[Post I’m reading: Rav Nir Ben Artzi Packs The House With Latest Predictions of Doom at Life in Israel]
About a year ago, I heard a prominent shul rabbi express disdain for the standard Torah articles published by yeshiva students on esoteric topics or analyses of the philosophy of legal minutiae. He would prefer they expend energy on new thinking, new ideas, and major issues.
I believe he would agree that writing these articles is valuable for the growth of the yeshiva students, as they develop their ideas more fully and learn to express them. And I think he would agree that minutiae, and legal theories, must be examined in the traditional ways, too, in order for one to understand how to rule on the more mainstream cases.
However, I agree with his critique when I contemplate my own possibilities for print publication. From time to time, people suggest publishing a book of derashos, or of shiurim. But – aside from the time investment – I am caught short by the question of why.
Whom would I be helping? Would it be for a resume? Would it just be for the sake of my own aggrandizement – look, that’s MY sefer, there on the shelf, with the faux-leather and gold-leaf and the articles with titles like בענין כשרות מילה בליל פסח מצרים? (Not to mention – doesn’t a blog with this many posts, not to mention WebShas and HaMakor and YUTorah audio shiurim and Koshertube video shiurim, count as some sort of publication?)
And then I walk into a seforim store and see how many seforim, written by people far more erudite and eloquent than I am, are ignored, gathering dust in piles. And I wonder: Would mine be any better, or deserve any better?
Certainly, there are sefarim I want to write, more along the lines of the “bigthink” writing that the above-referenced rabbi had in mind. I want to write a work on bioethics in which the medical, halachic and historical material are presented. I want to write a mussar sefer for Modern Orthodoxy. I want to complete the translation of the Aruch HaShulchan I started over a decade ago. And so on. And maybe one day I will.
But for now, whenever I think about cutting out some activity to devote time to writing, the answer that comes back is, “Why?”
Heed Kohelet 12:12 - There is no end to the production of books...
Showing posts with label Judaism: Publication. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Judaism: Publication. Show all posts
Thursday, March 24, 2011
Thursday, October 29, 2009
A Laptop in the Beit Midrash?
[Note: This week’s Toronto Torah עלון is now available on-line here.]
One afternoon a few weeks back, while waiting for minchah, I studied a teshuvah (responsum) by Rav Yitzchak Weiss, courtesy of my Bar Ilan CD-ROM – using a laptop. A gentleman strolled past and commented, “Try bringing that… kli [implement] into the Satmar beis medrash, it wouldn’t last a minute!”
I was non-plussed to be addressed that way, but, in truth, I share his sentiment; I am not a fan of having a laptop in the beit midrash, for several reasons:
• I like to make notes in my sefarim – not exactly do-able in a virtual margin, or at least not in the familiar way;
• Laptops, and their power sources, are clumsy, particularly in rooms that were not designed for this sort of use and which therefore lack outlets;
• This is a function of my generation, but I still find laptops stand out in a beit midrash, and distract people from their learning;
• Most of all, a laptop poses a distraction. It provides access to email and to games and to the Internet, and to distractions which can pose as legitimate for seder time (Israel News, updating our Toronto Torah website, working on our weekly Toronto Torah bulletin), but which are not.
Having said that, I now use a laptop in the beit midrash, for a few reasons:
• I have no time at home to write up shiurim and source sheets, so I need to do it in the beit midrash itself;
• I need access to sefarim beyond those stocked in our beit midrash here;
• I spend considerable time developing shiurim on new technologies (next week: Bionic Eyes), and sites like Tzomet have a lot of internet-only information necessary for understanding those halachot.
But I am still troubled – both by the problems I mentioned above, and one additional problem: Ease of Publication. Laptops, through their access to email and to the Internet, make publication entirely too easy.
Read a teshuvah and have a question, or an insight? Send it by email to your thirty closest friends. Think of a novel idea? Post it to your blog. Give a shiur? Post audio and video for all to download. Even without Net access - type up every quasi-chiddush that comes to mind and archive it for your eventual self-published sefer.
The result is that learning becomes shallow, with little thought and little review. Every question, every answer, every thought, is instantly conveyed to the masses, without careful error-checking, analysis, or even editing.
Certainly, other people are not vulnerable to this phenomenon; it’s likely only me. Nonetheless, for me, having a computer around is like being a football coach walking around with a mike on him; it lends itself to hyper-publication.
So I continue to lug my laptop to the beit midrash, but at heart I agree with my pre-minchah heckler; I am not comfortable having this kli in the beit midrash, either.
One afternoon a few weeks back, while waiting for minchah, I studied a teshuvah (responsum) by Rav Yitzchak Weiss, courtesy of my Bar Ilan CD-ROM – using a laptop. A gentleman strolled past and commented, “Try bringing that… kli [implement] into the Satmar beis medrash, it wouldn’t last a minute!”
I was non-plussed to be addressed that way, but, in truth, I share his sentiment; I am not a fan of having a laptop in the beit midrash, for several reasons:
• I like to make notes in my sefarim – not exactly do-able in a virtual margin, or at least not in the familiar way;
• Laptops, and their power sources, are clumsy, particularly in rooms that were not designed for this sort of use and which therefore lack outlets;
• This is a function of my generation, but I still find laptops stand out in a beit midrash, and distract people from their learning;
• Most of all, a laptop poses a distraction. It provides access to email and to games and to the Internet, and to distractions which can pose as legitimate for seder time (Israel News, updating our Toronto Torah website, working on our weekly Toronto Torah bulletin), but which are not.
Having said that, I now use a laptop in the beit midrash, for a few reasons:
• I have no time at home to write up shiurim and source sheets, so I need to do it in the beit midrash itself;
• I need access to sefarim beyond those stocked in our beit midrash here;
• I spend considerable time developing shiurim on new technologies (next week: Bionic Eyes), and sites like Tzomet have a lot of internet-only information necessary for understanding those halachot.
But I am still troubled – both by the problems I mentioned above, and one additional problem: Ease of Publication. Laptops, through their access to email and to the Internet, make publication entirely too easy.
Read a teshuvah and have a question, or an insight? Send it by email to your thirty closest friends. Think of a novel idea? Post it to your blog. Give a shiur? Post audio and video for all to download. Even without Net access - type up every quasi-chiddush that comes to mind and archive it for your eventual self-published sefer.
The result is that learning becomes shallow, with little thought and little review. Every question, every answer, every thought, is instantly conveyed to the masses, without careful error-checking, analysis, or even editing.
Certainly, other people are not vulnerable to this phenomenon; it’s likely only me. Nonetheless, for me, having a computer around is like being a football coach walking around with a mike on him; it lends itself to hyper-publication.
So I continue to lug my laptop to the beit midrash, but at heart I agree with my pre-minchah heckler; I am not comfortable having this kli in the beit midrash, either.
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