Presence

Engadget, one of the more popular technology/gadget blogs, posted about "kosher" kitchen appliances listed on the Star-K's website. Putting aside the "sabbath"-mode misnomer (the features are really meant for use on Yom Tov, when cooking is permissible; a distinction I wouldn't have expected most Jews to pick up on, let alone a gadget blog), the comments reveal a striking level of ignorance of the subtelty of Halacha, an impatience for religion in general, not to mention a healthy dose of repressed anti-semitisim.

The Wired article cited, on the other hand, is much more even-handed, and holy cow, if Jonah Ottensoser isn't in one of the techiest magazines in the world! First the Red Sox win the World Series, and now their discussing gramma in Wired (although, by referring to "different kinds of grammas," it sounds as if little goblins of causality are running around inside my refrigerator on Shabbos; that might explain why I'm always running out of beer).

On a personal note, this article, and Endgadget's link, along with the ignorant comments, are very poignant for me. I'm a technology afficianodo, to say the least, with a particular predeliction for blogs, but I'm also quite Jewish. As with most things in my life, I find it hard to bridge the two worlds (I'm missing the next BloggerCon yet again, beacuse it's on Shabbos). I've done my best to bridge the various facets of my personae into a single whole identity, but I'm continually finding myself segmented, for a variety of reasons. This is not the place to go into the philosophy of technology, and where it conflicts (or, is tempered by?) Jewish philosophy (or maybe it is, but I'm not going to), but this is, for me, probably one of the more difficult things I deal with. I see many who seem more able to integrate the disparate facets of their life, and often wonder if their lives are simpler, or, more likely, if I lack a certain level of confidence in my ideals.

Another point this article raises is the Star-K's position at the forefront of where the technology and kashrus industries meet. One would have thought that YU, or at least the OU, would be the more likely candidates for this role, but they are conspicuously absent. Instead, it's an organization of yeshiva-educated professionals who are the vanguard. It's a wholly different approach to modernity than the Torah U'Madda model, and from my perspective, possibly more efficacious in the long run. It could be argued that YU's particularly weak (er, non-existent?) engineering curriculum is to blame, but I think there's more at work here than that.