Friday, May 9, 2008

Masechet Cyberspace #5: Sources on God, Judaism and the Internet

Sources on God, Judaism and the Internet

1) Rabbi Avraham Ya’akov of Sadigora (19th century)

“You can learn something from everything:
o From the railway – we learn that one moment’s delay can throw everything off schedule;
o from the telegraph we learn that every word counts;
o and from the telephone we learn that what we say Here is heard There.”

2) Martin Buber “All real living is meeting”

3) Fritjof Capra, “The Web of Life”

“To regain our full humanity, we have to regain our connectedness with the entire web of life. This reconnecting, religio in Latin, is the very essence of the spiritual grounding of deep ecology.”

4) Chris Anderson, “The Long Tail”

“The era of one size fits all is ending, and in its place is something new, a market of multitudes.” “The mainstream has been shattered into a zillion different cultural shards. * Increasingly the mass market is turning into a mass of niches.”

* In Lurianic Kabbala, holy sparks are embedded in shards of shattered divine vessels scattered throughout the universe.

5) The great Hasidic master Rabbi Nachman of Bratzlav:
“It is good to have a special room set aside for sacred study and prayer, secluded meditation and conversation with God….and speak with Him about everything that is going on in your life. Confess to Her all your sins, transgressions and failings, and speak to Him freely as one speaks to a friend. You should speak at length, talk and talk some more, argue with Her, sigh and weep, and ask that S/He have mercy and allow us to achieve true devotion."

6) Joshua Hammerman, “thelordismyshepherd.com: Seeking God in Cyberspace”

Sit down in front of your computer late at night and see what is there. Reach out to connect — and not necessarily with people. Simply connecting to the latest news, to stock results or late ball scores, is enough to evoke a feeling of “humble surrender” and awe. How lovely can this universe be, how orderly and sound, when, without waking a soul, I can order cut-rate plane tickets to Chicago? How close to the mountaintop can one ascend, when, with a few clicks, one can see the deep blue earth from the perspective of a roving satellite hundreds of miles up? How dusty must my weary pilgrim’s feet get, when I can click my way to a live shot of Jerusalem’s Western Wall in seconds, and fax my prayer to be placed within its ancient cracks?

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