Having Enough Faith to Question
How arguing for open source Judaism led me to see healthy institutions as ones that are open for debate
Back around the turn of the century, I wrote an article for Adbusters called “The Sabbath Revolt.” I was arguing for a “one-seventh rule” where we reserve one day a week for non-commodified activities. This idea of a day off each week was one of the first things the Israelite slaves gave themselves after escaping from Egypt. And seemed to me it could serve as a safeguard for the coming digital onslaught. If the algorithms and AIs were really going to program us into a new sort of slavery, perhaps withholding 1/7th of our time from them could give us enough pause to reflect and reset on our inherent worth.
The article got me a lot of attention, particularly from Jewish organizations dedicated to keeping the religion going. They were all concerned about declining membership in synagogues and Jewish day schools, and thought someone like me could help them bring Judaism into the era of MTV and the World Wide Web. “Digital Shabbat” might catch on, they suggested.
In speaking with them, though, I realized that most of them didn’t really understand what Judaism was all about. They had mistaken it for a religion — for a set of things to believe in. At least as I understood it…
