduces readers to all three with considerable sensitivity. (Sept.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 144 pages
• Publisher: Picador; First Edition edition (September 15, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 031242017X
• ISBN-13: 978-0312420178
• Product Dimensions: 7.5 x 5 x 0.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (20 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #154,346 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #18 in Books > Religion & Spirituality > Bible & Other Sacred Texts > Jewish Texts > Talmud

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

21 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Only Connect, September 28, 2000

By 

Ms. Lyle L. Warner (Cambridge, ma USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Talmud and the Internet: A Journey Between Worlds (Hardcover)

Jonathan Rosen, who enjoys virtual reality on the Internet, has written a fetching introduction to the Talmud. Less informed critics (usually people who have not studied this incomparable work of scholarship) have given the word talmudic the connotation of "differentiating to the point of absurdity." Rosen convinces us otherwise.

He finds in the Talmud the key to living with the multiple worlds he has inherited, with an assist from the Internet. Deeply grounded in the great works of Western culture, Rosen seeks to keep in his head the voices of John Donne, Homer, John Milton, Henry Adams, Blake ....

From the model of the Talmud Rosen derives his model for accepting side by side realities. In this model science and technology do not destroy faith. The universal longings expressed in the medieval Chartres Cathedral can evoke awe in a Jew who keeps the memory of the Crusaders of the same medieval period who, on their way to the Holy Land, plunged into wholesale murder of Jews in the Rhineland and in France.

Rosen tells tales. There are memorable stories that exemplify Talmudic wisdom. There is, also, the story of Henry Adams's faith becoming overwhelmed by the awesome power of the dynamo (electricity). And the tale of Josephus, the turncoat Jewish historian of the Roman period who left us a vivid account of the decisive moment in Jewish history: the Roman destruction of the Second Temple in 70 C.E. Best of all is the story of Rabbi Yochanan Ben Zakkai, the creative genius who started the process that became the Talmud as the ashes of the Second Temple still smoldered.

Starting with Rabbi Yochanan's circle of scholars, the Talmud was 1500 years in the making. The last addition to its pages is the work of a 16th century scholar. Arguments and counter-arguments are the essence of Talmudic discourse. Rabbis argue with each other across the centuries.

Rabbi Yochanan created the Talmud to repair a broken Jewish world, deprived of the central focus of its religious rituals, the Temple. In Rosen's thought, the Internet too has emerged in a broken world. He sees the Internet both as mirror of a broken world--in its disjointedness--and as offering "a kind of disjointed harmony."

Since the establishment of the Talmudic academies in the first millenium, rabbis have answered questions that come from afar through "responsa", utilizing whatever communication network existed, usually depending on Jewish traders on camel or ship. To me "responsa" appear to have an unexpected parallel in the exchange of information between individuals that is made possible by the Internet.

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Talmud & the Internet is a lyrical meditation balance., November 26, 2000

By 

Rebecca Brown "rebeccasreads" (Clallam Bay, WA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Talmud and the Internet: A Journey Between Worlds (Hardcover)

The Talmud and the Internet is all about nothing ever being lost & about losing The Temple in the War against the Roman Empire; about Rabbinic stories & Internet sites; marriage & death; about connections to the past & thinking of the future.

It is an astonishing read filled with the stories that make up Jonathan Rosen & his beloved wife. It starts out as his maternal grandmother, a sturdy 95 year old suddenly dies & how, soon afterwards when his computer crashes, the journal he had been keeping was lost. It ends up with the author pondering on the heritage which his soon-to-born daughter will inherit.

In between, this thin little book travels far back to the Destruction of the Second Temple & Flavius Josephus' record of that time. About a rabbi who chose life rather than death. About a great American thinker & his anti-Semitic bent; about this author's other grandmother who was murdered by the Nazis & his father who was rescued.

This is an amazing exploration of living Divine expectations, seeking a life of balance. It is certainly a keeper & a super idea for a gift! ...

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Internet, Talmud, history, change ..., April 28, 2002

By 

M. J. Smith (Seattle, WA USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Talmud and the Internet: A Journey between Worlds (Paperback)

As a computer nerd, I'd always heard that an article in a 1940's magazine used the model of the Talmud to "invent" the concept of hypertext which is the conceptual model of the internet. Therefore, in reading the first section of this book I was bemused by the author's "discovery" of the similarities between the internet and the Talmud.
The subtitle of this book, however, gives an accurate hint of the contents "A Journey between Worlds". The book is broad in scope considering a variety of different worlds - Judaism before and after the destruction of the temple, the titled upper class in Scotland before and after the erosion of their wealth and position, European / American Jewish experience in the World War II, ...
While the meditation focuses primarily on living with the dichotomies of life rather than forcing an unreal reconciliation on them, there are a handful of sentences that open wide and interesting questions. For example, he contrasts the Christian "the word became man" i.e. became embodied with the Jewish experience of the destruction of the temple - seeing the temple to book transistion as the physical becoming "word".
This is an excellent, thought-provoking book that should appeal to anyone with an interest in religious and/or emotional displacement in our rapidly changing and chaotic world.