Why Judaism Needs Velcro

Why do we remember all the details of every urban legend we hear, but can’t remember the last PowerPoint presentation we saw?

That’s the question that brothers Chip and Dan Heath tackle in their outstanding book Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Die and Others Thrive. The book answers the questions “What causes us to remember some things and not others? What makes something ‘stick’?”

Surprisingly (or perhaps not so surprisingly), for an idea to stick, the how matters a lot more than the what. After all, how many amazing stories have you shared on Facebook, only to realize later that they were hoaxes? Or, on the flip side, how many terrific educational ideas have you heard at conferences, only to have forgotten them even before you implemented them?

In other words, just because is an idea is good, it doesn’t mean that we will remember it. As we all know, bad ideas can be just as “sticky” as good ones, and far too many good ideas have been lost because they weren’t presented well.

So for those of us who care about Judaism and the Jewish future, then, we can’t just focus on the next big idea, or create more content, or believe that “if we build it, they will come.” Instead, if we want Judaism to “stick” for our students, we need to be intentional about how we do it.

And what we need is Velcro.

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How Technology Changes Theology

(This post is part of the Sinai and Synapses Discussion Forum, a collection of perspectives on specific topics. It is part of our Fall 2014 series, “Are We Using Technology, or is Technology Using Us?“)

I go to Target a lot. I get diapers, or groceries, or clothes. But every so often, I have to buy something that’s not on my usual list, and since Target is a huge store, I sometimes need to find an employee to show me where, say, the humidifiers are.

There’s only one problem — I often can’t find an employee, either.

Why is that? It’s because technology is radically changing how economically valuable human beings are. After all, humans can work only a few number of hours at a time. They get distracted. They require vacations. Their kids get sick. Computers don’t have those issues, so many companies are investing more money in technology and less money in people. Why pay for a cashier when a computerized self-checkout can work just as well?

And while technology has always changed economics, in many ways, we are starting to enter uncharted territory. That’s the message that YouTube educator CGP Grey makes in his troubling, fascinating and important video “Humans Need Not Apply”:

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Do You Accept Science, or Judaism? Yes.

During my seven years in the congregational rabbinate, I had so many people say to me, “I don’t believe in God, and I don’t feel connected to my Judaism. Instead, I believe in science.” Or they would approach me and explain that they saw Judaism and science as separate realms, with no connection between the two.

The way this was framed saddened me, but I could understand where it came from. Since the media portrays religion as anti-science, many Jews would say, “I don’t want my science and my Judaism mixed. And if religion is opposed to science, then I don’t want any part of Judaism.”

Yet are those statements representative of the Jewish community as a whole? How do Jews perceive the relationship between Judaism and science?

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