Is There Really Unity Between Heaven and Earth?
Tech Tribe Dispatch #93
💡 Think:
This week’s Dispatch is dedicated in memory of my friend and colleague Rabbi Yudi Dukes, who passed away yesterday after a prolonged battle with complications from COVID-19. He was a person that always had a smile one his face, indefatigable in his refined positivity. On the eve of the pandemic, he found a yeshivah student to read megillah at our Purim party. The city shut down by the end of the week, and despite his incredible precautions, he had COVID by the end of the month.
Yudi was the director of Jnet, where he connected people in Torah study - making Zoom study sessions, and before that Skype or just on the phone, a thing well before our current era. When I was a yeshivah student, roommates with his younger brother Dov, Yudi asked me to study Tanya with a Jewish Marine stationed in Afghanistan. Yudi in many ways stayed ahead of the trend with technology - but it was never about the tech. His work was connecting souls. And that he did by the thousands.
May his memory be a blessing
In 1991, the Rebbe shared an interesting insight on the power of satellite technology:
Seemingly, Heaven and Earth are two disparate entities how can it truthfully be claimed that at their core they are truly one?
But taking a lesson from the satellite hookup itself - where video could be shared, in realtime, from multiple locations around the world - one could see the underlying unity in Creation.
Jews on opposite sides of the world, in Moscow and New York, Calcutta and Japan, or Israel and Australia, are able to connect to each other -- not just to send a message or talk, but to bring tangible relief for their most basic physical needs.
In other words, a person on one side of the world could instantly transfer charitable funds to someone on the other - ones and zeroes and theoretical calculations existing on computer chips could be harnessed by Cold War era technology designed for targeting bombs to provide immediate physical assistance to someone else.
We can use these platforms, as the ultimate expression that truly messianic potential.
🏃 DO:
📅 Purim 2021 is the evening of Thursday, February 25 and the next day, the 26th. Reply to this email to join our event committee!
🎥 Our latest Curated Conversation: Is Bitcoin Kosher Gelt! premieres on Wednesday, January 27th! #ChaiSociety members - check the top of this email for an exclusive live to watch the broadcast now!
🎧 Listen:
Stav Ya Pitu is a fascinating blend of Ukranian, Yiddish and Hebrew. This version, by Black Ox Orkestarm shines on the instrumental side, and is somewhat lacking once the lyrics begin.
🐦 Tweet:
We also joined in on the meme
📚 Read:
🌎 It’s Us Against Us, But You Can Save the World. The Rebbe’s gardening paradigm as an antidote to divisiveness and confusion.
👓 Eve Peyser asks, What Has the Pandemic Done to Our Eyes?
🇰🇷 How the Talmud became a best seller in South Korea
🕯️ Remembering Rabbi Yehuda Dukes, 39. He Inspired Thousands in Health and in Sickness
😍 Fave:
We’re a fan of many podcasts. One of the great ones is John McWhorter’s Lexicon Valley. Check out this episode on Yiddish!
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