Baby Boomers like to lament about how “kids today” are obsessed with social media and their phones, as though the older generation sees itself as a world apart: `Whatever those young people are doing, they didn’t get it from us.’
Except that they did. Sherry Turkle, who has written best-selling books on the effects of the digital age on human interaction, relates that many `20 somethings’ told her that they grew up literally pulling at the sleeves of their parents or caregivers, vying for the attention which Mom and Dad had voluntarily given to texting or emails. Gen Z inattentiveness is just technological karma.
Turkle traces the effect of our screen machines: "Our mobile devices are so powerful that they don't just change what we do, they're changing who we are," she reports. Even at funerals, where attendees agree that it's important to be present, "when it comes to what people consider 'the boring parts,' they sneak glances at their phones. We opt out of the kinds of conversation that requires full concentration. What you are missing out on is what the person across from you said, felt or meant.”
Turkle tells a story about a college senior who, waiting for her boyfriend to come back to bed, admitted checking out Tinder. "I have no idea why I did that," the woman later told Turkle. "I really like this guy, I want to date him, but I couldn't help myself." How is it that we've become a society where people are "incapable of paying attention to their lovers, incapable of being in the present?" Turkle asks.
However else one would want to describe what took place at Mount Sinai between God and the Israelites, on a certain level, it is a story about gathering, about learning to commune around an important idea or revelation, and remain attentive. Undoubtedly, the event on one level was overwhelming, with thunder and lighting and smoke, an audio-visual bombardment that eventually sees the people plead with Moshe to allow them to leave: “`Speak to us yourself and we will listen. But do not have God speak to us or we will die’…[So] The people remained at a distance, while Moshe approached the thick darkness where God was.”
But despite their fears, it is also noteworthy how the people imbibe a shared and powerful spiritual experience, as the tribal elders recount: “Hashem our God has shown us his glory and his majesty, and we have heard his voice from the fire.” Although the community literally has to be led by Moshe to the mountain, what is striking in our age of individualistic spirituality, is that Sinai is a group experience, one that is fostered and enhanced by doing it together.
Many in the contemporary West feel that meaning is self-created and idiosyncratic. But much of the meaning of our lives is formed through reciprocal interaction which begins in the womb and continues to the grave. The British pediatrician and psychoanalyst D.W. Winnicott once remarked: “There is no such thing as a baby,” meaning that “whenever one finds an infant one finds maternal care, and without maternal care there would be no infant.” The idea that “there is no such thing as a baby” stems from Winnicott's observation that the infant’s self is shaped, not on some developmental island, but through its relationship with mother, that in fact the way we experience ourselves is always through relation with the other.
One of our diminishing abilities as a culture is to engage in genuine conversation. Two or three or ten people, in real time, with real bodies shifting and breathing and taking in one another, eyes meeting eyes. To talk with a relaxed urgency, and patiently listen, without interruption and with full and respectful attention to the other, to wake up to great ideas and fundamental arguments—which are the legacy of each and every one of us. No doubt there are reasons for this conversational disconnect, such as the aforementioned and by now oft expressed lament about the preponderance of technology as a substitute for encounter. But I believe the problem predates and transcends the rewiring of our brains through the smartphone.
It is also because of a lack of conversational etiquette, almost as though we all need to be retrained about the art of dialogue, as we are inundated by the sound of “experts,” yelling and interrupting one another on talk shows and news programs in combative sound bites. Even in more civilized and, on occasion, inspirational forms like TED Talks, the mode of presentation is frontal and fast and absolutely self-assured, sending the perhaps unintended signal that we do not trust anyone can follow more than eighteen minutes of material and, anyway, why take up more of the listener’s busy schedule when the truth has already been dispensed? Whether we are being yelled at harshly or entertained genteelly we have lost the feeling of discussion as gathering, a community of mutual striving, where learning takes time and truths are subtle, complicated and often contradictory.
Shavuot represents the possibility of re-communalizing, standing again at Sinai, not just as passive recipients but as active interpreters of what it means to be Jewish in the modern world and what is the way forward. The time-honored Jewish answer to these questions is to study, to share ideas, and forge a collective quest for wisdom. And the best way to do this is in person. Gather a few friends, a few sources, ask some probing questions, throw in some dessert and, let the search for your new Jewish understanding begin.
Below, I’ll give you a head start with some sources from a class of mine about revelation at Sinai.
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Chag Sameach,
Elliott
Shavuot: What is the Sound of Revelation?
1) There was thunder and lightning, with a thick cloud over the mountain, and a very loud trumpet blast. Everyone in the camp trembled. Then Moshe led the people out of the camp to meet with God, and they stood at the foot of the mountain. Exodus 19
2) All the people saw the sounds and the lightning, the sound of the shofar and the mountain smoking; and when the people saw it, they fell back and stood at a distance. Exodus 20.
[There are people today who have described “seeing sounds.” This may correspond to a neurological condition called synesthesia, in which stimulation of one sensory or cognitive pathway (for example, seeing) leads to automatic, involuntary experiences in a second sensory or cognitive pathway (such as hearing). When one sense is activated, another unrelated sense is activated at the same time, and senses become intertwined. This may, for instance, take the form of hearing music and simultaneously sensing the sound as patterns of color. EM].
3) They [the Israelites] saw that which should be heard, something which is impossible to see on any other occasion. Rashi [France; 1040-1104]
4) And all the nation saw the sounds. All sensations join together and are processed at one point. And this is the meaning when they saw the sounds and the lighting. This drove a person to be afraid, and the voice of the shofar was something never heard before. And the mountain itself was smoke. When they saw these wonders, they trembled [a kind of sensory overload]. Avraham Ibn Ezra [Spain; 1089-1167).
5) How could they see the sounds? Each word that God spoke became palpable and tangible to the extent that it took on physical form and could be seen in the air as floating letters as if they were written in front of them. Kli Yakar Rabbi Shlomo Ephraim Luntschitz [Poland; 1550-1619].
6) And the text says: All the people saw the sounds. It is not written "sound (hakol)," but rather "sounds (hakolot) [in the plural]." R. Yochanan teaches that when God’s voice came forth at Mount Sinai – it was apprehended by young and old, women, children, and infants according to their ability to understand. Moses too, understood only according to his capacity. And the sounds divided into seventy human languages, so that the whole world might understand it, and every nation heard it in their own language. Midrash Shemot Rabbah 5:9
[ i.e. the sounds were not actual thunder, but a metaphor for the Torah spreading out and being “heard” by the whole world, everyone in their own way. EM]
7) `All the people saw the voices.’ When the people actually saw The-One-Who-Speaks-the-World-into-Being, they fainted away. Some say that their spirits left their bodies, while others say that they entered a prophetic trance. These visions brought them to trembling and shaking and a blackout of the senses.” Midrash Shemot Rabbah.
Questions to Ponder
Were the Jewish people having an experience on Sinai that today we might call psychedelic? Were they tripping?
When was the last time you studied Torah with your friends and not at a formal setting like a synagogue or school? Under what circumstances?
Do you think that Torah study is just for “religious people”?
Would studying Torah more regularly add to the quality of your life? If so, how could you make that happen this year?