The Jewish People Are The Original Internet
Tech Tribe Dispatch #233
💡 Think:
The Internet began with a glitch. On the evening of Oct. 29, 1969, a computer at the University of California, Los Angeles, sent the letters “L” and “O” to a computer at the Stanford Research Institute in Menlo Park, Calif. The hope was to send the word “LOGIN,” but after successfully sending the first two letters, the system promptly crashed.
Despite the glitch, the Internet—in the form of ARPANET, a project conceived by DARPA, the U.S. military’s advanced research agency to serve as a distributed computer network that would allow hubs to continue to function and communicate in the face of nuclear war—was born.
The prophet says “Instead of the noise of adversaries, between the places of drawing water, there they will tell the righteous acts of the Lord, the righteous acts of His open cities [pirzono] in Israel.”1
In this sense, the key word of the verse, pirzono, the open cities, reflects the strength of an unwalled city - as it says, ‘Jerusalem shall be inhabited like unwalled towns [prazot], because of the multitude of men and cattle therein.2'
The Rabbis in the Talmud3, which praises the safety and strength of cities that need no walls, share very a different read.
Rabbi Oshaya said: What is the meaning of that which is written: “The righteous acts of His open cities [pirzono] in Israel”? The Holy One, Blessed be He, performed a charitable deed toward Israel in that He scattered them [pizran] among the nations.” As Rashi, the foremost Talmudic commentator notes, had He exiled the Jewish people to one place, they could have all been destroyed at once.
There is an inherent contradiction in the verse’s simple reading and its Talmudic one. Are we talking about the safety and strength of the Jewish people, nestled on their land, in cities that need no walls to protect them?
Or does the verse really express the diasporic experience - how only by dint of the Jewish people being flung to the four corners of the world, can they survive oppression - so that even if one particular Jewish community were decimated, the other could continue?
The answer lies in a deeper understanding of the Diaspora.
While distributed network of the Internet was being formed as a way to overcome the potential calamity of nuclear war, the Rebbe explored the Jewish experience of diaspora as a distributed network of its own. The dispersion of the Jewish people isn’t one that allows merely for Jewish continuity… Of ensuring redundancy of communities to allow continuity, at least not merely in the sense of continuity in the post war American-Jewish framework. After all, surely there is some greater purpose as Jews, than Jews continuing to be Jews in order to have baby Jews. (Though, let the record state, I am firmly in favor of Jewish babies.)
True Jewish continuity, is a distributed network for building and increasing in goodness - the sublime and profound bond we forge with our Creator through Torah and Mitzvot. The diaspora allows the entire 24 hours of the clock to be filled with torah study and mitzvot.
And the experience of dispersion (pizran) is one that not only allows for quantitively more but also a qualitative increase in our Jewish expression. It’s ones that allows us to tap into our inner reserves and potential: We channel the negativity we experience to do even more - to become stronger, more determined and more uplifted as Jews in the Torah and mitzvot that we do.
(Think, perhaps of the how a network meant merely for multiple hubs to share information and create redundancy, now allows you and me, dear readers, to share ideas, to expand upon divine thoughts, and join together for Shabbat meals in the real world.
This then expresses the second meaning of the word the word, prazot, a sense of security and strength as Jews. When we use the obstacles we experience to spring ever higher, we can create a more uplifted world, one blessed with the ultimate expanse of goodness and revelations.4
🏃 DO:
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A LLM was trained on chasidic discourses - and gives a a class on a later part of the discourse explored above.
A further exploration of how this was done can be found here.
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💬 Saying:
“There are three loves: Love of G‑d. Love of Torah. Love of your people, Israel, and your fellow Jew.
They are all one. And since they are one, it is impossible to make distinctions between them.
They are a singularity, an essence-point. When you grab any part of a singularity, you have all of it. In any of these forms of love, you have all three.”
When the Rebbe accepted the mantle of leadership, this was his “acceptance speech.”
📚 Read:
🌹 In Lubavitch a Rose Bloomed: The life and memories of Rebbetzin Rivkah Schneersohn, the Dowager Rebbetzin of Lubavitch.
🏡 My Favorite Airbnb Experience: A Walking Tour Through Hasidic Brooklyn
📝There Are No Lights in War: We Need a Different Religious Language
💡Here’s to the Crazy Ones. A reflection on the Rebbe’s visionary leadership
⛰ Chabad and the ‘Tunnels’ That Weren’t. Media credulity aside, the event at the Brooklyn synagogue underscores the paradoxes of the group.
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Based on Tzidkos Pirzono, delivered Shabbat 11 Shevat, 1964.
Please note: a version of this email had the wrong shabbat candle time. Correct NYC time is 4:39