By Rabbi Dr. Moshe Dror
In order to add some more spice and options to this exploration we need to deal with other sets of themes as we develop.
We are all familiar with communities, and I imagine that anyone who reads this on the Internet is also a member of some kind of virtual community as well. Howard Rheingold reminds us that “virtual communities form when enough people carry on public discussions long enough with sufficient human feeling to form webs of personal relationships.”
This is certainly happening in these religious and spiritual communities that are springing up all over.
Enriching these relationships are also such systems –we call them by names we make up, invent and reapply to entirely new phenomena-such as:
Augmented Reality;
Augmented Virtuality;
Immersive Reality;
Mixed Reality;
Simulated Reality;
Virtual Reality;
Virtual Continuum;
Virtual Worlds;
I listed each of these on a separate line because I know that there are tens of thousands of very serious people who are devoting their creative skills to developing these technologies and applications. I take them and what they are exploring with a great deal of appreciation.
I do not begin to understand the subtleties of each of these. I do appreciate the power and significance of these technologies that are transforming what it means to be human.
When all this becomes just too much for me… I:
1. I stop and take a few Deep Breaths,
2. I think of the allegory of the Cave of Plato,
3. I think of the Butterfly Dream of Zhungzu ,the Chinese philosopher ( both of them asking what is reality- 2,500 years ago),
4. I am reminded that the Internet and the Web are among the most significant innovations of my lifetime and perhaps of all of human history,
5. I am older than the first computer,
6. I may live to see what Ray Kurzweil calls the “Singularity” actually happen,
7. All of this is just in its early stages,
8. What a fascinating time to live in.
I ask myself such questions as:
• Can Virtual worship be “real”?
• What might virtual worship be like in a “Virtual –Reality Cocoon” where augmented reality is superimposed on virtual reality onto the “real world”-designed by NAU, an international design collective?
• How might the emerging virtual human institutions that are developing in other aspects of organized culture such as government, economics, and social norms…also be innovative in the religious and spiritual dimensions of life on a global scale?,
• Since everything is interconnected where we all are living in an imminent world where physical objects and beings as well as virtual data and environments, all live and interact with each other in the same space and time: internetting everything, everywhere, all the time—what about my and your Soul Spirit in all of this.
You may ask what does all this have to do with Synagogues and Jewish services?
I see them as the cyber dimension of the term we all use –“TEXT”. The term text is derived from Latin and means “weave” (like in textile, texture…). So it is not just words and letters it is the modern version of the idea of
HYMN: a type of religious song specifically written for religious services. This is derived from the Greek (hymnos)-a song of praise. These were written in ancient Egypt; the Vedas of ancient Hinduism, the Psalms of Judaism.
This is a combination of words and music and body language that is so beloved in so many religions all over the world all through history.
I Judaism we call this a:
PIYUT –derived from the Greek (poetess-“poet). These Piyutim are Jewish liturgical poems usually designed to be sung or chanted during a religious service. http://www.piyut.org.il
What we are creating are CYBER HYMNS and CYBER PIYUTIM.
