Dear Members and Friends of Congregation Beth Sholom:

 

        

As a father I am not looking forward to teaching my son about the internet. At the moment he believes the internet is a place to watch fun videos or discover new things about animals. We also show him a video meme or two. But parents in modernity have a responsibility to teach their children the beauty and dangers of the internet. There isn’t a time-tested playbook to do this, because it is a uniquely modern problem. What we thought was going to be unlimited information at our fingertips turned out to also be a place where hate gets a megaphone.

        

So, it’s up to us parents to show our kids how to use the internet responsibly and safely. Yet, ironically as digital natives, our children will also understand the internet in ways I have yet to comprehend. The future and capacity of such a dangerously powerful force rests in their tiny hands. So how do we give our children the tools to handle something so volatile, when us adults are struggling with it?

 

Believe it or not our Torah struggles something similar. I’m not saying that the Torah predicted the internet. What I am saying is that the Torah presents an innovative, society changing idea, Monotheism, and soon shows how difficult it is to navigate a world that doesn’t have it. The Israelites are human beings and thus flawed. They received the 10 commandments at Sinai and have seen incredible miracles and plagues and yet they still stray under the influence of other gods. Deuteronomy 13 so desperate to prevent this behavior, lists 3 top offenders or influencers: false prophets, family members, and cities. The Deuteronomy narrator (who is Moses by the way), I imagine unsure what else to do, goes to the extreme for preventing idolatry. Capital punishment. Supposedly if you come across a false prophet, a family member, or even a whole city that tries to convince you to worship another god you are within your rights to destroy them on the spot.

 

Now obviously I do not agree with this policy. It’s a policy driven by desperation. Moses needs Monotheism for his people to survive. Monotheism is more than just worshiping Adonai. Just like the internet is more than watching cute videos of cats. Monotheism is the Israelites developing a shared experience that turns them into a cohesive group with a common identity. But the policy of capital punishment against idol worship backfires. Its extreme language drives the prophets in our Tanakh so crazy. Every prophet can’t help but notice all the idol worship going on around them and much of their rhetoric is influenced by Moses extreme reaction to it. If the policy against idol worship was not so extreme perhaps the prophets would not have been as needed or as angry. If the policy against idol worship was not so extreme, perhaps idol worship could have been eradicated in a matter of decades rather than the thousand years span of the Tanakh. But this is the problem when a society innovates something so incredible that it changes it in profound ways. Its reaction can be extreme especially among its innovators. Monotheism forever changed the land of Canaan and many of its inhabitants. And I think we can relate as we watch the internet forever change our own society. Some of those changes are far from positive.

 

For example, Facebook. Facebook has been a source of incredible community, growth, and building of relationships. And it does have the potential to make our world a more beautiful place. But there is a dark side. Facebook was so desperate to grow their user base that they built algorithms to convince their users to click, respond, and join new groups without thinking of the consequences of these algorithms. Consequences it turned out that would lead people into joining more and more extreme and hateful Facebook groups, and thus radicalizing them. The damage this did to our society continues to reverberate throughout our country and for many culminated into a full mental health crisis. Facebook refused to think of their algorithm as anything more than a way to get more reactions from content and thus more users. Ironically these radicalized groups broke Facebook’s own user policies and yet Facebook’s algorithm suggested these groups anyways. In fact, Facebook accepted advertisement revenue from these extreme groups to advertise on their own platform. When Facebook finally took responsibility for the damage and danger this caused, it was too late. Conspiracy theory groups became the fastest growing groups on Facebook and Facebook’s response could only be considered at an attempt at whack-a-mole.

 

The internet in many ways is still new. We are just beginning to understand the change it is capable of creating in our society. We are just beginning to understand how quickly and effectively it can change the hearts and minds of its users. And if we let the internet feed our hate, our greed, if we let the internet misinform our reality, we become subject to a modern form of idol worship. But here we can learn from the Deuteronomy. The Torah’s policy on idol worship, I believe, was too extreme. We can easily offer an extreme solution for our children of banning them from using the internet. But I don’t think this policy will work. Because if we enforce it, we may find ourselves turning to more extreme measures each time we fear it is harming our children.

 

Like all parents, I struggle with appropriate screen time, and I struggle with online usage. I do not want my children to be radicalized by the internet. But I also don’t want to make policies for my children that are so extreme that my children are not prepared for the internet when they are old enough to be on it by themselves. And ironically without the needed experience of online usage they are more susceptible to be radicalized or scammed.

 

I want my children to have a foundation of values and enough self-esteem to expertly navigate the perils of the internet to find its beauty. I believe that my children will develop these values and earn a high self-esteem through Judaism. Because Judaism has experienced life changing innovations throughout its existence, both in the Torah and well after. Generations of Jewish communities figured out how to survive society changing innovations and even thrive from them. I believe that the lessons children learn from Jewish institutions will carry them through a life of healthy choices. Choices that help them prevent the internet from harming them while embracing all the incredible beauty it has to offer.

 

 

 

Rabbi Abram Goodstein

Congregation Beth Sholom

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