1998 - The Real Thing

Kol Nidre

Sort of Like … Virtually Real

THE REAL THING

When I was a youngster, growing up in the idyllic, pre-smog, pre-traffic, pre-overpopulated environs of Los Angeles in the 40s and 50s, I used to take my bike down to the beach and spend leisurely Sundays there surfing the waves. A one-speed bike with Bendix brakes, a pair of swim trunks, a towel, and a comparatively primitive surf board were all one needed then for a day of fun in the sun. I recently returned to the site of my early years and was, as expected, astounded by the profound changes that (ahem) just a few years had wrought.

What once took 15 minutes on a one-lane country road by bike was now a 45 minute hassle on a bumper-to-bumper freeway by car. Parking was impossible. The beach was a solid sea of humanity ... or variations on the theme. This once pristine ocean-front area was now awash in debris. And, the stuff that people now needed for a simple day at the sea was boggling. Every manner of umbrella, towel, picnic or travel basket dotted the landscape. There were plenteous variations on the theme of bathing suits from the total cover-up to band aids with strings. Sun screen not only had numbers, it also came in flavors ... from tropical coconut (what other kind of coconut is there?) to my favorite – serene guava (I always like it when fruit is content). There must have been 20 variations on the theme of bottled water, and enough food to nourish a third world country. The new, high tech surfboards were impressive – big fins, little fins, one fin, two fins, and lots of different kinds of cords to attach the board to an ankle. Sunglasses appeared in every imaginable color and shape. Inline roller blades dotted the beach. (I suppose that’s in case the ocean stops making waves). And, I can’t begin to describe the hats. I personally never wore one at the beach. I used to think that hair and hats don’t go well together. Now lacking one, I do wear the other.

Despite all this, the one thing that had me totally transfixed was the universality of beepers and cell phones. Here were all these people, off of work and away for the day, talking on their cell phones ... at the beach. And they were getting beeped on their pagers. Which life were they living, anyway, I asked myself? So many phone calls, so much beeping – it was like being at an office full of sand and saltwater. I have no doubt that there were computers in some of those picnic baskets. Odds are that they were receiving faxes right there on that beach where I used to just surf and swim.

Indeed, the beach had taken on an aura of unreality – play, work, posturing, posing – no different from the workplace in many respects. My very real beach of yesteryear had now become as if ... a virtual beach. Just as I could as well have called it up on my computer and watched it from home, so those who were there had turned its reality about by using it as a place from which to access their virtual home or office. Virtual reality, I thought, is any place in which a keyboard replaces a surfboard – with or without fins. Virtual reality is not being where you are, or conversely, being where you aren’t.

I miss the real – an audio tape seems a poor substitute for a book. But there are positive aspects to all this hi-tech. My Encyclopedia Judaica – all 18 ponderous, very heavy volumes of it – has been replaced by a slim CD-ROM replete with film clips and voice simulations of Jewish events and persons past. Tanach, Talmud, and complete Midrash collections in Hebrew and English with commentaries – easily five huge shelves full of massive volumes, all fit on two CD-ROM discs. The image of Yeshivah students rocking against wooden shtenders holding slim-line laptops instead of ancient tomes, does give one pause. The entire Library of Congress could be reduced to a manageable number of such discs and stored in a small filing cabinet. That could save Congress about $10 billion a year in property upkeep and personnel. Actually, the whole Library could be put on the internet and ... we’d save the cost of the filing cabinet.

We can, of course, virtual shop. You never have to leave home, nor do you have to touch the merchandise. There is no risk of getting mauled at a mall, delayed by the drive, or peeved while parking. Just keep the plastic handy, point and click, and wait for FedEx. We can even buy a car or a house without a personal look-see. There they are, right on the screen, 4 wheel drive, sunroof, 5 bedrooms, 2 baths, and a large garage; what more do we need to know? We can get a college degree via Virtual U, and you don’t have to pledge a Greek house ... which in and of itself is really just virtual Greek.

Travel plans can be made with little effort. Hotels in most of the places we’d ever want to visit are just a click away. Web sites show the lobby, the guest rooms, the pool, and even the restaurant cuisine. Smell-a-vision would make the experience complete. Then again, why travel at all? There are virtual sites for most places in the world. Virtual Jerusalem, using what is called the Kotel Kam, shows the Western Wall in real time 24 hours a day. You can even fax a note to be placed in the Wall for you. What reason is there to go in person? There’s virtual Italy and the Grand Canal – with a few clicks of the mouse, one can avoid the heat and the crowds and the language problems. With 3-D on your PC you can even experience a virtual gondola ride. Via virtual India, one can experience the Taj Mahal without suffering from “Agra-phobia.” It won’t be long before we can “virtualize” everywhere from Taos to Laos, from Watts to Bangor Wat, from old Rangoon to the planet Neptune ... and beyond.

And isn’t this just wonderful, we enthuse? With little or no effort we can virtualize the world and all that is therein. Why, with little effort, one could imagine virtualizing oneself. Indeed, why live at all? Imagine ... one’s own pre-natal Web site – www.virtualfetus/parental names.html. It hypothecates the unborn’s life – showing how it might spend its earliest years, right through college (without tuition costs), then a marriage to the person of the parents’ choice (mind you), followed by ... virtual grandchildren (no birthdays to remember, no juice stains on the carpeting). There is little downside to such a scenario – and absolutely no disappointments ... ever. One could virtualize virtually every eventuality. Which reminds me of the note posted on a bulletin board:

This life is a test

it is only a test

had it been a real life

you would have received

further instructions on where to go

and what to do.

Of course, the great virtual story is about the grandmother who was pushing her new grandson in his stroller when a neighbor stopped to take a peek. “My what a cute baby,” the neighbor cooed. “Oh, that’s nothing,” replied the proud grandmother, “you should see his picture!” And therein lies the beginning of concern for the virtual frame of reference ... the virtual mind-set.

The virtual world blurs the edges of reality. Perhaps the easiest way to understand this is by thinking Hollywood for a moment. In the 1930s, movies depicted everything in black and white – what we might term ... proto-reality. The dialogue was stilted, everyone lived in an obvious fantasy world of elegant gowns, huge homes, fancy dining, and amazing leisure. This was during the height of the Depression, mind you. Movie goers knew it was bunk and were grateful for the opportunity to dream of what could probably never be. The moral code demanded marital fidelity, twin beds for married couples, and at least one foot on the floor if two people were shown seated on a bed together. Language was proper, if not stilted – everyone was called “darling.”

Today, of course, movies depict what we might call over-reality, ergo ... virtual reality. Action is slick and quick, money is made illegally, super hero/heroine can climb over anything and anyone to reach objectives. There is no moral code, no marital fidelity, no twin beds, and two people never just sit together on anything. The language is a sort of grunt-English slang, ungrammatical at best – with everyone calling each other by the f... word, which is not ... darling.

The silver screen of the 30s tried to raise expectations; the digitized, manic, film of today features a quashing of communal expectations and a debasing of personal values. It “de-mensch-ifies" the human spirit. It makes us out to be nastier and less generous than we are inclined to be. It makes us less able to identify real expectations and needs. It desensitizes us and makes us less able if not less willing to respond to one another.

The virtual world of High Tech brings with it virtual expectations. In the computer age, nothing is ever fast enough. The virtual world must appear instantly or we get mighty annoyed. Therefore, modem speed is never high enough. Even the standard 56,000bps ... are being replaced by network and cable systems that are many times faster ... and none too soon, many would say. The virtual world demands faster and faster. In fact, the virtual world must appear just as fast as reality itself ... if not ... faster! So long as we are virtual, we need to be virtual ... immediately. Therefore, the mind set is to be disappointed with anything that doesn’t respond fast enough, or provide the correct answers immediately, or isn’t immediately accessible. Hence, beepers on the beach and cell phones in the car.

And this attitude, this mind set, spills over into our expectations of friends and family, business associates and merchants, professionals of all sorts – including teachers, and those who administrate ... even those who are truly trying to be helpful. We want what we want when we want it, which is always now ... if now sooner. In the virtual mind-set, each person becomes the ultimate consumer. And since the consumer is always right, either the service provider “changes to meet my expectations, or I will change providers.” Such an attitude gives rise to constant transition – employers change workers for unclear reasons or for no reason at all, and employees leave their positions for something seemingly immediately better. In a virtual world, people become objects, whereas in reality we were created to be subjects.

Marriages are framed against this frenetic mind set. Problems require instant resolution. It’s not that the problems faced in marriage are qualitatively different today. It’s just that the baud rate is too fast; there is virtually no time to make the necessary adjustments. Parent-child relationships have also become market driven. In slower times, parents seemed to take more time to talk and explain – there was a definite sense of what was right and wrong – a priority of values and virtues that were taught and lived. I sense that today we find children telling parents what they expect and what they consider to be their rights regardless of how immature, uninformed, dangerous, or flat-out wrong the children may be.

The other day, parents came to the Religious School and announced that they are letting their nine-year-old decide whether he would attend forth grade this year. “We’re teaching him to make his own decisions.” The mother said it with such a straight face that I knew she was serious. I wonder what she would do if her nine-year-old decided to steal candy from a store, dig holes in the carpet, beat up his sister, call his parents names, throw rocks at their car, or take a loaded rifle to school.” These are all his decisions. But, virtual parents can’t distinguish between letting a child make decisions on issues that are age appropriate vs. making decisions that are rightfully within the purview of an adult. A parent’s role is to teach a child how to make proper, sensible, life-affirming, value-laden decisions. Virtual parents tend to raise virtual children. Both live in a values never-never land – a sort of virtue hyper-space where anything goes because we can’t distinguish right from wrong, parent from child. Nothing is weighted. Nothing is more important than anything else. A white lie and a murder are as equivalent as washing dishes and saving a life.

Moses, seeing the people dancing around a golden calf, smashes the tablets of the law. God tells him to carve two more stones and ascend Mt. Sinai once again. God’s words to Moses are a bit unusual (Ex. 24:12): “Alay Aylei HaHarah Veh-yay Sham – Come up to Me on the mountain and ... be there.” The verse seems to contain a redundancy. If Moses climbs the mountain, where else would he be but there? But the Kotzer Rebbe makes an interesting comment on the verse. There are times when we are someplace without really being there. Therefore, Moses was instructed to be fully present and open to his relationship with God when he stood atop Sinai.

There is danger in a world that offers more and more virtual opportunities. Because nothing fully human ever takes place without our being there – wholly and completely. One cannot be a friend in the abstract – we have to be there for one another in times of sickness, sorrow, need, and in times of joy and celebration.

There is no such thing as virtual love. Love in the abstract is not love, it’s fantasy. And fantasy is not relationship. Fantasy is more about distraction than it is about attraction. Love involves being there with one another. And one can’t be a virtual spouse. To be married means to be there – to listen and to share and to care about and, when necessary, to take care of one another. Marriage is complex. It is a slow relationship. Like a stew, it contains lots of diverse ingredients; each must be dealt with separately and the whole must cook slowly. The entire household knows if a stew is being made ... or, if there is merely a lot of chopping and dicing going on.

Likewise, there can’t be a virtual family. Real life is not sit-com – half-hour episodes once a week. Family means being present to and for one another – helping each other to grow, sharing chores, teaching and learning from one another, celebrating and praying with one another, praising and protecting, working on behalf of one another, struggling through arguments and disappointments together, constantly in the process of becoming. Anything less is not a family, it’s an association. Home is not the place where you never have to say you’re sorry. That thought is offensive. Rather, home is the place where you can and should and must say you’re sorry – and be accepted and understood for taking responsibility for your acts. There is a Jewish concept called Sh’lom Bayit. Literally, it means peace in the home. But peace does not mean quietude and ignoring one another. It means respecting one another so much that you are willing to risk discussing important issues together, even personal matters, even sensitive personal matters – knowing that no one will betray a problem or exploit a weakness. Sh’lom bayit means feeling "right at home with one another." The family that achieves that is richly blessed.

On this eve of Kol Nidre, it is also important to realize that there is no such thing as virtual atonement. One can’t apologize in the abstract. One apologizes for a specific act to a specific person – face-to-face. Atonement can’t be made in absentia ... one has to be there. And how can atonement possibly be effective when made to an uninvolved, dispassionate audience via television? That is the ultimate attempt at virtual atonement. Our President has acted the fool. His addiction has diminished him. His title and office demand a higher standard. One cannot justify his folly, nor need he offer generic apologies. For the offended party is only tangentially the American people – certainly it is not you or me specifically. The offended party is not Monica. She is as much the instigator as the victim. The offended parties are Hillary and Chelsea. It is they who warrant apology, and in person, and in private.

But, if the truth be known, there is a greater sin in all of this national tragedy cum farce – this modern American version of Les Misérables – about a little crime and a vindictive prosecutor, and a virulent judiciary. The greater sin rests first with the media for failing in its charge to report fact. Instead, it encouraged gossip and rumor-mongering and then wallowed in it. Pundits and lawyers and politicos trooped before cameras to air opinion on what they supposed happened, and then to analyze and to “what if” the public ad nauseam. And, secondly, we the public tuned in and listened to this televised tripe. Gossip and unfounded suppositions are called Lashon HaRa – evil speech. Adultery harms those who are directly involved – apologies and repentance can be made. But Lashon HaRa is a sin that has no boundaries. It harms everyone who creates it as well as all who listen to it or pass it along. It can bring down empires. The Hofetz Haim reminds us that it can even destroy the world. Indeed, we have seen such virtual truths presented by people who are not there, were not there, will never be there, and then passed along by viewers like us as if it were some sort of higher wisdom – a virtual moral tale. Shame on us all for viewing such gossip and shame on us all for passing it on. Both acts diminish us all.

And finally, there can be no virtual Judaism. One can’t be a person of faith without faith. Nor can one have a sense of identity without identifying. One can’t be a virtual Jew. A Jew who isn’t there is of little consequence to him or herself or to the greater Jewish community. A Jew simply can’t live alone and without community ... no more than one can worship a virtual God who does virtually nothing. Like Jacob, being a Jew means wrestling with God even as we are wounded. A virtual fast is no fast; a virtual observance is no observance; a virtual religious experience is no experience at all.

Come up to the mountain and be there! Being there is what life is all about. Being there – not in someone’s voice mail or on a recording device. Being there means slowing down and taking time to experience each day. Being there means making commitments and keeping them. Being there means living by significant values and virtues that lend dignity, and teaching these to your children. Being there means choosing and acting with wisdom and courage. Being there means listening with full attention. Being there means being where you are ... when you’re there. Yom Kippur is a sort of ultimate being there – a day in which we are in touch with ourselves – our real selves, without pretense, without being somewhere else, without diversion. Today, God beeps us to climb our personal mountain and be there with our self, our conscience, and our promises.

I close with a saying that I like very much. “The past is history, the future is mystery, but right now lived wisely is a gift we give ourselves ... which is why we call it the present.” On this night when history and mystery merge, may we gift ourselves with a present in which we get real with ourselves, with our friends, with our family, and with our faith. Amen

All 100 sermons in Forty Years of Wondering: The High Holy Day Sermons of Rabbi Raymond A. Zwerin are available in softcover and digital versions at:

https://www.amazon.com/Forty-Years-Wondering-Sermons-Raymond/dp/1735889636/