January 2002
Never has the world suffered such a crisis. For centuries, we had too little knowledge about everything. We did not understand the stars or the heavens. We had no idea that the world was round.
We thought that life was created by spontaneous combustion. We believed that if you leave a book open over night, you would lose the knowledge that you gained by reading that book.
Today we almost know the size of the universe. We can measure the very large and the very small. Not only do we know that the world is not flat, we also know that it is not completely round either. We know how life forms, and we have cloned certain forms of life. Computers are replacing the books that we used to learn from. For the first time in the history of the world, we suffer too much information. We can read books on subjects that are completely wrong. We can search document after document on the web, only to find that what we have discovered is trivia or useless information. Once people had to rely on couriers to receive news.
We can turn on the TV or radio or go on line or read the newspaper or a magazine. Sadly, we cannot be certain that any of those sources are presenting us with the real news! Once Jews only had Bible and Talmud to study. Now, anyone who can be published and can hold himself out as an authority on religion or on Judaism can find others who will look to that person as a Jewish guru. We have so much informatioon that we do not have the time to process it all. We do not have the time to read even a little bit of it.
Information confuses us. We are not expert enough to know what is relevant and what is irrelevant. Sometimes we accept as dogma the propaganda of nations and of corporations. Sometimes we just do not see that information which can truly aid us.
What is there to do?
There are some good books in the world. They have been time tested, and they work. They might not be as complete as we would like, but they have served our fathers and their fathers before them. A book that has been read for hundreds of years must be a worthy book to study. Ancient parables never go out of date. Plato has something new to teach every generation, and so do Descartes and Hume and Kant. A good story that was written hundreds of years ago remains a good story. Shakespeare is a important to study today as he was in the seventeenth century.
For the Jews, the old books are still the central Library to our faith. One can learn more from Torah and Midrash and Talmud and the Codes than he or she can from any new age literature. New books might tell you how to find faith; but studying the old books will give you faith.
Science books can go out of date. The newer novels may have shelf life of only two or three months. Newspapers and magazines may present information that is contradictory and wrong, yet the old books of faith are not out of date. We might read them in new ways, but the lessons they teach are necessary especially for a world that does not know where to go to find meaning in life.
B'Shalom,
Rabbi Aaron Kriegel