Between the Enlightenment and the Internet

With God’s help

And this is for Judah – 5773

In recent years, the religious-Torah world has been seriously debating the subject of the Internet. The more conservative part maintains that its harm far outweighs its benefit (if any). The more open part believes that the benefits of the Internet are not negated, and that it is not right to prohibit its use. It seems to me that at least in the central parts of modern religiosity, this discussion is unnecessary, because we have no real way to avoid exposure to this media, whether we like it or not. A more important discussion is what we should do in the age of the Internet? Does this require changes in perception, or should we be content with various filters as is customary in our regions?

I would like to emphasize that I am not talking here about pornography and other worthless sites that are prevalent on the Internet, but rather about information and arguments that may lead young people in directions that we find undesirable (i.e., I am talking about "following your heart" and not "following your eyes").

The traditional religious reflex is that when there is a change that opens up different options, we must be strict and close, make a watch for the watch and raise the walls ("In the time of gathering, disperse, and in the time of scattering, gather"). I believe that this very reflex led us during the Enlightenment to enormous damage, as the young Jewish man was placed at a problematic crossroads, where he was faced with the following dilemma: whether to be a wise infidel (to engage in external wisdom and open himself to the world, but then be declared a infidel) or a foolish believer (that is, to remain an innocent righteous man, closed to new spirits, without filtering between good and evil).

Many of the Jewish youth chose the first option, and some also chose the second. Thus we received the disgusting fruits of this dilemma, which we encounter to this day: the religious became accustomed to being stupid (to close themselves off and shut themselves off from innovations, to the point of boycotting, and to wage a losing battle against them) and the others became accustomed to going with the winds of the times and being infidels. Thus our world was divided into staunch conservatives and open-minded, evasive ones (at most). Despite the superficiality of this description that is required by the brevity of the platform, I think it is not far from the truth.

Today we face a similar crossroads, and are likely repeating the same mistake: information in all areas is becoming more accessible, and we are faced with the choice of whether to close down and remain a dos, or to open up and become a scoundrel. Even today, this crossroads produces either closed-off religious people, or open-minded ones who are beginning (at various levels). It seems that we have not yet found the magic solution that allows us to create a person who will be a wise believer, that is, a person who is open to new spirits and knows how to filter the inside from the shell, and who remains to live in his faith.

It is difficult to criticize the giants of the generations who worked during the Enlightenment. And what if we rest on them?! But I still think it is difficult to ignore the accumulated experience. Even the sages allowed themselves to criticize the patriarchs and biblical figures, since history and the retrospective view of it allowed them to understand things more than someone who lived amidst the storms and crises of the period. The same is true today. Some may feel more comfortable with the somewhat trite (and not entirely accurate, to be fair) metaphor of "a dwarf on top of a giant." Therefore, I will still allow myself a pinch of constructive criticism.

Thomas Kuhn, one of the most important philosophers of science in the twentieth century, divides the conduct of science into two periods: a period of standard science and a period of crisis. When there is data that the standard theory cannot cope with, a paradigm must be changed. Instead of insisting on continuing to use standard science, we must look for a new theory. At the same time, I would like to suggest that a crossroads like the one we went through during the Enlightenment and that we are currently in is a period of crisis in which we must change paradigm. The policy of strictness and automatic closure, that is, the collection of reservations that we have become accustomed to adding and piling up in times of crisis, is not doing the job. Something requires a change in us, and not just in the environment.

One of the main reasons for these crises and their consequences is that educators are not equipped with the necessary tools to help the educated, but insist on not changing the paradigm. In such situations, the educated person feels smarter than his educator, because he does not receive satisfactory answers from him. When history reaches a crossroads of this type, the traditional educator finds himself helpless. The easiest way he can choose is to boycott and ban and label anyone who opens up without recognition and threaten as an infidel and a criminal.

The way to deal with this is to change the orientation of educators. They need to enter this new world with their students, and help them learn and process it in a controlled and critical manner. I do not mean here to complete education in the taps of the Internet, but to expand education in philosophy, in various arguments in areas relevant to faith and tradition, and so on. If the educators of the Enlightenment period had entered with the full intellectual power they were endowed with (which is familiar to us from their wonderful books of halakhic and religious studies) together with their students into the thick of it, studying science and philosophy and historical research with them, and helping them progress in a critical and open manner, perhaps the results seen to date would have looked a little different.

The implication for today is obvious. Instead of constantly thinking about how to close and filter, which is close to impossible (and, to be fair, undesirable, at least on the intellectual level), we should actually open up to the end. We must get out of the 'head' of closing and raising walls. We must think about how to enter with the trainees into the media and into the new world in all its branches, in order to give them guidance and a healthy sense of criticism towards what they read. The Internet surfer is not always equipped with tools that will help him examine arguments and information to which he is exposed. An older and more educated person can help him with this. Show him that not all that glitters (=what is written beautifully and aesthetically) is gold (=true and intellectually honest). A religiosity that is confident in itself should not feel reluctance to be exposed to information and arguments. At most, we will learn a few new things. The alternative is that our young people will surf there without us, and then they can reach rash and irresponsible conclusions.

From my not-so-much experience on the Internet, mainly in the 'Stop Thinking Here' forum, I meet (in all sorts of forms) dozens of young people who are exposed to various materials, and gain a very impressive education in various fields. Some reach extremely high levels in complex fields of knowledge (such as evolution, philosophy, Talmudic and Biblical research, archaeology, and more). Of course, they did not encounter most of these things in their schools and yeshivahs, and therefore do not have the tools to deal with the meaning of things (and as is known, scientific education is not a guarantee of a correct philosophical understanding of things). They reach rash and completely uncommitted conclusions from the facts to which they are exposed (some of them from biased and biased websites). Needless to say, they do not receive answers from their educators, who explain to them that all of this is useless material and intellectual blinders, while recommending appropriate filtering and pure fear of God while praying with devotion and intention. In my experience, this does not really convince them. They understand very well that these are expressions of despair and helplessness. This understanding throws them out even more, as they disdain the tradition they were raised on, and even those who do not abandon religious life often develop feelings of inferiority towards the wise people out there (from the understanding that their world has no real answers to what is happening there).

Intellectual discourse today is conducted mainly on the Internet, with the foreign in its various forms bringing the best intellectual forces there, with extraordinary expressive and writing skills, while our tradition is represented there by second-rate preachers who are rightly ridiculed and scorned. The best intellectual forces of the religious and Torah world engage in the study of Torah with great care, while ignoring the hardship and difficult problems that their students encounter throughout the virtual world. And if any of them do engage in thought and contemplation, they usually sail into the depths of Greek philosophy (it seems to me that almost the only place where this 'forbidden' field is engaged in is in the world of yeshivahs) in the kind translations of the Rabbis and the Maimonides. Scholasticism is alive and kicking, some six hundred years after its death. We are redeeming Aristotle, whose lips are daily buried in the grave. In contrast, Kant, Freud, Newton, Darwin, Einstein, Wittgenstein, Russell, Dawkins (by contrast) and many others remain unanswered, and daily embarrass thousands of young people who are exposed to their thoughts and arguments without any ability to deal with them.

I must reiterate that I do not mean to say here that every educator needs to develop extraordinary skill in the use of computers and the Internet. Here, the handicap of age is almost inherent. What I mean is that precisely in light of the accessibility of information in all fields via the Internet, it has become much more important today for the educator to be familiar with the relevant information, to acquire skill in philosophy and scientific and critical thinking (even if the details are less important). We must now correct the distortion created during the Enlightenment period, which is only getting worse. Of course, not everyone is supposed to be an expert in all fields, but everyone needs to take part in this general task, and each and every one of you will be rewarded.

If we are willing to change the educational paradigm that we have received from our tradition, if we understand that the correct continuity of tradition is precisely through change, if we open an educational year that opens instead of closing, a year that provides security instead of a sense of fear and inferiority, then we have already done half the job. The terrible fear and ignorance that the traditional world transmits is one of our greatest educational disasters. "And the main thing is not to be afraid at all."