Between the Shtetl and the Web (Vayak'hel-Pekudei)

 

Between the Shtetl and the Web

It is a brave new world. The community we interact with on a regular basis is bigger than it has ever been before. Our ability to interact, to seek information and communication, is broader than it has ever been before, and it is seemingly only getting bigger. 

And yet… With more information at our fingertips, we somehow seem to know less. And with more people available to us for connection, we are somehow less connected. I’m sorry to say it, but we are increasingly isolated even though our ability to connect is also increasing. 

This is the slipperiness of the web: it looks like it is expanding our world, but it is actually contracting it. We have more access to connection, and yet we are less connected. 

There are multiple layers to how this has happened. More people means more anonymity. More time speaking online means less time looking into one another’s eyes. One reason I think Shabbat is so important in our world is that it requires us to interact only with the people who are sitting in front of us. It’s worth doing. It’s worth doing every week. 

I revisited a simpler world this week, in reading Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel’s essay The Earth is the Lord’s. It is a warm, rich, vibrant account - full of nostalgic yearning - for the Shtetl. 

The Shtetlekh were the small Yiddish towns of Eastern Europe, which were ultimately - tragically - torn away by the forces of evil. They were societies in which education was central, people knew and supported one another, and Jewish culture flourished. Heschel’s conclusion about Shtetl life is that it was the golden era of the Jewish soul. And when contrasting the memory of the Shtetl, where everyone knows one another and looks after one another and learning is of paramount importance, with the cold anonymity of the web - well, it is easy to get swept up in Heschel’s vision. 

But Heschel also reveals - quite accidentally, I think - why “smaller” doesn’t always mean “more sacred”. In the midst of describing the centrality of Torah learning, I was struck by how Heschel added the line: “Women toiled day and night to enable their husbands to devote themselves to study.” 

It is easy to forget that half of the population was not invited to that idyllic image - other than toiling to enable it for someone else. It is easy to overlook that these “simpler times” could be so stifling to those who did not fit the mould. That in the backdrop loomed the ever-present danger of violence and crisis. We are not going backwards to a simpler time - and many of us would not want to anyway, not really. 

But I do think there is some value in considering the needs that were met in a smaller world, in the sense of group belonging - and how we might be trying to fill those needs in the wrong places. 

The formation of group identity is fundamentally important to the human experience. Anthropologist Robin Dunbar put a number on how many relationships we can actually hold together by the strength of simply knowing one another. It is under 150. Over 150, and we cannot expect to actually know people and maintain connection with them. Unless, that is, our connection goes beyond knowing them. Our societies have grown over groups of 150 because we have something else to hold us in relationship. What Emile Durkheim called “collective representations” and Yuval Noah Hariri calls “imagined reality”. We are held together by stories we tell. Cultural narratives that help us understand that we are in this together even when we cannot possibly have intimate relationships with everyone. This is very natural to us as Jews, I think - we are part of an extended family. We were together as slaves in Egypt and at the base of Mt Sinai, even if we don’t all know one another’s names. 

Shared cultural narratives, the stories that hold us together, work on all kinds of levels. So here’s the problem I’m turning over in my mind, the gap I see between the Shtetl and the Web: our world is bigger than it has ever been before. But what is the story that holds us together? 

We might be more capable of connecting through the miracles of technology, but the foundation of connection is eroding. Perhaps that is why we flee into little online corners with those who already agree with us. The rest of the world might be at our fingertips, but they’re also further away in terms of understanding one another. 

It’s not all doom and gloom. I’m not against technological progress; I want you to switch your phone off for Shabbat, not forever. But I think we need to be taking seriously the way that we connect. The very first thing that God calls “not good” in the whole Torah is loneliness. “לֹא־טוֹב הֱיוֹת הָֽאָדָם לְבַדּוֹ - It is not good for the Human to be alone.” We should be able to utilise technological connection for true connection. We should be able to find a way to be closer as a human family. 

But I think it starts at home. 

Because while our ability to connect is increasing, we are also increasingly isolated. We are spending less time looking into one another’s eyes and it is affecting us. We cannot be expected to build healthier worldwide relationships by being less healthy in our relationships in person. 

And the good news is that there is a third space, between the nostalgia of the simple Shtetl life and the fear of the anonymous online sphere. The even better news is: hello. It’s right here. 

Our Torah portion began today with “וַיַּקְהֵל מֹשֶׁה אֶֽת־כׇּל־עֲדַת בְּנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל”. And Moses VaYak’hel - gathered together - all of the eidah, the congregation, of the Children of Israel. In that one little introduction, we get three different terms for the community. The first is kahal, kehillah, a gathering. The second is eidah, usually translated as “congregation”. And then the Children of Israel. 

Rav Hirsch, in his commentary on Numbers 20, suggests that to be B’nei Yisrael refers to the people having a shared identity, but to be an eidah, a congregation, means to have a shared spiritual goal. To be a kehillah means just what Moses is trying to do: to be gathered together. I’ll try that my way: to be the Children of Israel means to have a shared history; to be an eidah means to have a shared future; and to be a kehillah is to be gathered, now - to be present, in the present. To see value in coming together for its own sake. 

That is what I think is missing in much of modern society. The spaces where we come together, between the intimacy of our closest relationships and the wideness of the world. Not because we are filtering people “in” and “out” depending on whether they fit an ideal we already have. Not because there is some specific goal to fulfil. But for the sake of community itself. 

In kehillah, no algorithm chooses your 150 best friends for you, based on sharing exactly the thing you want to hear. In kehillah, we don’t know everyone intimately, we don’t filter the guest list to the pre-approved. Here, we should be comfortable, and challenged, and comfortable enough to be challenged. Here, the motley crew is pre-created and handed over to us, to ask us to figure out how to exist in covenant together. 

It is a space to break through the binary of the intimate vs the anonymous. 

And what is asked of us is just to show up. To show up as ourselves, and provide something for one another that cannot be designed.  

We have quite a road ahead of us. We will need to learn to balance this brave new world, and also learn from the old world. But the best way to face that challenge of worldwide community is to ensure that this kind of community, around us in the present, is strong and strengthens us. 

As our Bar Mitzvah said at the end of the Torah reading, the phrase that we say to one another when a book of Torah is completed: chazak, chazak, v’nitchazeik. Be strong, be strong, and we will be strengthened.