Transcript

Judaism 4.0 | Zack Bodner | TEDxLAHS

[Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] Judaism is 3000 years old but what exactly is Judaism is it a religion and nationality a moral code a culture the answer is it's all of the above and it's none of the above that's why many of us today prefer to think of Judaism as a people hood Jews as a people you see the latest studies say that only 15% of American Jews today think of their Jewishness as a religion the vast majority think of it as a culture or part of their ancestry because you can pray three times a day or you can be an atheist and you could still be Jewish you could look like this you could look like this you could look like this or even this and you could still be Jewish you see Jews are of a multiplicity of ethnicities of backgrounds of nationalities of skin colors of languages rabbi mordechai Kaplan said that you can be Jewish in one of three ways you can be a Jew of believing a Jew of behaving or a Jew of belonging meaning you can believe what Jews believe as opposed to say Christians or Hindus or Muslims in the Old Testament or you can behave certain ways you can do Judaism you can pray and eat and celebrate the Sabbath in a certain way or simply having been born of Jewish ancestry makes you a part of that group confused yet don't worry many Jews themselves are confused and what makes it even more confusing what makes it even more complicated is that Judaism has evolved over the centuries Jewish identity has evolved and what I want to talk to you about today is how I believe that we are on the cusp of the next evolution of Jewish identity what I call Judaism 4.0 but let me take you back let me take you back to judaism 1.0 you see our tradition tells us that the israelites came down from Israel to Egypt because of a famine and in Egypt the Israelites became a huge nation they were enslaved by Pharaoh Moses came and freed the Jews takes the Jews to the desert where they received the Ten Commandments from God at Mount Sinai and then they wandered the desert for 40 years and in that period of wandering the Jewish people's holiness sacredness went with them they carried it with them God went with them in a cloud of smoke in front of them and they had a holy ark the Mishkan that went with them and after 40 years they finally make their way back to the promised land to Israel and that's when 2.0 happened that's when the first evolution happened so the Jewish people became more of a people with a place and they built the temple and it was at that temple that Judaism was defined the priesthood would make animal sacrifices Jews from all over would make pilgrimage to the temple but then that temple was destroyed a second temple was built and then that second temple was destroyed and the Jewish people were exiled they were dispersed and Judaism had to find a way to survive with no temple and that was the evolution to Judaism 3.0 from the temple came the synagogue from the priests became the rabbi's from animal sacrifice we saw prayer and the Jewish people developed a system of law called the halaqa and that became the central part of Jewish culture and for the last 2,000 years this is pretty much the Judaism that we've practiced today up until the last couple hundred years roughly when the Enlightenment to take hold and the secularization of Europe LEDs used to think of their identity as something separate from their religious faith and Jewish people started becoming involved in philosophical society and creative society and the sciences and I believe that that evolution that's happened over the last couple hundred years is coming to a head right now we're in a moment and we're on the cusp of a religious evolution if not a religious revolution why because of five factors that are creating the perfect storm factor number one dropping institutional affiliation less than one-third of American Jews are members of synagogues but that doesn't mean that Jews aren't doing Judaism they are young people are finding their Jewish connection on the hiking trail with wilderness Torah they're finding it in urban gardening with urban adamah they're finding it and connecting to each other outside of college through a moisture house they're finding it through study ancient texts on the Internet so they're still doing Jewish they're just not doing it the old way number two shifting F no graphics what I mean by that is that people used to define themselves by their Jewish parents or their Jewish grandparents but right now conversion is being flipped on its head people are saying I can still do or be Jewish without even having converted officially and they don't look the same way as they do I have a Japanese friend a woman who didn't convert to Judaism married a Jewish guy and she's the one who takes the kids to Hebrew school she's the one who makes Scala for Friday night Shabbat dinner she's the one who prepares the Passover Seder you tell me who's Jewish in that home factor number three for the first time in Jewish history there's both a strong Jewish homeland in Israel and a strong Center in the Jewish Diaspora here in North America it's never been like that before there's been one or the other but today we have these two strong centers of Jewish life making contributions to the Jewish future and we have to find a way to bridge these two centers we have to find a way to get beyond our differences and that's contributing to the need to evolve factor number four broadened ways that people are finding meaning and belonging in their lives no longer are people only finding their sense of meaning and belonging in the church or the synagogue or the mosque they're finding it in their book club in their study group and their cycling group and their yoga group and their Burning Man experience people are finding their sense of meaning and their micro community in different ways and again that's a great thing but it challenges the old ways of doing religion and not just Judaism I would make the case and finally the fifth factor advances in science and technology science and technology are taking us in places that we don't even know where they're going imagine being able to put on virtual reality goggles and stand at the base of Mount Sinai for Revelation imagine that it's not so far off that we'll be able to eat kosher bacon because the rabbi's have said well it's from cloned pig cells so it's kosher imagine being able to drive around and on tot anima khals on a Friday night in a Saturday without breaking the rules of the Sabbath because you're not driving you're being driven imagine being able to study this sacred texts that are thousands of years old that are now online and interconnected and not needing to sit across from a rabbi these five factors are leading to what we would call a crash a sociological crash rabbi Binet lepay talks about how when there's a crash it's because your system of views your worldview is being challenged by a bunch of outside factors and one of three things can happen when your worldview is challenged you can either double down you can block out the outside world you can become even more ingrained and say we're not exposing you to television or the Internet that's a legitimate response the second response is people walk away they walk away from the old way they're shown a new way and say whoa this whole thing's been flipped on its head and I don't believe it anymore or the third way is that people innovate they try to combine the old and the new and that's what's exciting that's what brings us to Judaism 4.0 it's trying to find a way for those not in category one to still make meaning out of their Jewishness so it's still relevant you know a couple hundred years ago if you were Jewish it defined everything about you it defined how you dressed where you lived how you ate who you married what you did for a living today if you're Jewish it might be one piece of your identity you might be a student you might be a soccer player you might be a dancer you might be a teacher you might be a lawyer you might be a mother you might be a soldier and somewhere in there you might also be Jewish but how is that gonna become a part of your identity unless you choose for it to be a part of your identity you have to make the active choice of doing as opposed to just being who de kertzer of the shalom hartman institute talks about how we are all now today Jews of choice that's the term that we used to use for Jews who converted to Judaism a Jew of choice but today we all have to choose to make that an important part of our identity I want to end with a story a story that takes us back to the last evolution in Judaism from our last operating system 23.0 I'm gonna take you to the Year 70 CE II seventy years after Jesus was born the Romans are sacking Jerusalem I mean leveling it destroying it burning it down and the Jews in Jerusalem who are defending the old city have said we're gonna fight to the death no one is leaving these old city walls unless you're in a coffin this was a fight to the end and there was one man named Yohanan Ben Zakai who realized that if all the Jews were killed that could be the end of Judaism the end of all these traditions and he realized he had to get out of the old city so he could save Judaism and he came up with a plan to fake his own death he had his students build him a coffin and they snuck him out of the old city of Jerusalem in a coffin and they brought him to the tent of the Roman general Vespasian and when they dropped the coffin in front of us Bayesian and Yohanan Ben Zakai popped out and he hailed Vespasian as Caesar and the spazing was taking him back and he said I'm not Caesar there's a Caesar in Rome and at that very moment a messenger came into the tent and said Caesar had been killed and he was the new Caesar well this Bayesian was totally blown away by this prophecy and he turns to Ben Zakai and he says I'll grant you a wish what do you want it's almost like out of a Disney movie right he doesn't ask for power or wealth or riches he simply asked to run this small school in a town called yagna the famous quote is that Ben Zakai said give me jana and it's ages and Vespasian did and it was at that school that the next level of Judaism was born that Judaism 3.0 was born that diaspora Judaism was born because how could you have a Jewish life if there was no temple how could you have a Jewish life with no animal sacrifice no priesthood they had to come up with a new way to do Jewish because the old way would no longer work that's pretty much the Judaism we've been doing for the last two thousand years now what's the Judaism gonna look like for the next 2,000 years I'm not sure but I'm excited to find out thank you very much [Applause] [Music]