Should our students be allowed to study Torah on an iPad? Does it change the Kedusha of the text?
For thousands of years Jewish tradition was rooted in the oral passing of history. In the first and second century when Yehuda HaNassi compiled the Mishna, he changed the future of Jewish education. I can see the riots and criticism he must have dealt with from the 'traditionalists' and others who thought he was lessening the importance of learning these sacred pieces of our religion. However much it changed when the Mishna was compiled, the move towards printed material centuries later when the printing press was established changed our way of studying ten-fold or more.
Today, we are in a new stage of progress, we could call it a technological revolution, moving from books to ipads and computers. The text remains the same but the access is vast and always expanding to meet our broad needs and provide us with an abundance of text in moments. People today are 'wired' differently--pun intended--and our movement towards increased technology in Jewish education goes along with the progress in other elements of lives.
Studying Torah on the iPad for an older person today might seem strange, counter productive, too high tech, and possibly flat out wrong. When you're used to books, flipping pages, and being surrounded by a large library or Beit Midrash, using a small screen that can hold all those texts seems weird. But, todays students are used to the technology, seek new ways of learning, and like to connect in simple ways. By teaching Torah on the iPad, our students can learn quickly, move through a large amount of texts at a high speed, and can make learning Torah as accessible as everything else they do in their lives.
The initial feelings of studying your Torah portion or learning a daf of Gemara on the iPad might seem strange but when you realize the amount of knowledge and wisdom you possess at your fingertips, it's inspiring. Our students don't want to be brought into the past, they want to transform the future. The way we teach can inspire holiness in the text and bring the words of our tradition to life in a fascinating way.
